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| The Art of Jonathan Bowden - Review | Review by Alex Kurtagic |
| Grand Guignol - Film Review | Review by Troy Southgate |
| H.P. Lovecraft: aryan mystic | Homo Lupus Hominem; Man is a wolf to his kindred |
| Kratos - Review | Another fine dissection by Troy Southgate |
| Apocalypse TV - Review | An informed review by Troy Southgate |
| Hans-Jurgen Syberberg | An analysis of the German director |
| Tradition & Revolution | The collected writings of Troy Southgate |
| Revolutionary Conservative | An interview with Jonathan Bowden |
| Opening Pandora's Box | An elitist defence of modernism |
| Homo Americanus | The latest work from Dr. Tomislav Sunic |
| Psychopathia Sexualis | Response to Alisdair Clarke's homosexualism in NI |
| Betjeman's Monday Club | Review of Raymond Tong's Necessary Words |
| Theseus' Minotaur | An examination of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought |
| A Hymn To H.E.R.R. | A review of H.E.R.R.'s The Winter of Constantinople |
The first time my wife saw Jonathan Bowden’s art she thought he was insane. I had some days before attended a meeting where he spoke about the German filmmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and his epic, 7-hour production Hitler: A Film from Germany. Due to engineering work on the railway network, I arrived late, in the midst of Lady Michele Renouf’s talk about freedom of speech, the Lisbon Treaty, and the European Constitution. At this time Bowden, who was due to speak next, was leaning on a windowsill, facing the audience. Clad in suit and tie, sporting a wooden pendant carved with a rune, and a pair of small, bottle-bottom spectacles, he stood there with a head of curly hair, arms crossed, and eyes closed, deep in thought. The room was hot, pre-Victorian, crammed to capacity with angry middle-aged men, compressed into tightly packed rows of hard coccyx-crunching chairs–stewing in their fury against the modern world... review continues here
'Grand Guignol' (2009)
Directed by Andrea Lioy
Screenplay by Andrea Lioy & Jonathan Bowden
TWO and a half years in the making, Jonathan Bowden's second foray into the world of cinematic production is now finally available. I had previously reviewed and enjoyed Bowden's film debut, Venus Flytrap (2005), so was therefore very eager to see this latest offering. The real Grand Guignol was a Parisian theatre specialising in dramatic presentations of various horror stories, among them Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations and L'Horrible Passion. These gruesome tales of primeval revulsion, brutal murder and raving insanity were first introduced to French audiences by Oscar Metenier in 1897, with the theatre finally closing its doors no less than sixty-five years later in 1962. Bowden's unusual film has been carved from the same demonic substance and the theatre's macabre tradition lives on in this more contemporary tale. The beginning of the film is shot in black and white and in the opening scene we see a woman (Penthouse model, Lucy Zara) glancing warily from side to side, the sound of her stiletto heels colliding with the floor is fused with the tortured growls and loud chimes of the soundtrack. There is a sense of fear and trepidation. The camera pans away from her face and we notice for the first time that she is completely naked. The music adopts a more exotic tone and we see that her surroundings, a room with a tall stairway occupying the centre, is full of clutter. Assorted bicycle parts, boxes, bags and various other rubbish conveys the impression that the woman finds herself in a basement storeroom of some kind. She makes her way past wooden doorframes and 'no smoking' signs until the camera settles upon a ball of glowing light. She is then shown kicking a pot full of money across the floor, which may indicate that whilst she is naked and vulnerable she cannot be bought like a cheap whore. The real reason, of course, given the subject matter, is that she represents what is commonly known as 'the Bottler', the person responsible for collecting the earnings of the Punch & Judy man.
Various other camera angles are brought into play and we see more rubbish strewn throughout the large room, with two rows of white columns adding to the Eastern mysticism being conjured up by the music. Her initial fear turns into joyful abandonment, as she struts boldly across the room with her long blonde hair, white skin and generous breasts united in a perfect flow of carefree motion. She then enters another section of the building and we see large glass windows and various liquid containers and paint pots arranged across row upon row of shelving. The music stops, the scene changes and everything is plunged into colour. Pretty Polly (Kate Willow) is heard complaining about being in pain and then Bowden appears dressed in everyday apparel, an unsympathetic grimace spread across his features. He refers to her as a 'wooden puppet' and her masochistic response - made significantly more obvious by the use of the term 'master' - is tinged with a slightly unrepentant insolence, which is both seductive and innocent at the same time. The pair are situated behind a concrete pillar, which adds to the mystery. It is clear that Pretty Polly has recently been created and one wonders whether Bowden - whose character at this time is still not entirely clear - has created a lover for himself in the same way that Doctor Frankenstein created one for his monster. Pretty Polly emerges from the rubbish, clothed in a white blouse. A light comes on and Bowden is shown cringing in the cold, a sudden reversal from his earlier role as the dominant master. Now he, too, it seems, is just a wooden figurine glad to be free of 'the puppet's graveyard' from which they have each recently withdrawn themselves. Death into life. Formlessness into being. Bowden - as Punch - embarks upon a delightful monologue which details his past association with fairs and sideshows, at which he spent his time 'beating, and being beaten'. The words and sentences, often dismantled and reassembled across different scenes in quick-fire succession by the director, revel in the character's love of the primeval and Punch's cold heart shivers with the loneliness and desolation suffered back in the wilderness of the graveyard. This may well be a metaphor for the womb and conjures up poetic images of Yeats' 'rough beast, its hour come round at last' as it 'slouches towards Bethlehem to be born'. Pretty Polly, meanwhile, still coming to terms with being able to walk, stumbles erratically across the room like a newborn antelope. With a little coaxing, however, Punch invites her to recite 'the ventriloquist's mantra' and using a selection of props - fire extinguisher, child's hoop, hard hat, bicycle, mask and stick - goes on to describe his own role in the marvellously brutal drama that is the Punch & Judy show itself. But beyond his 'multiplicity of selves' and all 'the administered beatings', Punch is alone. Or is he? Cue a 70s disco beat and the appearance of a sultry brunette in various photo-shoot guises. It's Judy (Nicola Henry), of course, and she is portrayed here as a jet-setting celebrity who is eventually interviewed by a star-struck Michael Woodbridge.
