by Frank Gelli
I was giving the Baron a summary of the Boccaccio story when he stopped me: ‘Fine. You have done as I told you. Good. But now note how Lessing changes and twists Boccacio’s simple story for his own dramatic and sceptical purposes. A Templar knight appears, for example. And the patriarch of Jerusalem, a negative figure. Plus a judge. The ring itself becomes a magical one. It confers on the ring a secret power. His owner is granted exceptional merit and success in the sight of God and men. So, it should be a simple matter. Just ask two of the brothers which sibling each loves most and everything is clear. The counterfeit rings obviously would not accomplish the feat of making the wearer favoured and beloved. Only the true magic ring would do that. Do you agree?’
I knew it was a trap so I muttered that I was not sure. ‘Just as well. Lessing goes to imagine that none of the three rings was authentic, that the father could not bring himself to hurt two. So he had three copies made, instead of two. None has the true ring. Psychologically, each son is happy. But then...what happens when each discovers he is not revered and obeyed by all? Remember that only the magic ring does that. Fake ones don’t perform the task. They all will be feeling cheated and grow angry. Mayhem will follow.’
I listened to him, dumb as a fish – and not feeling more intelligent.
‘Lessing clearly cribbed the tale from Boccaccio. Plagiarism, pure and simple. But he adapted it to his own purposes. He constructed it as a parable, or allegory, about tolerance. The three sons, by now you would have got it, stand for the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The father is God. Lessing also puts in the judge – the author’s mouthpiece – who instructs the sons as to the moral to be drawn from the parable. Which turns out to be a predictable compendium of progressive thought. Each brother should strive to imitate the others in mercy, love, forgiveness, all the rest. Above all, he would seek to benefit others. And pass those virtues on to his heirs. Thousands of years will pass until a future judge will be able to adjudicate which faith is best.’
‘Lessing was a freemason, an undisguised propagandist for the so-called Enlightenment. He hated transcendence. Insofar as any faith incarnates elements of that, he was out to debunk it. Even the much-vaunted modern step of making citizenship no longer dependent on religion, of which he was a keen advocate, turns out to be anti-traditional, as it leads inevitably to secularisation, to relativism... One of his pestilent tracts, in which he claimed to set out “the education of the human race”, postulates different phases in the development of civilisation, from the lowest to the highest. They are supposed to parallel a pseudo-ascent of the human mind towards truth. It is a classic evolutionary scheme. But of course, what we behold before our eyes today proves my point, as explained in my Revolt against the Modern World. The enlightened modernity Lessing admired is no evolution – it is actually involution. His tale is just a cover...Anyway, the story cannot work. The real, historical Saladin, pace Lessing, would have had no doubt as to which religion was true – his own! And he has to introduce a trick which robs the story of its epistemological point – there is no magic ring anymore - none of the rings is the true one, the judge suggests, hence you can no longer recognise the true faith. (A Mephistophelean hint that perhaps the three monotheisms are impostures? I would not put it past Lessing to insinuate that something like that...) Of course, had the real ring been in the possession of one of the brothers, doubt would have dissolved but Lessing, like a snake, thrives on sowing doubt... Even that simplistic recipe, doing good deeds, does not mean the same in the three religions. The exoteric rules of Islam are not the same as those of Christianity... Muslims and Jews do not eat pork but Christians do. When the Mahdi comes, he will slaughter all the pigs, think on that!’
METAPHYSICS OF LOVE
Of all his books, The Metaphysics of Sex, as I have already said, appealed to me the most. But it aroused in me contradictory responses. Its opening contains a brilliant insight, a critique of the notion that sexual union is intrinsically aimed at procreation. An attack on both Schopenhaeur and biblical ethics. The Baron’s argument is simple and, to me, compelling – the great, iconic lovers in art and history were not thinking of babies and families when engaged in sexual congress. The ecstasy of coitus and the instinct for reproduction are two different things. When I first read it, ‘the penny dropped’. That’s it! Insight flashed. It was a moment of realisation, an intellectual epiphany I never lost. But, alongside that kind of valuable intuition, the same book has passages that make me shake my head in disbelief. The final chapter on sexual magic, never mind how much I tried to comprehend it, still seems sheer gobbledygook. Embarrassing stuff, almost designed to justify Umberto Eco’s damning comparison -Allah ia’lahannuhu! - Evola as a cheap conjurer, a stage magician of the lowest kind. And yet, this was not the man I knew. Nor can his writings, however flawed, be so dismissed. So, was Evola just nodding, like Homer does occasionally in the Odyssey, when he wrote embarrassing phrases like “operative sexual magic”, or was he tongue in cheek or what?
