Pasolini Between Enigma and Prophecy

Les Harding is Reference Librarian at the University of Waterloo.

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a poet, playwright, communist, and atheist who
was tried 33 times on charges ranging from obscenity to blasphemy. He
was also a giant of Italian and world cinema. On November 2, 1975,
Pasolini was brutally beaten to death by a homosexual tough on a
football pitch near Rome.

Zigaina was a long-time friend and artistic collaborator of
Pasolini’s. Though it contains elements of biography, Zigaina’s book
is a heavily footnoted and intensely intellectual study of Pasolini’s
artistic and human experience and how the two were really one. At times
the book is difficult, even torturous, to read.

Drawing on his knowledge of art history, psychology, and literary and
cinematic analysis, as well as recollection, Zigaina brings forth the
startling conclusion that Pasolini’s death was not a casual accident.
According to Zigaina, Pasolini was looking for death. He was a voluntary
martyr who felt that only a violent death would give his life and art
meaning. Zigaina then goes further. He quotes descriptive fragments of
Pasolini’s writings that closely parallel the police reports of
Pasolini’s murder. Was this a coincidence or a diabolical suicide? We
will never know.