Judy relates how she first came across Punch at a theatre in Guildford, before Bowden - hidden behind the figure of Pretty Polly - suggests that her fascinating with him was sheer 'adoration'. Woodbridge infers that she was obviously in love, but Judy is unable to explain how she felt and the viewer is left wondering whether Punch himself managed to bring her under his spell. It then becomes clear that Pretty Polly is Punch's latest object of desire, just like in the real Punch & Judy story, and Punch tells her that ever since the beginning of civilisation love has gone on to lose its authenticity and that both he and Judy now find themselves 'estranged'. The dialogue will strike a chord with anyone who has found themselves in a broken relationship of this kind and Punch speaks of 'distance', 'a forgetting' and an 'absence of love'. Judy is shown immersed in her own vanity and Pretty Polly asks Punch whether, despite everything, he can still love her. This is followed by the words 'Who are you, master?' and the scene changes and Woodbridge returns to interview both Punch and Judy together. This appeals to Punch's inherent narcissism, but Judy seems disinterested in his show of arrogance and conceit. Pretty Polly, on the other hand, is apparently impressed with his know-it-all attitude. Punch launches into a sneering tirade about the primordial instincts of the puppet world, something which finds itself mirrored in the world of human affairs: 'Don't talk to me about sentimentality, or about pity, but only about desire and fury which goes on forever until the curtain comes down'. Beat or be beaten. Kill or be killed. Victory or defeat. Love and hate. All are valid, all have their place in the general scheme of things. The couple are then shown standing, about to kiss, but Punch can't resist the urge to canter off on another outburst and a cultured reference slips off the tongue as easy as a torso off Beachy Head and Sir Harrison Birtwistle's 1967 opera, 'Punch and Judy', receives a mention. This is the style adopted in many of Bowden's surreal novels, in which his characters tend to plunge into a series of literary and philosophical comments in the most unlikely circumstances. Rather than accept a kiss from his wife, the proudly contemptuous Mr. Punch obviously considers it beneath him to concern himself with such matters. Pretty Polly is shown falling to the floor and Punch and Judy appear at the windows of a garden shed, perfect for a makeshift booth, at which they bicker over marital infidelities and throw insults at one another. At one point Judy even calls her spouse a 'BBC newsreader', but surely even the obnoxious Punch doesn't deserve that?! The latter responds with terms like 'liberal' and 'dishwasher', whacking Judy a few times in the process, but she eventually kicks him in the balls and walks away. This act sends Punch into a raging fury and he brings his stick down on the back of her head and she plunges to the ground. She retaliates, but Punch is too strong for her and so throws his jacket over her head to disorientate her and proceeds to kick her mercilessly. The joys of domestic bliss. He finally stops and seems taken aback when Judy is lying prostate on the floor: 'Come on girl, it's just a bit of old slap.' And then we're back in the studio again, where Judy explains how she took her revenge by smashing up Punch's personal belongings.
