by Frank Gelli
Evola listened to my story, glaring at me. I had made a mistake. I should have known better than telling him that silly episode. He disapproved of that kind of thing. Indeed, he had attacked spiritualism in a book. He took his monocle in and out a couple of times. Would not speak for a while. In a vain attempt to justify myself, I stammered that Plotinus too – a philosopher I knew he liked - once had participated in a séance. That must have made Evola even angrier. From the frowning look on his face I could divine his thoughts: ‘Do you compare yourself to Plotinus, you silly lad?’ But he said nothing. Then he asked me to leave. It was a rare example of his displeasure. But he never alluded to that incident again.
CONTRADICTIONS
His comments on the putrefaction of the Italian state puzzled me. In articles published, I think, in the magazine Il Borghese, he had maintained that the state still had to be defended, even if void of spiritual value. Was that a contradiction? I can only say that the Evola I knew was an intimate, private, unlikely figure. I still cannot explain why he would say certain things to me. Was it part of a strategy to confuse the shallow-minded? The old Dadaist artist playing tricks? A perverse Sufi strategy? I don’t know, but for some reason Walt Whitman’s words keep coming up, whenever I remember the old Baron: “You say I contradict myself. Very well. I do contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
CAMUS’ REBELS
As theatre is one of my passions – indeed, I freelanced as a drama critic for the magazine Sipario - I went regularly to see plays. One I had found stimulating was The Just, by Albert Camus. A thoughtful piece about Russian revolutionaries. The plot hinges on a young terrorist about to blow up one of the hated aristocrats. At the last moment, he pulls back because with the Grand Duke in the coach there are also his grand-children. The revolutionary’s conscience prevents him from killing the innocent. Later, a character in the play says: “Even in destruction, there is a right way and a wrong way, and there are limits.”
The play had troubled me, I told Evola. He commented: ‘Camus’ literary rhetoric may warm a sentimentalist’s heart but it is flawed material. Maybe it works on stage but, at the philosophical level...No! I am sure the young man’s fellow terrorists would have called him chicken. How can you make a real revolution with beautiful souls like that? They would have reasoned that way, yes. The boy was a romantic – in the bad sense of the word. Worse, he was soft. Lenin was far more coherent, systematic and ruthless. The Bolsheviks set about exterminating the Russian elites, the aristocracy, from the Tzar’s family downwards, and that they did with total, savage pitilessness. The Russian crown prince and the young princesses, they were all butchered at Yekaterinburg. No delicate scruples about child-killing there. Camus should have written a play about that. Of course, the Russian revolution was far more than a political or even a social revolution. Like the French revolutionaries before them, the Bolsheviks were intent primarily on a metaphysical rebellion. Do you know a recent book entitled “The Damned of the Earth”? It should rather be called “The Scum of the Earth”. That’s it. The scum of the earth in Russia rose up against their elites, those who had made Russia great in the past. Of course, the revolting masses were being manipulated by other forces. The puppet masters are well-known. Yes, it was a metaphysical revolution. The destruction of Transcendence and its values, a further, fearful levelling down of everything, those were its objectives. In that, they succeeded...’
