This booklet contains the barest outline of Evola’s ideas on race. Since I had never been particularly interested in that topic until I read this, I am not familiar with his other works which may expand upon these ideas. (That’s a situation I plan to rectify over the next few months.)
You may have noticed that I took the liberty to retranslate the passage a bit – the original text on page 31 has “nervous” where I have put “energetic”. I would have translated “thin” as “lean”. I doubt Evola was recommending the “skinny, nervous” type of guy as the ideal. “Lean and energetic” makes more sense here. I would also bet that the word translated as “slim” is “snello”, not “magro”. My grandmother used to complain that I was too thin (magro), as she filled my plate with another serving of pasta!
Perhaps the moderator would be so kind as to give us the original text – including the word translated as “straight”. I suspect “erect” would be a better translation.
So now: a “lean, tall, energetic, erect” body – that sound much more Aryan to me. Sorry, no way can I make it “short and fat”, but at least we are not ruling out the mesomorph.
As to why? Evola explains: “It is not a matter of indifference that a body has this shape rather than that one: it is not by chance and without consequence.” `[my rewording].
I don’t know which wording you are referring to – Evola’s point is that the race of the spirit and soul is expressed through the body.
Don’t forget, too, that Evola is expressing the ideal, and ideal that many of us may be far from due to the factors mentioned (cross-breeding, hybridisation), so that the inner unity of an individual may be lost. There is a life’s task involved: to develop our introspective and intuitive faculties, to be able to discern those spiritual and soulish factors that constitute our interiority. This requires concentration, but the end result may be to achieve a more unified sense of spirit and soul. If we dig back far enough, we may be able to find that primordial Aryan spirit within.
As for the nation, Evola’s purpose is writing this tract was to outline a racial education for young people, so they would be able to recreate a purer race over time. Of course, such an education is out of the question anywhere in the Western world anymore. I suspect that we will begin to see racially aware groups of people begin to withdraw from the wider society to create their own communities.
-----Original Message-----
From:
evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com [mailto:evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Savitar Devi
Sent: Friday,
December 09, 2005 2:45 PM
To: evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [evola_as_he_is]
Elements of Racial Education -- Chap 9
This may seem overly pedantic, but why does Evola feel it necessary to ascribe a set of given physical attributes to the 'man of race'? Does this mean that a man of less physical stature is smaller in spirit? The use of the word slim seems especially odd, as it would preclude anyone of muscular stature as well as those amongst use whom are more 'padded'.
This wording actually seems to imply the opposite -
that there is a connection between the body and spirit.
Tony Ciopa
<hyperborean@...> wrote:
This is how Evola describes the man of race:
Soul: The soul experiences the world the world as something before which it takes a stand actively, which regards the world as an object of attack and conquest
Body: A face which reflects by determined and daring features this inner experience. A slim, tall, energetic, straight body.
Spirit: The calm domination of the spirit over the soul and the body.
Overall: a man of one piece, unified and coherent.
Of course, this rules out self-promoters who change their religious and political affiliations as often as a snake sheds its skin. And naturalists who believe the spirit arises from the body, rather than the body being the expression of the spirit.
Three heavens there are; two Savitar's, adjacent:
In Yama's world is one, home of heroes.
As on a linch-pin, firm, rest things immortal:
He who hath known it, let him here declare it.
- Rig Veda I.35 (Griffith)