This 'prospect of resolution', as she describes it, seems to relate to the tit-for-tat nature of their fragile relationship. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Surely Punch, after all, would appreciate that nothing is entirely sacred in the great and often turbulent game of life? He calls it 'the cannibalism of desire'. Pretty Polly, on the other hand, climbs up from the floor and feels herself changing from wood into flesh and now resolves to find him. And then we find ourselves outside for the first time, Punch and Judy are heard talking - although their lips do not move - about the inevitability of conflict. They climb a metal stairway and Judy tries to seduce Punch in the doorway of a tenement, but he resists and sends her away. This is followed by an optical exchange between Judy and Pretty Polly, and then a scene on the steps in which Punch and Pretty Polly exchange bizarre references about Greek literature, anti-Semitism and procuring a blue rope from Jewsons with which to string up the audience. Punch then appears before a plain backdrop and tells a mother-in-law joke that goes unappreciated. His guffaws fade away and both he and Pretty Polly are back on the steps. She explains that her identity is only secured by her love for Punch and that love itself 'foreshortens those days of turmoil prior to death'. Substance applied to meaninglessness. Existentialism with a romantic ending, perhaps, although that was something Sartre and de Beauvoir - a Punch and Judy of a different kind - never experienced! Pretty Polly continues to wax lyrical about the innumerable pleasures of love, but Punch seems determined to engage in further conflict with Judy and reappears at the studio where Woodbridge, the interviewer, tells him to sort out the matter for himself before wheeling away on a child's scooter. Pretty Polly, disturbed by Punch's disappearance, begins to search for him, knowing that her lover has a dark side and that 'evil is a stray latitude given to boredom'. Is Punch bored of their safe compatibility? Does he find it impossible to live without the violence and aggression of his relationship with Judy? A brief spat between the couple causes Judy to think seriously about the deeper meaning behind their tempestuous relationship. She still loves him and can even tolerate the brutality, but decides that 'confrontation is not the way'. However, it soon transpires that Judy harbours aggressive tendencies of her own, comparing herself to a female spider that devours the male with a single 'crunch'. But it's little more than a feminist fantasy. Then Pretty Polly appears in their dressing room and Punch laments the modern portrayal of their dying art - 'they say that it's too violent for children, what tosh that is, and they say that it's politically-incorrect, nonsense, blather and nonsense' - and begins to stress the difference between his 'immemorial' role as Punch and the comparatively more ordinary existence of the common wife-beater: 'I release the primal urges. when I say throw the baby out of the booth, every father in sight smiles inside his own heart'. This, of course, is the darker - and necessary - side of human nature that the liberal establishment wants hidden, simply because it doesn't accord with their blinkered, utopian humanism. And this is the penultimate scene in the film.
Bowden's acting is superb here, because essentially he's being himself: 'My life is the audience, they're the other side of me, they're the other character. When I'm beating you I'm beating them. The world needs Punch. The world needs a man who represents cardinal force and glory...' Punch falls to the floor in total exhaustion, as Judy and Pretty Polly look on. In the final scene, Punch emerges from beside a green curtain and introduces himself, speaking for the first time in that unmistakably shrill voice and proceeding to act out the entire performance single-handedly. Leaping from side to side like a demented lunatic, actions and voices combine in a macabre display of tradition, sarcasm, wickedness and cruelty. Punch is doing what he does best and, after an exhilarating twenty minutes, takes his bow. The finale is a brief discourse about the nature of evil, something which has occupied the minds of thinkers and philosophers for centuries. Bowden's view, on the other hand, is that demonic energy should be 'beaten out' and that these primal forces can become a moral good. And lest you disagree with this analysis, even the sensuous dancer at the end is there to evoke man's deepest desires and only a eunuch would fail to be moved. To conclude, then, this is a fabulous film and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has a strong cast, a good director and, ultimately, a very powerful message.
For more information about the film, please follow this link: Grand Guignol
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence on Rhode Island in 1890. His father died in 1898 in Butler hospital, Providence, from allegedly nervous exhaustion due to over-work, but, in actuality, it was occasioned by general paresis or insanity brought on by tertiary syphilis.
Lovecraft was then raised by his mother and two aunts, Lilian and Annie Emeline Phillips. A cosseted and molly-coddled youth, he developed psychosomatic illnesses of varied kinds – most of which disappeared the further he travelled from his aunts. Did his mother go insane from what might be described as a syphilitic complication, the latter aided and abetted by arsenic tincture as a ‘preventative’? She also died in Butler hospital on May the 21st , 1921.
Lovecraft’s stories are divided by some into three categories: namely, the macabre, the dreamy and the mythological. His tales all incarnate the premise of some genetic inheritance or other --- usually in a morbid manner. They often illustrate notions of a guilty precognition – the former nearly always of a morphic or physiological kind. Other leitmotifs – which are almost Wagnerian in import – prove to be non-human influences, usually of a cosmic indent, that impact on mankind in a detrimental way. Indeed, Lovecraft’s view of a mechanistic and amoral universe goes well beyond Augustinian pessimism – the usual basis for Christian conservatism. It essentially looks to a benumbing terror at civilisation’s heart; and it also speaks of Pascal’s nausea at those cold, interstellar depths. Fate plays a large role here as well, and under such a dispensation progressive notions of free will or evolution fall sheer. Lovecraft felt that Western society was labouring under an implicit or immediate threat. This took – somewhat inevitably – a racial form. A convinced Anglophile, Lovecraft saw miscegenation and ethnic kaos everywhere in contemporary America – not least in New York city during his brief marriage. His discourse tends to intuit hierarchy, to wish to manage or reify it, and then to string it uppermost like a mobile by Angus Calder. He attempts here – morphically – to create hierarchies of an exclusive or traditional kind, so as to provide Nietzsche’s pathos of difference. All of this is undertaken – without any notion of paradox – in order to make life more three-dimensional or tragic. Truly, a pessimist and an ultra-conservative who’s on a par with Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, Lovecraft even sees science as grist to his mill. Usually positive enquiry – or evidentialism – is thought of as liberalism’s hand-maiden, but, in Lovecraft’s oeuvre, it can serve as a basis for over-throwing ‘Enlightenment’ nostrums.
