I have to admit that the situation is no less confused in this field than in that of politics. On the other hand, there is the pressure of the mass media urging the writer to write for the newspapers, to take part in round-table discussion on television, to give his opinion on anything that he might or might not know about. The writer is given a chance to fill the space left vacant by any intelligible political discussion. The more flaccid and abstract the language of politics becomes, the more we are conscious of a tacit demand for a different language, more direct and personal. More provocative, too.
Provocation is the public function most in demand in present-day Italy.
The life and death and posthumous life of Pasolini have consecrated the provocative role of the writer. There is a fundamental error in all this. Usually, whatever is temperamental, emotional, ingenuous, and not at all austere. It is very hard to find someone who believes in the austerity of literature, superior to and opposed to the false austerity of language that runs the world today. The Nobel Prize this year was awarded to Eugenio Montale, but few now remember that the strength of his poetry has always lain in his keeping his voice low, without emphasis of any kind, using modest and doubtful tones.