Julius Evola- The Sufi of Rome

by Frank Gelli

  SCHWARZKOEGLER

  From an American magazine I had learnt of an obscure Viennese artist, Rudolf Schwarzkoegler. The article claimed that the man had made his own body into an experimental work of art, by regularly cutting off bits of his own flesh. At last, he cut off his own penis and succumbed to the operation. (Years later I discovered that the whole thing was a fake. Never mind, a brilliant spoof, if there ever was one.) It was both weird and hilarious. I was curious what the Baron what make of it: ‘If it is true, here is a man who had courage. Never mind how crazy he was – he had pluck. Plus coherence and consistency. Making the artist cohere with his art in the strictest, most literal sense. So Schwarzkoegler compares favourably with the ants that scurry about the art scene today. None of them would have the courage to act that way, to do that kind of truly radical, costly art. Nevertheless, he was wrong. Not so much in slicing off parts of his own body. Any soldier who willingly fights in a war exposes himself to the risk of having his organs blown off. It goes with the job. Why should an artist be different? If he genuinely feels his art demands it then he must act. However, Schwarzkogler’s mistake was the same as Lord Byron’s. Trying to identify himself with his art. To live it out in his own flesh. To make himself into a work of art by self-mutilation. Like a sculptor chiselling a statue from the flesh of his body. Impossible. Because the objectivity necessary for the work cannot obtain when subject and object are one and the same. Art demands some degree of detachment, self-control, exactitude. None of that is possible if you are engaged in destroying your own limbs. Nor would an anaesthetic have helped. An artist has to remain fully conscious. No, I can respect your Schwarzkoegler’s radical devotion to art but I cannot admire him. I suspect him of vanity – another grave, unpardonable defect in a true artist.’

  A BEAT POET

  Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso – the Beat generation, American writers and poets. I had read them all and was a big fan. Unfortunately Evola despised them. Every time I made a timid reference to the Beats, he would shoot me down. Until I told him how Gregory Corso had written a poem extolling the atom bomb. A singular piece, entitled indeed Bomb. It was composed as a calligram, indeed resembling the shape of a bomb. ‘A poet who sings the praise of an instrument of mass murder! Something everyone fears and hates! Corso showed real guts. You must get that poem for me. I look forward to reading it.’ That I did. He asked me to recite it out to him, first in English – he liked the sound of that language, he said he could perceive the kinship, the affinity with German – and then rendered it in Italian. He did not like the verse too much. ‘It is modernist poetry. I see Corso went in for alliteration and onomatopoeia...old tricks. And his excessive jumble of images betrays a chaotic mind. Clearly, he was tongue in cheek. When he says he loves the atom bomb, he does not really mean it. He does not celebrate the bomb, he is just out to show one side of it. More genuinely radical it would have been to really love it...I can understand why it appeals to you...The idea was brilliant, the execution poor. Perennial problem with these modernists. His use of the calligraphic device is not original. Guillaume Apollinaire had been at it well before your Corso. And Apollinaire was far more interesting than this American...In Paris someone informed me that Apollinaire’s real father was the Pope. Not at all impossible, perhaps!’

  I told him how English students had booed Corso’s public reading of Bomb in Oxford. ‘Not very bright students. They should have applauded him. Say what you like, Corso had spunk. But then students in England seem to be a feeble lot. During the recent unrest they did not even manage to come up with a leader from their own nation, they had to rely on a foreigner, a Pakistani...France produced a German Jew, Cohn-Bendit... But only Germans had a real German leading the trouble, Rudi Dutschke. But do write down for me that translation of Corso’s poem. I would like to study it a bit more.’ I did as he asked. Despite what he had said, I think he liked Bomb, otherwise he would not have wanted to read it again. It must have appealed to the buried Dadaist in him. I rejoiced in that.

  Referring back to Corso, he later said that a more poetically revolutionary gesture would have been to throw a bomb at the students who were hooting the poet. ‘Oh, well, maybe only a stink bomb’ he said, smiling. But I am not so sure he did not mean a real explosive device. Evola was a mischief. That is why I liked him. Sometimes I would have wanted to be like him. But then I was not so sure...