Let us take, by way of illustration, the relatively lengthy tale which is known as The Dunwich Horror… It first appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in 1929. This story involves the idea of transformation or radical change – i.e., of a man into a beast and a beast-man into nothingness. At one remove from the present, a decayed family of backwoodsmen merges in with entities from the beyond. They do so on Sabbat eve up on those stones in dense undergrowth and pursuant to bringing down what exists without. Two spawn are bequeathed to their witch-mother, Lavinia, one of whom is visible – the other less so. Initially, her father extends the homestead in order to accommodate new borders. An extension is added so as to conceal beneath its wood the threat of what grows within it. A sharp hammering was heard at night, as Old Man Whateley sought to extend his Imperium. Gradually the more presentable of the two sons, Wilbur, begins to seek out forbidden knowledge and secrets. These tomes happen to be stored at Miskatonic university – a creation of Lovecraft’s. Wilbur’s deformed torso and trunk – not to mention his devil’s foot – as well as his searching out of unhallowed lore, leads to suspicion. One eminent professor, Doctor Armitage, becomes disturbed by Whateley’s desire to access arcane texts. Many of these are in Latin and feature the scribblings of the Elisabethan astrologer, John Dee. Bemused by Dr. Armitage’s refusal, Wilbur determines to break into the library at a later date. In a Hammer horror denouement, young Whateley dies trying to extract unhallowed arcana from this ‘Bodelian’. Doctor Armitage – concerned at the presence of satyrs in New England – decides to investigate up country. He gathers a posse around him. Meanwhile, Wilbur’s brother has burst out of the house – after the deaths of his mother and grand-father. He (Doctor Armitage) then proceeds to investigate this decayed hermitage. In a dramatic crescendo – punctuated by Lovecraft’s love of Yankee patois – a final blaze takes place. It involves the other Whateley who’s observed by some New England peasants floating into the ether. (In this scene, the man’s senses are blasted out of all expectation!) The first thing to note is the beast’s categorisation: this involves anthropomorphism. For it consists of a writhing and insensate ‘mass’ of snakes, pipes, vessels or tubular instruments. (These can’t help resembling a cancer). It also floats abroad without any discernible support – and yet above its tendrils, suckers and mouths (or living stoves) we see a remarkable sight. It happens to be a face – or, more accurately, a half-face which hovers above Whateley’s jelly. It looks like a revolving disc. You see, this creation of inbreeding, miscegenation, Galton’s dysgenics and lower occultism is leaving the planet. He/‘it’ proves to be searching out the Old Ones beyond the stars – he’s going back. For Lovecraft’s tale seems to be a rite of passage; in that it’s a cautionary wedding of an albino’s litter with the occult’s left-hand. Could it be thought of as a celebration (albeit in reverse) of a Comus rout? It ticks off the absolute in order to cry out against the cosmos, somewhat pessimistically. Does it resurrect Evola’s example here? Certainly, all of this causes the pot to boil over. After all, it’s a medley of the albino, racial kaos, a search for ‘elementals’, satanism, unsacrosanct lore and nineteenth century degeneration theory a la Nordau… An effluvium which contrives to alter our perspective of a New England dreamer; a man who once produced a journal called The Conservative. A ‘zine which was mimeographed in form and truly reactionary in spirit… At this distance we can see Howard Phillips Lovecraft more clearly: and he floats, free of clutter, like a mystic, a visionary or a mystagogue. His imagination is on fire and he exists amid a transport of energy. Truly, he has seen the Black Sun – to use imagery from the New Zealand writer, Kerry Bolton. This former resident of Rhode Island can now be considered as an Aryan fakir – or a mage who dreams of purple in obsidian (implacably so). These nightmares exist amidst blocks of granite – whether tinted red or green – and in subdued light. He (Lovecraft) preaches the end of the discernible; even the beginning of a cosmic kaos – sometimes called cosmicism. Moreover, these processes portend a notion of order; i.e., they move towards it before doubling-back or switch-blading. Most definitely, Lovecraft has drawn the Tarot card known as the Tower in either Waite’s or Crowley’s deck. He succeeds in preaching Apollyon (thereby). Indeed, no other fantasist reckons on such Revelations as these – in the manner of the Apocalypse or the New Testament’s last reading. (A discourse which never repudiates the scientific enquiry that this astronomer believed in). Hail to thee, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and your dark visions of yore. They are bound to end up in either autophagy or a triptych by Memling. Isn’t it an example of a Western gothic or baroque sensibility? Or might it be seen in terms of George Steiner’s shoah drama, The Portage to San Christobal of A.H.? In this respect, could his lexicon haunt mass consciousness as Grendel’s latest trip?
