("Do we know how many letters Guénon and Evola exchanged? Is there in
Italy a book about their contacts? According to you, was Evola really
influenced by the work of Guénon?" are the three questions asked by
this member, for those who don't read French. Since the language of
this list is English, we'd be grateful to all members for posting
messages in this language, knowing that, however, in exceptional
cases, short messages can be translated into English, provided that
they are originally written in a language we can read)

Renato del Ponte has published eleven letters from René Guénon to
Julius Evola in 1996, which, for all of them, were sent from 1930 to
1950. Later on, he came into possession of five more letters : the
first four concern the revision of the proofs of the first edition
of 'Revolt against the modern world'; the fifth, which is presented
at http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id5.html , the translation
made by Evola of 'La Crise du monde moderne' in 1937. Was one letter
enough to sort out the problems related to this translation? However
this may be, according to del Ponte, those are all the letters sent
by Guénon to Evola. As for those sent by Evola to Guénon, to the best
of our knowledge, their exact number is not known. However, from the
correspondence between di Giorgio and Guénon, from which we have
given excerpts, it can be inferred that Evola wrote more letters to
Guénon than the latter wrote to him, not to mention the copies of Ur
and of Krur which Evola sent him in the late 1920's, the various
papers and books he sent him in the 1930's, when the latter was
collaborating to Il Regime fascista. In 'My correspondence with René
Guénon', a text which is meant to sum up his correspondence with the
French metaphysician, Evola doesn't give much information on it ; he
just mentioned that they maintained a long correspondence with each
other.

In the 1990's, del Ponte announced that the correspondence between
Guénon and Evola was likely to be published one day or another,
adding, however, that some people in possession of letters by Evola
to Guénon were reluctant to release them. It still hasn't been
published.

As you have already figured out, too little is known about their
contacts for someone to be able to write a book about them

As far as the problem of influences is concerned, Evola acknowledged
himself that he was influenced by Guénon's work, at least by a part
of it, that which concerns the criticism of the modern world and
the 'occult war'. In 'Sugli strumenti della guerra occulta' ('The
Instruments of occult war'), published in La Vita Italiana in 1938
and which can now be found in the anthology 'Fenomenologia della
sovversione', Evola based himself on "various observations found in
René Guénon's work" to examine the main tactics of the 'occult war'.
At the end of 'The Limits of Initiatory Regularity' (
http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id61.html ), don't you see the
shadow of René Guénon behind Evola's reference to 'Allah Akbar' in a
context where it appears rather awkward? More deeply, as strongly
suggested by Pietro di Vona in his 'Evola, Guénon, di Giorgio', it is
not impossible that Evola took his distance from the concept
of 'magic' under the influence of Guénon.




--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "fbernardjacques"
<fbernardjacques@y...> wrote:
> A t'on une idée du nombre de lettres que se sont échangés
> René Guénon et Julius Evola ? Existe t'il en Italie un livre sur
> leurs contacts ? Selon vous, Julius Evola a t'il réellement été
> influencé par l'oeuvre de René Guénon ?