Julius Evola- The Sufi of Rome

by Frank Gelli

  THE CAGED POET

  The great American poet Ezra Pound had lived in Italy throughout WWII. An admirer of Mussolini, he had defended the regime in English language broadcasts. When the Yanks “liberated” Italy (not a language Evola used – he always spoke of “occupation”), they arrested the poet near Pisa and shut him into a steel cage, in the open air, guarded by brutal and bestial soldiers. It was deliberate, sadistic humiliation. Technically, Pound was a traitor to America, so he was sentenced to death. Many writers and intellectuals pleaded on his behalf, claiming he should be excused on grounds of insanity. After many years in prison, he was released. Later he returned to Italy and was feted in a public meeting by Adriano Romualdi’s father, Pino, the right wing MP. The poet’s behaviour appeared peculiar – maybe there was truth in the notion he had gone mad. I preferred the idea that Pound was so disgusted by the degraded reality he saw about him that he had ‘opted out’, so to speak. A self-imposed, internal exile from a pseudo-humanity that repelled him. A position for which there is much to be said...

  Evola much admired Ezra Pound’s extraordinary poems, the Cantos. His poor, almost non-existent English did not allow him to appreciate them in the original but then the Cantos are so interlarded with foreign words and symbols that perhaps it did not matter much. However, Pound had also composed two cantos in Italian. Evola very much liked them: ‘Pound’s knowledge of our language was astounding. Canto 73 should be compulsory reading in our schools. It sings of a heroine. An Italian girl in Rimini raped by Allied soldiers. She takes her revenge by leading a platoon of Canadian servicemen over a mine field. She dies with them but her sacrifice frees some German prisoners. Ma che ragazzi portan il nero! “What stupendous kids wear black!” the poem ends, extolling the martyr. It is glorious verse. Its sentiment is at odds with the rubbish our young people are brainwashed into believing and admiring, so much so that it hits you like a blow. The sad cabal (triste cabala) that rules us admits of only left-wing heroes. It is sheer dishonesty. If they really believed in justice, as they swear up and down they do, they should at least occasionally allow that there were heroes and heroines on the other side, too. But that would be asking too much from that lot...’

  ‘The Americans’ inhuman, savage treatment of a great artist like Pound brings out the fundamental ferocity of that people. For a long time the media have regaled us with images of Americans like apple-pie nice, friendly, civilised lot. But their history is shot through with violence. Have they not conquered their land by exterminating the native inhabitants, the Red Indians? They claim that the gangsters, many of them immigrants of Italian origin like Capone and Luciano, brought to America their crime culture from Sicily. Yes, to some extent. But you can also argue it is the other way around. That it is America that turned the immigrants into criminals. A brutal, individualistic society, a society without traditions, without real elites to give people a real backbone, a society so enmeshed in violence would do that, wouldn’t it? Just think about it. They stuck a great poet inside that steel cage, like a wild animal in a zoo, guarded and reviled by loathsome jailers. From barbarous people like that you can expect anything. The dropping of the atom bomb on civilians, the obliteration bombing of German cities, the napalm, the massacres in Vietnam today, anything.’

  Evola was one-sided in his condemnation of America. Other nations have perpetrated similar or worse atrocities. However, when I think of the Guantanamo prisoners in our time, of scandals like the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib and so on, I feel he had put his finger on at least one streak of inhumanity running through American history and the American psyche. As to poets, well, no reason why they should not suffer like anybody else. Emperor Augustus exiled Ovid from Rome, the centre of the world, to the wilds of the Black Sea, a destiny maybe worse than being shut into a steel cage for a few days. Dante’s own expulsion from Florence and his homeless wanderings provide the model of the unhappy bard. And it was thanks to the awful experience of the American jailers that Pound wrote his brilliant Canti Pisani. As to the actual value of his Cantos, yes, they are outrageously experimental but...damn it, I still like them a lot!

