La meglio gioventù [The best youth] is the volume, published in 1954, that brings together the entire first cycle of Friulian poems: most of the Poesie a Casarsa (1941-48); the Suite furlana (1944-49); a group of poems directly linked to the events of the Resistance entitled Il Testament Coran (1947-52); Appendice (1950-53); and Romancero (1953). The latter group includes, under the subtitle / Colús—the surname of the poet's mother's family—the "humble" story of the Friulian land.

The presentation in a single volume of a number of poetic works, written during different periods even if thematically and linguistically tied, seems to indicate the author's desire to clarify a posteriori the psychological and cultural structure of his first literary attempts. The fundamental choice is that of the Friuli as "the early characterization of an essential rapport, of a bond with a geographical, social, and even biological matrix" conditioning the poet's whole discourse, up to the necessary ideal conclusion. Underlying the choice of the Friuli is the dialectal option shared by all the compositions of La meglio gioventù and constituting their most evident stylistic note. Speaking of himself in the third person, Pasolini has outlined the motives of the choice that made him assume the Friulian dialect as "his only mode of consciousness." In the essay "La poesia dialettale del Novecento" [Dialect poetry of the twentieth century, 1952], in the section on "Il Friuli" we read that

at the sources of his sensuality there was an impediment to a form of direct knowledge from the inside out, from the bottom up … ; a screen had fallen between him and the world for which he felt such a violent, childlike curiosity. Being unable to possess it by the psychologically normal means of the rational, he could only re-immerse himself in it … return along that road, at that one point when his moment of happiness coincided with the enchanting landscape of Casarsa, with a rustic life made epic by a heartrending charge of nostalgia. Knowing was the same as expressing. And here is the linguistic break, the return to a language closer to the world.

The rejection of the official Italian language of the twentieth century thus imposes the retreat to a dialect which, for lack of other instruments of expression, becomes the chosen language. Regarding this option, it would be restrictive to neglect its political significance, albeit differently "political" with respect to the poet's whole later message, preceding as it does "the discovery of Marx"… [Through] his adoption of dialect in the early poems, Pasolini exalted, with true anti-conformism, that which the Fascist regime intended not so much to oppress as to exclude, namely the regional idiosyncrasies, the vital originality of local cultures, and the innocent naturalness of the peasant world. Opting for a world left outside the institutions, the poet carried on his literary operation against the nationalistic centralism of Rome and against the pseudointellectualism descending from it.

Beyond the courage and purpose of a political statement, and in a certain sense in contradiction to them, the recourse to dialect implies a rather complex process of poetic stylization. In the first poems, namely those collected in the short volume published in Bologna in 1942 under the title Poesia a Casarsa, the linguistic medium is "a literary koine" utilizing words and expressions fromthe dialect of Casarsa and its neighboring villages (those on the right side of the Tagliamento River). The young poet had sensed the creative autonomy and the integral vigor of that vernacular, still relegated to the status of a spoken language, which made it unique even within the sphere of the limited but tested Friulian linguistic and literary tradition. With the philological acumen that would always mark him, and through survey operations showing a technique based on the codified rules of university linguistics, Pasolini gathered the living language, emitted "from the mouths of native speakers." The attestation is once again his own:

On a summer morning in 1941 I was on the wooden balcony outside my mother's house… on that balcony, I was either drawing … or I was writing verses. When there resounded the word rosada [dew]. It was Livio, a neighbor boy from across the street, one of the Socolaris, who spoke. A tall, large-boned boy…. Anyway Livio surely spoke of simple, innocent things. The word rosada, spoken on that sunny morning, was only an expressive bit of his oral vivacity. Certainly that word … had never been written. It had always only been a sound. Whatever I had been doing that morning … I stopped suddenly: this is part of the dazzling memory. And I immediately wrote some verses in that Friulian speech … which up to that point had been only a bunch of sounds: I began at first to make the work rosada graphic. That first experimental poem disappeared; the second, which I wrote the next day, remains: Sera imbarlumida, tal fossàl/ a cres l'aga …" [Luminous evening, in the ditch/the water grows.]

However reliable the "dazzling memory" might be, what undoubtedly struck the poet, activating his imagination, was the expressiveness of the intimate spoken language and its phonic substance; and he benefited, as Giorgio Caproni has written, from "the fact of having assumed a language … not properly his own, which not only did not force him, precisely because it was not his own, to choose and love its particular physical and human territory with a redoubled 'spirit of love'; but, being almost virgin as far as literature is concerned, also permitted him a greater freedom of speech thanks to the newness of the words, which were not yet codified and therefore still malleable." ["Appunti," Paragone Letteraturd].

