SOURCE: "Movies and Poems," in The New York Times Book Review, June 27, 1982, pp. 8-9, 14.

In the following review, White discusses Enzo Siciliano's biography of Pasolini, Pasolini's work, and Pasolini's similarities to Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima.

Pier Paolo Pasolini was violently murdered near Rome on Nov. 2, 1975. He was only 54 years old, but he had managed to produce a lifetime of work in several genres. The publication of a translation of the first biography of him, by Enzo Siciliano, and a volume of translations by Norman MacAfee of Pasolini's best poems remind us what an extraordinary man he was.

He had gained fame first as a poet in the dialect of his native region, Friuli—the area north of Venice that extends into Yugoslavia. Soon he switched to Italian, in which he went on to publish more than 40 volumes of poetry, fiction, travel notes and cultural and political criticism.

But...