Julius Evola- The Sufi of Rome

by Frank Gelli

  ‘Poor Nino has not killed himself. I do not believe that. He was not a coward. He was framed. I have some information... Not the first time...things like that tend to happen to my boys. Not only the secret services, there are other agencies...But let us assume that Nino did it. I want to look at this not emotionally but metaphysically. Suicide is not always wrong. The Catholic Church’s teaching, such as St Thomas Aquinas’, says that it is a most grievous crime but I disagree. Thomas says it is a sin in more than one way. It is a sin against the state, the community, but what if the state has abdicated its role, if it is rotten through and through, like the Italian state today? Spitting in the face of such a pseudo-state by committing self-destruction can be no sin. Rather, it is a genuine rebellion. St Thomas also says suicide is a sin against oneself. Like Kant, I believe there are duties to oneself but the question is whether higher duties can override other, lower duties. Anyway, no one can wrong oneself willingly, I go along with Aristotle there, so how can it be a sin against oneself if someone voluntarily chooses to do it! Lastly, of course the saint says suicide is also a sin against God. But his problem is that suicide is nowhere condemned in the Bible. If God had determined it to be a sin, he would have revealed in the Jewish law, the Torah, the Pentateuch. But he did not. On the contrary, the case of Samson, who killed himself with all the Philistines by pulling down their temple, suggests that self-destruction could be approved by the God of the Jews. Hence, suicide is not against the will of God. QED.’

  ‘However, I grant you that, as Socrates says in the Symposium, it was part of Orphic, secret doctrine, revealed only to initiates, that suicide was impermissible. The Orphics...they are for another time...Suicide is wrong only if it stems from cowardice. Hitler in his bunker showed guts... He refused to give the Russians the opportunity to cage him, mock him and then execute him - that cannot be termed cowardice. Nor did he leave his body intact, so that the democratic, hysterical masses could make a display of it. I have no doubt Stalin would have had his enemy’s corpse stuffed and hung by the Lenin mausoleum, something like that... In shooting himself Hitler acted with resolve, with dignity. Compare his example with Mussolini’s. He was caught when running away, disguised under a German topcoat. Then he was shot, like a rabbit. And you know what happened to his body, don’t you? Would it not have been better if he had shot himself? He lacked the pluck. He could not do it. So his end became his life. His inner confusion, the mixed, ambiguous character of his regime, his fundamental emptiness. He had started as a socialist, after all...Theatricality, show, bombast...the regime was like an Opera. Or, worse, like the Operetta.’

  ‘Schopenhauer’s condemnation of self-murder is metaphysically deep but too much bound up with his peculiar philosophy. To go along with his argument you have to believe that existence is a mistake and I don’t believe that – well, correction, I believe that some people’s existence is a mistake, in the sense they should exist at all – the world would be better off if they did not exist! But that’s not a universal fact, just a particular thing. Besides, Schopenhauer did not quite live up to his own doctrine. He pontificated on the meaninglessness of life while treating himself to regular good meals. Some of his disciples, impressionable young men, did self-destruct, however. It was regrettable. He did not practice what he preached. In that, a bad philosopher. Despite appearances, a thinker of decadence, as Nietzsche termed him. Yes, the judgement must be so.’

  I never knew the full truth about Nino’s death. Did he really take his own life? Or was he framed? By whom? Rumours circulated about the manner of his death but the far right has always been paranoid about these things, just as much as the lefties. Certainly, whenever someone from the left met with a mysterious death (I recall the notorious Feltrinelli case), the media made a big fuss about it but little was said about Nino. I still like to believe he had been set up as a fall guy but evidence I have none, I admit.

  On suicide he also quoted a saying by Nietzsche. Suitably paradoxical. Something to the effect that the thought, or possibility, of suicide can be psychologically comforting. “An insomniac can endure many sleepless nights thanks to that possibility”. There is a way out of your suffering, the thought suggests. Suicide like an aspirin! Nietzsche must have spoken out of personal experience. He had to put up with all sorts of psycho-physical ailments. Of course, the emphasis here is on survival. It is the thought of the deed of self-destruction that helps the sufferer, not the actual deed. The thought has its own metaphysical charm. I know from my own experience. And so did Evola, I am sure.