As we learn in a "note" by the author in the 1954 edition, the compositions in Friulian that follow Poesie a Casarsa show some changes with respect to the first group "… while there the linguistic 'violence' tended to make of the Casarsan speech both a Friulian koiné and a sort of absolute language, nonexistent in nature … here Casarsan is readapted in its entire institutional quality." Several of the poems of the second group, furthermore, are based on other variants of the Friulian dialect: that of Valvasone, Cordenons, Gleris, etc.: all villages situated in the heart of the Friuli, on the right bank of the Tagliamento. The poet's philological attention to local variations is painstaking, and it is carried out through tonal differences pervading the various compositions and also in the use of similar—but not identical—words identifying or qualifying a single object, and in the multiformity of syntactical devices.

In my opinion, however, it is in Poesie a Casarsa that "the greater freedom of speech" permitted by words "not yet codified" is manifested more clearly, in the extraordinary richness of expressive variation afforded by the "speakers'" vocabulary and that of the poet.

To aid the average Italian reader and—given the special composite nature of the dialect in the earlyworks—the Friulian reader as well, Pasolini has provided, at the bottom of the page, an Italian version of the various compositions, stating in the note to the 1954 edition "the versions in Italian … are a part, and sometimes an integral part, of the poetic texts: I have therefore drafted them with care and almost, ideally, at the same time as the Friulian versions." With Pasolini, and contrary to the opinion of those critics who pointed out only the inevitable lack of "musical resonance" in the translations and the fact that they are only approximative interpretations (which, no doubt, is quite evident at times), I retain that they fulfill a notable structural function both within the individual compositions and in the collection as a whole. Within the full range of his Friulian works, the dialect text conveys the poet's yearning—originally lyrical—for a recovery of moral health to be acquired only through an immersion in the innocent naturalness of the peasant's world, the remoteness of which the poet feels with unconquerable melancholy. Detached from reality, taken on as a distant, absolute tongue, the dialect lives in its ability to evoke, evoking essence rather than existence. To the translation is given the task of "naming" in a recognizable fashion. In the pages of the book, the physical space between the dialect text and the translation the reader must consult in order to understand (a space which at times takes up most of the page) creates a further distancing from the poet's world.

This opposition—or juxtaposition—of dialect and translation can also be expressed as a contrast between the poetic functions of sound and meaning. Consider what Pasolini said about his first perception of the aural essence of Friulian: The dialect provides the poetic sound and substance, but we must resort to the translation to demystify the expression and to find access to its meaning.

Identification with nature and with people, the boy and the mother, the enchantment of the countryside, the arcane fascinations of religiosity and solitary sex constitute the general topics of the first part of the collection. They are placed between the polar presences of innocence and death. In the second part, which deals with adulthood (and the division is purely psychological), the same themes reappear, revealing, however, new interests, not so much social as moral, favoring the motifs of poverty as daily struggle, of a first, still-latent, and unconscious rebellion by the peasants against the rich, of a thirst for liberty understood as freedom from oppression of the natural right to be young and to be happy. The theme of the Resistance is also placed within this by-now-limiting framework, between youth and death.

In the economy of both parts, if to differing extent and with differing functional usage of stylistic elements within the whole of the text, the image of infancy and youth in all their attributes is preeminent, and the expressive richness of dialect assists the poet.

The lexical variants connoting children, boys, and youths are quite numerous, and the tonal shadings they express are, more often than not, impossible to render in translation; but they may be felt in the poetic context of dialect. The range of these expressions is again enlarged through adjectival qualifications.

Nini is the word connoting childhood. There follow those that designate early adolescence and youth: frut, donzel (of almost classic poetic stature), fί, fantàt, zôvin, and the variations frutίn, fantassίn, fantassút, frutút, zuvinín. The range of these locutions is further widened by qualifying expressions: frut di lus ("child of light"), zàvin lizèir ("light youth"), bel fi ("handsome lad"), puòr zòvin ("poor youngster"), frut ch'al rit ("laughing child"), spirt di frut ("boyish spirit"). (The more imaginative and affectionate of these variations are more numerous in the first part of the collection.)

The poem immediately following the "Dedica" [Dedication] to Casarsa introduces many if not all the allusive symbols of the collection, beginning with the title "II nini muàrt" [The dead child] and the evocation of Narcissus. In the first tercet the landscape is luminously vital, marked by fertility expressed in nature and woman:

Sera imbarlumida, tal fossàl
a cres l'aga, na fèmina plena
a ciamina pal ciamp …

[Luminous evening, in the ditch the water grows, a woman with child walks through the field.]