THE cover of this remarkable new publication from The Spinning Top Club is host to ‘Kratos I’, one of Bowden’s most gruesomely endearing paintings. Two mismatched eyes confront the reader with a sense of optical incompatibility, as a demonic bust with blackened snout, wide skull and brush-slashed features greets the world with a vacuous yellow smile. In total, there are four stories in this collection: ’Kratos’, ’Origami Bluebeard’, ’Grimaldi’s Leo’ and ’Napalm Blonde’. Throughout the book, and within each of the chapters, the text is broken up into a persistent litany of convenient extracts that resemble the little aphorisms that one might find in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Bowden, whom I know to be favourably predisposed to the writings of the famous German philosopher, will no doubt savour the comparison. The sections themselves also come with a series of bizarre one-liners, often rather amusing, which may or may not relate to the short paragraph which follows. But is this a random stream of consciousness or a calculated grammatical onslaught? You‘ll certainly have fun weighing up the possibilities, I know I did.
The first tale in this quartet, ‘Kratos’, contains three characters, all of whom are said to ‘battle in an ascendancy or non-gulf‘: Basildon Lancaster, Fervent Dominique and Odd Billy-o. Incidentally, perhaps I should mention at this point that the real Kratos is a figure from Greek mythology who is born with a slave-like mentality and throughout his life willingly obeys whatever Zeus instructs him to do. This led to Kratos developing no independent belief-system of his own and he became a creature without friendship or pity. The present adventure, on the other hand, begins with a dream-like figure walking through the thick, London fog. It is Lancaster, a man who narrates his story with a cacophonic blend of strange anecdotes, ethereal fantasy, twisted surrealism, wild conjecture, philosophical musing, blatant speculation, a hefty sprinkling of adjectives and all mixed in with a generous dose of descriptive cynicism. After spending a night at a seedy hotel room, Lancaster lumbers back to his cottage and is confronted with the sound of his wife - Fervent Dominique - screaming. At this point the narrative sways from side to side like a drink-addled zombie trying to negotiate his way down a cobbled street or perhaps like one of those blurred and oscillating dream-sequences you find in a Hannah-Barbera cartoon. And a dream, or perhaps even a nightmare, is precisely the setting in which the reader finds himself. Lancaster suddenly gets caught up in a sexual fantasy and it seems to take an eternity for the story to pick up where it left off, the words entangling themselves in an orgy of masturbatory innuendo and literary name-tagging. Then, in another twist, the married couple arrive by car at what seems to be another cottage (this time for sale) and are there confronted by the ramshackle character of Odd Billy-o (AKA Dung Beetle). The author continues to add to the general air of textual disorientation and its effect on the reader by causing them to question precisely who is doing what and when. In this extract, for example, is Lancaster knocking at somebody else’s door or knocking at his own: “After what seemed to be an interminable delay, perchance, a shabby man came to the wooden door. I rapped on its rough surface with a knocker, at once graven to a lion’s tooth.’ [p. 12] Or perhaps Bowden is simply working backwards for a moment, the door having been answered before the summoning knock had even been delivered? This is lucid story-telling at its best. Lancaster conceals his distaste at Billy-o’s appearance and comes straight to the point: ’I dispensed with such vagaries and turned up business’ flame.’ [Ibid.] It transpires that Lancaster and Dominique are interested in buying the property and the author’s depiction of class-based mannerisms in uncomfortable situations is wonderful: ’I extended a gloved or manicured hand, only to withdraw it speedily from his mallet. Was it really an entreaty? I noticed its curvature into felt or matted hair.’ [p. 13] Note, too, the hilarious juxtaposition between Billy-o - a Northern caretaker said to have been ’aborted from a maternal cervix like Piltdown man’ [Ibid.] - and the way Lancaster enjoys his ’rare Kensington & Chelsea cigarette’ [p.14]. Somehow, amid all the clandestine snobbery, a deal is finally struck. Before long, however, Lancaster appears to be transported back to his London hotel room, although, in reality, he is confined to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane and was apparently referring to a past existence that he finds difficult to think about. The landscape flits from imaginary pillar to illusory post. At one point Lancaster is a masked killer back in the cottage, his wife the victim of a frenzied attack. But soon afterwards he is back in the asylum and his wife is alive and well. In and out of the psychopathic portals we go, dragged along the weaving avenues of a deranged memory like prepubescent meat on the way to a pederast’s abattoir. Lancaster’s self-questioning testament - the thoughts of a ‘moon-staring gibberer’ [p. 27] - gives Bowden an opportunity to elaborate upon guilt and sympathy, to make a broad allusion to the master-servant relationship as outlined by Nietzsche and to consider the ills and shortcomings of the mental health industry. Not least the sounds and sights which characterise the environs of your average nuthouse, let alone the idiosyncrasies and ultimately irredeemable qualities of the inmates themselves. And, like Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 film, Insomnia (remade in America), sleep - against which Lancaster fights tooth and nail, despite the fact that a severe dearth of it leads to yet more delusion - is portrayed here as a dangerous enemy. Hunger performs a similar role in Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel of the same name. We