Monteverde Stories 2: Pier Paolo Pasolini

This is the second of a 2-part series on Monteverde. The first appeared 10/10/09.

In 1954, the neighborhood around Piazza di Donna Olimpia acquired a new resident: Pier Paolo Pasolini. He was not then the up-and-coming director and screenwriter of Accatone (1961), though in 1957 he would write Roman dialogue for Federico Fellini's Nights of Calabria and three years later act in his first film, Gobbo. Born in Bologna and raised in the Friuli region of northern Italy, he was not even a native Roman. He had arrived in the city in 1950, 28 years old, and lived for a time near the Hebrew synagogue, with his mother (there are plenty of mothers in Italian stories). Within two years they had moved to via Tagliere 3, in Ponte Mammolo, east of the Centro a good ways. He was unemployed and, so he said, desperate, confessing in his letters to suicidal thoughts. To make ends meet while he wrote, or tried to write, he took a teaching position at a school in Ciampino (today, the site of Rome's second airport). The salary was so low and the job so exhausting that he complained bitterly to friends; "lavoro come un negro" (I work like a Negr0), he wrote. Despite the workload, a first book of poetry appeared in 1952.

From his base in Ponte Mammolo he was a frequent visitor to the Donna Olimpia area, fascinated by the area's factories, its public housing, the topography, and the life he observed on the streets. His interest in all of that could only have become more intense after the move to via Fonteiana (n. 86), less than half a mile from the Grattacieli (skyscrapers, a reference to the nearby Fascist-era public housing project). Though he was now close enough to indulge his fascination with the lives of the struggling working class, his neighborhood--up the hill, toward the Gianicolo, and in Monteverde Vecchio--was a world apart from that of via di Donna Olimpia. And the building he occupied [see photo above] (again, with his mother) was newly constructed for middle-class Romans seeking relief from the tumult of Trastevere--not then a chic tourist area. The building is still there, Pasolini's presence marked by a plaque in the lobby. It was in that apartment that he completed Ragazzi di Vita, his first novel, in April 1955, having given up the teaching position just a month earlier. The book was published later that year. Another move followed in 1959--further up the hill to via Carini 45, which also housed poet and friend Attilio Bertolucci (father of the filmmaker), who had introduced Pasolini to Livio Garzanti, the publisher of Ragazzi di Vita.

A natural athlete, Pasolini loved soccer and boxing, and over a period of ten or twelve years, beginning in 1950, he did both with the boys of the projects, getting to know them and, with some at least, earning their confidence. He joined soccer games up the hill at the field on (what is now) via Fabiola and at a much smaller space right in the Piazza di Donna Olimpia, and he observed the boys and their activities elsewhere, too. His visits became less frequent with the move to via Carini and the the completion of the book, as one might expect, but he continued to come by. On more than one occasion he arrived in the FIAT 500 given him by Federico Fellini for his work on Nights of Cabiria, leaving it unlocked so that the neighborhood boys could reach in and take the change he had purposefully left in the door pockets.

Pasolini's deep investment in the lives of the working class was a phenonmenon of the era, and not just in Italy. In Street Corner Society (1943), sociologist William H. Whyte compared "corner boys" and "college boys" in a Boston (Italian) slum. Novelist Hubert Selby Jr. examined the violent and highly sexualized culture of 1950s lower-class Brooklyn in Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964). Pasolini's Ragazzi di Vita tracked the lives of a half dozen foul-mouthed, ignorant, unemployed, and marginal young men--boys on the cusp of manhood, really, some of them from the Donna Olimpia neighborhood--as they walked and lived off Rome's periphery, stealing, carousing, gambling, drinking, having sex with prostitutes, and occasionally working. Somewhere between innocent and worldly, between angry and accepting of their circumstances, Pasolini's boys enjoy themselves, most of the time, even as most of their energies are dedicated to the day-to-day necessity of accumulating enough lira each day to get by. Like Rome the Second Time, the world Pasolini creates is one grounded in geographical detail ("Lenzetta generally hung around the Via Tuscolana, the Piazza Re di Roma, the Via Taranto, where there were neighborhood markets, barracks, and a soup kitchen run by the friars"), and it is a world beyond and apart from the central city. Indeed, Pasolini's text marks the boys' world--whether Monteverde or Tiburtino or Mandrione--as NOT Rome ("when you turned around toward Rome, the weather was still bad").

Although Ragazzi di Vita reads primarily as a narrative description of the boys' adventures, Pasolini frequently steps aside to analyze and contextualize their conduct ("they were all excited and full of fun, not even remotely aware of the fact that the joys of the world are brief, and fortune fickle"). By and large, he explains the behaviors and values of his protagonists as a product of their "environment," and defines them primarily as victims. But he also believed that the boys were in some way fortunate to have escaped, if inadvertently and not entirely by choice, the homogenizing culture of television and consumption that marked the Italian "boom."

