In The Shadow of the Torturer
The Saló obsession has less to do with “fascism” and more to do with the fascination of open torture. The flavor of the torture is Italo-facism, so the film can be used politically, in a distorted reflection of Pasolini’s Christ film, which should be (but isn’t) used religiously. Agony connects them, and agony compels us.
This fascination is active in self-effacing fictional biographies that are or were popular -- It is good to be a victim, but it is best to have the mystique of torture.
The “problem of torture” is a very Nabokovian idea. At the end of Bend Sinister he releases father and son from the various pains and sufferings (among them the killing of the son at a rehabilitation camp for violent criminals where they hunt children for sport) by wearily walking away from the page. A moth twanging in his window distracts him and Adam Krug the hero is left forever executed and un-executed, a will-o’-the-wisp. There is a tacit understanding that the violence and horror is all and both critical, dull, silly, nauseating, essential. It (political torture) is the manifestation of a perverted idea - sinister to the dexter.
Pale Fire provides a better exit before the ride.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
Was, was, was, how much depends on was - was takes the poem from active atrocity to museum exhibit. A safety valve from the extreme pathos. Every day I am thankful for was.
I’ll example you with thievery:
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing’s a thief…