TRIBUTE TO PASOLINI

Doug Ireland, radical journalist and truth-teller, messages a request: “As the 30th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder is coming up in a few days, would you consider giving this a plug?” We’re glad he asked.
“This” refers to his exclusive publication of Pasolini’s major poem “Victory” for “the first time ever in English translation.” The “day of victory” of the poem’s last line, Ireland explains, “is April 25, 1945, when German troops surrendered in Italy, effectively ending the fascist era.” The poem was translated by Ireland’s friend, Norman MacAfee, who also selected and translated Pasolini’s collected poems, now in paperback from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Pasolini, above, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant lot 20 miles outside of Rome on Nov. 2, 1975, was “a giant polymath of postwar Italian culture” who “frequently celebrated homosexuality in his writings and films,” Ireland writes. Ireland’s must-read piece about Pasolini’s murder and his career as a filmmaker, poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, political columnist and painter, tells why Pasolini’s friends believe the killing was a political assassination and not, as originally claimed, an “S&M adventure gone bad.”
— Tireless Staff of Thousands

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