  THE COLLE OPPIO AFFAIR

  Some of the young men connected with the Solstice group also belonged to the MSI, the main Italian right-wing party. We used to hang out at the party branch on the leafy Colle Oppio, a stone’s throw from Rome’s Colosseum. The name of the branch was “Istria and Dalmazia”, both lands communist Yugoslavia had wrenched away from Italy after the end of WWII. It was, literally, a cave. We nicknamed it “the Bunker”. On entering it, you had a feeling of descending into the bowels of the earth. Its underground rooms and corridors were crammed full with odd memorabilia. They went from a monstrously huge marble bust of a scowling Mussolini to the many ubiquitous fasci, the bundles of sticks with an axe in the middle, fake guns, flags, memorabilia of colonial wars, pictures of fighting men and so on. The prevailing atmosphere was secretive, conspiratorial and a bit thrilling. It furthered the sense of esprit de corps among the young members, the feeling of unity, of belonging to a select, elite band. You felt you were among kindred spirits, fellow rebels, revolutionaries, kids who swam against the tide. Never mind how misguided we might have been, I still feel positive about life in the Bunker. A rough fellowship but a real one.

  Gradually, I found myself drawn into the inner circle at the heart of the Colle Oppio branch. I was not surprised one night when a young man called Giorgio – not his real name - invited me to an exclusive meeting taking place in one of the innermost rooms of the cave. Giorgio was short, freckled-faced and very tough. Originally from Venice, he was a keen sportsman and amateur boxer – you did not fool around with him. His hatred of Marxism sprang partly from personal reasons – his brother had lost an eye in a brawl with communists. At the meeting I learnt that Giorgio and two others were planning a bank robbery. The idea was to get funds for buying arms and then storm the Palazzo del Viminale, the Ministry of the Interiors, to carry out a coup d’etat in the name of an anti-communist revolution. In hindsight, I realise it sounded all incredibly implausible, amateurish and even silly but at the time it was a different affair. Giorgio told me of important contacts, support in the Army and high places. I guess I was sufficiently alienated from bourgeois society to embrace the crazy project. So I agreed to be part of the revolutionary vanguard and take part in the robbery. We took turns outside the bank in question, studying the times when money was delivered, the staff, all that. The day for the heist was meant to be a Friday. We had only one gun, a Beretta pistol – I am not sure it contained any bullets. Giorgio assured us it was sufficient but, for good measure, sharp knives and clubs were provided, too.

  I was all geared up for action. As fate would have it, I went to see Evola on Thursday. I had not intended to tell him what I was letting myself into but... he must have sensed I was not my usual self: ‘Is there anything troubling you?’ out of the blue he asked. That was it! I had to tell him. I made a clean breast of it and I felt all the better for it. I don’t know what I expected him to say. I saw his black eyebrows shoot up a bit. After a few moments’ silence he said, almost casually: ‘Have you considered that Giorgio may not be what he claims to be?’ He paused. His meaning began to sink in. ‘How do you know this stupid thing is not something cooked up by the secret services? A provocation to blacken us with the charge of terrorism?’

  Evola spoke from direct experience. After the war he had himself been implicated in something similar and imprisoned, though later acquitted at his trial. Anyway, he strongly urged me against going ahead with the heist. “
But I am committed”, I told him. ‘Just phone Giorgio. Tell him you have changed your mind. You can mention my name, if you feel you must. You have a right to do that’, he said, quietly. And that is what I did. Giorgio of course was angry. He complained I was letting the comrades down. Accused me of being chicken. When I replied that Evola had advised against the action, his tone of voice changed. “You should not have told him”, he muttered and rang off. No bank robbery took place next day and Giorgio never mentioned the affair again. For a while I stopped going to the Colle Oppio. When I began frequenting it again, Giorgio was no longer around. I shall never know whether he was a spy or not. Maybe Evola knew something about Giorgio that I did not know. But I am grateful to the Baron. In a real sense, he saved me. The episode gives the lie, I think, to the canard that he was an inspirer of terrorism. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was a sage. I don’t care what his detractors spew out. Evola was a thoughtful and sagacious person.