Ragazzi di Vita is not just about the Donna Olimpia neighborhood, nor is it just about boys who came from there. But the first two chapters treat that area, and the book's main character--Riccetto (Orlando Marecchioni)--is a Monteverde boy. The Case Popolari are part of the story, too ("The thousand lines and diagonals of the windows and balconies of the Grattacieli were lit up, radios were going bull blast, and from the kitchens you could hear the clatter of dishes and women's voices yelling, arguing, or singing"). We first encounter Marcello (who lives in the Grattacieli) and Riccetto (who lives in the school across the street) during the war; there are German soldiers on the streets. We follow them as they steal iron from the Ferrobedo' (Pasolini's rendering of the factory name), lift manhole covers from the streets to sell as scrap, or go for a swim at a dingy, "private" swimming hole on the Tevere--one of several swimming scenes that bring to mind Lord of the Flies, William Goldman's 1954 novel about the inherent savagery of British schoolboys. For newsreel footage of several of Rome's Fascist-era public housing projects, clock on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJHlBiOcY2s

The lives of Marcello and Riccetto are suddenly and profoundly altered by the collapse of school Giorgio Franceschi (see the previous post). Marcello has been to the school, looking for Riccetto, and is leaving the building when "he heard a terrible racket behind him, like a bomb exploding, and felt a violent blow on the back, as if someone had given him a sneak punch. 'That son of a bitch!' Marcello thought, and he fell on his face, an enormous crashing in his ears, and his eyes blinded by a cloud of white dust." And, for Marcello, that was just the beginning of the end. Riccetto's absence spares him personal injury, but his mother is killed, and the youth finds himself on the periphery with an irritating aunt and alcoholic uncle, and then on the road.

Pasolini's reputation in the neighborhood of the Grattacieli owes much to the work and enthusiam of Silvio Parrello, who appears in Ragazzi di Vita as Il Pecetto, a name derived from his father's employment at La Purfina, the tar (pece) refinery near the intersection of the Ponte Bianco and the Gianicolense. Il Pecetto is in only one scene--he's one of the boys who goes swimming in the Tevere--and the English translation of his name as Tar Baby makes him hard to locate in the English translation (available, but also hard to find). Silvio was only eight at the time, but he has served as the neighborhood's historian, telling the stories he remembers while collecting documents and artifacts about the Grattacieli, the collapse of the school, and Pasolini, and displaying them in his artist's studio, located at via Ozanam 134. Outside the studio he placed a reproduction of a plaque designed by the local government for the cortile of one of the buildings. It read:

In this neighborhood was born
the famous novel
Ragazzi di Vita
Pier Paolo Pasolini,
"Citizen of Monteverde"

Bill

Monteverde Stories 1: Skyscrapers, Devil Woman, School Tragedy

In April, when we first scootered down the hill from our Monteverde Nuovo apartment on Piazza Madonna della Salette, and around the big, gentle curve of via Falconieri to the busy intersection below, we were immediately taken by the enormous apartment buildings that lined three sides of the square and dominated the cross street, via di Donna Olimpia, for a block each direction. We recognized the complex as a particularly extravagant version of Case Populari (Popular Houses--that is, public housing), this one built under Fascism, the first portion completed in Fascism's 10th year, 1932. We wrote about the complex briefly, and included some photos, in an April 5 entry. For video of the opening of the Donna Olimpia development, complete with Fascist salutes, lick on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z04US7bg3Bc

What we didn't know then is that these buildings, and the piazza formed by the five streets that come together to make it (via Falconieri, via Ozanam, via Ugone, and both directions of via di Donna Olimpia, comprise an historic 20th century site, remembered by Romans--and for the most part, fondly--for events that took place there more than half a century ago, events that involved and brought together Romans that could not have been more different: the ordinary, working-class Romans who lived in the case populari (we would call them the "projects"), and a middle-class young man who lived just up the street and was on the cusp of a brilliant career as a poet, novelist, and filmmaker: Pier Paolo Pasolini. That story to come. But first, some geography, and then a story that most residents would rather forget.

Monteverde (green mountain, named after the yellow/green tufo mined from the area's many caves and outcroppings) was laid out in the 1909 city plan. It is composed of two zones (quartieri), Monteverde Vecchio (old Monteverde), closer to the Tevere and today an upscale area of smart shops and expensive homes and condominiums, occupied by those who can afford them; and Monteverde Nuovo (new Monteverde, developed later in the 20th century), further from the river and less pretentious, home to Rome's middle- and lower-middle classes and, temporarily, to us. In a sense, the story of the two Monteverdes is our story; Dianne longs for the good life in Monteverde Vecchio, while I prefer the less toney and more "authentic" experience of Monteverde Nuovo.