What then did he make of the principle of non-combatant immunity, on which modern international law is based? ‘International law goes back to the Roman jus gentium, the law of nations. Its roots and principles were based on self-interest, reciprocity. For example, you did not kill heralds, because it was in nations’ mutual interests to do so. But, when it came to the crunch, those conventions were overridden. Even kings and noblemen ignored them at times. At Agincourt the English king, Henry V, had the French prisoners slaughtered. He did not have enough men to guard them. So he had them killed. He won the battle, that was what mattered. It just shows you how the spiritual rot had polluted even the crown. A king should never have behaved in such a low fashion... Nietzsche might have had this example in mind when he commented, “Plebs below, plebs above”....Similarly, the slaughter of women and children can have its own, utilitarian rationale. Women can be prolific child-bearers. Children themselves in time will grow up, become soldiers and fighters. A nation could be justified in wanting to act before those children could fight against them in the near future...Look at the last war. Do you think the strategy of obliteration bombing of German cities by the Allies had no ulterior motives? I am sure the infamous British Air Marshall, “Bomber Harris”, wanted to make sure there were not enough German women and children left after the war to continue the struggle. It was brutal, yes. Especially as the Allies swore up and down they were acting from lofty, superior principles, like freedom and democracy. Hypocritical nonsense. The Germans, for their part, initially had fought cleanly. They did not primarily target English cities. But Churchill was astute. He got the RAF to bomb German civilians. Hitler was enraged and ordered reprisals against English cities. It was a mistake...It gave the English time to build planes and repair air fields....Typical low cunning, deviousness...But back to your play. Are there limits in destruction? Yes, there are but they are not the limits Camus would have had in mind. His existentialism muddles everything up. You know that, shortly before he died, he objected to Algerian terrorism because he was afraid for his mother’s life? Pretty pathetic for an existentialist thinker, a champion of the Absurd, isn’t it? Not quite like his hero, the Mersault of L’Etranger! This kind of consideration, of course, is on a purely horizontal plane. When people blab about the rights of civilians they don’t realise these things are based on human conventions. Like all conventions, they are not absolute. They can be altered. For people upholding Tradition the frame of reference is vertical, transcendent. Some things simply are not allowed. Not sentimental rubbish like in the case of your Russian revolutionary, but things that involve a man’s very being. Like breaking your word, for example. A man of Tradition would sooner jump into a boiling cauldron than do that. Once you have given your word there is no going back. You have committed your soul. A squalid Italian academic once advised his students to cheat even the devil. It was about the Faust legend. It speaks volumes about the ignoble nature of that professor. A conjunction of Mediterranean and Latin decadence. Enough. Just remember – there are things that you can never bargain about, understand? So, yes, there are limits but of a very different nature your Camus ever dreamt of.’
EX AFRICA LUX
His comments about blacks were not at all one-sided. I had expected him to be abrasive but he was more nuanced. For example, he dismissed the passage in the biblical Book of Genesis which in ages past was adduced as a putative proof of the inferiority of blacks. ‘Noah’s children, eh? I am tempted to agree with Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab historian. Ascribing black skins to the descendants of Ham because of a curse makes me smile... Ibn Khaldun prefers environmental factors, like the climate...not that his explanation is much better.’ And he spoke of Roman Africa as having its share of blacks, Nubians and the like. ‘Toynbee, the English historian, says that there has never been a black civilisation in history. So what? Maybe there will be one in the future, who knows? As Europe’s twilight sets in, who is to say that Africa won’t be the next civilisation?’
He also disagreed with Ibn Khaldun over his condescending judgment on blacks. ‘In the Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun says that blacks excel at singing, dancing and idling. Did anyone ever accuse him of racism? Amazing. In fact, some of black African tribes display great energy, a vigour, a vitality...Compared with the increasingly effete Europeans, who knows whether ex Africa lux – the future light won’t arise from the dark continent? Think of what I am telling you by the year 2000 – I know you will still be alive then... Of course, slavery in the ancient world had nothing to do with a particular race. Anyone captured in war could be a slav
e. Greek slaves were often far more cultured than their masters. People forget that. Just the same, the abolition of slavery was a mistake.Thomas Carlyle saw that. His pamphlet on the black question makes it clear...’
Still, it would be impossible to make him out as politically correct on the subject of Africans. ‘It is nonsense to claim that Emperor Septimius Severus was black. He was from Roman Africa. The funerary portraits on coffins show fairly Latin-looking faces...Septimius was African only in the geographic sense. A mosaic shows his face as perfectly Aryan...’
One afternoon he told me that he had been listening to some radio programme about racism. It had not pleased him. He quoted the French liberal writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book on democracy in America. Black males, according to de Tocqueville, desired nothing else than marrying white women. ‘Europe in future will be striated with black...’he said, fatalistically. ‘Part of the Kali-Yuga...’
He went on in this vein for a while. Best not to set down what he said. I think in judging him you should always recall how he often used ferociously negative words – racist, if you like - about his own people, the Italians. As I have stressed, Evola’s fierce views about ethnicity did not spare his own people. That is important, in order to keep the whole thing into perspective.
