Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Rome, the Rome of his novels, his films, and his philological studies, is tragic and picaresque. He was born in Bologna, studied in Emilia Romagna, where he lived his hermetic period with Longhi, and then came his Friulian experience in Casarsa, his mother’s hometown. First there were poems in dialect, then the first poems in Italian, and then there was September 8th128 and the dangerous period that ensued.129 Then came the end of the war and “my father’s return from his imprisonment; he is ill, and poisoned by the defeat of Fascism, in his homeland, and by the defeat of the Italian language at home.”130 Then in the winter of 1949 he flees to Rome with his mother, “like in a novel.” The Friulian period is over. “My notebooks remained in a drawer for a long time.” “But soon, just a few months after arriving in Rome,” he writes, “if on the one hand I continued in a baroque Gaddian note in my anti-Italian research, on the other hand I began to write that narrative thing which would one day be Ragazzi di Vita.”
Almost 23 years have passed.
Yes, almost.
And why did you pick Rome?
It wasn’t a conscious choice. What I mean is that, if I had had the choice, I probably, almost certainly would have chosen Rome, but I came here as the result of a series of family circumstances, because I had a certain chance of starting a life here, that’s all.
You have lived here for 23 years. After all this time, do you feel that you are indebted to the city, or that it is more indebted to you?
Well…until about five or six years ago I had a wonderful relationship with the city. I wrote many poems…all the poems in Gramsci’s Ashes are set in Rome. There was a real love there, if one can speak of love between a person and a city. I owe a lot to Rome. I owe my maturity to Rome, and I’ve said so in my writing, with the words one uses to bear witness to a debt, in my poem “Il Pianto della Scavatrice” [“The Cry of the Bulldozer”], “Stupendous, miserable city, you have taught me those things that, ferocious and joyful, men learn as children, the little things in which the grandeur of a life of peace is discovered, like going strongly and readily into the fight…Stupendous and miserable city, you have made me experience that unknown life. Until I discovered that which, in each of us, is the world.” But this period ended five or six years ago. It ended not so much because of a rupture in my relationship with Rome, but because of a rupture in my relationship with all of Italian society. If Rome has changed, extremely and for the worse, it is not the city’s fault. This thing was not born in the city, but belongs to a degenerative phenomenon that is affecting all of Italian society.
Before this recent separation, five or six years ago, do you feel that you understood the city, that you learned to know it well?
Yes, absolutely. But now it has changed and I don’t want to understand it any more.
So, now, you feel a kind of rejection…
Yes, I feel a total rejection and in fact I have bought a little place in the country and I’m planning to go and live there. And I travel often, far from Europe, to the East mostly.
So, let’s speak for a moment of that Rome of five or six years ago, the Rome that you loved, let’s say. If you were to anthropomorphize it, what gender would you ascribe to it?
I wouldn’t ascribe a masculine or feminine gender to it. I would ascribe to it that special gender of ragazzi.
What age?
Adolescent.
What appearance?
The appearance of a typical Roman kid from the outlying neighborhoods, dark hair, olive skin, black eyes, robust build.
Robust, how?
Slim, not exactly athletic. A bit like an Arab, not exactly athletic, but, let’s say, harmoniously built.
What kind of spirit?
The spirit that is born of a non-moralistic conception of the world. Not Christian. The spirit of someone who has his own, stoic-Epicurean morality which has, shall we say, survived the teachings of Catholicism. A morality which has continued to develop underground and to survive beneath the dominion of the Vatican. It is a philosophy based on a loyal relationship with one’s fellow man, which substitutes love, understood in a real and authentic way, with honor. Tolerant, but not the kind of tolerance that comes with power, but the singular tolerance of the individual.
So, in your opinion, the centuries of Vatican domination have not significantly affected…
No, they have not significantly affected the Roman character. Rome is the least Catholic city in the world. Naturally I mean the Rome of five or six years ago, which was a great capital of the masses. Proletarian and sub-proletarian. Now, it has become a small, bourgeois, provincial city.
Why?
Because while the protagonist of Roman life was the people, Rome continued to be a metropolis, an untidy metropolis, messy, divided, fragmented, but still a great, confusing, sprawling metropolis. Since this acculturation took place, however, mostly through the mass media, the model of the Roman populace is no longer born of itself, out of its own culture, but is based on a model provided by the center. When that happened, Rome became one of many small Italian cities. Petit bourgeois, small-minded, Catholic, full of inauthenticity and neuroses.
Do you believe that this process of acculturation occurred earlier in other Italian cities, like Turin or Milan?
No, this process of acculturation, of the transformation of particular and marginal cultures into a centralized culture that homogenizes everything, occurred more or less simultaneously all over Italy. Several elements came together. The development of motorization, for example. When the diaphragm of distance is eliminated, certain societal models also disappear. Today the kid from the outlying areas can hop on his motor-scooter and go “downtown.” People don’t even say, as they used to, “I’m going into the city.” The city has come to them. The adventure is over. The exchange between center and periphery is rapid and continuous. But Turin and Milan were industrial cities, not proletarian and sub-proletarian but petit bourgeois. So in those cities the change was less apparent, less dramatic than in Rome. This phenomenon is less apparent in Naples. Naples is really the only Italian city which is still the same as it has always been. With its own, particular culture.
