Well, if you want to know the story of Evola's return to his home
City Rome, the reading of Clemente Graziani's book of rememberances
would be a good tip. Graziani tells us about a short stay in jail
together with Gianfranceschi and Rauti, where they discovered
Evola's books in the prison's library. Immediately after having left
the cells of the well-known old Maria Coeli prison, they tried to
meet the Master, who was still cured in Bologne.
The story has deeply enchanted me, when I read him some years ago,
especially because it is a charming testimony of a genuine youth
faith, of an actual thirst of wholeness and sincere veneration,
inviting to direct initiative without any lost of time. A virtue
that has disappeared among today's youngsters.
But are you sure that it was as late as 1948? I would say that it
was earlier, after the three had been released as British Prisoners
of War ? Could you check please ?
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "evola_as_he_is"
<evola_as_he_is@...> wrote:
(...) As is well-known, Evola, following his accident in Vienna in
April 1945, was treated in Austria, and did not come back to Rome
before 1948. He settled down there for good only in 1951, after
having been treated in various hospitals in Bologna. 'Orientamenti'
was first published in 1950 by the group which had just founded the
famous review 'Imperium', of which only four issues were published,
from Eastern to Autumn of that year, and to which Evola contributed
with 3 articles.
Most of those who founded it were young men in their early twenties,
who belonged to that "generazione che non ha fatto in tempo a
perdere la guerra" ("the generation that didn't make it in time to
lose the war" - F. Gianfranceschi). In post-WW2 occupied Italy, most
of the editors of 'Imperium' experienced repression and gaol, under
the pretext that they were supposedly sympathisers of a neo-Fascist
underground organisation (F.A.R.).
One of them, Pino Rauti, a few months after Evola's death,
recalled : "Tens and tens of rightist Romans, mainly students, but
also men who had fought for the R.I.S. (Italian Social Republic.Note
of the Editor), 'met' Evola through his books, and read them in the
cells of the Roman prison of Regina Coeli (...) from 1946 to 1950"
("Evola : una guida per domani",'Civiltà', II, 8-9, Sept-Dec. 1974).
Giano Accame, along the same lines, recalled :
"Selected by a certain ability to face incomprehension and
isolation, to withstand conflicts, and having built our habitat (in
French in the text. Note of the Editor) through endured brawl and
discrimination, we even ended up divided among ourselves, between
Gentilians and Evolians(...) Gentilians claimed to represent a
philosopher assassinated because of his adherence to the Italian
Social Republic, but whose name was found in all school manuals and
whose value, though controversed, was universally acknowledged.
Evolians, on the contrary, huddled up against a thinker whose name
was generally ignored, who was not spoken of in any book and in any
paper, who was not established among scholarly culture and among the
republic of letters, who, save a few exceptions, was never taken
seriously by Fascism itself, but who had become the almost secret
heritage of a youthful current of Fascism, the tiny minority of a
minority, which was besides slightly mocked within the ghetto of the
vaniquished, even though the expression used to portray them had a
peculiar beauty : the current of the "sons of the Sun"."
It is to youth, to that youth, which is often referred to
in 'Orientamenti', that this work was written for. There are 11
orientations, given for the "fight to be fought, especially to
youth, so that it takes up the torch and the instructions of those
who have not fallen, learning from the error of the past and being
able to discriminate well and reconsidering all that has felt
yesterday and still feels the effect of contingent situations. It is
essential not to go down to the level of the adversaries, not to
only raise mere watchwords, not to insist excessively on what of
yesterday, even if worth being remembered, does not correspond to
current and impersonal power-ideas, not to yield to the suggestions
of a false petty realism, the tare of every 'party'.
It is indeed necessary that our forces act also in the hand-to-hand
political and controversial fight to build up all the possible room
in the present situation. But, besides, it is important, it is
essential, that an élite is formed, which, in a contemplative
intensity, defines, with intellectual rigour and absolute
intransigence, the idea according to which it must be united, and
asserts this idea essentially in the shape of the new man, of the
man of resistance, of the man standing among the ruins. If he goes
beyond this period of crisis and illusory order, it is only to this
man that future will belong. But, even if the destiny that the
modern world has created for itself, and which now overwhelms it was
not to be contained, in this premisse inner positions will be
maintained : in any eventuality what can be done will be done and we
will belong to that fatherland which no enemy will ever be able to
occupy nor to destroy".
In other words : Kapitulieren niemals.
And these orientations, needless to say after our readers have been
enlightened about the context in which 'Orientamenti' was written,
applied obviously, contrary to what Vandermok wrongly assumed (see
message 18), to the Italian, to the European, to the Western youth.