Claudio Mutti, “Evola’s Diplomatic Activities in Vienna, Prague, Bucharest and Berlin” (1996)

‘L’activité diplomatique d’Evola à Vienne, Prague, Bucarest et Berlin,’ Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes, 24 (1996). Italian original, Pagine Libere (March 1996). PDF of this version here; original here.

Some time in 1938, at a date unknown to us, the Ahnenerbe brought to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler a secret report on the activities of the Baron Evola that ended with the following injunction: ‘Keep him from exercising any influence in the future on leaders and functionaries of the Party and the State; survey his propagandistic activities in neighbouring countries’ (see the document published by B. Zoratto in L’Italia settimanale [9 February 1994] titled ‘Fermate Evola, firmate SS’) [See also H. T. Hansen, introduction to Julius Evola, Revolt against the Modern World (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1995), p. xviii.]. Moreover, we can concur with Piero Di Vona, who shows, in his Evola, Guénon, De Giorgio (Barzano, 1993), that the relationship between Evola and the Third Reich was ‘very complicated and obscure.’ Nevertheless, from the fact that Evola was suspected of being able to ‘influence’ ‘structures as difficult to penetrate as the Party and State of National-Socialist Germany,’ Prof. Giorgio Galli quite rightly deduces, in his preface to Marco Fraquelli’s Il filosofo proibito (Milan, 1994), that Evola ‘did in fact pursue political projects of an elitist type, not lacking in operative potentialities.’

Durrell, Geopolitics, Idealizing the Beloved

1. A paragraph on Durrell from Robert Steuckers, “Pour donner des fondements philosophiques à la ‘N.D.,’” c.5, Vouloir, 146–8 (Autumn 1999), translated by me:

Lawrence Durrell, born in India, living in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, his great homeland of choice, sings the Greek and Cypriot landscapes, sketches ironical and comical rustics who are true men of flesh and blood, develops an almost Joycean vision of the real formed of superimposed strata communicating vaguely amongst one another and implying the extreme relativity of all facts of the matter: for there is simultaneously imbrication and juxtaposition, general mixture and hermetic contingency, so that each phenomenon is unique in itself, the product of a fusion or of an unparalleled originality; no schematic thought can succeed in grasping the essence of all these phenomena; no dry and prescriptive morality can succeed in taming them, submitting them, choking their influence. They escape the classifications of the schematisers. Ultimately, for Durrell, as for [D. H.] Lawrence and his friend [Henry] Miller, sexual experiences are veritable initiations into earthly pleasures.

Aleksandr Dugin, “Evola’s Conservative Revolution in Metaphysics” (1994)

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.

Evola and Italian Philosophy, 1925–49: Three Biographical and Bibliographical Essays

The following essays all appeared in Vouloir 119–121 (1996), the supplement to the revue Orientations, edited by Robert Steuckers. They centre on Julius Evola’s relations with the two major figures of Italian philosophy in the interwar period.

In “Evola, ultime tabou?” (pp. 1–3), Gianfranco de Turris asks if the rehabilitation enjoyed by such philosophers as Giovanni Gentile, previously denounced as Fascist, might be afforded to Evola. He briefly sketches the case in his favour: unlike the marginal crank of post-War imagination, Evola seems to have maintained relations with such figures of the first rank as Gentile and Benedetto Croce. In “Gentile/Evola: une liaison ami/ennemi…” (pp. 3–5) Stefano Arcella examines Evola’s fertile collaboration with Gentile and Ugo Spirito on the Enciclopedia Italiana. And in “Quand Benedetto Croce ‘sponsorisait’ Evola” (pp. 5–7) Alessandro Barbera investigates the Croce connection, looking in some detail at the correspondence between Evola, Croce, and the publisher Laterza.

French originals:

1—http://www.archiveseroe.eu/evola-a48672110

2—http://www.archiveseroe.eu/gentile-a126198308

3—http://www.archiveseroe.eu/croce-a126196870

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/42191919/Evola_and_Italian_Philosophy_1925-49_Three_Biographical_and_Bibliographical_Essays

Dominique Venner, “Julius Evola: Philosophy and Direct Action” (2008)

My translation of Dominique Venner’s short editorial, “Evola: Philosophie et action directe,” Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire 37 (2008). By 2008, Venner was known as an historian; but signs of a sympathy born of youthful activism (in French analogues of the Italian movements he describes) remain. The text is still a good introductory overview.

But the following texts go into greater depth:

Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World (Oxford: O.U.P., 2004), prologue, pp. 11–2; parts II.5, III.9 and IV.11.

Franco Ferraresi, “Les références théorico-doctrinales de la droite radicale en Italie,” Mots 12 (March 1986), pp. 7–27.

—, “Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction and the Radical Right,” European Journal of Sociology 28, 1 (1987), pp. 107–51.

French original:

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/freda-a108281026

PDF of this version:

https://www.academia.edu/42160976/Dominique_Venner_Julius_Evola_Philosophy_and_Direct_Action_2008_