  Of course, Evola did not condemn the course of action in itself. He did not say that it was wrong to use violence to finance the insurrection but only that it was unsafe for me to do so. Should that be held against him? If so, the same should apply to the many far-left academics who justified terrorism, in the name of principles like the working class, anti-imperialism and fighting multinationals. Those armchair panjandrums who defended so-called modern Robin Hoods to excuse all sorts of murderous crimes. None of them, I don’t think, lost his job, was ostracized or turned into a pariah as a result. If Evola later invoked a similar rhetoric, but from the perspective of the far right, what of it? What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. In actual fact, unlike the other side, the Baron always cautioned against using pointless, physical violence. The battle he urged was primarily inner – an inner jihad, to use the language of Islam. He taught that armed fighting, given the circumstances, was bound to be self-defeating. And he was right.

  Evola was all too aware of the difficult problem of agents provocateurs. ‘All revolutionary organisations have had to contend with them. In some cases, the police spies were so numerous that they virtually took over the groups themselves. It happened in America. Chesterton’s story, The Man Who Was Thursday, is a fantasy based on that. Not too fantastic, I tell you. You can never detect them all, or be sure who the informant is. The only workable solution is Lenin’s. The Bolsheviks rarely killed suspected spies. Instead, they put them to work. To teach, to form revolutionary cadres, things like that. So, while on the one hand the spies were sending revolutionaries to jail, they were also helping in training new recruits for the revolution. I suggested doing the same to Zed but he was not the man to understand that.’

  “Zed” was a reference to one of Evola’s most faithful follower. A distinguished writer and journalist. Apart from the fact that he had got married and had children – for Evola the equivalent of the sin against the Holy Ghost – the Baron had a high opinion of him. At the same time, he joked about Zed’s looks. “He once wanted to marry a Nordic girl. Told me how Aryan she looked... Maybe he should have. A Southern Italian, from Calabria, his bodily hair (peli) is so thick that it sprouts out of his shirt collar... His thick, black mane of hair reminds me of an Arab, an Emir...a fine example of how physical race is irrelevant to a spiritual attitude. Zed is a living proof!’

  Should I apologise for being the sort of person who once contemplated something as unethical as robbing a bank? Writing this in 2011, in England, I suspect the popular feeling is not quite bank-friendly. (If not banks, against bankers, at the very least.) But I admit that Giorgio’s enterprise was potentially a perilous affair. Someone, an innocent person, might have been killed. The mind of the young man I once was, however, did not bother about such trifles. A revolution is a revolution. You can’t change the world without getting your hands dirty – that was the message of the Maoists, the far-left as well as the right. Years later, when the Red Brigades terror hit Italy, political violence became commonplace. I knew a guiltless young man who was shot dead while waiting at a bus stop, because the killers mistook him for an MSI activist. Were we at the Colle Oppio then just anticipating what was going to happen?

  I should cite Goethe here. He said there was no crime or abomination he felt he would have been capable of, at some stage or other in his life. The same applies to me. But at least, thanks to the Baron’s wisdom, I was saved from committing an action that may well have ruined my life, that of my loved ones and of many other innocent people. That is why I pray for Evola, sometimes. He professed to disdain conventional religious practices like prayer, of course. Still, if he has not perished, from wherever he is now, I am sure he hears my prayers and smiles on me.

  FRANCESCO

  Another lad who had come to Solstice meetings was Francesco Papaldo. A tall, slender silhouette, fair and gentle in looks. There was something extraordinarily pure and lovely about Francesco. To me he looked more like an angel than like a mere human being. The words of the poet Aleardo Aleardi come to mind:

  Un giovinetto pallido e bello e con la chioma d’oro, con la pupilla del color del mare...

