Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Chapter 22, Section One by Dave Jaffe

        The Poet as Gay Activist - The Life of Pier Paolo Pasolini

    He was a poet, then a novelist, then a film director. He grew up under fascism and became a communist.
      He was a homosexual in a country, that like many others at the time, loathed gays and lesbians and outlawed homosexuality. In his relatively short but very active life, Pier Paolo Pasolini created some great works of art.
    Pasolini was born in 1922 in Bologna, a very left wing city in northern Italy. His father was a lieutenant in the Italian army and at one time was arrested for gambling debts. During the 1920's, the Pasolini family - a wife, husband and two sons - moved many times, due to the father's military career.
    Italy at the time was ruled by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. 'Fascism' is a word often used and misused on the political left. "Oh that premier (or president) is just a fascist," many leftists have said. But Mussolini was a true fascist and the first real fascist ruler.
    "Fascism in its modern and precise sense," writes John Berger, "can exist whenever a class or people feel trapped." Fascism, says Berger applies to the exploitation of this feeling by imperialism and big business "as a weapon against socialism."
    Mussolini's one-party state was born in the unrest that swept the world at the end of the First World War. A former socialist himself, Mussolini crushed the Italian socialists, all leftist opponents and protesting farmers and workers. He sent his troops into Ethiopia in 1936 and conquered it while killing tens of thousands of its black people. Ethiopia and Libya remained in Italian hands until the end of World War Two.
      Mussolini allied himself with Hitler and Japan in the Second World War against the U.S. of A., the Soviet Union, Great Britain  and other countries. His government was overthrown in 1944 and Mussolini and his lover were killed by Partisans.
      During this time of great upheaval, Pasolini and his family at first remained untouched. At a very early age Pasolini began to read literature and poetry. As a very young person, Pasolini was religious, a staunch Catholic in Italy that was the home of the Catholic church. Then he deserted religion and  embraced fascism. Yet then he was fired by a fascist editor when working on a magazine. This shook up his politics.
    Soon the war impacted Pasolini and his family. In 1943 and 1944 Allied forces invaded Italy. Mussolini was rescued by the German army and the war went on. Thousands of Allied forces including Canadians, Americans, British, Poles and others fought and died against the German and fascist Italian armies.
    Pasolini's family now moved to Friuli in north-east Italy to escape the war.  Pasolini was drafted by the Germans, then he was imprisoned by them. His brother was killed in battle while fighting with or against Italian communist Partisans who set up anti-fascist forces. (One person I read said that Pasolini's brother fought on the fascist side. Another  book I read claimed that Pasolini's brother fought on the side of the Partisans.)
     Pasolini had lived in Friuli before and by now had written many poems in the Friuli dialect. This was something Mussolini's government didn't like. It sought to stamp out all regional dialects and get everybody to speak and write in Italian. Pasolini's poems written in the Friuli language, was, in a small way, an act of rebellion.
     "I learnt it," Pasolini said of the dialect. "As a mystic, as an act of love."
     Pasolini was soon launched into a life of rebelling against all authorities.
         
          (End of Section One. To be continued0.