When you came to Rome, first you went to live near the Portico di Ottavia. The fashion of fully refurnished two-bedroom apartments in Trastevere had not yet begun…And then you moved to the Tiburtino, then to Monteverde Vecchio, and now here, to the EUR neighborhood, in one of the most beautiful and quiet parts of the city. Is there a reason for all these changes?
Economic reasons, of course.
So, this pilgrimage upward from one neighborhood to another, and your personal experiences, have allowed you to traverse the various social strata of the city? And get to know them?
Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. My Roman experience is principally the experience of the working classes. I have never lived among the Roman bourgeoisie.
You said earlier that you identify Rome with a certain kind of adolescent from the outlying neighborhoods, but don’t you think that Rome is also the bourgeoisie, the small businessman, the restaurant owner?
Well, you see, this bourgeoisie is so closed in on itself, so lacking in a culture, so parasitical, that it doesn’t even count in the city’s life. At least not up to now. Perhaps the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the government offices have counted to some extent. But still, this bourgeoisie is not very Roman. It has always counted politically, because it has formed the Right in the city.
According to you, Rome is an open city, in other words, instinctively democratic. Is there communication between the classes? Are there passageways from one social class to another?
No. There is a barrier between the center and the periphery. Until just a few years ago, they were two completely different cities. Now, on the surface, it is less so. But the reality is that the Roman bourgeoisie does not accept a proletarian among its ranks, even if he is gentrified. And the same goes for the aristocracy.
So the division is less evident, but more dramatic…do you agree?
Yes. It is more dramatic in that it is felt by the proletariat, who was not aware of it before. Before, the men and women from the slums did not feel an inferiority complex because they did not belong to the so-called privileged classes. They felt the injustice of poverty, but they were not envious of the rich, the well-off. They considered them almost inferior beings, incapable of adhering to their philosophy. But now the poor have this feeling of inferiority. If you observe the young people from the working class, you will see that they no longer try to impose themselves through who they are, but instead attempt to imitate the model of the student. They might wear glasses, even if they don’t need them, in order to seem “superior.”
And on the other hand, this habit that the aristocracy and the bureaucrats have of behaving like members of the proletariat, using dialect, going to simple osterie, etc….this is all just a façade?
No, it is also a Roman tradition. I think that many of these habits have gone on for centuries. The Roman aristocracy, I believe, has always spoken Roman dialect. If for no other reason, out of ignorance. It is the most ignorant aristocracy in the world. So it is not even an aesthetic choice. Perhaps it has become so in these last years. But, in the past, I think it was simply out of boorishness. They had never read anything, written anything, brought anything to the culture; they were not even patrons of the arts, which is another way of understanding culture. They have always lived off their revenues, in total isolation. Mixing with the proletariat is now a snobbish exercise.
You have written in Friulian dialect and in Roman dialect. Beyond the level of experimentation, what is the reason for this, as a writer?
Well, despite the fact that people say the opposite, that they believe that my experiments in dialect have been instinctual, in the case of Roman dialect, this was not the case….
What do you mean?
I mean that these experiments do not come from a direct inspiration. I did not decide to write in Roman dialect for the pleasure of it, or because of a personal interest in philology. It was not like that at all. My interest came out of an interest for this new life, these new people I encountered when I came to Rome. And, because this life and these people functioned in Roman dialect, it was natural for me to experiment in the language.
Let’s isolate a few expressions which to me seem typically Roman. Why is an expression like “a fanatigo!”131 so recurrent in dialect? Is this an unconscious choice?
Yes, it is a choice…What does this choice consist of? It consists of a Stoico-Epicurean Roman philosophy based on common sense, on a practical view of life which implies a humorous, tolerant condemnation of everything that seems idealistic, beyond reality. That’s it.
What about “faccio come me pare, si mme va”?132
Well, it fits into the pragmatism typical of all dialects, with a particularly Roman attitude. Like “a fanatigo”; there are variations of these expressions in every dialect.
Well, I don’t know if there is another dialect with an insult equivalent to “li mortacci tua”!
No, no. These expressions are particular, but there are similarities.
For example?
Well, I can’t give you a whole repertory right at this moment…but in the north, especially in the Veneto where people are more religious than in Rome, they blaspheme.
Can you think of any other expressions? Is there one that has left a mark on you, as a northerner?
Yes, there is one I love especially. It’s “anvedi!”133 It is the only case, the only moment in which a Roman lets himself go. He reveals that he is capable of feeling surprise. Because his wise, detached, ironic attitude does not usually permit him to show surprise. Even if he is ingenuous, the Roman youth, or man, always tries to mask his ingenuousness. This expression, “anvedi,” reveals a sudden capacity for surprise. And that’s why I like it so much.
Il Messaggero, Rome, June 9, 1973. Interview with Pier Paolo Pasolini by Luigi Sommaruga.
128 On September 8, 1943, the Armistice was declared. Almost immediately, the Germans occupied Rome.
129 Pasolini was called up by the Italian army in the days before the Armistice, and deserted before the advancing German Army.
130 During this period, Pasolini writes and teaches in Friulian dialect.
131 Fanatigo is a version of the word fanatico, or fanatic.
132 From “faccio come mi pare, se mi va”; means “I’ll do whatever I like, if I feel like it.” In Roman dialect, the pronunciation becomes “si mme va” as it is spelled here.
133 Means something like “imagine that!”