Venezia Arti Journal of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Journal | Venezia Arti
Journal issue | 24 | 2014
Research Article | Pasolini and the Mystery of the Scene

Pasolini and the Mystery of the Scene

Abstract

In his usually provocative manner, Pasolini offers us a stage that appears to go as far as to deny stage itself. Here, even if in a ambiguous way, a deep nostalgia of the lost rites forces his tales toward a true mistery. Actually, besides the adolescent poetry written in Casarsa and the dialectal Massenspiel Turcs tal Friul, furtherly after the Manifesto del nuovo teatro (in opposition to Talk Theatre and Gesture Theatre) and the masterpieces dealing with the classic miths like Affabulazione and Orgia, this analysis above all focuses on the fundamental work in progress, Nel ’46. The fact is that this tourmented and continuously amended play presents both male and female roles and the characters of son/sister/mother profoundly twisted between them. We can say that we are faced with a family in the the night, that is a sort of dream or of nightmare which settles the lines and the plot itself. Consequently, obsessive metaphors and personal myths (in Charles Mauron’s terms) occupy the Pasolini’s stage. So, his troubled relationship with the ghost of Jesus Christ on the cross (in spite of his ostentatious atheism), his morbid desire (and paradoxical prophecy) to be killed by his young lovers, the tragic sacrifice of his brother and the painful mourning together with the mother are all attempts to make a sacred «aura» come back in the modern theatre. For sacred, of course, I mean the mixture of sublime and obscene, in a pre-Christian horizon.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Published June 15, 2014 | Language: it


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