SOURCE: "Poet, Martyr, Myth," in The Nation, Vol. 235, No. 3, July 24-31, 1982, pp. 86-8.

In the following review, Stille analyzes Pasolini's relationship with Italian society and politics.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, probably the most famous writer of postwar Italy, is best known in America for his lurid X-rated movies Arabian Nights and 'Salo,' the 120 Days of Sodom. An immensely gifted poet, novelist, film director, literary critic and social commentator, Pasolini was a tangle of contradictions—Communist and Catholic, artist and ideologue, celebrity and outcast, homosexual and rigid traditionalist.

No single work can convey his importance in Italy as a public figure and a national myth: the bête noire of the right (and sometimes of the left) and, for millions of young people, a cult figure whose actions and opinions were the subject of great controversy. Pasolini's murder in 1975, apparently by a teen-age male prostitute, divided the country. For...