Foul in thought, word and deed
Margaret FitzHerbert
A VIOLENT LIFE by Pier Paolo Pasolini translated by William Weaver
Carcanet, £9.95
Ten years ago on All Souls Day 1975 the murdered, mutilated body of Pier Paolo Pasolini was found on a desolate sandy rubbish heap near Rome airport. To cele- brate this rather gruesome anniversary the Arts Council of Great Britain has subsi- dised the re-publication of William Weav- er's translation of Una Vita Violenta. It seems a little odd of the Arts Council to employ its limited resources on the prop agation of an old work of foreign pornogra- phy translated into a second foreign lan- guage — American. Una Vita Violenta was written in Roman dialect and Weaver has translated it, very freely, into colloquial American. The Italian version of the book has a 400-word glossary to explain the more obscure dialect words. The English reader does not need a glossary to explain Weaver's americanisms since their mean- ing is self evident but needs instead a strong stomach because the vocabulary he has used is, quite simply, disgusting.
Weaver, probably the most respected translator of Italian into English working today, has allowed himself great licence. His dilemma with this book is easy to understand; how successfully he has re- solved it is more difficult to assess. Many Romans questioned the authenticity of Pasolini's Roman (Pasolini himself came from Bologna and learnt his Roman from his homosexual adventures with the rough trade). Weaver's American may be valid; to English ears it does not ring quite true.
Roman parolaccie translated literally are often meaningless in English. The seriously offensive — L' anima de li mortacci tua (the soul of your filthy dead) — the use of which leads to a knifing in the novel, has obviously to be replaced by some other expression. Delicacy prevents giving Weaver's phrase but it is suitably un- pleasant. However, although Pasolini's book is larded with obcenities, Weaver has added many for good measure. Phrases like vatene, a mildly discourteous way of saying go away is always translated as 'fuck off.
Leaving aside the filth of the language, the content of A Violent Life is ugly and disturbing. The first two chapters are almost unreadable but there are rewards for perseverence. Gradually one is en- gaged by the unprepossessing little hero, Tommaso, a weak, vainglorious, mindless- ly violent product of the Roman suburban slums. First glimpsed while still a school- boy, his short and sleazy career is followed to his early death from tuberculosis. Pasoli- ni wrote the novel just before he embarked on his career as a film-maker but already he is using a cinematographic technique. There is scarcely any narrative, just an accumulation of scenes, mostly horrifying: Tommaso at school failing to seduce a pederastic schoolmaster; Tommaso as a neo-fascist bullying an old olive seller, beating up a petrol pump attendant, mug- ging a prostitute; Tommaso in the cinema and public lavatories working as a male prostitute; Tommaso in prison; Tommaso in hospital; Tommaso taunting and strip- ping an old tramp, a rival gang abusing and maltreating prostitutes and a pitched battle with the police. There are other less beastly scenes with Tommaso's girl friend Irene; some of these are curiously touching and sensitive and one scene, his return from prison to find his family rehoused from their one-room shack into a council housing estate, is genuinely moving. Final- ly there is Tommaso's death, which is embarrassingly sentimental.
The mixture of realism and sentimental- ity throughout the book is not a happy one. It does, however, accurately reflect the conflict in Pasolini who was on the one hand a sensitive romantic and on the other an aggressive masochist. The youths he wrote about in A Violent Life were the same youths whom he loved and used to provoke to acts of violence and who finally murdered him. His politics were as mud- dled and contradictory as his emotions.
He was a romantic communist when he wrote A Violent Life and the conscious irrationality of his political philosophy is evident in the book. In later life the romanticism conquered the communism and he moved nearer to an Italian version of Chestertonian Distributism although he continues to be claimed as a hero of the communist movement by today's Italian communists. Indeed the cult for Pasolini has never been stronger in Italy. All his books are still in print and his unedifying end has augmented rather than diminished his reputation. In England, however, although known as a film director, his books are little read. Whether the Arts Council is serving any useful purpose in re-introducing them to the English reading public must remain doubtful. A Violent Life is unquestionably a powerful book. A few years ago some might have said it was also an irrelevant book, but with the growth in England of aimless youthful thuggery it cannot be denied that today there are plenty of parallels. In Italy, prosperity has more or less eliminated the dispossessed violent class that Pasolini wrote about, but his books continue to be read.
When A Violent Life first appeared in Italy in 1959 it caused a sensation. It was a shocking book. Surprisingly, 25 years later it still is. This is not simply because of the presence of violence. There is a revelling in it which is more than disagreeable or unpleasing. It is foully shocking.
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