  TWO POETS: CAMPANA AND D’ANNUNZIO

  I had brought with me a copy of Dino Campana’s Orphic Songs, just bought from the left-wing Feltrinelli bookshop near Piazza del Popolo. I was not quite sure what he thought of that obscure, half-forgotten, minor poete maudit. Somehow, I expected the Baron to dislike him. Campana had quirkily called himself “the last German in Italy”. I thought Evola would consider that presumptuous – maybe he felt the title best suited his own person! Instead, he expressed admiration:

  ‘Campana is a fine example of an artist who intuitively, poetically grasped a deep truth about the Italian race. It is, like all races, a mixture. There are various tendencies, orientations buried in the national psyche. The Germanic element is one. It doesn’t matter that Campana did not look particularly Germanic or that maybe he was of Mediterranean, pelasgic descent...’ He explained the meaning of “pelasgic” - a defective, botched type of individual. A Levantine mish-mash. A worthless stock...To be fair, he regarded the pelasgic element in the Italian character as nothing biological. It was an inner, spiritual or ethical tendency, something in the soul.

  ‘Campana imagined he was of ancient Lombard descent. A fantasy. But he grasped the essential thing. Something that comes up again and again in Italian history. Two souls, at war with each other. Often, the lower, carnal, rebellious soul predominated. The medieval Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation attempted a rectification of the Italian soul. The two nations united under a single, solar monarch. One people, one mind, one will. Dante celebrated that vision in the De Monarchia. But it did not last. When Dante’s own Emperor, Henry VIII of Luxenbourg came to Italy at last, he accomplished nothing. The people ignored him...He had to go back to Germany. Almost prophetic...Today it is the same. When someone proclaims noble ideals he meets with the same fate. He is either crucified or ignored.” He paused to sip some water. I wondered: did he have in mind his own, bitter destiny? But he went on: ‘Campana was quite mad but how could he not be? And there was some method in his madness... He saw his own country fighting against two Germanic Empires in WWI. That pushed him over the edge, I am sure. Italy had chosen to betray the alliance she had made with them – a pattern of treachery typical of this race – she joined the French and the British. The British are an oligarchy of merchants. Yes, they retain vestiges of aristocracy but it is all a sham...Even their monarchy, of German origin, has shown itself unworthy....George V even refused asylum to his own cousin, the Russian Tsar...What manner of man is that? King George was afraid the exiled monarch’s presence would have fuelled an English revolution, so he sent Nicholas II to his death, along with all his family. Washed his hands of his relative’s blood, like Pilate. The Bolsheviks murdered them all. The English King put personal interest over honour...look what the English monarchy is today - how low have they sunk! It was karmic justice. They brought it upon themselves.’

  ‘The modern French Republic stands for everything opposed to Tradition. Their cult, or rather, worship, of the French revolutionary slogans says it all. A chaotic, individualistic, boastful bunch. Under the sway of freemasons, capitalists and lawyers, those accursed azzeccacarbugli. (An Italian word for a pettifogging solicitor.) Italy’s invocation of Latin fellowship with the French was a joke. Latinity is a confused and confusing notion, what is true is Romanitas, something totally antithetical to Latinity. It was a squalid, grubby deal. The Allied in WWI promised Italy the moon but in the end, after the war, Italy was cheated. It served her right...’

  He quoted Campana aloud: “Ecco le rocce, strati su strati, monumenti di tenacia solitaria che consolano il cuore degli uomini...” He noted that Campana had an affinity for mountains, for heights: ‘Always a good sign...’

  I brought up the name of Gabriele D’Annunzio. The nationalistic poet who is seen as a kind of precursor of fascism. Was he not a better poet than Campana?


