In October 1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled to Venice to interview Ezra Pound for broadcast on national television. One a lifelong Marxist, the other a former propagandist for the Fascist regime, their encounter was billed as a clash of opposites. But what do these poets share? And what can they tell us about the poetics and politics of the twentieth century?This book reads one by way of the other,aligning their engagement with different temporalities and traditions, polities and geographies, languages and forms, evoked as utopian alternatives to the cultural and political crises of capitalist modernity. Part literary history, part comparative study, it offers a new and provocative perspective on these poets and the critical debates around them – in particular, on Pound’s Italian years and Pasolini’s use of Pound in his work. Their connection helps to understand the implications and legacies of their work today.
Author(s): Sean Mark
Series: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 440
City: Cham
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations of Works by Ezra Pound and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Ezra Pound
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Introduction: Pound and/or Pasolini
References
Chapter 1: Family Portraits
Encounters
Civil War
Ghosts and Benedictions
References
Chapter 2: Creatures Facing Backwards
Spirit of Romance
Congenial Ancestries
Nekuia
Barbarians
References
Chapter 3: Exposition
Revelations
Passion and Ideology
Crisis-Writing
Pure Opposition
References
Chapter 4: An Economy of Signs
Reality’s Written Language
Lapsus
The Age Demanded an Image
The End of the Avant-garde
New Techniques
References
Chapter 5: Failure
The Record / The Palimpsest
Paradiso Perduto
Katechon
The End of the Poet
References
Coda: Afterlives
References
Appendix A
Appendix B
References
Index