Nevertheless, in the second part the picture dissolves and the luminous quality of the evening vanishes: "I remember you, Narcissus, you were the color of the evening, when the bells toll for the dead." The evocation of memory, and especially the past "you were," interrupt the peaceful contemplation. There is an implicit relationship between the "I" and Narcissus: the "I" establishes the scene and the memory, then evokes and calls Narcissus. Narcissus is the device permitting the introduction of both the poetic voice and the symbolic premonition of death. In an atmosphere of subdued resonances, in which the "luminous" evening of the first tercet becomes the mere color of itself, the end is linked to the title. The symbolic poles of the work are revealed through the structure of the poem and the overlapping of images.

NARCISSUS

The first boy to emerge from the poet's memory in "Poesie a Casarsa" is called "Narcfίs," Narcissus. In other poems other boys and youths appear, and if their name is not Narcissus, they take Narcissus's lyric function. In Poesie a Casarsa and Suite Furlana (1944-49) especially, the name and presence of Narcissus return until they finally assume an unequivocal dimension:

O me donzel! Jo i nas
ta l'odòur che la ploja
a suspira tai pras
di erba viva … I nas
tal spieli de la roja …

[O my youngling! I am born in the smell that the rain breathes from the meadows of living grass … I am born in the mirror of the fosse … ]

And under the title "David":

"Leaning against the wall, poor lad, you turn towards me your kind head, with a weary laughter in your eyes …"

up to the poem "Suite furlana" and the three variations of "Dansa di Narcis":

"A boy gazes at himself in the mirror, his eye laughs black …"

… I arose among the violets
while the dawn was breaking
singing a forgotten song …
I said to myself: "Narcissus"
and a spirit with my face
obscured the grass
with the gleaming of his curls.

The motifs connected to the myth of Narcissus are not, in my opinion, peripheral to Pasolini's poetic work, but they encompass all the other themes. By this I do not intend to claim that the myth constitutes the poetic archetype, but rather that the fundamental elements of the myth of Narcissus and those accessory to it are present in most of the poems of the first two groups. In the later ones, when the first glimmers of the social problematics surface, the myth is present on another level and takes on other colors, but it does not lose its function as a basic structure. Consider the last poem of Romancero (1953), cited above, the poem with the same title—"La miej zoventút"—that ends the book La meglio gioventù:

… Vegnèit, trenos puartait lontan la zoventut.

[Come trains, take far away the youth.]

The poet's identification with the "merry youths" sent away from their land and condemned to laugh no more is obvious. Less evident is the link between the last poem in the collection and the first. If the Narcis of the first poem is a nini muàrt, la miej zoventút ("the best youth") of the last poem va soto tera ("goes under the earth"): This in fact is the following verse in an old Friulian folksong, from which the title is taken:

Sul ponte di Bassano
bandiera nera
la meglio gioventù
va soto tera

[On the bridge of Bassano, banner of black, the best youth goes under the earth.]

The search for the elements of the myth of Narcissus in the compositions of La meglio gioventù reveals a singular balance between the energy and content of the poems and their formal characteristics. We find concrete presences: Narcissus and the other boys, the waters, the fountains, the tears, the mirrors, and—significantly in one of the last poems—il flÒur dal narcis ("the narcissus flower"). One component above the level of verbal imagery that governs the form of the work, connecting itwith the substance of the myth, is the atmosphere of total stillness that in many compositions permits the reflection of the image:

I nas
tal spieli de la roja.
In chel spiele Ciasarsa
—coma i pras di rosada—
di timp antic a trima …

[I am born in the mirror of the fosse. In that mirror Casarsa—like the meadows with dew—quivers with ancient time … ]

The past within which the poet searches for himself is a reality retransmitted to us as a poetic image, and immobility is necessary so that the optical phenomenon of reflection may take place. Casarsa quivers "in the mirror of the fosse," but "like the meadows with dew" her stirring is placed within a poetic, figurative context that has the features of eternity. In the same way, "the woman with child" who yet "walks through the field" is immobilized as a characterizing pictorial element in the changeless scene in which Narcissus searches for and, in the dead child, recognizes himself.

Another stylistic structure that leads us back to the myth is the function of the echo. The Italian translation "echoes" the dialect text, and most of the poetry of the second drafting—La nuova gioventù—echoes that of the first version. Words and feelings become somewhat distorted, as words and sounds are when they are repeated by an echo. Thus the verse of the dedication "A no è age pí frescia che tal mi país" (There is no water fresher than in my village) becomes "A no è aga pí frescia che ta chel país" (There is no water older than in that village). And the verses of the first form of "Aleluja": "Adès/ ti sos/ un frut di lus" (Now you are a child of light) reecho: "Adès/ ti sos/ un frut mai vivút" (Now you are a child who never lived).