My preference is for the latter. He did have a sense of humour – what the English call “a saving grace” - I can vouchsafe that. Although his humour was, like Stalin’s, a peculiar one, tinged with a streak of cruelty. I suspect at times he deliberately intended to make himself contemptible in the eyes of progressive, trendy intellectuals like Umberto Eco. The type of person he despised the most. He gave them a bait – and they swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. Part of his malamatiya strategy. A perverse course of action but...it was his vocation. That is what transcendence had imposed on him. He had to follow his star. Evola, ‘the bad teacher’. Like Socrates, accused by the bourgeois Athenians of being a corrupter of youth. Unlike Socrates, he has not been rehabilitated. Perhaps he never will. He would not mind that, I don’t think. The triumph of his ultimate way. In his badness, in his shame, he has overcome.
These reflections belong to a later stage in my life. The young man I was back then was mesmerised by the passages on tantric erotic practices alluded to in The Metaphysics of Sex. I tried to persuade Maria to try them out. She did not like the idea and resisted but gradually I won her over. Tantra is a kind of sexual yoga, with complicated postures and positions. I had a book and followed its directions to the letter. It was awkward but we did it. Well, at first it came out as a bit of a damp squib. Maria mocked. She said it was a disappointment. On my part, the experience was not totally negative but there was little in it to justify the aura with which Evola had clothed the operation. I never told him, as I felt he would have excoriated me. How could I dare experiment with something as deep and as dangerous as tantra, without being properly taught? A long and arduous apprenticeship is required. Obviously I had not the inclination for it. I was in a hurry. I kept my mouth shut, yet I did not give up the thought of trying out the vaunted sexual magic. Eventually I made contact with Satish, a teacher at the Yoga Academy. An institution based not far from Rome’s main train station. Satish knew Evola and his works. For a certain honorarium he introduced me to intense and systematic tantric techniques. On the way there were a few taboos that had to be broken. Some were pretty hair-raising – best left unsaid. Evola would have regarded them part of the way of the left hand, I am sure. Satish’s training lasted for some months. At last I thought I was ready. No point asking Maria to be my shakta, my tantric bride. She would have refused point-blank. Liana, however, was sufficiently besotted by Eastern mysticism to agree.
It was like a religious ceremony. We met at Liana’s. Her parents were away on holiday. Her large flat, on the Aventine Hill, was a modernist affair, functional and geometric. Something that might have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Not really congenial in spiritual terms. But Liana’s own room was warm and inviting. We got down to business, after ritual invocations. The two of us together, skin to skin. The old skins slowly sloughed off and the two bodies were fused into one. Using words to describe how it felt would not do. Yet, what was it like? It was like nothing I had experienced before
, so what could I compare it? The moment of union (or was it non-union?) was...A sentence from the ancient mysteries helps – Apuleius of Madaura reports it: “At midnight I saw the sun brightly shine.” Translate that into eros and...yes, it was like that.
Afterwards I felt elated but completely drained, exhausted. Despite that, after some time I desired to do it again again but Satish warned me against it. Both of us also became worried about Liana. She had shown signs of derangement. Indeed, she went on to become quite promiscuous. Became pregnant and had a baby, despite her partner’s inclinations – he had wanted her to abort, although no one quite knew whose child it was. But she was incapable of bringing up the child after she was born...she had become schizophrenic. The baby was given into adoption. So Satish said I should leave tantra alone. I never told Evola but he was an old fox. I am sure he guessed something. The sharp way in which he looked at me...Nevertheless I am glad I did not blurt it all out. Somehow, I know he would not have liked it at all.
