Critics have interpreted Pasolini’s Edipo Re from a psychoanalytical point of view as the reenactment of Pasolini’s own Oedipus complex, in which the famous director identi- fies himself with the Greek hero. In this paper I argue that this identification has a fur- ther dimension. Drawing on the evolution of the Oedipus character in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Pasolini uses the figure of Oedipus as the blind sage as a symbol of his own role as intellectual/seer in the modern world and of his isolation in con- temporary 20 th century Italy. W ith the following words, written in a letter to Italo Calvino (Lettera aperta a Italo Calvino: quello che rimpiango [‘Open letter to Italo Calvino: what I miss’]), Pier Paolo Pasolini outlines his notion of his duty as an intellectual, to reach out to the world of the proletarian classes: I know well, dear Calvino, how the life of an intellectual unfolds. I know it because in part it is also my life. ... But I, like Dr Hyde, have another life. In living this life, I must break down the natural (and in- nocent) class barriers. I must break through the wall of this narrow middle-class Italy, and head toward another world: the peasant world, the sub-proletarian world, and the working class world. 1 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Francesca Schironi, Harvard University, Department of the Classics, 215 Boylston Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 16, No. 3/4, September/December 2009, pp. 484-500. * I would like to thank the anonymous referee of IJCT for very helpful comments and suggestions. 1. Pasolini 1999, 320: “Io so bene, caro Calvino, come si svolge la vita di un intellettuale. Lo so perché, in parte, è anche la mia vita … Ma io, come il dottor Hyde, ho un’altra vita. Nel vivere questa vita, devo rompere le barriere naturali (e innocenti) di classe. Sfondare le Tiresias, Oedipus, and Pasolini: the Figure of the Intellectual in the Edipo Re* FRANCESCA SCHIRONI DOI 10.1007/s12138-009-0134-2