“Fratelli dei cani”: Autobiographical and autodiegetic interferences of the incipit of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Orestiade

Starting from the examination of a marginal text like Letter of the translator, this article analyzes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s translation of the prologue to Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. The paper delves into the central image of Pasolini’s Letter: the comparison between the translator and a dog picking a bone. This juxtaposition alludes to the method used by the translator, which is based on an instinctive approach to the text, similar to that of a beast. I think that this rhetorical figure was suggested to Pasolini by the figure of the lookout on the roof of Atrides’ royal palace; his solitary nocturnal vigil is compared to the derelict condition of a dog. In the association between man and dog made by Aeschylus at the beginning of his trilogy (Orestea), Pasolini finds an expressive way very congenial to himself. In fact, this analogy is used in many points of his entire production as a writer to indicate the marginalization of the intellectual. The immediate proximity that the contemporary poet feels to the canine world implies an unconscious identification of the translator with the hardships of the Aeschylean character. This direct relationship between the human sphere and the animal sphere would explain the free and personal aspect of some interpretative choices about the introductory monologue of the Greek tragedy. It would also explain why Pasolini intended to reuse the prologue of Agamemnon, which he translated into a chapter of the posthumous novel entitled Petrolio.