However, for a moment, or a fraction of a moment, I thought I glimpsed something in his eyes. Like a message, a signal, an imploration. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he seemed to be saying. Back then, I did not. Now, I do – or I think I do. He was wearing his malamatiya mask. Belting out his notorious, unadulterated racism, to make himself more disreputable. He needed to be blamed, despised, to be considered an outcast. It was his vocation. Again, not masochism, but a spiritual calling. Even in my eyes. I, his disciple – he had to speak like that. But he must have intuited I was too sensitive, that inwardly I could not go along with his phobias. Nonetheless, he had chosen to wear that mask. But his glance had betrayed him. It had disclosed the truth. Or, rather, it was a hint, an allusion, a deliberate give-away signal. He could not do it directly. Now, forty years on, I understand – or I believe I understand what the Baron really meant. But then, sometimes I wonder...Was there a sort of mockery behind it all? The derision of a pagan god, a Dionysus...Was he making fun of me? I will not – I cannot believe that.
PADRE PIO
Yes, he would regularly amaze me. I had let slip de passage that my mother was very keen on Padre Pio, the immensely popular Franciscan priest, healer and miracle-worker – now canonised as St Pio da Pietralcina. I immediately regretted it. I thought it would provoke him into an anti-Catholic tirade. Moreover, Padre Pio was a simple peasant, far removed from the aristocratic types the Baron was drawn to. Not so. He liked the old healer: ‘It seems Pio had the power of bilocation. Many people have seen him in two different places at the same time. A feat that contradicts commonsense but then commonsense can be a real idiot. Doesn’t quantum mechanics say that a subatomic particle is capable of that? If it obtains at the micro-physical level why should that be logically impossible at the macro-level? Padre Pio seems to have had the power. There are of course other possible explanations...Even the Prophet was seen in two different places at once during his night journey...Aisha testified to that...Pio’s followers would say he got the gift from God or Christ but those are short-hand, compendious terms for something deeper... Certainly, Pio could divine people’s intimate thoughts. I heard of a woman whose son had fought with the Italian Army on the Russian front in World War II. The boy had gone missing during a battle and was never seen again. She could not find rest. Someone suggested she went to see Padre Pio. She had to wait months for that, the monk was so popular. He knew nothing about the lady and her son but, as soon as he saw her, before she could utter a single word, he said: “Do not distress yourself, my lady. Be at peace. Your son is in Paradise. He is happy. Go in peace.”
I relished the simple story. It was hugely heart-warming. Also, so out of character. Evola was not, as rule, anecdotal. It was not his style. And Padre Pio can be thought to have stood against everything Evola publicly affirmed. Was not the Baron supposed to be a terrible anti-Christian ogre? He had even been attacked in print by a priest who later became Pope, Mgr. Montini. But the Baron could be like that. Mischievous. Unpredictable. Like a Zen master. That is why I liked him. This angle on Padre Pio also fits in with Evola’s Sufism. Muslim mystics can be endowed – or claim to be endowed – with magical powers of all kinds. Padre Pio’s thaumaturgy, his ability to read people’s thoughts, to project his image across space, they all have their counterparts in the records of the lives of many Sufis teachers. Pio as a Christian Sufi – well, why not?
IMAM ALI
Huseyin, an Iranian student I had met at Rome University, had chatted to me about Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam. Naturally, I asked Evola his opinion: ‘You should be very careful when you utter that name’, he first warned. ‘Never do it casually. I know you mean well but idle inquirers should realise Ali is in a different category. Don’t for a minute imagine it is like asking about any historical figure from secular history, like, say, Frederick the Great or Napoleon. Ali stands apart. He is one of ten men to whom the Prophet promised Paradise, do you know that? He is at the head of a chain of initiation. One of the mightiest ever existed. Ali is truly termed ‘akbar’, the greatest sheikh – and more than a sheikh. Many prophetic hadith witness to Ali’s exalted rank. Muhammad would say: “Ali and I come from one stock”; “Ali is part of me and I of Ali”; “He who offends Ali offends me”; “I am the Abode of Wisdom and Ali is the gate”, and many others.’