If we continue reading La meglio gioventú examining the network of those metaphors that appear with high frequency, always in connection with the same ancient myth, we may glimpse the underlying affective forces and the decisive existential experiences that shaped them. We find the text invaluable in pointing out and exemplifying the author's persistence—up to the inevitable breaking point—in an attempt to realize (or simply to represent to himself) an ideal self, absolutely lovable for its truth, beauty, and power:

Io i soj un biel fi, …

[I am a handsome lad, … ]

… io i soj un spirt di amòur,
che al so paìs al torna di lontan.

[… I am a spirit of love that to his place returns from afar.]

Lus a è me vita, e a súnin
di fiesta par me tal sèil nut, …

[Light is my life, and they ring festively for me in the naked sky … ]

The attempt to perpetuate a complete reproduction of himself and his own body is organized and concentrated around attributes or parts of his own physical concreteness. Of primary importance for the clarification of this aspect are the first two variations of "Suite furlana," which I transcribe only in part:

Un frut al si vuarda tal spieli
il so vuli al ghi rit neri.
No content tal redròus al olma
par jodi s'a è un cuàrp chè Forma …

[A boy gazes at himself in the mirror, his eye laughs black. Not content, he looks in the other side to see if that Form is a body … ]

The refusal to accept the reduction to subjectivity, marked by limitation and difference, is seen in the last of the Poesie a Casarsa, first version:

A plòuf un fòuc
scur tal me sen:
no'l è soreli
e no l'è lus.
Dis dols e clars
a svùalin via,
io i soj di ciar,
ciar di frutút …

[A dark fire trains in my breast: it is not sun and it is not light. Sweet clear days fly away, I am of flesh, flesh of a child … ]

To conclude this analysis, … there remains to be pointed out that determining element which, in the economy of narcissistic expansion and fixation as it appears in La meglio gioventù, is represented by the figure of the Mother. She comes to assume the role of an oracle of wisdom and authority that merges with her natural and immediate role as the object of desire, an image that is an obvious sign of a substantially regressive ideal ego, to the point where such an image may be recalled in the intact, absolute form of "Child mother" and "Girl mother." In "Pastorela di Narcís" the representation of the mother as the sensual image of a young shepherdess is set beside that of a four-teen-year-old Narcissus:

I olmi platàt …
e al so post i soj jo:
mi jot sintàt ta un soc
sot i ram dal pòul.
I vuj di mi mari
neris coma il fons dal stali,
il stomi lusínt
sot da l'abit risínt
e una man pojada sora il grin.

[I spy hidden away … and in her place am I: I see myself seated on a stump, under the branches of the poplar. My mother's eyes, black as the bottom of the manger, shining body under the new dress, and one hand placed upon her lap.]

Exemplary of the mother's desire—desire by the mother—and furthermore of extraordinary poetic effect is "Suspir di me mari ta na rosa" [Sigh of my mother over a rose]:

Rosuta di me fí,
dulà ti àia ciolta,
parsè ti àia ciolta,
la man di me fi?

[Little rose of my son, where did it pick you, why did it pick you, the hand of my son?]

Death, tenderly celebrated in La meglio gioventù (and in different ways in all of Pasolini's works where a relationship and identification with innocence and youth are expressed), is necessarily left outside the myth. The death of the archetypal Narcissus is not a real one, as the transition from the body to the flower is a resurrection, and the flower gives shape to the fundamental elements of transformation.

The meanings and the conclusive evidence of Pasolini's tormented narcissistic itinerary will be found in the pages of La nuova gioventù, all of them marked with the anguish of continual contradiction with reality. Mourning the elusive purity of virgin youth the poet will say there:

I no soj veciu jo
al è veciu il mond
che no murínt al lassa
cui ch'a vif sensa fond …

[I am not old; it is the world that is old, which, undying, leaves those who live without aground … ]

And again:

i no plaus parsè che chel mond a no'l torna pì
ma i plaus parsè che il so tornè al è finít …

[I do not weep because that world will not return, but I weep because its turning has ended.]

In the Friulian poems, essentially, Pasolini lives the paradox that the narrator—in Ovid's version of the myth—points out to the young Narcissus: "What you seek is nowhere; but turn yourself away, and the object of your love will be no more. That which you behold is but the shadow of a reflected form and has no substance of its own. With you it comes, with you it stays, and it will go with you—if you can go."