UNEVOLIAN CHARACTER
Paolo, a guy from the Colle Oppio, was a real Evola freak. He professed the greatest admiration for what he reverentially called ‘the Master’. Evola was his mentor and hero. One rainy, bitterly cold day we had arranged to meet up. I waited for him in the Colle Oppio lair – the Bunker - in vain. When I saw him next I naturally asked why he had not turned up. “Oh, I had something else to do”, he breezed, nonchalantly. Well, maybe. More probably, he could not be bothered to go out in the foul weather. It seemed a trivial episode but it bothered me. It signalled something important. I told Evola. He raised those thick, black eyebrows of his – often a sign he was not pleased. He was scathing about the man: ‘What is the use of calling himself my follower when he cannot even keep his word over something as simple as an appointment? It angers me. I have seen this again and again. Too many of these kids are like that. Someone swears he stands by my principles, honour, courage, valour, etcetera, and then he fails to keep a simple promise to a friend. That is behaving like a Mediterranean buffoon! Do you know that passage in the Gospels? Christ says that not everyone who calls him Lord will enter the kingdom of Heaven. You have to do his will to deserve that. I tell you, not everyone who says he is an “Evolian” is pleasing to me, unless he really conducts himself in the ways I advocate.’
‘Marx says somewhere that his doctrines are not abstract theories but principles for action. “Philosophers have concerned themselves with interpreting the world but what matters is to change it.” I think he wrote that in his theses on Feurbach. Well, I agree with Marx here. My ideas are not merely theoretical, for contemplation, for books only. They are meant for implementation, as guides for action. The champions of subversions displayed a certain clarity, I must admit. In their destructiveness, they possessed a definite rigour, a coherence, a system...Lenin knew you cannot make a revolution without discipline. Marx could see the point of real philosophy. He did not want talkers as followers but doers. It is the same with me. I don’t care for chatterboxes, for the empty talkers, for armchairs “Evolians” like Paolo. It is the Italian in him...It saddens me to say that but I am compelled to. The shallowness of our race infects even those in my ranks...A German, even a German Communist, would not behave like that.’
Later, when I made a study of the personality of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I came across an anecdote somewhat reminiscent of the Paolo incident. A young disciple of the Austrian thinker had neglected to keep a banal promise. Wittgenstein flew into a rage. “What is the use of studying my philosophy if it does not enable you to keep the simplest duties!” he had said – or words to that effect. Despite the differences in the contents of their respective systems, I cannot help feeling that, existentially speaking, Evola and Wittgenstein resembled each other. Their personal intensity, the demand for a total engagement, commitment to their teachings, not merely theoretical or bookish, but felt and real, was something they had in common. I surmise it stemmed from their ethos, which was Germanic. Never mind if Evola was Italian and Wittgenstein Austrian. In character, they were Germans. In a sense of the word ‘German’ which naturally indicates more an ideal type than any empirical reality. I am far from suggesting all Germans have embodied the behaviour I have in mind. There must be plenty of Germans like Paolo. But, considering the way Germany seems to be leading Europe once again economically, there must be something in the German character that bears out my point...
Recalling the Baron’s words today makes me wonder. I feel his analysis of certain features of the Italian national character is basically correct. I always felt that way. My ancient copy of Men among the Ruins still bears my marginal notes, in which I recognised how, in the pages on the “Mediterranean soul”, Evola had hit the nail on the head. Anyone who has witnessed the unruly behaviour of an Italian group – never mind from what social stratum – when it comes to that most sacred of British institutions, queuing, would know instinctively what I mean. Italians as a people are undisciplined, chaotic and, yes, bloody unreliable. (I could go on, of course, but I fear my comments would shade off into self-loathing and even racism – la samaha Allah - may God not allow it.) I never needed convincing on that score.
