The figure of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) shines like lightning in a post-war European culture. A poet, essayist, and filmmaker, his freewheeling intellectual attitude allowed him to be a lucid, astute, and compassionate commentator on the Italy of his day. For Pasolini, poetry was not only the root and center of his creative project, but also an almost dizzying exercise in renewal and self-criticism.