  Francesco was younger than me and I felt quite protective towards him. His family did not like my radical ideology and so we met more or less secretly. We talked of Evola’s ideas together. Francesco was fascinated. He wanted to meet the Baron but I felt reluctant. I always found excuses to put him off. Perhaps subconsciously I was afraid Evola would have liked him more than me, so that, as I had replaced Adriano as Evola’s special confidant, Francesco might have taken my place. Petty, I know, but such is human nature. However, Francesco was so keen on meeting the famed character that he managed to get Adriano to take him along. Evola must have liked him, because Francesco returned several times. Later he disclosed to me the extraordinary spell Evola had cast on him. I shudder a bit in recalling what he said, even after so many years.

  Francesco had felt as though his mind had been taken over. His will was no longer his own but Evola’s. Then, he said, his body began to feel like the Master’s body. He could no longer move his legs. However, that had not disturbed him. He knew he was no longer any separate self. There was no independent ego, or thoughts...Evola’s feelings became his feelings, his joys Francesco’s joys. Even when he looked at his hand and feet, they appeared to be no longer his own limbs but Evola’s. According to Francesco “as the Baron was paralysed, I – but of course there was no longer any I - wanted to give him the use of my legs.” He confessed that the new, unified ego he had become ardently desired to do that. Amazingly, he said he was not frightened by that at all.

  I never could make out whether Francesco was telling the truth or not. He was still a bit childish and he tended to make things up. What he said did not in any way match what I felt when with the Baron. Evola’s influence on me was intellectual, not magical. I began to wonder whether Francesco was having me on. Maybe he had read a book about shamanism or wizards and he got overexcited about it. He was, after all, only a lad.

  Francesco met with a horrible end. Years later, he fell in love with a girl, an air stewardess. I never knew her but anyone could see she had captured the boy’s heart. Anyway, she had previously been engaged to a well-known mafia gangster. The man could not bear his former fiancée to be in love with someone else and so he hired two killers to murder poor Francesco. They stole his car and then phoned up the boy, pretending to have found it. Francesco went to the appointment and vanished. The family were desperate but to no avail. Only years later his remains were found, buried in a wood. The killers had shot him and then disposed of his body.

  Era biondo, era bianco, era beato, sotto l’arco di un tempio era sepolto.

  The thought of sweet, dear Francesco, a lad so kind and harmless being so savagely killed, of his body rotting away so long without a proper burial is still unbearable to me. I am also led to reflect on the Evola connection. Was the Master really a jinx? Did he have a negative, destructive influence on the young ? Did he somehow bring bad luck? An unworthy hypothesis, I know. O
ne implying a mentality that belongs to primitive, pre-modern cultures. In rationalistic, godless England, where I live, it seems a laughable, superstitious question. And yet, and yet...too many of Evola’s followers, in a way or another, have come to grief. What does Hamlet say? “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt on in your philosophy...”

  A SEANCE

  I had to confess something embarrassing to the Baron, once. I had allowed myself to be involved in a seance. A meeting in which a medium attempted to make contact with the souls of the dead. It was really a bit of a prank. Suggested by a girl friend of mine, Liana, who liked to dabble in occultism. She was petite, with auburn hair and a gaunt but charming face. A nervous and neurotic personality but popular with boys. We went together to an address in the elegant Parioli discrict. It turned out to be an attic flat, a cavernous place, overheated and full of absurd knick-knacks, some vaguely pornographic. After the medium – a large French lady, a Madame Something - tried in vain to summon the spirit of Napoleon, I suggested calling Nino Aliotti back from the grave. Initially, it looked like another flop. Madame was getting no response at all. Suddenly, the lit candle on the table was snuffed out and a voice spoke out of gloom. I must say it sounded uncannily like Nino’s. Perhaps it was my imagination. ‘Did you really kill yourself, Nino?’ I wished to ask. Unfortunately, someone in the chain started giggling uncontrollably. Madame shrieked and then started to call us names in French. The lights came on. We were ordered to get out at once.