My provisional translation of Dugin’s 1994 address to
the Fondazione Julius Evola. These fifteen pithy theses expose the bare bones
of Dugin’s reading of Evola. Dugin’s political preoccupations at the time are
present in the emphasis on Evola’s “metaphysical leftism” and the possibility
of an at once spiritual and political “third way” (as in terza posizione, etc.). Printed in Orion 9 (1994) in
Italian. This translation was made from a French version in Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes 6 (1994).
Of Dugin’s trip to the West, the editor of N.S.E. reports that
In June of this year, Aleksandr Dugin visited France, Spain and Italy. Accosted by the police at the moment of his landing in Paris, Aleksandr Dugin was interrogated for three hours by the boorish rozzers, and was made to hand over issues of his journal, Elementy (so that he was subjected to censorship!), thereby depriving a number of official French institutions (the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, etc.), who had requested review copies, of these texts! Does the police have the right to prohibit researchers from accessing documentation? In Italy, he was received triumphantly at the Institute of International Relations in Milan, by General Jean at the Italian Ministry of National Defence, and by numerous cultural organisations. Our readers will appreciate the difference between a country governed by regular politicians, and a country governed by uncultured thugs, by boors and by scoundrels.
French original:
PDF of this translation:
1. There can be no doubt that Julius Evola is one of the central
figures of the ideological phenomenon we call conservative revolution. Indeed,
he was very close to representatives of this ideological and political current
in Germany. We can cite, for example, men like Heinrich von Gleichen, or Karl
Anton Prinz Rohan of the Herrenklub, a descendent of the Juniklub founded by
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the great founding figure of the Conservative
Revolution in Germany.
2. Evola’s participation in Italian politics might also be
described as “conservative-revolutionary.” The formula “conservative
revolution” perfectly defines the essence of the Evolian Weltanschauung, beyond the more contingent aspects of his work.
3. We must specify that the conservative revolution has never been
a reactionary phenomenon. The two lexical elements of the expression
“conservative revolution”—an apparently paradoxical expression—are very
suggestive, and reflect the profound originality of this phenomenon, which extended
well beyond the confines of the German movement more widely known by this name.
4. Conservative revolution is a conservative vision of the
Revolution—that is, a Revolution seen from the right—and also a revolutionary
vision of conservatism—that is, conservatism seen from the left.
5. Politically, Evola positioned himself on the right wing of the
conservative revolution, and willingly termed himself a “reactionary.” But the
entirety of Evola’s work, and above all his first and last books, clearly and
incontestably show the presence within him of an authentically revolutionary
sensibility. This sensibility can only be understood in contemporary
terminology as being of the left.
6. We sometimes speak in this regard of an anarchism of the right,
which amounts to the same thing, since anarchism is a concept inextricably bound
to the left.
7. The paradox of Evola’s conservative revolution is more marked at
the metaphysical than at the political level. If, at the political level, Evola
seems to gravitate towards the right or extreme right (take, for example, his
involvement in the journal Contre-révolution
with Emmanuel Malynski and Léon de Poncins), it’s undeniable that at the
spiritual level his sympathies tend towards decidedly less orthodox currents.
Contrarily to political and religious conservatives like Léon de Poncins and
Heinrich von Gleichen, Evola keeps to the spiritual path—a profoundly
nonconformist path—which we might justly term the “metaphysical left.” The
Indian expression “left-hand path” is very significant in this connection,
above all when Evola explicitly defines himself as an adept of this path.
8. Evola’s celebrated personal equation, by which he defines
himself as a “Brahmin-Kshatriya,” also falls within the framework of this
“metaphysical left.”
9. If he keeps to the right of the political field, at the
metaphysical level, he remains faithful to the Revolution. And when I speak of Evola’s
“metaphysical revolution,” I think not only of Ride the Tiger, but also and above all of works like The Yoga of Power and The Doctrine of Awakening—even of other
texts on tantrism, on magic or Zen.
10. Evola finds in tantrism the traditional form that best reflects
his own spiritual nature. The tantric vīra
is his own archetype. But the figure of the tantric vīra, who rejects the traditional Vedic bonds, who busies himself in
obscure and terrifying practices in cemeteries—is he truly orthodox? To speak
here of strict orthodoxy is impossible. It’s rather a matter of a certain
“heterodox orthodoxy,” and therefore of “conservative revolution”—even of a
paradoxical metaphysics. We might also recall the rather positive attitude
Evola took towards such highly suspect characters as Aleister Crowley, Giuliano
Kremmerz, Gustav Meyrinck, etc.
11. The left-hand path essentially consists in a total negation of
outward sacrality (this is a fundamentally revolutionary attitude) in order to
attain and to realise an inward sacrality (this is a conservative affirmation).
Paradoxically, negation and affirmation here converge upon suprarational and
paradoxical syntheses. For this reason, the tantric vīra (like the Buddhist monk) denies castes, traditional bonds,
norms, rules. The tantric path is conservative revolution par excellence.
12. In my view, the essence of the Evolian message consists
precisely in a spiritual “third way,” in a “heterodox orthodoxy”—in a
metaphysical conservative revolution.
13. To designate Evola a man of the right (that is, to claim him as
implicitly orthodox) is an error. To designate him a man of the left (that is,
as a vector of the subversion of orthodoxy) is another.
14. To understand Evola, we must reject the dichotomy between the
political and the spiritual. The essence of his message is first of all
paradoxical. Following the advice that the ancient masters of western alchemy
have given us, we must resolve paradox by paradox, understand the obscure by
the obscure.
15. The right wing’s reading of Evola is now exhausted. To consider
Evola a thinker of the right is banal; and it’s on account of its very banality
that this reasoning is untrue. We must rediscover Evola’s “leftist”
dimension—above all the metaphysical leftism it expresses—in order to
understand the true nature of the conservative revolution of one of our
century’s foremost personalities.
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