  FATHERLY JULIUS

  Towards me he was always very indulgent. Even after, in 1969, my joining the Maoist movement. I still cannot precisely describe the train of thought, my mental state at the time. Inwardly, I was in turmoil. It was one of my Sturm und Drang life phases. China beckoned. The vanguard of the revolution seemed to have shifted from Moscow to Bejing. So I went to Italia-China centre in Piazza Vittorio. Contacts I made there resulted in my becoming a Maoist. Of course, my former friends in the far right soon got to know it. There were bitter and angry exchanges. It was painful. Still, I went to demonstrations, chucked stones at the cops and became a member of the PSIUP, a far left party, in order to infiltrate it and to split it up in a Maoist direction. Endless sectarian discussions in smoky back rooms followed. As well as late-night living it up with my new comrades, trips abroad, new girls, radical chic (amazing how many of them came from the posh Parioli district of Rome), finding out how promiscuous Mao’s Western followers could be...all that and more. Of course, I told the Baron. I expected an explosion. No, he took it all coolly. He sat there, looking as old as the pyramids, as impassible as the Sphinx. He did not criticise me, nor did he try to dissuade me from my chosen course of action. Nonetheless, he asked some searching questions. What he wanted to know was my inner state. ‘You are swimming fast in the seas of the Kali-Yuga. But are you sure you know how to stay afloat?’ The answers I stammered must have satisfied him. We went on meeting as before. I shared with him the experiences of my Maoist life. He was eager to know. It was a world of which he had hitherto known nothing. His curiosity about Maoist habits was almost child-like. But, concerning certain practices, he said that ‘I would never be able to put up with that!’

  On the rare occasions when he showed signs of temper because of something stupid I had said or done, I never doubted that he would forgive me. One thing there was, though, that would have led to his cutting me off. If I had had the bad taste to get married. (Actually there was no danger of that, because, for inborn predisposition, a quirk in me, I am not the marrying kind. Much to my regret, I confess it. Not having a wife is a sorrow.) Still, one of the most damning remarks he could make about a former follower was: ‘He has married...Now he has family, children...’ The shallow-minded might think it had something to do with possessiveness, jealousy or even an underground homosexual streak. It was nothing of the kind. His attitude to conventional marriage was rooted in the very essence of his metaphysics, his world outlook. A warrior, physical or spiritual, should not be hindered by family ties. His ideal type could have a sex life, of course, but not a family. That was peculiar. Most of the heroes he admired were married men. And the greatest champions of Islam, from the Prophet himself to Imam Ali, to the many conquerors the religion of the Crescent can boast, all were married, with large families. How could he ignore that? A question I often found hard to answer. Until I remembered certain minor things...looks, half-words, pauses. When he spoke of Baroness Von Krudener’s “spiritual marriages”, for instance. There was also a woman’s name he mentioned a few times. An aristocrat he had met in Germany. She died under an allied bombing in Berlin. He showed me her picture...a haughty-looking face, a sexy silhouette, definitely ‘Aryan’, even in that old, faded photograph. Like a Valkyrie. Evola, I like to imagine, had perhaps been united with her in a marriage of sorts. But then I wonder whether I merely like to phantasise about ‘Evola’s wife’. His hints and admissions were often mischievous. Evola was not childish, oh, not at all, but I sensed something child-like in him. But also the spirit of the trickster, the mischielf-maker, the pied-piper. How far did it
go? Was he having even his followers on?

  His dislike of the family was bound up with the artist in him. The inveterate Dadaist, the foe of bourgeois customs and mores, the aristocratic disdainer of the proletarian brood – they were all part and parcel of his anti-family ideas. (He was fond of pointing out the etymology of ‘proletariat’ – those whose contribution to society consists chiefly in their numerous offspring, proles.) I sympathised with his critique of unbridled demographic expansion, of pompous, rhetorical fascist slogans like “numbers is power” and the like but, from a genuinely conservative point of view, despising the family is wrong. It is the basis of the social nexus. In his Introduction to the Philosophy of History Hegel makes that very clear. The German philosopher writes that the members of a family exist in a unity of sentiment, trust, faith and love in each other. Each, in this reciprocal relationship of care, discovers the consciousness of himself in the other. The family members in this way learn to be lovingly involved in each other. Hegel goes to say that it is the family so understood that constitutes the basis of, and a preparation for, the political edifice called the State. I find it a convincing defence of the huge value and importance of the natural family from a traditionalist point of view. It cannot be coincidence that those who strive to attack whatever is left of genuine values in society are always seeking to undermine and destroy the family. Yes, there are vocations that transcend the family, such as monasticism, but to transcend does not mean to negate and destroy. Still, you cannot expect a metaphysical pessimist to approve of Hegelian optimism, I know, and yet...Shame Evola was apparently so resolutely anti-Hegel. It blinded him to that philosopher’s good points. Even great men have their foibles.

  NIETZSCHE

  Beyond Good and Evil was a text Adriano Romualdi had lectured on during sessions of the Solstice group. He had dwelled on the paragraph in which Nietzsche had set out his famous distinction between two contrasting types of ethical conceptions, master-morality and slave-morality. Adriano had rhapsodised about the noble man of whom the German philosopher wrote. A creator of his own values. One who supremely does not care whether he is liked or disliked – he is above that. It is he who judges, none judges him. “What is harmful to me is harmful in itself”, he proudly affirms. The noble man confers honour on himself. His morality is a form of self-estimation. Or self-glorification.