reach Page 28 and the author suddenly decides to return us to the little cottage, where Dominique is being attacked by the hideous form of Odd Billy-o. Meanwhile, Bowden makes no attempt to mince his words when it comes to the nature of the psychologically-impaired: ‘A maniacal stare beams from the caretaker’s visage - truly, criminals are born and not made: they are the products of license and genetics. Each profound buffoon - in consequence - represents a recrudescence of impure blood. You see, Lombroso was right: moral inferiority results from a physical defect and the low are bound to exhibit the swinishness of how they look. The malefactor, therefore, is bred by virtue of an absence of oxygen to the brain at crucial moments. Can’t you tell Criminal Man from the placement of his eyes together in the skull; or those brown stains beneath either orb? Insanity has to be physiological; but evil and human ugliness are deeply interlinked at every level.’ [Ibid.] Consequently, like a cunning theatrical device the wobbly Crossroadsesque backdrop is hurriedly changed once again and Billy-o is seen to receive ‘electric shocks in a sensory deprivation chamber.’ [p. 29] But then a struggle ensues back at the cottage, where Lancaster - trapped in some kind of bizarre out-of-body experience - is thrown across the room by the caretaker. This appears to be a subtle analogy that very cleverly denotes how Lancaster himself becomes incorporated within the actual form of Billy-o. But the distinctions are soon blurred by the fact that our narrator begins to experience the caretaker’s dreams ... As if his own weren’t really enough! Billy-o tries to dodge a cascading steel blade and Dominique makes a second appearance within the sterile hospital walls and ’stands alone and barefoot on hygienic floors’. Even Billy-o returns to try and murder her, amid a frenetic and incessant ‘tapping‘ [p. 36]. But Lancaster’s disjointed imagination is running wild and he switches erratically between the vision of Dominique in an adjacent cell to the events now taking place back at the cottage, where, to his immense horror, he discovers his own corpse and begins intoning in a Northern accent not dissimilar to Billy-o. In reality, of course, Lancaster has turned into the revolting creature he so despised and has returned to murder his wife. A perfectly ironic ending to a visual odyssey.
The second tale in this volume is ’Origami Bluebeard’, a fifty-part offering set in a decrepit suburban house in which the furniture is moth-eaten and garish and even the potted plants are wilting in sympathy. Trevelyan Bostock - a toy boy for whom an initial attraction to older women is fast losing its gloss - and his wife, the appropriately-named Candice Leper, are having marital difficulties and the husband is shown trying ‘to avoid her toilet-plunger lips’ [p. 49] as Bowden compares the basic human ’desire for love [to] a pullulating jelly-fish’. [Ibid.] Bostock, then, resists her feminine wiles and has no intention of ‘mounting those steps to a spider’s webbing’ [p. 50] because to engage with his wife would surely verge upon necrophilia. But he does respond when she begs him not to leave her. There is eventually a knock at the door and we are introduced to Man-Cloth, a tatterdemalion cum rag-and-bone man who used to buy old clothes from Mrs. Bostock. Trevelyan then questions the sense behind purchasing the pile of ’mildewed parchment’ being offered to Man-Cloth by his wife, but the latter pacifies their visitor and tells him later on that nothing has been damaged apart from their ’sense of bourgeois respectability’ [p.62]. Bostock is left alone and goes up into the attic, but he hears a noise from below and emerges to discover that Candice has returned with ’a large bag of swag’. Man-Cloth arrives once again to examine the contents, before Trevelyan decides to try to unearth his wife’s hidden fortune and is subsequently discovered. At this point the conversation is brimming with intellectual allusions that make the dialogue between this incompatibly married couple seem deliberately sarcastic, insincere and surreal. The pair have decided to ’engage in dialectic’ [p. 70] and the Catch 22 exchange becomes a winless game of draughts. At least for Bostock. I like the suggestion that Candice is disappearing nightly to procure rag-dolls for her ragamuffin accomplice, but Trevelyan himself has his own daily routine as he continues to search for her hidden fortune. But when his wife mocks him for his fruitless quest, he tells her that he is digging her grave and ends up plunging a pick-axe into her spine whilst resembling ’a fervent Punch who was murdering Judy in darksome splendour.’ [p. 78] Then, right in the middle of this homicidal episode - described at some length - Bowden even includes a plug for his new film … now that takes some doing! Inevitably, the next morning Man-Cloth reappears for his collection of rags and Bostock tries to palm him off with a few old towels and eventually dismisses him completely with strict orders never to return. He does, however, and after discovering Candice Leper’s grave in the cellar Bostock fires several shots into his body from an old blunderbuss. But neither that nor his trusty axe can kill the tatterdemalion and the two end up locked in deadly combat on the floor. It transpires, however, that Man-Cloth’s body is made up of ’pellets or shavings of canvas, dye, used curtain, tarpaulin, rug, bear-skin, fillet, combustible resin, fox-glove, stole, dyed blue-skins and Persian carpets.’ [p. 86] So Man-Cloth, therefore, as his name suggests, is ’animate clothing’ [Ibid.] and in a flurry of gory imagery he kills Bostock with ease. The author describes his story as ‘anti-feminist’, but I don’t find an enormous amount of that to be evident in the text and the ancient Heiress, despite her violent demise, is often seen to give as good as she gets. But then ‘anti-feminism’, of course, need not imply that Bowden is anti-woman per se.
