Exile, Realism, and Authorship in Pasolini's Atti impuri and Amado mio

What is it about?

This article analyses Atti impuri and Amado mio, Pasolini’s early unfinished novels about young homosexual love, in the context of Italian narrative of the period as well as Pasolini's own career. It argues there is a nostalgia to their depiction of Friuli, which Pasolini had since left for Rome. This poetics of absence provides the backdrop for a reflection on the practice of realist authorship that engages with contemporary neorealist narrative from a position of paradoxical outsiderhood.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Prior scholarship has read these novels as autobiographical and even diaristic, overlooking their metaliterary aspects. Critics have largely ignored the fact that the novels' final redactions were drawn up, not in Friuli, but in Rome, where the author had fled in January 1950 in the wake of a sexually tinged scandal. With this in mind, the author's relationship to his material changes significantly from one of identity to one of alienation and the literary complexity of his work emerges.