SOURCE: "Pasolini's Gramsci," in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 96, No. 1, January, 1981, pp. 120-37.

In the following excerpt, Sillanpoa investigates the influence of Antonio Gramsci on Pasolini's work.

When discussing those who perhaps most influenced the thought of the late Pier Paolo Pasolini, poet, novelist, critic and filmmaker, one critic recently spoke of "il suo Gramsci." Implied in this possessive is the highly personal interpretation that Pasolini attached to the example and writings of Antonio Gramsci, revolutionary political theorist whose famous notebooks survived their author's death in 1937 after eleven years of Fascist imprisonment. What follows attempts to qualify this implication through a survey of Pasolini's writings directly linked to a reading of Gramsci. Demonstration should emerge to bolster those claims of a subjective interpretation whose ultimate complexity can best be described generally as a curious admixture of confraternity and contradiction.

The closing section of L'usignolo delta Chiesa Cattolica (1958), containing verse...