La volontà di Pasolini a essere autore: uno studio filologico delle "forme" della "Divina Mimesis"

"La volontà di Pasolini a essere autore" [Pasolini’s Will to Be an Author] investigates the authorial performativity of late Pasolini through a critical and philological analysis of "La Divina Mimesis". Conceived as a monographic study, the project takes as its starting point a detailed and in-depth investigation of Pasolini’s final work in order to trace the transformation of the author’s habitus between 1963 — the year in which the writing of the work began — and 1975, the year of both the publication of "La Divina Mimesis" and the author’s death. To this end, the research first examines the papers preserved in the Alessandro Bonsanti collection at the Vieusseux Archive, focusing in particular on the folder "Memorie barbariche – frammenti infernali", which contains the preparatory materials for the work. Through an analysis of both structural and micro-variants, the study reconstructs Pasolini’s compositional method and the concurrent transformation of his authorial habitus. From the identification of this working method, the analysis proceeds to investigate the different compositional strata of the text, ultimately identifying the six distinct "forms" assumed by the work during its gestation. More than mere stages in the construction of the text later abandoned, these "forms" constitute archaic survivals of meaning that persist, though resemanticized, within the work’s final significance. In this sense, the study demonstrates that the title of the work functions not only thematically but also rhematically, insofar as it designates both the central subject matter of the book and its genre and form. Through this inquiry into the authorial performativity of Pasolini’s final phase — visible, for instance, in his dialogue with Dante Alighieri, Giacomo Leopardi, and contemporary intellectuals — the research shows how, in his later years, Pasolini sought to create a new kind of realist work capable of containing within itself the contradictions of existence and reproducing the simultaneously dialectical and antidialectical movement of reality. Ultimately, the study argues that, in the final phase of his production, Pasolini composed works intended to intervene in society as genuine civic "documents", works that point toward the only desirable synthesis of the historical process: one capable of preserving archaic survivals within itself and mastering the irrational without overcoming it, unlike the mala sintesi pursued by the hegemonic development of neocapitalism.