LA RABBIA / ANGER
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI

Editors: Dominic Jaeckle,
Cristina Viti
Published by Tenement Press
262 pages
14 x 21.5 cm
Softcover
English/Italian
ISBN 978-1-8380200-8-8

Price: 125 lei

Written in response to producer Gastone Ferranti’s request for his comments on a set of newsreel items, the poet would respond with a montage of his own. Via the unfolding of a chrysalis of images, in La rabbia (1963), Pasolini’s lens pans over Soviet repression in Hungary; the Cuban revolution; (the utopian object of) space exploration; political imprisonment in Algeria; the liberation of the former European colonies; the election of Pope John XXIII; the prospect of revolution in Africa and the Middle East; in Europe and in Latin America... Here, we’ve a panoply of photorealist intimations of Pasolini’s ‘poetic sense.’ The death of Marilyn Monroe crests as an idea in this tidal pooling of reflections, as the poet’s line lights out for conceptual rhymes and counterpoints.

"Why is our life dominated by discontent, by anguish, by the fear of war, by war? In order to answer this question I have written La rabbia, not following a chronological or perhaps even a logical thread, but only my political reasons and my poetic sense."
—Pier Paolo Pasolini

"Pasolini saw what was coming, and saw the poet’s mission as an excoriation of this world to come, that has now arrived. His tremendous energy was not negative. It came from an abounding love of the world. Picturing himself like a hero from ancient days, he struggled mightily, in and against the powers arrayed against life. What he called neocapitalism already came with its own brands of neofascism. Good comrade that he was, he knew the mark of our enemies, and where to direct his rage. Here we find him in a moment when he thought the good fight might still be won. A book to give us courage."
—McKenzie Wark

"La rabbia remains one of Pasolini’s most singular achievements, an all-consuming expression of the restless and relentless fury that defined his work and his thinking. In an age of increasingly one-dimensional political art, this most welcome volume is an urgent reminder of its dizzying possibilities."
—Dennis Lim

"Pasolini’s poems thrive with passion and outrage. A 20th century Dante, he grieves at inequity, feels disgusted by corruption, and wails against the evil that people do. Pasolini doesn’t render a coming paradise, but contests hate with love, meanness with generosity, and through the reality of his beautiful poems, suggests the possibility of creating a better world."
—Lynne Tillman