Notes on Ezra Pound (3): Epic and/or Propaganda

1—Poetry and/or Propaganda

David Barnes, “Fascist Aesthetics: Ezra Pound’s Cultural Negotiations in 1930s Italy,” Journal of Modern Literature, 34.1 (autumn 2010), pp. 20–1:

For the purposes of this article, it suffices to say that there is some critical debate as to whether or not the two “Italian Cantos,” 72 and 73, represent an attempt at Fascist propagandizing by Pound. Patricia Cockram takes this view, seeing the Italian Cantos as esthetic [sic] failures on Pound’s part, driven by political and economic desperation (535). Bacigalupo, however, views these Cantos as both a return “to the ‘visionary’ structure attempted…in the ‘Three Cantos’ of 1917, and an anticipation of the autobiographical Pisan Cantos” (“The Poet at War” 71). Bacigalupo argues that the poems should not be seen as aberrations, but as crucial staging posts in the development of Pound’s writing.

Barnes’ references: Massimo Bacigalupo, “Ezra Pound’s Cantos 72 and 73: An Annotated Translation,” Paideuma, 20 (1991), pp. 10–41; Patricia Cockram, “Collapse and Recall: Ezra Pound’s Italian Cantos,” Journal of Modern Literature, 23.3–4 (summer 2000), pp. 535–44.

Claudio Mutti, Interview with Aurel Cioran

Interview conducted 3 August 1995, Sibiu. Note that Emil Cioran had died on 20 June that year. Italian original, Origini 13 (February 1996). This translation made from the French version in Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes 22 (August–September 1996). Cioran offers interesting reflections on his brother’s relationship with religion, youth, and involvements with Nae Ionescu and the Legionary movement.

French version:

http://planetcioran.blogspot.com/2006/11/entretien-avec-aurel-cioran.html

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/histoire-c18369981/85

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/43160665/Claudio_Mutti_Interview_with_Aurel_Cioran_1995_6_

Carlos Caballero, “Mystics and Conquerors: Cioran and the History of Spain” (1988)

Provisional translation of “Mystiques et Conquérants: Cioran et l’histoire d’Espagne,” Punto y Coma 10 (1988). The present translation was made from Nicole Bruhwiler’s French version in Orientations 13 (1991) as it appears at http://www.archiveseroe.eu/. Quotations from Cioran are my own translations, and will therefore differ from Richard Howard’s authoritative versions. I have not located every quotation, and have left Caballero’s citations untouched.

PDF of this version:

https://www.academia.edu/43108599/Carlos_Caballero_Mystics_and_Conquerors_Cioran_and_the_History_of_Spain_1988_

Original:

http://planetcioran.blogspot.com/2006/10/mystiques-et-conqurants-cioran-et.html

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/cioran-a48271323

Section 18 of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy

(I just found this little note I wrote in May 2019, when I was at university studying Nietzsche. B.T. 18 struck me as a germinal microcosm of much of F.N.’s mature philosophy—including his ideas on cultural-historical cycles, underplayed in Nietzsche scholarship, but a special interest of mine.)

“Voracious” creators fuel their activity with illusion, one of the three principal kinds, which correspond to types of society, themselves fuelled (?) by that type of illusion:

Kind: Illusion: Society
Apolline: Veil of beauty: Hellenic
Dionysiac: Undercurrent of “eternal life”: Indian
Socratic: Knowledge as salvation: Alexandrian

At the end of this Socratic cycle, we are in a time of Alexandrianism. Such a society requires a slave-caste to survive: the properly Socratic element is a flower of the culture, a luxury, and consequently fragile. Cf. F.N.’s essay “on the Greek State.”

There is a danger from below in the form of this slave caste grown discontent; and in this is the germ of his insights into resentment become fertile. This class “learn[s] to consider its existence an injustice,” the mere rhetoric of human rights (e.g.) having ceased to “console.”

There is a danger from above: elite disillusionment; critical philosophy; “the blight that lies dormant in the womb of theoretical culture.” The Alexandrian fears the consequences of his form of life and lacks his former confidence. No longer wanting “anything whole,” he doesn’t plunge but dithers on the shore: “at bottom a librarian or a corrector of proofs,” impotent.

But there is also a way onward and upward: a new “tragic man” of “proud audacity” who would live tragically, wean himself off the “art[s] of metaphysical consolation” and train himself for “seriousness and terror.”

Armin Mohler, “Zeev Sternhell, New Historiographer of Fascism” (1986)

My translation of Armin Mohler’s “Zeev Sternhell, nouvel historiographe du fascisme,” from Généalogie du fascisme français (Geneva: Idhuna, 1986). Mohler gives an excellent review to Sternhell’s study of the birth of fascism out of French socialism and nationalism. Mohler finds in Sternhell a kindred spirit. Of particular interest is the “conceptual rhyme” between Sorel’s account of myth and Sternhell’s account (per Mohler) of historical realities.

French original:

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/sternhell-a48288056

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/42202245/Armin_Mohler_Zeev_Sternhell_New_Historiographer_of_Fascism_1986_

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

Armin Mohler, “Homage to Oswald Spengler” (1982)

My translation of Mohler’s “Hommage à Oswald Spengler,” Orientations 1 (1982). Mohler presents Spengler as aligned with the Conservative Revolution, emphasising his Nietzschean aspects, and placing him in a tradition of implicitly anti-Platonist and “nominalist” thought (in Mohler’s special sense of the term).

French original:

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/spengler-a48363374

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/42178159/Armin_Mohler_Homage_to_Oswald_Spengler_1982_

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_

Armin Mohler, “Before History: Some Unsystematic Remarks” (1975)

My translation, rather provisional, of Armin Mohler’s “Devant l’histoire: quelques remarques non-systématiques,” Nouvelle École 27–28 (1975). These few brief theses bear the marks of Mohler’s “nominalism,” his term for his rejection of the “eternally valid” in politics, and of his anti-systematic thought. If you have any critical comments on this translation in particular (but any of my efforts), please do say. These are in part an exercise for me; I'm eager to improve.

The French original can be found at

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/defis-pm-a48319952

And a PDF of this translation at

https://www.academia.edu/41660834/Armin_Mohler_Before_History_1975_

Regarding “nominalism” from Nietzsche to Mohler to Alain de Benoist:

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-nominalism-of-mohler-and-de-benoist.html