The third story in the book is ’Grimaldi’s Leo’ - described by the author as a ‘John Aspinall ’passion’’ [p. 88] - and it is set around a travelling circus. Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), of course, was the so-called ‘King of Clowns’ who is still fondly celebrated and remembered by a legion of red-nosed admirers today. Bowden’s tale revolves around the story of an escaped lion, who also happens to be called Leonine Half or King Leo. And the image of the empty cage relates to Bowden’s examination of animal liberation, or at least according to philosopher-activists such as Peter Singer, who have turned what began originally as a worthy cause - certainly in terms of preventing vivisection and deliberate mistreatment, although the utopian notion of animal ‘rights’ leaves a lot to be desired - into yet another form of liberal victimology that echoes talk of ‘racism‘, ‘fattism’, ’ageism’ and all the other nonsense. Again, Bowden’s characters use intellectual terminology in order to engage in conversation, a philosophical method which allows the author to get his message across more effectively. After all, that’s precisely what this book represents; Bowden’s own thoughts are put into the mouths and expressed through the actions of the characters themselves. Winged Rhea, a trapeze artist, becomes a ‘Second Mrs. Kong’ [p. 91] as she defends the ‘right’ of the lion to be left alone and unfettered. Meanwhile, a debate ensues between Clown Joey (or Scaramouch) and the Lion’s tamer, the curiously-named Agent Naxos (I wonder if he likes Classical music?). The latter is convinced that his Beast would never even consider tasting human flesh, whilst Winged Rhea’s mood turns to anger and she attacks the Clown for daring to reduce the Lion to something wholly governed by the natural penchant for raw meat that such creatures are often renowned for. The debate rages on, this time about the ’theoretical halitosis’ [p. 98] that is political-correctness. Joey Clown continues to warn of the dangers presented by the escaped Beast, sounding more and more like an Apollonian archetype outlining the innumerable evils of the Chthonic realm and the threat they pose to civilisation. The rant is cut short by Sol Rasputin, the ring-master, who seeks to assert his authority. But the Clown continues, highlighting the flaws in Singer’s reasoning: ’If sentience happens to be the key to Professor Singer’s route-master then animals and men will forever wander unequally. Mental self-consciousness betrays a resilience under fire … Singer then resultantly slips into speciesism or non-human prejudice, basically because he has no other choice.’ [p. 102] Winged Rhea, says the Clown, ’addresses that killer cat as if it were a free-born Englishman.’ [p. 103] The Beast, by this time, is firmly under lock and key. Sol Rasputin exerts his authority once again and Agent Naxos assures him that from now on the Lion will be confined to his cage. A week later, however, the big cat escapes again and as the Lion Tamer is about to shoot his furry exhibit he is prevented from doing so by the ‘perfumed sleeve’ [p. 108] of the Trapeze Artist. She, instead, instructs the Lion to return to its cage amid ‘a ganja-laced atmosphere’ [p. 112]. The Lion does as it is asked and the implication - at least in the opinion of Winged Rhea, who now swaggers before Agent Naxos with a drug-infused arrogance - is that a more gentle and compassionate approach is preferable to more forceful or coercive means. But she saves much of her vitriol for Peter Singer, who would - presumably ‘to avoid suffering’ [p. 117] - gladly see the demise of all non-sentient beings, including circus freaks of all shapes and sizes. A while later, Winged Rhea falls from the high-wire and is miraculously saved by the Lion, who, by this time, has escaped yet again and now finishes the tale as a great hero.