The whole of Monteverde is an extension of the better known Gianicolo, the hill to the south of the Vatican, justifiably famous for its views of the city. At the base of the hill is viale Trastevere on the east, near the river, and then the Gianicolense, today a tram route, which curls and climbs a ridge on the south and west sides of the hill. One of the more hilly and complex areas of a hilly and complex city, Monteverde is essentially a series of ridges, separated by narrow valleys. The major streets run parallel to each other in the valleys (like via di Donna Olimpia and viale dei Quatro Venti) or on the ridges (like via Carini and the Gianicolense). The hilly routes crosstown, against the grain, are less common and, on foot, more strenuous. One of the streets that does so--creating energy as it spills down the hillside from Piazza San Giovanni di Dio and crosses via di Donna Olimpia--is via Ozanam.

The dividing line between Vecchio and Nuovo is via di Donna Olimpia. It runs more or less north and south, with Vecchio to the east and Nuovo to the west (if it sounds like West Side Story, it is). The street's current name derives from Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, the tough and powerful 17th-century sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X, a Pamphili. Signorina Maidalchini had married Pamphilio Pamphili (with a name like that, you've got to be wealthy), and she used her position to enrich her family at the expense of the Vatican which, to be honest, could afford to be fleeced. She and hubby lived in splendor in--guess where?--Villa Doria Pamphili, which is in the neighborhood, right there at the end of the street that bears her name. Before 1914, when it was filled in, today's via di Donna Olimpia was only a gully or ditch called the via or Fosso (here, gully) di Tiradiavoli, watered by springs in the Villa that today sustain the moss-covered remains of the spectacular Pamphili fountains of centuries past. The odd name "Tiradiavoli"--one scholar translates it as "drag devils" or "devil's drag"--was the source of stories about Donna Olimpia, who is said to have relished terrifying midnight rides through the city at breakneck speed, her carriage pulled by snorting black horses in full lather, whipped to a frenzy by her driver: the devil. She must have been a very bad woman.

Our modern story opens in 1932, when the first of the Case Popolari were completed and occupied, and when most of the area--especially Monteverde Nuovo--was unoccupied, just rocky hills and small plains of stubble and underbrush. It was the first public housing in the area--the first, also designed by architect Innocenzo Sabbatini, was built in about 1920, up the hill at the intersection of via A. Algardi and viale Quatro Venti. But Sabbatini's new project was different, and not just because it was bigger and taller. In line with the political and social ideas of the Fascist regime, the new project was designed to project a new "proletarian," working-class identity. Dispensing with the middle-class decorative touches and sensibilities of the earlier project, it celebrated functionality, sheer mass, and the new lives of the "ordinary" people on whose support Fascism depended. As the buildings opened one by one, the first residents were mostly those who had been forced out of the Centro and the Borgo (a neighborhood near the Vatican) by the demolitions required by Mussolini's urban renewal programs. (For what it's worth, our interest in Rome's public housing is shared by Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti. See his sweet scooter tour on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Gqbnml8aw

Whatever else the tenants felt, they were impressed by the size of the buildings, referring to them as the "grattacieli," or skyscrapers. Despite their height, there were no elevators until after the war, and the apartments had no toilets within. In an apparent effort to teach the residents middle-class values (toilets and elevators would have been a good start), fines were levied for (incredibly) the time-honored Roman practice of hanging clothes out the window to dry. Many of the men worked in one of two existing factories. Il Ferrobeton was a huge ironworks making railroad track, up the hill from the housing project and a few blocks southward; La Purfina belched black smoke as it produced tars and resins at a location further down via Donna Olimpia and across the Giancolense. The hundreds of children and youth who lived in the complex spent their days rummaging through piles of old mortar and plaster, competing in the card game zecchinetta, playing soccer in small spaces behind the building or on a larger, flat open space off present-day via Fabiola, now occupied by the Fabrizio de Andre' elementary school, and exploring the hills above, to which they gave names that may or may not have been ironic: Monte di Casadio (house of God), and Monte di Splendore.

The community was shocked and deeply saddened by a tragedy that took place in 1951, at the neighborhood's elementary school, Scuola Elementare Giorgio Franceschi. Located just across the street from the apartment complex in the corner formed by via di Donna Olimpia and via Ugone, it was opened in 1941. During and after the war, the school was used to provide shelter for families from San Lorenzo, Pigneto, Tiburtino, and Casilino, neighborhoods where homes had been destroyed in the allied bombing raids of July 1943. The building was still being used as a shelter in March 1951, when a portion of it collapsed, killing four people and injuring many others. With a portion of the school in ruins, some of its residents got together and decided to nest in open apartments in the skyscrapers across the street, where some of the buildings were only then in the final stages of completion. Apparently they were allowed to remain.

To be continued.... Bill