by Frank Gelli
Certainly in Zen a key principle, as Sensei Deshimaru would never tire to repeat, is to act mushotoku, in a goalless way. If you seek to get enlightenment purposefully, if you aim hard at Satori, the goal will slip through your fingers, like water, the very moment you think you have got it – perhaps that is why I never attained to it! But the adept who sits quietly in za-zen, his mind empty and receptive as a mirror...maybe that person is actually getting it...
As to the malamatiya lot...oh, well, they keep doing what they are supposed to be doing. What else?
LAST MEETING
‘You are not a revolutionary’, he said to me. In a matter of fact tone but with finality. It irked me. Did I consider myself one? I am not sure but I interpreted his words as a sort of reproach. I tried to make a joke of it. ‘No, of course. I am a counter-revolutionary. I have learned that from you’, I grinned. It made him smile. Shaking his head, he said: ‘That is harder than being a revolutionary. Much, much harder...’
This exchange took place during the last visit I paid to him. He was then physically much declining. The signs of his approaching end were obvious. I could see Izra’il, malak al-maut, the angel of death, hovering about him. I told him I was going abroad and why. He encouraged me. Despite my sharing with him rather unheroic worries about having to rough it. He waved them off: ‘You are young. At your age, you can sleep in the open, under the arches of a bridge. It would do you good...Brancusi, the great Romanian sculptor, was so penniless that he walked all the way from Romania to Paris. Good training. Just imagine the thoughts, the experience he would have gained during his walks. Maybe you should do that, instead of flying out...’ Then, for no apparent reason, he spoke about his passion, mountain-climbing, the solitary heights, the peaks. For the first time, he asked me if I had ever climbed a mountain. Actually, I had. Mount Cetona, a modest mountain in Tuscany. I did it as a schoolboy. With a group of friends – I still possess a photograph of myself, looking haughty, an aspiring Nietzschean adolescent, on the windy summit. I told him how much I had enjoyed it. It pleased him very much. His ravaged countenance glowed with pleasure. But he was the last person to indulge in sentimentality. I knew – and he knew that I knew - he was triste, sad inside – he was not going to see me again. So our last meeting was all too brief. His parting words were in German, not a language I could understand. ‘What does that mean?’ I shyly asked. He did not reply. Instead, he turned his face away.
EPILOGUE
The Approach to al-Mu’tasim, the tale invoked at the beginning of this book, ends in aporia. Not quite ignorance but perplexity. Who is al-Mu’tasim? No clear answer is forthcoming, although speculations abound. Ambiguity reigns. Borges indeed insinuates that he is the inexistent hero of an inexistent novel. Al-Mu’tasim, in other words, lacks reality. I dissent from such a one-dimensional, reductionist view. If anything, the conjured figure of al-Mu’tasim strikes me as more than real – in truth, it is hyper-real. It is so because it points beyond himself. Borges’ problematical hero, like the Hidden Imam of Twelvers’ Shiism, gestures towards someone else. A remote one, or perhaps someone so near that we labour to discern him... Esoterically speaking, al-Mu’tasim proclaims the reality of that inexhaustible ground of being, that Ens Realissimum, that most real One, whom we all call God.
Unlike al-Mu’tasim, Julius Evola, the Roman who singled me out for his partiality long ago, was perceived as all too transparent. A haughty aristocrat, an ultra-reactionary magus, even a teacher of terror, some say. But I have, perhaps hubristically, claimed to know Evola’s genuine identity. I am certain of that but...then again, when I reflect upon the Sufi of Rome, I sometimes cannot hide my perplexity. Like Socrates, who was he, really? What did he truly teach? This uncertainty becomes him. Plato’s Socrates is not the same as Xenophon’s Socrates, nor indeed Kierkegaard’s or Nietzsche’s. The reason is that Plato’s teacher was hugely complex. Socrates’ meaning is somewhat unending. Likewise, my Evola will be different from the Evola of Enzo Erra, Adriano Romualdi, Giulio Salierno (la samaha Allah!), Umberto Eco and others. Of course, Socrates wrote nothing. That makes many disparate attributions plausible. Not so, apparently, with Evola. My strategy, however, bypasses that hurdle. I have ascribed an esoteric intent behind the Master’s published views. I do not believe it – I know (or maybe I believe I know) I am right in that.
A modern philosopher, O.K. Bouwsma, a disciple of Wittgenstein, in his recollections of conversations with the great man wrote that Wittgenstein was like a prophet. To stress his extraordinary character, Bouwsma likens Wittgenstein to a tower, standing high, independent, relying on no one else.
Could the same be said of Julius Evola? That he was a prophetic figure? He certainly shared the destiny of many so-called prophets in experiencing incomprehension, hostility, rejection and vilification. A prophet speaks not his own thoughts – he is God’s mouthpiece, his voice utters pronouncements transmitted from the world above. Evola too, if he was in any sense prophetic, can be seen as a voice not merely individual but channelling the values and symbols of his beloved, now extinct world of Tradition. But no one is a prophet in his own country, as the Gospel intimates. Italy’s academic and intellectual establishment shunned, ignored or ridiculed the Baron. His ideas remained confined to small circles of radical youths and rebellious souls. Hence, was he a failure? If so, the expression ‘nobility of failure’ springs to mind. He failed like a samurai, like the Nibelungen hero Siegfrid, like King Arthur, like the White Russian generals who doggedly fought against the Bolsheviks after the revolution. They failed, but nobly. They never surrendered. So did the Baron. Never mind the outcome, he resisted, he fought, he never surrendered.
Moreover, if the thesis of this book is right, if Evola was indeed a secret Sufi, then his actions, his life take on quite a different meaning. How could a malamatiya master, a follower of the path of shame, achieve success in the eyes of the multitudes, except through exclusion, repudiation and excommunication? So, despite all appearance to the contrary, maybe Evola has overcome, after all. Not in the conventional, descriptive sense of the word ‘overcome’ but in the evaluative sense. Victory, yes, but in the way in which people would understand.
Where the Baron is now, if he has not perished, I trust he rejoices in that.