TV Host: How is it that a Marxist like you so often draws inspiration from subjects from the Gospel and from the testimony of the followers of Christ?
Pasolini: It always comes back to what Bignardi mentioned: I experience things in a very interior fashion. My view of things of the world, objects is not a natural or secular one. I always see things as being a bit miraculous. For me, every object is a miracle. My view of the world is in a certain way a religious one, though not rigid and sectarian. That's why I invest this way of seeing things in my work.
TV Host: Is the Gospel a source of consolation for you?
Pasolini: Consolation? I'm not looking for consolation. Like any human being, every now and then I look for some small delight or satisfaction.. but consolation is always rhetorical... insincere, unreal.
Ah, you mean the Gospel of Christ? Then I completely reject the word "consolation." For me, the Gospel is a great intellectual work... a great edifice of thought. It doesn't console. It fills, integrates, regenerates, sets one's own thoughts in motion. But consolation? What use is consolation? "Consolation" is a word like "hope."
TV Host: Who are your enemies?
Pasolini: I don't know. I don't pay attention to that. Every now and then I sense waves of sometimes inexplicable enmity towards me, but I prefer to not dwell on that.
TV Host: Who are the people you love the most?
Pasolini: The people I love the most? You want specific names, or general types?
TV Host: General types, and names too, if you like.
Pasolini: The type of people I love the most by far are people who perhaps never even reached fourth grade. Very plain and simple people, and those aren't just empty words on my part. I say it because the culture of the petite bourgeoisie, at least in my country, but perhaps in France and Spain too, always brings corruption and impurity along with it. While the illiterate, or those who barely finished first grade, always have a certain grace, which is lost as they're exposed to culture.
Then it's found once again at a very high level of culture. But conventional culture always corrupts.
Youtube Comments & Replies
A man born at the wrong time. The world just wasn't ready for his art and sincerity.
Wasn’t really born at the wrong time, every person is a product of their time. Had he been born in our generation, he’d be much different. At least we can still enjoy his work to this day, so its not like his art went to waste.
He’s right. I never hear “simple people” and “grace” in the same context but those who are shallow and vain are the real “simple” ones. Hard-working people carry with them a sense of wisdom and experience that makes them individuals, compared to snobs who carry on the same lifeless conversations with others everyday.
Well, you're half there. The first part is easiest to understand: simple, working people with grace. But the second part is more complicated: those who have transcended class and daily cares and achieve a new grace through study, arts, literature, thinking, and curiosity about what we as a humanity can do and be for each other and ourselves.
Recently saw the film "Pasolini" and was compelled to view vids of the man once again. One of the most fascinating artistic figures in history. You'll know times are good again when an artist speaks as eloquently and as deep as he did.
His films changed my life. I saw The Decameron in the cinema and it was an experience I will never forget, and the Gospel according to Saint Matthew is perhaps the most brilliant religious film that exists.
Beautiful. It seems to me that he's starting from a place of love for all and realizes that capitalist culture must destroy that deep feeling of love for all which is within us all at birth by creating people who get labeled "uneducated".
Additional reading
Pier Paolo Pasolini - RARE Ebooks - hosted on Internet Archive, and starting with Petrolio, the book Pasolini was in the process of writing when murdered.
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