Pasolinijev prikaz globalizacije italijanskog društva 20. stoljeća u romanu Nafta
Pasolini’s Review of the Globalization of Italian Society of the XX Centuries in the Novel Petrolio

Summary/Abstract: The novel Petrolio was published posthumously only in 1992 by the publishing house Einaudi, since its author Pier Paolo Pasolini was assassinated in 1975, leaving this work unfinished. The title itself immediately tells us about its protagonist, since oil is the power by antonomasia, and is a symbol of capitalist society. Thus, the protagonist is not an individual, but a social system, with its own way of shaping individuals, filling them with its own contradictions. He imposes his own life models on them and kills opponents through violence. The novel is a story about the bourgeois class, about the Italian economic boom of the fifties, and about the massacres of the seventies. It is portrayed through the intricate vicissitudes of a member of the left-wing bourgeoisie, Carl, a Catholic who is an engineer facing an outstanding career at Eni. But the author makes two protagonists out of him, whom he calls Carlo and Karl. As much as Carlo is moderate and sober in his public life, so much does Carl break all the taboos in the private one, enjoying excessive sexual pleasures. Petrolio talks about Enrico Mattei, who was killed in a staged plane crash, and his successor Eugenio Cefis. The work talks about all this in a rather experimental way, showing the elements of the chronicle through allegory. The result of this is the intertextuality of Pasolini's work, which moves from the document to the basic story of the novel. From narrative prose, he reaches journalistic subpoena, using the same materials. He turns the cruel Italian chronicle into direct and political prose of the postmodernist type, which is so accurate and sharp that it cost him his life.

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