by Frank Gelli
‘Mutants mentally inferior, hybrids, would work as servants. That may well be inevitable. The servant supply from the third world will dry up at some stage, as poor countries grow more prosperous. On the other hand, mutants could turn out to be our equals. Or even our superior. Chimeras...Did not Jean Jacques Rousseau say that the country of chimeras was the only one worth living in? But chimeras can be upsetting. Even a degenerate culture might baulk at rubbing shoulders with jackal-headed men or cat-like females – unless you are a fine hair fetishist!’
‘The Catholic Church, I should imagine, would demand that monster-like mutants be granted all the rights to life and respect other human beings are accorded. But what if the mutants posed a real threat to mankind’s survival? The Church might modify her views a little. She was always unduly sentimental about freaks. The Cottolengo Hospital in Turin used to be a freaks’ show. All sorts of natural monster were kept alive there, cared after by religious. Because the Church could not be sure such beings did not have, after all, an immortal soul. Catholics felt a kind of horror at the thought of beings with no rational soul – St Thomas Aquinas taught that not even God could make someone like that – create a man with no soul, that is. Unlike the Saint, I find that not at all difficult to imagine. Look at our democratic politicians, our so-called intellectuals, our opinion moulders. Do they really have a soul? They are like soulless, walking dead. Zombies. Certainly, they have no Spirit. Not in the sense the man of the world of Tradition – or even the Gospel of St John - would have understood the idea of a Holy Spirit.’
‘Our left-leaning intellectuals make a lot of noise. Yes, noise, as opposed to meaningful, rational sense. Plutarch again, I seem to remember, narrates that somewhere in Thrace Roman soldiers managed to capture a satyr. They are meant to be purely mythological figures, of course. Half-human and half-animal, wild, woodland creatures. The Greeks imagined them with the ears and tail of a horse but the Romans described them with horns and goat-like legs. So, we do not know exactly what the satyr in question looked like. (Unless he was a wag playing some kind of practical joke, but then the Romans would not have been amused...) Plutarch relates that when the prisoner was taken before the aristocratic general Sulla, he could speak no human language. All the satyr could produce were unintelligible cries, noises half-way between those of a horse and a goat. Anyway, he stank to high heaven, so Sulla commanded him to be sent back to the wild.’
‘This anecdote applies well to what passes for intelligentsia in Italy. Those so-called intellectuals who monopolise virtually all the media, control all the means of mass communication, from radio to TV to newspapers and magazines. They pour out an incessant stream of speech. Words, words, words. And yet, to anyone who is ‘awakened’ in the Buddhist sense of the term, our egg-heads only produce inarticulate cries or noises. Freaks, like the monsters, like Plutarch’s satyr, they have abdicated, forsaken il ben dell’intelletto, their genuine rational nature. They have sunk back into an animal substratum. One day that will be recognised, I hope...’
Being rather a fan of the science-fiction writer Frederic Brown, I told him how much I enjoyed a novel published in Italian with the title of “Absurd Universe”. Its hideous, alien monsters, the Arcturians, are never quite seen but only glimpsed at. Because, Brown writes, “the briefest sight of an Arcturian would be enough to drive a person mad”. It was the insight of the author never to attempt to describe an Arcturian but letting the goose-pimpled reader guess at it. Far more creepy and effective, I felt.
Evola nodded and said: ‘It would work both ways. The monsters from outer space conjured up by your science-fiction would find us just as monstrous as we would them. Why would it not equally drive them mad to see us? Your Arcturian...just imagine his rage, his pain, his disgust at beholding us, revolting human freaks? Like the monster at the end of Fellini’s movie...The men of the world of Tradition – the ancient Greeks, the Romans, Dante, the Knight Templars - might feel a similar revulsion in contemplating the way we are, the way we live now...’
