Pasolini interviews Ungaretti on Homosexuality

Comizi d'amore - Love Meetings (1965)

While looking for the right set for his film Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964), Pier Paolo Pasolini embarks on a journey throughout Italy and, driven by restless curiosity and a deep passion, he gives life to Comizi d'amore (Love Meetings).

Equipped only with his microphone, Pasolini explores the most diverse social environments, traveling the Peninsula from north to south, and asking for Italians' opinions about sexuality, love, eroticism: farmers, workers, students, housewives, actors, writers, nobody is spared. He thereby provides us with a photography of the Country at the beginning of the 1960s (it was 1963, the film-documentary will be released in 1965).

The Hands of the Apes

Sometimes, the thought comes to my mind that the way we are living with our body is misleading. I get the strange feeling, for example, that my eyes are not entirely to see any more. It's not up to them, though. They have been doing an extraordinary job for 28 years and I am grateful to them for how they managed to overwhelm successfully hours spent in front of the laptop. But what about my part? Am I able to use my eyes up to their potential?

Our sight can spot target miles and miles away, but how many times during the day can we raise our eyes above the horizon? In most of the cases, this faculty is not of any use any more, even though the anthropologist C.L. Strauss wrote of a tribe with an extraordinary sense of orientation because they could spot Venus in the sky during day time. Then, he went to see old treaties of navigation and he found out that it was possible for old sailors of our civilisation as well, but we can not say if the rest of the humans lost this skill or simply forgot how to do it. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, 1978)

In parallel, if the first Homo Sapiens could have a walk in our time, he would take just a few steps before suffocating. He could not live in a world with million of cars as we do, but probably he could rely much more on his nose for his every day life.

So, doubts raised on me about other parts of the body. I am not sure the mouth is for eating and the tongue to taste food. I am not even sure if my hands are grabbing correctly things I move from a place to another.

On the contrary, when I see Chimps on TV handling rocks or stick, I perceive they really mean those actions. Their hands seem to have a conscience on their own when they touch what soon will be a tool for fishing ants trough a hole in the ground. I started to believe that in these moments, their hairy hands are more hands than mines.

Calypso and Odysseus

Calypso's Isle, Herbert James Draper, 1897

Calypso is a nymph of the Ocean whose name comes from the Greek kalyptō which means "to hide ". In accordance to her name, she lives alone in a cave in Ogygia, a mysterious island located somewhere in the Western Mediterranean sea. Her eternal life, rather than going through the days and the seasons, seems to be a single instant far away from the rest of the world. A world, in any case, not able to understand Calipso’s charm and beauty.

One day, brought by the waves, the shipwrecked Odysseus lands to Ogygia. This does not seem real to Calipso: she takes care of him, she restores and charms him in that little corner of paradise in the middle of the sea. On the island there is abundance of any wealth: food, comfort, satisfaction and old age are not a nightmare to wash away with the water of an unobtainable spring. On this new land the decay does not occur.

Yet Odysseus eventually gets bored and all this comfort becomes dull and unbearable to his eyes. Some sources report how Calypso managed to keep the hero in Ogygia for seven years, other texts state less. But, as a matter of fact, Odysseus will at last go away, helped in this by the gods. Urged by Athena, Zeus sent the god’s messenger Hermes to Ogygia with the order for Calypso not to hinder the departure of Ithaca’s hero. On the contrary, the voice that comes from the Olympus is clear: Calypso shall collaborate!

The nymph does not disobey; she understands and helps by preparing the supplies and the barrels of wine for the voyage. She also shows to Odysseus where to take the wood to build his raft, so that the hero becomes suspicious and makes her swear that it is not a trap. There is no deception in the heart of the nymph and Calypso swears on the holy waters of the river Styx without resistance.

Once again Odysseus faces the waves, but differently from the past this time he is alone. Nevertheless, he will always bring with him the everlasting remembrance of his lost companions. Eternity has been rejected; flattery and ease have had the same response. Once again days will always bring something new and there will never be an end to discovery.

The Body of the Enemy

Igorot Warrior
Source: http://silentreed.hubpages.com/hub/headhunters-of-the-cordilleras#

Sailing up the Congo River, Marlow’s expedition feels the presence of the tribal warriors hiding along the banks. They are observing the boat from the forest and Mfumo, Marlow´s Congolese companion, knows that they will not let them go much further without attacking. Those warriors are cannibals and only once they will get a member of the expedition, they would be able find their peace.

In order not to lose his strength, Mfumo picks out of a little bag a piece of bone which he inserts in a hole he has pierced on the right side of his chin. In spite of this, the threat becomes more and more pressing and Mfumo eventually stops trusting in his amulet. All of a sudden, he takes the bone out of his chin and throw it away in the waters of the river by saying: my enemy is laughing at me.. il me protège plus..Adieu! 

The little bag carried by Mfumo is full of small pieces of bones of a former enemy. In spite of his great strength, Mfumo succeeded in killing him and now, these small human fragments shall keep the caring presence of the dead’ spirit close by.

Mfumo’s disappointment in realizing the ineffectiveness of this method is smarting, but completely incomprehensible to Marlow, a man of the West. After attending Mfumo’s vehement reaction, he asks him placidly: Do you think that was a good idea? But Mfumo got his way out. In fact, in his bag are “many enemies” and another bone is what he needs to be confident again.

The scenes above are from the 1994 TV movie “Heart of Darkness” by the English director Nicholas Roeg, in which Marlow and Kurtz are interpreted respectively by Tim Roth and John Malkovich. 

The reason why I chose to recall the mentioned footage is because I think it highlights with particular attention the difference between the sentiments of rivalry among natives and colonists. 

The news that reach us from the conflicts all over the world, the falls of regimes, the attacks on minorities as well as the acts of violence reported on newspapers, made somehow “usual” at our eyes the sight of the enemy’s body as the object of scorn, humiliation and annihilation –symbolic other than physical – of an overcome obstacle. 

In many indigenous traditions instead, what happens to the body of the adversary does not go together with the denial of his valour. 

His body is torn and made in pieces and, by means of this, his spirit is asked to cross the line and step on the winner’s side. This implies that the reality of the defeated is symmetrical to the one of who succeeded in the fight. The head of the dead rival is stuffed, his bones are cleaned and made shining white, his tufts preserved to become part of amulets.

The cut heads stuck on poles at the entrance of the villages in the ancient Taiwan, the skulls hanging from the ceiling of the huts by the natives of Borneo and those dangling from the saddles of the Celts were certainly a warning against prowlers, but this reason went together with a primary religious purpose: the freeing of the spirit of an enemy whose virtues can be assimilated by who got his life. Through rituals, gifts and ceremonies this spirit is now prayed to stand by those who are still alive.