  For Adriano the noble man envisaged by Nietzsche is supremely self-confident. He never doubts that his values, his life are the only ones that were worth living for. Like the human type described by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics, the megalopsuchos, or “big-souled man”, Nietzsche’s ideal man knows instinctively that he is superior to others, meaning by “others” those who are slaves by nature. Men who are born to serve and submit.

  Hearing Adriano speak in those terms irked me a little. I could not help feeling that there was something excessively boastful about this “noble man”. Paradoxically, Adriano made him sound like a goody-goody. Well, at least that is the way it came across. Evola was sympathetic to Nietzsche’s argument but made some qualifications. ‘You should never forget that Nietzsche also makes it clear that the power of his Edelman, his noble man, is of distinctive kind. First and foremost he exercises power over himself. Thus his mastery is not comparable to that of a boastful bully. That would be a travesty. If Adriano has given that impression, he was wrong. The noble man’s mastery begins with self-mastery. He has control over himself, his lower nature...Nietzsche admits that the character traits of both moralities can even coexist in the same person. So one can exhibits tendencies and features of both. But the noble man has striven to overcome his lower traits, his inferior, slavish nature. You could say that Julius Caesar was a case in point. The populist politician, the manipulator, the demagogue idolised by the plebeians but also the hero from above, the aristocrat descended from the Olympian gods. Julius Caesar was both high and low, good and bad, noble and despicable. At times he succeeded in mastering his lower side but not always. In Islam one might call this hard-won mastery over the lower side of oneself a jihad. The inner struggle. Fighting the greater jihad. Against the nafs, the lower aspects of the soul. So the primary requisite of the noble man, before he can assert any supremacy over others, is that he should have conquered himself. I think that must always be stressed. Otherwise, yes, I agree with you, there is danger of his coming across as simply boasting. But, if he has accomplished this arduous inner self-mastery, his honouring things will indeed create value.’

  ‘My favourite Nietzschean image in Beyond Good and Evil, in the passage you mentioned, is that of the noble man exhibiting a kind of overfullness of energy, resulting in an overflowing of virtue...You see, that is akin to Master Eckhart’s image of divine activity as bolitio. A boiling, yes, like a pot boiling over. Stupendous image. An overflowing, or running over of power, of the Supreme Identity’s own goodness. Something issuing from his very being. The noble man is like that. He does not seek to conform to outer, moralistic standards. His morality is not heteronomous, dictated from the outside, as Kant would say. Rather, it stems from himself. He is so full of goodness that it boils over, it overflows into others. People have this one-sided idea that the noble man is simply aloof and uncaring. Despite the philosopher pointing out that, on the contrary, this overman does help out, reach out to those in need. But he does so not in obedience to outer commands or the conventions of society or even God. No, his virtue, his excellence is so abundant that it runs over, it overflows, it spreads itself out to the needy. In our world, in which people suspect anyone great of having ulterior motives, that is quite refreshing, don’t you think? Nietzsche gets that absolutely right. Generosity belongs to the noble man’s essence. But it is a genuine quality, not a sham and pretence...and it is super-abundant. It boils over into action.’

  ‘Nietzsche, despite his many flaws, shines with exciting insights, hints and illuminations. Take his point that the longing after freedom is a hallmark of slave morality. To the shallow, that looks counterintuitive. You can’t argue against freedom, they say, it is a contradiction in terms. If you do, you cut off the ground under your feet, because what you say implies that you are not free to say it. But that is not what Nietzsche is claiming. He is gunning for the idea of freedom as liberte’, part of the battle-cry of the French revolutionaries. Under that slogan they mounted an assault against their betters. Freedom in that sense is a classic expression of resentment. The noble man’s freedom is the opposite of that. He has no need to cry out for freedom – he already has it! He is genuinely, essentially free. He is a free spirit. He has fought and conquered in the hardest of all wars, that against himself. His freedom is now identical with his nature. His freedom too overflows and bestows freedom on the unfree, value on the valueless. Like St Martin giving half of his cloak to a beggar. Not part of an ideology, a programme, like a charity. Not something studied. The overman’s freedom is the real thing.’

  ‘Max Scheler, an unjustly neglected thinker, wrote on Nietzsche’s concept of resentment. Scheler, a Jew, defended the Christian notion of love, as love of neighbour. He opposed that to the modern, humanitarian idea of love. The latter for Scheler was a manifestation of psychological degeneracy. I don’t agree with him but, like Nietzsche, Scheler contains some fine apercues and ideas. You ought to read him...’