HIMMLER AND THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
A droll, German-speaking housekeeper usually opened the door of Evola’s flat. I much regretted not speaking German and told Evola so. That led him to reminisce about his time spent in Germany. He told me how he had once been invited to a gathering of top SS officers. Himmler had addressed them on the subject of homosexuality: ‘He declared himself astonished by the number of inverts in Germany. Millions, according to him. The State and the SS had reason to be concerned. He said that sexual mores could not be a mere private affair – a view that Hitler himself had once professed. You know how Roehm, the Brown Shirts leader, was a notorious, voracious homosexual? When he was shot, during the night of the long knives, he was in bed with a young man. Party members had long complained about Roehm’s sexuality but Hitler had countered that such matters were personal, private. Himmler’s view could not have been more different, although he would not have said that to Hitler’s face. His position was that because homosexuality is contrary to procreation it results in the demographic destruction of a people.’
‘In practice there is something in that of course but, from the point of view of the metaphysics of sex, of its deepest significance, it is a very shallow point of view. The drive to reproduction does not constitute the essential meaning of Eros...the great lovers of mankind, Romeo and Juliet, Paris and Helen, even modern, prosaic couples like Edward VIII and Wally Simpson...were they thinking of having children when they fell into each other arms? It is nonsense. It is amazing even a deep thinker like Schopenhauer should have made the mistake of believing that sex was an expression of the biological need to procreate, to perpetuate the species. I have demolished that opinion in my Metaphysics of Sex. I know you have read it. Good.’
‘I suspect the problem was that Himmler lacked a solid theoretical basis for this subject. He was no deep thinker. Besides, he was a married man, though unhappily so. I think he had children...And there was always something very Bavarian, conventional and petty-bourgeois about him, alas. Even his looks - round head and small, Mongolian eyes - do not argue in his favour. Still, he seemed to know an awful lot about homosexuals. For instance, he said that such people can recognise each other in a meeting amongst hundreds, by a single glance. Proust says something similar in his Recherché du Temps Perdue. Of course Proust was one of them, a homosexual. But how can Himmler have known about that?’
‘Himmler drew a comparison between Jesuits and gays. Jesuits practice and teach the virtue of deception in order to serve God. Omnia ad Majorem Gloriam Dei is their motto. Their lies are necessary, devoted to the greatest glory of God. The Jesuits are fully aware of their deceptions. Inverts, on the other hand, are not, according to Himmler. They lie without realising they do...Even if they swear on their mother’s life, you cannot trust them, he said. That is very grave, because your word is the strongest pledge you can give, especially for a German, let alone the SS...Not so amongst certain Latin types, of course...they would lie through their teeth happily and would not lose any sleep over it. But you remember Faust? When he realised he had given his word to the devil, he knew he was lost. How very German!’
‘Himmler stunned his audience by telling us that homosexuality existed even among the SS. Quite extraordinary. His way of dealing with such cases was to have the man in question reduced to the ranks, sent to a concentration camp and later shot “while attempting to escape”. Radical but effective.’
‘He stigmatised those in the Party who stressed the importance of virile friendships and made fun of romantic attachments, of boys in love with girls. He said that attitude leads to homosexuality. No, there was nothing to be ashamed of when a boy showed his calf love for a girl. It was a fine, natural thing, healthy.’
‘Himmler was not all that wrong though when he commented on the tendency by homosexuals to boast about all sorts of historical characters belonging to their coterie. Men such as Alexander the Great, Caesar and Frederick II. A self-regarding attitud
e, as if they were claiming that homosexuality and greatness are synonymous. Rather like the Jews, who attribute almost all the great figures of mankind to their race. Let us say it is a bit of an exaggeration! Anyway, whether those examples are correct or not – Alexander certainly became very indignant when some young boys were offered to him, Plutarch relates - I have discussed the problem elsewhere...There are varieties of homosexuality that are not so easy to explain, certainly...I used to think that it was not connected with a sense of Macht, power, but now I am not so sure. I wonder...Perhaps domination really has something to do with it, at least in the case of the active, butch homosexual.’
