
Best known for one of his latter films, Pier Paolo Pasolini always ruffled feathers. Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom will go down as one of the most shocking works of cinema: still banned in several countries, it’s the usage of underage actors in such shocking and repugnant scenes that has left a bad taste in the mouth. Through all the controversy lies a very talented director, who also was a writer.
Pasolini created a tie-in novel for his 1968 film Teorema, known as Theorem in the UK. Those keen to both read and watch, would fare well to do so in that order – reading first helped make the film much more digestible. The familiar, pretty face of Terrance Stamp in the film (and on this version’s book jacket) adds moments of English, also breaking down some barriers.
On a sort of quasi-religious theme, a young, handsome visitor visits a middle-class Milanese family; through his time there, he gifts them sexual awakenings they have never encountered before. Each family member is taken unawares by this, only for each one to handle his swift departure in a different way, akin perhaps to how different people would react to losing a divine presence in their life. The daughter becomes catatonic, the son an artist, the mother adulterous, the maid a saint and the father a naturist frolicking up a volcano.
We must decide if this young man really was a divine presence, yet the book gives us little wiggle room to disagree. What was amusing was the writer’s flippant digressions. At times, he eschews vital details in favour of hyper-descriptors of landscapes in a scene – masses of detail about houses, greenery and piazzas, to the extent one wonders how seriously Pasolini is taking all this, and what is its fundamental purpose.
Yet these sexual discoveries are written tenderly, and absorbingly: you might consider them written storyboards for the film. The capturing of yearning, and the uneasy attempts to seduce someone you like, is brilliant; life usually leads to heartbreak and Theorem is a telling reminder of that, whatever our religion or lack of.
Stuart Hood’s translation is well met to the mood and pacing of the story: there is poetry as well in this little oddity. One line really struck me: “Remember you are here only to be hated, to upset things and to kill.”
Perhaps this novel calls for multiple readings: I’m not sure I’m up for the task, but those hungry for more may wish to know that the NYRB have also published a new version of Pasolini’s first work of fiction, Boys Alive. This translation, by Tim Parks from the Italian, should also prove noteworthy.
Theorem, Pier Paolo Pasolini [trans. Stuart Hood] (New York Review Of Books)
Price: £15.99. Info: here
words JAMES ELLIS