More problematical are Evola’s remarks about the other side of the polarity, what he calls the “Roman” aspect. His references to ancient history, to writers like Plutarch, Svetonius, Tacitus and the ethos of Sparta in a way make my point. He had to peer into the most remote, nebulous antiquity to find models for his ideal type of Italian. Well, if such kind of Italian ever existed, which is doubtful, he is no longer around today. Nor did he exist at the time of the Fascist regime, Mussolini’s truculent rhetoric notwithstanding. Even if communism had prevailed in Italy after the end of WWII, they would certainly not have succeeded in creating a new, totalitarian type of Italian. Communism would have had to accommodate itself to the Italian character. Indeed, the post-war popular books and movies about the priest Don Camillo well illustrated the farcical element in Italian Marxism. The truculent Communist mayor is always outsmarted and bested by the cunning Catholic priest. It may be a caricature but one that cuts very close to the bone. The Mediterranean soul again, Evola would say – and he would be right. But, once all is said, I feel there was something distinctly quixotic about Evola’s search for an ideal, mythical and superior Italian, a figure no more real than Don Quixote’s paladins. And I suspect he knew that all along. Had I had enough pluck to point that out to him, I am sure he would have shrugged his shoulders and answered, with Plato, that it did not matter. It was a high ideal, laid out in a supernal world, and that was that.
EVOLA’S PLOY
In our meetings the Baron looked forward to hearing what I had been up to, the details of my private life. Such as the people I had met, the books I had read, the films I had seen and so on. He would not ask me directly but dropped hints, suggesting that he wanted to know what had made me happy or otherwise. It was not mere curiosity – that was not in his nature. Not that I liked to show it – his professed dislike of “Latin sentimentality” prevented it – but he was actually the opposite of unfeeling. He cared for me, I knew it. Once I told him of the infatuation I had developed for a girl. She was a journalist for Lotta Continua, a far-left publication. I shall call her Mirella. We had met during a debate at Rome University. Mirella was a petite brunette, with an infectious laughter and a turned-up nose. Of course, we were hardly on the same ideological wavelength but just looking at her made me quite crazy. I could not get her out of my mind. I knew I had to go to bed with her but it looked like a hopeless, impossible endevour. And yet, Mirella dominated my thoughts day and night. I confided in Evola, feeling quite stupid about it. He was not one for romantic attachments, I knew. Still, he listened to me and then said: ‘Well, there may be a way...’ What? Was the magus going to suggest a magical incantation, a love potion? I shuddered inwardly at the thought. I was not going to buy that! I should not have worried. Evola coul be quite earthy, pragmatic: ‘You could tell her you want to become Ma
rxist-Leninist. Ask her to help you in that...’ It sounded implausible. Would Mirella really be as naive as that? ‘Well, it depends’, he observed, shrewdly. ‘If she fancies you, she will be glad of an excuse to go to bed with you. If she doesn’t, you will at least realise there is no point in going on hurting yourself over her.’
It made sense. So, I followed Evola’s advice. I told Mirella I was thinking of changing my politics. Faking interest in Marxism was not difficult for me, because as a teenager I had flirted with that ideology, read Marx, Lenin and so on. So I could rattle off Marxist texts and name Leninist luminaries by heart. To cap it all, I moaned about the far right, how brutal, reactionary and absurd their beliefs were, how they disgusted me, that sort of thing. As I spoke, I felt phoney. I was afraid Mirella would see through the deception. I did not mean a word I was saying. I had to struggle to keep a straight face as I told her all that cock and bull stuff. Well, she believed me. And soon she began to smile at me sweetly, let me hold her hand, kiss her, everything. When she felt I was really becoming a comrade, a fellow Communist, she asked me over to her place and...bingo! My dreams became true.
The affair left me with a bit of a guilty conscience. I had to tell the Baron. ‘Everything is licit in love and war’, Evola remarked. ‘As to your conscience, perhaps you should read what Shakespeare makes one of his characters say in Richard III. Everybody who wishes to live well strives to do without his conscience.’ But, from the way he was smiling, I knew he was not serious. Cynicism did not become him, it was not part of his way of looking at the world. Conscience in the aristocratic sense of the word, as honour, to him meant much. He added: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t worry. The easy way she fell into the trap suggests she wanted, or perhaps pretended, to believe you. It is quite possible she never took your supposed “conversion” seriously. As a woman, she has an instinctive way of sensing these things...I think she likes you and so she was just looking for an alibi to go to bed with you. But her own “conscience”, her Marxist dogma would not permit her to sleep with a reactionary class enemy. And, after all, our Marxist friends are supposed to believe in free love, aren’t they? She must have been glad when you gave her a reason, never mind whether phoney or not, to override her ideology. She must have jumped at the opportunity. You did her a favour, really.’