‘I recall the Reichfuhrer mentioned the situation developed in the United States, how that society had become virtually woman-dominated. America had become a kind of female tyranny. And he was talking as things were in 1937! Huh! What would he say today?’
‘Himmler looked dead serious as he spoke but I think he also enjoyed himself hugely in this talk. Afterwards there was a glint in those slanted, oriental eyes of his...It was a ball. Especially when he went on to blast the Catholic Church for her attitude to women and sex in general. Clerical celibacy drew his wrath. He seemed unable to grasp that there might be ascetic and mystical reasons behind priestly celibacy. Such as the Imitatio Christi. Like Hitler, he was too imbued with a type of positivistic and rationalistic anti-clericalism harking back to the Enlightenment. A fatal mistake. In his opinion, the Catholic clergy were homoerotic-homosexual associations in disguise. Perverted and sadistic lot. He went too far, I have to say. You can’t imagine men like St Bernard or St Ignatius of Loyola to have been like that! Celibacy for Himmler was linked to subversion, something almost Bolshevik. Weird...The idea that there might actually be something like a genuine spiritual vocation – a call to what is higher - did not seem to have entered his mind. I have myself met some impressive monks – the real thing. I could never have believed as they did, but I respected them. Himmler could not. Remember, he came from a deeply devout Catholic family. Catholicism has often engendered its greatest enemies. You will not find anything like that in Islam, believe you me. Islam does not demand that men should contradict their basic drives. Islam is realistic...’
‘That is not to say that the ranks of the clergy have not at all times included numerous homosexuals. Dante, I think, overstates it a little: “You must know that these were all priests and intellectuals, tainted with the same filthy sin” he says, speaking in Hell of the souls dwelling in the circle of sodomites. He even names a notorious Archbishop of Florence. A sodomite so rampant that the Pope had to get him out of Florence and move him to another diocese. So, you see, maybe Himmler had been influenced by Dante, who knows?’
THE BARONESS
A name the Baron invoked once or twice was that of a woman. A fellow aristocrat. Baroness Barbara Von Kruedener. ‘She was the Russian visionary who became the Muse of Czar Alexander I. In fact, not Russian at all but an ethnic German from the Baltic countries. Brought up in a wordly, hedonistic household, at the age of 40 she underwent a mystical experience that changed her life. She started giving money away to the indigent. Big sums, quite extravagant. And she visited the sick. People suffering from the most unpleasant diseases. The Book of Revelation became her favourite biblical text. She believed she had found the key to contemporary political events in its pages. Napoleon was obviously the Beast spoken of by St John. I am told she correctly prophesied that Napoleon would have escaped from his exile on Elba. Also, she had a notion about spiritual marriages. Unions that could be contracted between kindred souls, never mind how distant in time or space. (That is a true, esoteric doctrine, by the way.) Her coup was to capture the attention of Czar Alexander. In that, she rendered the cause of Tradition a great service. You see, she sowed in the emperor’s restless mind a lively seed. An idea that later germinated in the treaty, the vision called the Holy Alliance. Yes, that! The bête noire of our Italian history. Our Italian school books describe the Holy Alliance as reactionary, repressive and obscurantist. It was quite the opposite. It could have marked the start of a new era...’
‘The Holy Alliance treaty was signed after the fall of Napoleon by the sovereigns of Russia, Prussia and Austria. The rulers bound themselves indeed in a bond that was no merely political. It was a spiritual compact. Not just to repress subversion and rebellion, the work of the murky secret societies like Freemasons and Carbonari – the gangs that have wrought so much mischief - but also to defend the principles of spirituality. Tradition. They meant to fight back, to encourage the establishment of an academy of wisdom, reform education, teach the elites true principles. And the Alliance was no paper tiger. It intervened in Europe to quell uprisings. Eventually, of course, it was defeated. England kept out of it – what would you expect? Always short-sighted...True to her dubious history...England was suspicious of the Alliance resulting in a sort of European hegemony. Her eternal concern. She’ll regret it. One day, mark my words, she will get her deserts. It will be Europe that will dominate England, although not the Europe we desire...’