  A Nietzschean aphorism I sensed struck a deep chord inside him: “One who struggles with monsters should be on his guard, lest he should himself become monstrous. Se tu guardi in un baratro troppo a lungo, il baratro diverra’ parte di te. “If you stare into a chasm for too long, the chasm will stare at you.” He quoted it more than once. What exactly did he mean? The problem with anti-Semitism? Obsessive anti-Semites ending up mirroring the presumed faults of their foes? Or was it a reference to the dangers of contending with forces behind most people’s comprehension? Like the heavenly powers, cosmic entities hostile to man, of which St Paul speaks of? Or was it something more intimate, personal? The monsters inside him, tormenting him at t
imes during bouts of insomnia? Did he perhaps anticipate the splendid freaks that would have hunted me, his unlikely disciple, throughout my life? Actually, insofar as I have attained any self-knowledge, I am not aware of monsters haunting me – only of angels. Dangerous angels, yes, but an angel is not a monster. And il baratro, the chasm, is one of unending bliss.

  He liked very much an aphorism from Aurora. It is an imagined dialogue between a brave man and a prudent, sensible one: “In these woods there are poisonous snakes – I will go and kill them.” “But look, perhaps they you won’t kill them – they will instead kill you!” “Why should it matter?” Splendid punchline! The Baron quoted it to sustain his anti-teleological view about warfare. Against people such as Aquinas and the rationalists. The warrior fights because he has to. It is in his nature to do so. His victory is in the fighting itself. The spirit of the brave. You might judge it as unduly romantic. But that was not Evola’s point – I can hardly imagine anyone less inclined to romanticism – Our age misunderstands the warrior when it supposes him as wholly motivated by the end result. That is the morality of the merchant, the banker, the vulgar politician. What powers, what energises a warrior is something else. Of course, the brave man of the story does want to exterminate the snakes. In that sense, he has an aim, yes. (Nietzsche calls his story “the last argument of the brave” – a last resort.) But, if the snakes get to him in the fight, that will not render the fight pointless. The contrary is true...

  BEAUTY

  “Why are most people so ugly?” Not one of the Baron’s obiter dicta but mine own. A reflection engendered by a bus ride. The number 90 bus from Piazza Zama to Piazza Venezia that day had been filled with a particularly ill-looking crowd. Shabby, scowling and, yes, smelly. And the rabble I had seen as I strolled all the way to Corso Vittorio had not been an improvement. Evola gave a kind laugh: ‘Allah jamil’, he said that in Arabic. ‘God is beautiful. A hadith, a saying of the Prophet. Something worth remembering when you get depressed by the sight of so much ugliness. I am blessed, I do not get out of doors...I am spared much of il brutto. It is different with you. Yes, the world is increasingly marred by la bruttezza, ugliness...ugly noises, too. Ugly actions...Our Italian language posits an intrinsic nexus between beauty and goodness. Bello can be applied to deeds, not just to persons. I am inclined to agree - in such an ungainly world beauty becomes almost an imperative...Doesn’t Dostojevski say that the world will be saved by beauty? You will remember Plato’s debate in the Symposium. Eros is the link between above and below, the sensible and the eternal worlds. Beauty of soul is higher than beauty of body. Socrates was ugly – Nietzsche (himself quite plain) took that as an outright condemnation – ugly outside, that is, but beautiful inside...Diotima, the prophetess, is made to say that beauty is something divine, unchangeable...It neither comes into being nor it passes away. The seeker after the beautiful is like a person on an ascending, moving staircase – he moves from the lowest levels of earthly drives and desires and ascends to those upper regions where he sees beauty in its pure essence... In another dialogue, the Philebus, his paradigm examples of beauty are geometrical lines and shapes...A vision too disembodied to appeal even to Plato’s followers! Also, Plato neglected the possibilities offered by transcendent sexuality... I commend to you Plato’s great Islamic disciple, Ibn Arabi...His views on beauty are worth studying...And Celaluddin Roumi’s, too... There is a hadith about Roumi...Once they brought him a “water monster”, whatever that was. A repulsive freak, I suppose. Slimy and horrible to look at. They wanted to kill him and so asked Roumi’s permission. He looked on the creature with pity, with love. Roumi embraced and kissed the monster and ordered to have him released back into his watery realm. Well, a story with parallels in the lives of many saints...think of St Francis and the leper...Ugliness can be an opportunity for fine deeds...By contrast, beauty can be a trap and a snare... Beware beauty! Don’t be overimpressed by it. Pope Gregory thought the pagan Anglo-Saxons in England were so handsome a race – non sunt Angli sed angeli – that he dispatched missionaries to England to make the Anglo-Saxons into Christians. Looking at the remnants of the English today, you might have a different reaction...’