A Pact. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ezra Pound

Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ezra Pound. A Pact
Curated by Giuseppe Garrera
With contributions by Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Olaf Nicolai, Luca Vitone.

24 November 2022 – 19 February 2023
#Arrhythmics

From 24 November 2022 through 19 February 2023, MACRO hosts a show curated by Giuseppe Garrera entitled Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ezra Pound: A Pact. Connected with the exhibition Pier Paolo Pasolini. Tutto è santo – Il corpo poetico at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the exhibition is part of a wider project devoted to the Italian intellectual involving the National Galleries of Ancient Art – Palazzo Barberini, and MAXXI National Museum of Arts of the XXI Century.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. External view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Exhibition view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. On the left: Olaf Nicolai, Un Mondo che Muore, 2022. 4 color prints on blueback paper. Courtesy the artist and Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin. Heartfelt thanks to Pascal Schönegg. On the right: Luca Vitone, Eppur si muove, 2002-2007. Print on acrylic textile. Courtesy the artist and Collezione Gianni Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Exhibition view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Luca Vitone, Eppur si muove, 2002-2007. Print on acrylic textile. Courtesy the artist and Collezione Gianni Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Exhibition view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Olaf Nicolai, Un Mondo che Muore, 2022. 4 color prints on blueback paper. Courtesy the artist and Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin. Heartfelt thanks to Pascal Schönegg.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Detail, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. From left to right: Ezra Pound, Kung Fu Tseu. Confucius. Digest of the Analects. All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, Milan, 1937. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera. Confucio, Ta S’Eu Dai Gaku. Studio Integrale, Italian edition by Ezra Pound, Alberto Luchini. Scuola Tipografica Orfanotrofio Emiliani, Rapallo, 1942. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera. Ezra Pound, Canti pisani, translation, introduction and notes by Alfredo Rizzardi. Guanda, Milano, 1953. First Italian edition. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera. Ezra Pound, Canti pisani, translation, introduction and notes by Alfredo Rizzardi. Guanda, Milano, 1957. Second Italian edition. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Detail, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Vanni Scheiwiller, advertisement bookmark inserted and hidden in the Scheiwiller editions. All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, Milan, [1954-55]. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Detail, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. Edizioni di Vanni Scheiwiller, with a text by Ezra Pound (1937). All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, Milan 1962/1965/1968/1973/1978. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Detail, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. From left to right: Giuseppe Ungaretti, column “Italia domanda”. In Epoca, year VII, no. 276. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 15 January 1956. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera. Reproduction of the 1956 “Petition for the liberation of Ezra Pound” with signatures by the principle Italian poets and writers of the time. The petition was not signed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Courtesy Fondazione Centro di studi storico-letterari Natalino Sapegno – onlus. Heartfelt thanks to Carlo Pulsoni. Flyer from the Poetry Week, 8° Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, 1965. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ezra Pound were both amongst the guests. Courtesy Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi. Catalogue of 9° Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, 1966.

Courtesy Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi. The World’s Great Poets Reading at the Festival of Two Worlds. Spoleto, Italy. Ezra Pound reading his Cantos III, XVI, XLIX, LXXXI, XCII, CVI, CXV. Applause Productions, Port Washington 1969. Recorded in Spoleto during the summer of 1967. Courtesy Collezione Gianni and Giuseppe Garrera.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini ed Ezra Pound. A Pact. Exhibition view, MACRO 2022. Ph. Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio. On the left: Luca Vitone, Eppur si muove, 2002-2007. Print on acrylic textile. Courtesy the artist and Collezione Gianni Garrera. On the right: Ezra Pound, during his television encounter with Pasolini, portrayed seated in front of one of the cue cards listing his answers to the interview. Photograph by Vittorugo Contino, 1967. Private collection.

While the exhibition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni investigates Pasolini as a body of poetic work, the show at MACRO addresses a precise moment of the poet’s history: the 1967 televised encounter with Ezra Pound, organized by Vanni Ronsisvalle for the series Incontri, and broadcast by Rai in the following year, as the point of arrival in a path characterized by hate, afterthoughts and reconciliation. The encounter, in fact, took on the unexpected form of a pact based on a shared destiny of struggle and illusion which distinguished both poets.

Pasolini had been one of the few poets who since 1956 had clearly refused to sign a petition for Pound’s release from the criminal mental hospital in which he had been confined for eleven years, when the death penalty for treason, collaborationism anti-American and fascist propaganda had been converted into confinement on psychiatric grounds. Eugenio Montale, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Salvatore Quasimodo, Elio Vittorini, Vittorio Sereni, and even some who were close to Pasolini such as Sandro Penna, Alberto Moravia, Attilio Bertolucci, together with many others, had signed the petition for Pound’s release, in the name of humanitarian principles, or on the basis of the fact that he was one of the greatest poets of all time.

The conversation could thus have been seen as a preordained execution of Pound, above all due to the charismatic force and influence of Pasolini. Nevertheless, on 26 October 1967 in Venice, Pasolini staged a ceremony of friendship, which began with the reading of A Pact, a poem Pound had initially written and dedicated to Walt Whitman, face to face with the poet who assisted silently to this gesture of acknowledgment towards the value of his thought.

The exhibition therefore narrates Pasolini’s tribute to the Pound (to the point of presenting himself like a son reconciling himself with a father) after years of rejection and hostility; it also contains selected historical documents, newspaper articles and books reflecting the context of the evolution of the relationship between the two poets, retracing a story of devotion, doubt, perplexities and considerations on the role of poetry. Among the exceptional and unpublished documents on view, there is a letter written by Ezra Pound in 1959 to Giorgio Almirante (founder of Movimento Sociale Italiano), containing a “position statement” as well as a “Programme towards the search of a party”.

The narratives that emerge from the numerous archival materials are joined by the contributions of Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Olaf Nicolai and Luca Vitone, three contemporary authors invited to bring their own interpretations of what happened, and to investigate the echoes and overtones of the thinking of these two controversial protagonists of twentieth-century literature, along the furrows of underground cults of faith in poetry that criss-crossed this era.

The exhibition is promoted by Roma Culture and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo.

The event is part of the PPP100-Roma Racconta Pasolini programme promoted by Rome the Capital City – Department of Cultural Affairs with the coordination of the Department of Cultural Activities.

A heartfelt thanks to Rai Direzione Teche for having kindly released the archival audiovisual materials.

Curator: Giuseppe Garrera
Curatorial coordinator: Vasco Forconi
Exhibition coordinator: Sara Cattaneo
Exhibition display: Marco Campardo Studio
Production assistant: Giulia Caruso
Art handlers: Fabio Pennacchia, Matteo Pompili