‘It is a pity that in the end the baroness overreached herself. She kept pestering the Czar so much that he banished her from his presence. I think he had come to fear that she was a kind of enchantress, a witch. He commanded her not to write to him again, on pain of imprisonment. So she just faded away. But I do find her an admirable female. Those spiritual nuptials of her, especially...not that I could ever have been her spiritual partner. Marriage apart, a bit too fanatical a Christian for my taste!’
Meditating on the Baron’s words now, at the beginning of the third millennium, I imagine him currently descanting on one of his favourite themes, that of inversion. An age of out-and-out dissolution twists and turns everything upside down. It makes sense that what we witness today is a distinctly Unholy Alliance. I mean that embodied by the American Neo-Cons. The wicked cabal in the States determined to subvert the Middle East, the whole world, in order to reshape it according to what they perceive to be the true interest of America. Like the Holy Alliance of old, they promote aggressive military adventures into the Islamic world. Pre-emptive wars, they call them. Evola would prove that easily. The Neo-Cons promoted the unnecessary, unjust Iraqi war. Ditto with the intervention in Afghanistan, which is still, at the time of writing, destroying and wasting lives and resources. Libya suffered a similar fate. Syria is going to be next...The New American Century project – that is the blueprint for this Unholy Alliance. And Mr Leo Strauss, their weird ideologue, stands for a grotesque reincarnation of the visionary Baroness Von Krudener. Inversion indeed! It would take another 1848 revolution to overthrow that gang. Sigh...not very likely...
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
Discoursing about one of my favourite writers, Jorge Louis Borges, I told Evola how Borges was blind, although that disability had not made him bitter. The subject of blindness triggered off another literary association in him: ‘Physical blindness is bad but not the worst kind of thing that can befall a man...H.G. Wells’ short story, The Country of the Blind, can serve as a critique of the condition of modernity. It is set in a happy, secluded valley in the Andes, somewhere in South America. The people there are blessed with excellent natural conditions but they are blind. An epidemic had caused their ancestors to lose their sight. Over the centuries the condition had been passed on and become hereditary, until no one remembered what it was like to be sighted. Until the day a stranger stumbled into the valley...’
‘On realising the valley people lacked sight, naturally the stranger had felt very sorry for them. That had only bemused the people. “We don’t understand you. You say we cannot see. But what does seeing mean? There is no such a word...” They had forgotten their past so much, they could not even conceive what the faculty of vision was. In the end, they concluded the stranger was quite mad. They pitied him so much that they decided they had to do something about it. They proposed to the stranger that they should help him to get rid of his delusion. There was a str
ange, soft depression near his forehead. That surely was the cause of the disease. No need to despair. Something could be done. The anomaly could be surgically removed, thereby restoring the tormented lunatic to normality and happiness.’
‘You can imagine the man’s reaction. Not only did he decline his hosts’ offer – he took to his heels as fast as he could. The story’s end has the stranger on a mountain cliff, looking down on the ghastly valley of the Blind, with a smile on his face.’
Yes, Evola could be a good story teller. This one had had me spellbound. It is a pity the gift that came through in his conversations with me was not manifest in his books. I almost told him so – ‘Why don’t you write like this?’ – but it would have been too cheeky and that was not something I could dare in his presence. That said, he was right. Wells’ story for him had become a telling allegory. The country of the blind was the modern world he had damned in writings. The peculiar, extraordinary blindness the people had fallen victim to was a reference to transcendence. Yes, the transcendent. The higher dimension of reality – call it “God” if you will, though that was not one of Evola’s words – that dimension had been shut off, driven out, obliterated by modern man. So much so that people had utterly lost all recollection of it and considered anyone who had eyes to see mad or bad – or, like Lord Byron, both.