Poesie / Básně – Pasolini Pier Paolo (2020)

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) is known above all as the director of now-classic films of world cinema, including Accattone, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Theorem and the controversial Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. He regarded himself primarily as a poet, however, and wrote poetry throughout his tragically short life. Until now, Czech readers have encountered his poetry only in fragments, for example in Mikeš’s translation of the 1957 collection The Ashes of Gramsci. This volume is the first extensive cross-section of his poetic work, presenting selections from all his collections, including those written in the Friulian dialect spoken by his beloved mother, such as Poems in Casarsa from 1942. The centrepiece of this bilingual collection, translated by Alice Flemrová and Tomáš Matras, who also selected and arranged the poems and supplied the introductory study, is the autobiographical and confessional composition Il poeta delle ceneri / The Poet of the Ashes, in which Pasolini reveals hidden truths about political and economic power and the justified risk of the collapse of modern and postmodern society. The volume is enriched with graphic works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The contents are in Czech and Italian.