  ‘Let us separate D’Annunzio’s poetry and literature from his life. He tried to combine the two but he failed. A typical, fatal Romantic mistake. Today it counts against him, because the progressive establishment believe he belongs to the right. You know, that is nonsense, ultimately. When he was an MP he once changed his allegiance. He got up in Parliament and moved from the seats where the right-wing deputies sat to the left-wing seats – he said as a poet he celebrated life and so he walked away from the ossified, sclerotic right to the left, the party of life. Not true but...poetic license! His poetry is too turgid, anyway. As to his novels, they are still readable, apart from the cult of the superman...Andrea Sperelli is a failed superman, like all supermen are bound fail, in a world of Untermenschen’ – he said that in German, with feeling. ‘His politics, his actions were typical expressions of vainglorious Latinity. Full of grandiosity, provocations and impulsive actions...A Latin through and through...Do you know he once boasted he had had sex with a fly?’ he said, spying my reactions. My jaw dropped. I tried to visualise the impossible feat. I could not. The Baron smiled:

  ‘Pure D’Annunzio. Typical of his romanticism. His desire to shock. A decadent poseur. Of course, he was also a very brave man. In the war he fought with honour. Flying over Vienna he dropped not bombs but leaflets. Compare that with the murderous behaviour of the “civilised” Americas and British, reducing German cities and their inhabitants to bloody rubble. He was a better man than many of the pigmies who have denigrated him since. But, going back to Campana, I will not say which one is a better artist. However, Campana’s instincts were right. His upholding of the Germanic ideal is correct, whereas D’Annunzio is mired into the cult of France, Latin sister, all that rubbish. So, Campana has my preference. His sufferings speak to me, too...’

  A rare reference to his own predicament. What an irony! The noble man, the spiritual warrior, the kshatriya became a outcast in his own land. Never mind how stoically he behaved most of the time, deep inside he must have felt his situation as a bitter irony. It galled him, there were occasional glimpse of it and that was one.

  KAFKA IN PRAGUE

  Kafka has always turned me on. I tried to share my enthusiasm for the magus of Prague with the magus of Rome but Evola cut me short. ‘Stop it. He is not my kind of man. The only writing by Kafka I ever read is the Metamorphosis. The story of a man who wakes up one day and finds he has become a cockroach...I have wondered whether Kafka dabbled in magical practices from the Jewish kabbalah. Prague was crawling with cabalists at some stage. Maybe once he succeeded in shape-shifting, in turning himself into a cockroach... Still, regardless, Kafka conveyed a point. In fiction it is normally wrong and naive to identify narrator and narrative but not in this case. The story is autobiographical. It really tells you about the author. It informs you about his mind – the mind of Kafka as a...’ I cannot bear reporting what he said. The word he used. The sharp reader may divine it. I muttered an alternative explanation. But he would not budge. To his partial excuse I should point out that Kafka himself, in one of his letters to Milena, alludes to something similar. But what Evola said shocked me. It was a ferocious thing to say. I could not sleep the night after that. As I recall them, his words still trouble me. How could he say that? How could he!? Undoubtedly it was a malamatiya utterance but...it was horrible. And difficult for me, very difficult.

  Many years later, on a trip to Prague, just after the fall of communism, I made a special pilgrimage to Kafka’s grave. He rests in a tomb in the city’s new Jewish cemetery, away from the city centre. It took me a long metro journey to get there. At first it looked like an impossible task – a forest of tombs all around and no way of telling. I noticed those prior to 1939 bore the names of the deceased in German – one name I remember was “Borges” - but after 1945 the names were all in Czech. Eventually, a kind old lady directed me to the spot I sought, while sobbing and speaking nonstop about her sufferings, under the two successive tyrannies, first Nazis, then Communists. Kafka’s tomb is a simple, stylised affair, a sort of pointed, grey stele or obelisk, bearing the words “Dr Franz Kafka”. Below are some words in Hebrew. Someone had placed a few pebbles on it.

  No one else was nearby. It was so quiet. Peace, rest. Non-existence. I tried to conjure up Kafka’s soul in my mind. I would have wanted to ask him plenty of questions. “How goes it now, Dr Franz? Have you really perished forever? If so, how is existence in a Heideggerian Das Nichts? What do you think of Max Brod, your friend who betrayed your last wishes and did not destroy your manuscripts? Do you have a love life where you are? Are you perhaps reunited with your girl friends? With Milena? With Felice? With both? Hhmmm...Is there monogamy or polygamy in Heaven? Judaism...does it agree with plural beds?”