‘Ali’s rule in Shia thought begins the chain of the Imamate. The Imams are the true successors of the Prophet. The Imam is a divinely-guided figure, considered sinless and infallible. The Qur’an of course is the infallible book and the Imam complements it by being an infallible guide. There have been eleven Imams after Ali. The last never died – he went into hiding, occultation, instead. He lives on in a secret place. Shia identify him with the Mahdi, the awaited redeemer who comes at the end of time to vindicate justice and purify Islam and the world.’
I pointed out Ali’s final, tragic defeat at the hands of his enemies. He shook his head: ‘Ali was never beaten. It might appear so to the outer person, the uninitiated. Not so to those who see beyond appearances. The shallow-minded are those who stress the contingent aspects of Ali’s caliphate. For example, that Ali was not present at a crucial meeting after the Prophet’s death and so failed to be elected Caliph – he missed the bus, so to speak. One writer even drew am absurd comparison between Ali and Trotzky. The latter never made it at Lenin’s funeral, so paving the way for Stalin to claim the succession. A cretinous analogy. From the sacred to the profane, indeed!’
‘The uninstructed also speak of Ali taking over at a period of trouble for Islam, because his predecessor, Uthman had been assassinated and that Ali never fully repudiated the killers. They cite his alleged vacillating behaviour after the key battle of Siffin. The Kharijites, or secessionists, accused Ali of betrayal because he had agreed to arbitration. Further, they say that Aisha, the youngest of the prophet’s wives, disliked Ali...and so on. The truth is that all these events matter only on the horizontal, immanent, earthly dimension. They appear important but they are not. Or they are so only relatively. The one-eyed multitude do not comprehend that what really counts in human history is decided not below but above. In the realm of Transcendence. Ali’s life, his path, his destiny were laid out in a heavenly pattern. Adapting something Virgil wrote, it could be said that that “Eternity understood Ali in its own way”. It is not just that he was a noble failure, after the manner of the Samurais. That too does not get the point. His victory was in his defeat. Martyrdom is never a defeat – how could it be? Mors ianua vitae - death is the door to life. Many tarikat, Sufi fraternities, regard Ali as their spiritual father. Ali the Lion. Yes, the king of the animals was his symbol. I know of a sect in the Middle East that has elevated Ali to a status comparab
le with God – they say Gabriel, the angel of revelation who dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad, inspired him - but that is an exaggeration, displeasing to Muslims.’
I asked: could one argue Ali was unlucky? It was a bit wicked on my part, there was something I knew...but he denied it: ‘What may appear like bad luck here below is not so from the point of view of Transcendence. The Powers are in control. To make any correct judgment about Imam Ali you must never leave what is higher out of account. Never forget that.’
FATIMA
The following week he spoke of Massignon’s comments on Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, Ali’s wife and the mother of Hasan and Huseyin, two tragic figures of enormous emotional and theological importance in Shia Islam. “La Dame de l’Islam” Massignon had called Fatima. ‘Massignon sought to present Fatima as a promoter of justice, the champion of the oppressed, a standard bearer of equality. That is unfortunate. It just reflects Massignon’s fixation with Western thought forms. Amazing how a devout, traditionalist Catholic like him should have swallowed l’egalite’, one of the unholy trinity worshipped by the French revolutionaries. But he is right in seeing Fatima as the godly hostess, the Mistress of the House of Hospitality in Islam. That is sound and acceptable. It reaches back to the hospitality showed to Abraham to the three men who appeared to him in Genesis – three tokens and hints of the Trinity. Hospitality is a Semitic virtue. Alas, Massignon also shows his bias in linking Fatima with the agitation for women’s rights in Eastern societies. Again, part of his deplorable secular mindset...despite his mysticism, he never completely overcame his French progressive background. The obsession with rights is a baleful affair...It is not any “rights” in the vulgar secular sense that Fatima symbolises but something higher, above and beyond them. She represents the care and love she showed to her family, her father, husband and children through her life. Indeed, Massignon bestows on her the extravagant title of “Mother of her Father”, to signify exactly that love and care. I suspect here Massignon has in mind the bizarre phrase “Daughter of your son”, a title Catholics apply to the Virgin Mary. The idea is that Mary is not only Christ’s mother, she is also the new Eve, the offspring of the Trinity and hence somehow her son’s daughter. Muslims won’t like that.’