  Suddenly, I noticed a beetle crawling by, on the ground. “No!” I thought, this cannot be. It can’t! Jung would call it synchronicity but...no, it was too much. I left the beetle alone.

  I stood there silently, praying for the great writer’s soul.

  I said a prayer for Evola, too.

  A DEMOCRATIC WIMP

  E.M. Forster, that old maid of a novelist, wrote that one of the qualifications for being a great man is sexlessness. The Baron would not often laugh a full laugh – like Aristotle I guess he deemed the thing vulgar - but on that occasion he did. ‘Whoever wrote that was either a eunuch or not very bright. Forster, eh? I believe he went in for his own sex. Never mind that. It is an enormously inane thing to say. I wonder which great men he had in mind? I cannot think of any. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Muhammad, they were hardly sexless... Anybody who knows anything about the Prophet’s life would be mad to call him “sexless”. Indeed, the historian Gibbon relates a tradition from the Arab chronicler Abulfeda which proves that the Prophet’s virility was attested by his son in law, Ali, even after his death. I cannot say whether Gibbon’s source was reliable or not – I remember the passage he quotes is in Latin, an obvious device to avoid offending the faithful. To an Arab, however, the idea of sexlessness or celibacy is repugnant, certainly...’ He went on to say much more after this, but I no longer have my notes to that effect, alas.

  DADA: MAX ERNST

  Given his Dadaist past, I would have expected him to enjoy talking about it but it was not the case. Whenever I tried to bring it up, he would change the subject. Only once he mentioned the painter Max Ernst but that was in connection with a blasphemous, comical work by that artist: ‘Ernst shows the Virgin Mary in the act of spanking the child Jesus. It was a painting he had to conceal for years. Ernst came from a staunchly Catholic family... A strict Catholic upbringing often produces that sort of reaction...you’ll never find anything similar in Islam...Yes, Ernst delighted in making fun of a hallowed subject. If you think of the myriad artists who through the centuries have handled that subject, Ernst’s painting was shocking. But only to the bourgeois. In essence, that painting was merely cheeky. A bit sophomoric, undergraduate, really. I don’t think of Ernst as a real iconoclast. After all, the sea of faith in the West had been in withdrawal since the age of the so-called Aufklarung. To be an iconoclast you have to smash real, breathing icons. Images that really embody the living faith of a people. A genuine idol-breaker today would tackle the sacred cows of our terminal Zeitgeist. Like the myths of racial equality, women’s rights, the free market and democracy, for instance. That would be really daring. Ernst risked little. Like too many of his fellow artists, he was all surface and no depths. Flat, one-dimensional. Or, if you like, the avant-garde has lost its balls! I suspect Ernst knew it that but could do nothing about it. Only go on indulging in his piffling, self-regarding daubes. Too bad.’

  LOVE COUNCIL

  ‘A more daring transgressor in drama was Oskar Panizza. The forgotten German who wrote that fun (divertente) play, Council of Love. Someone tried to stage it in Rome but Mussolini had the director and the whole cast arrested. Ironic, considering that the Duce had himself been a fierce anti-clerical in his early years. He had penned that notorious anti-Catholic trac
t, The Cardinal’s Lover. About Claudia Particella, a beautiful young woman who was a lover of the Prince-Cardinal of Trento. Another irony, when you consider Mussolini later signed the Concordat Treaty, giving the Catholic Church a monopoly of religious power in Italy...Council of Love, like the Book of Job, starts in Heaven. God the Father, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Satan, they are all there, as in a sacred representation. Only, they are portrayed as ridiculous, effete characters, squabbling like naughty children. Then they look down on earth and see humanity engaging in the grossest sins and crimes. It was the time of Pope Borgia, don’t forget. There is a quarrel as to what to do. Jesus and the Virgin are pitilessly lampooned. Satan, or the Holy Ghost, fashions an alluring, syphilis-bearing prostitute and then sends her down to earth with the order to have sex with all the cardinals and the priests, to infect them all with the filthy disease...Poor Panizza! He was himself syphilitic. I believe in the end they shut him in a hospital, where he died insane. Unlike Ernst, he paid dearly for his blasphemies...’