Unlike its predecessors, the book’s final story, ’Napalm Blonde’, billed as a tragedy of Greek proportions, offers no introductory dramatis personæ. The central figure in this narrative, Scaramouch Ruby (or Lupin) is having an affair with her husband’s manager, Abel Cummings. Ruby makes no attempt to conceal her predatory and seductive nature: ’All that concerns a femme fatale like me, Abel, are the muscles, tendons and appended glands of a He-man.’ [p. 123] The betrayed husband, the brutishly-named Runter Bog, discovers his wife’s infidelity and Cummings makes his excuses through one of Bowden’s intellectually exaggerated conversation pieces: ’Dear me, my man, you have aggressively grasped the wrong end of a damaging stick with main force. It looks bad admittedly, but none can really arrange for an auction to be enacted using their own souls. Rely on me, Strong-Man, not to sully your family’s escutcheon with salt-petre.’ [p. 129] Bog spits out a series of descriptively lurid threats, as Cummings takes his leave in a fit of wild terror that suddenly gets metamorphosed into a dream. But the jealous husband is perfectly adamant that ’Adultery will be punishable by death’ [p. 133] and ’Armageddon chunters through Runter’s veins’ [p. 134] as both colours and surroundings change constantly and our tale begins to writhe around like a snake caught in the nightmarish throes of a bad acid trip. By this time Ruby has taken hold of a bread-knife and the couple seem to be encased within some kind of labyrinthine chamber. Bog becomes the Minotaur of Greek tragedy, at least momentarily, and the perceived sanctuary of the hidden corridors resemble a Bosch landscape and are then penetrated by the ever-advancing Runter Bog. Ruby and Abel find yet more corridors in their ever-changing maze of underground tunnels and make an attempt to enter one final chamber. The room, however, is a cell in a mental asylum and whilst Ruby is seen to be ’trussed up’ [p. 145], Abel Cummings ’continued to tap away in a manner which proved to be beholden to a vegetoid moment.’ [p. 146] The repetitious tapping and references to mental illness appear in ‘Kratos’, too, so the psychopathic quartet has now brought us full circle. But not before the pair try desperately to leave this latest room with Bog still hot on their heels, although when he reaches out to catch them Ruby finally silences him with a plank of wood. But the scenery shifts around yet again and Ruby Scaramouch changes into a vampire before her lover’s very eyes: ’All I wish to do is suck your BLOOD - we children of the night and daughters of Lilith must swallow such ichor in order to live! Demise can only be celebrated as a capturing of existence, you see?’ [p. 155] The seconds tick away and Cummings is hopelessly trapped between Death portrayed in two forms: first, as Beauty (Ruby) and, second, as Beast (Bog). For some, this book will prove rather difficult and in order to reap the full benefits prospective readers will need to concentrate and keep their wits about them. Bowden’s work is undoubtedly on an even keel with various other examples of high intellectual culture upon which the New Right looks favourably - including that produced by figures such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Gabriele D’Annunzio and even T.S. Eliot - and, despite the stiflingly unappreciative epoch in which we currently find ourselves, it is vitally important that it is both viewed and appreciated in that vein.
AND so we move on to a work produced by our very own Jonathan Bowden, a man well known to the New Right for his forceful opinions on Art, Philosophy and far more besides. ‘Apocalypse TV’ is a dialogue written in the classic Platonic style, with the two characters - Friedrich and Thomas - designed to represent Nietzsche and Aquinas alike. But only very loosely, because the pair are really only shown defending the respective values of these philosophers and they are permitted to exist in the contemporary world. The dialogue itself is compelling, but despite the fact that it is essentially an intellectual joust between the decidedly amoral and the traditionally Christian, at no time does it descend into insulting or disrespectful behaviour. It reminds me of a famous quote by G.K. Chesterton in relation to his late brother, Cecil: ’We debated constantly, but we never argued’. But although the characters do address one another as ’Friedrich’ and ’Thomas’ within the book itself, they are rather curiously initialled as ’J’ and ’S’. I can only surmise, therefore, that the more philosophical names were adopted originally but then never incorporated within the final draft. Judging by some of the political references, too, ’Apocalypse TV’ was clearly written in the early-1990s, but the overall message is just as relevant now as it was back then.
The work is comprised of six chapters, or conversations. Each of these takes place at a precise location, something which often adds to the atmosphere. The first of these, ’Sex, Death, Fred and Rose’, debates how murder and violence in modern-day Western society are viewed by the liberal establishment. Thomas, as you’d expect, believes that criminals of this kind are endowed with original sin, whilst Friedrich makes it clear that there will always be a darker side to human nature and that it often has a crucial role to play in the wider scheme of things. The chapter also examines the way in which crime is punished by the law.
The next debate, ’Hitler Was A Federalist!’, looks at the issue of imperialism and the way political structures have been imposed by the liberal intelligentsia. It also concerns morals, something Nietzsche discussed in several of his own works, but although Thomas often has the ability to identify a certain problem, it is usually Friedrich who manages to put things into the correct perspective without allowing the former to embroil him in yet another debate about religion.
‘Room 101, Downing Street’ is possibly the most political chapter in the book, concentrating on the hypocrisy of party politics and the often contradictory labelling and colour-coding of the various parties and movements themselves. Elsewhere, Friedrich and Thomas discuss the issue of censorship, the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ and the ambiguous manner in which genocide is treated in both the media and by those who inhabit the realms of academia. Each of these subjects is looked at in relation to the manner in which certain controversial issues are greeted - and consequently dealt with - by the Orwellian establishment.
‘Alien Nation’ deals with conspiracies, among them UFOs, satanic abuse and those allegedly cataclysmic diseases said by an hysterical media to herald the end of civilisation as we know it. The tone is very tongue-in-cheek, to say the least, but there is a more serious dimension to these matters because - as Bowden points out admirably - such tales are often used to scare the life out of the masses and thus help to consolidate the liberal regime and its grip on power. The role and consequences of drug-use is also discussed, with the author pointing out that, contrary to popular belief, it is detrimental to human creativity.
The subsequent chapter, ‘Art Attack’, deals with a subject close to the author’s heart. Bowden has discussed some of his views about Modern Art and the Turner Prize in the pages of this very magazine, and here he elaborates further on the contrived nature of contemporary Art forms which, effectively, have each been influenced by Art produced in the twentieth century. The pair are heard discussing their visit to a recent exhibition in which some of the participants were bourgeois favourites like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. The author makes a good point about the inability of Modern Art to actually shock people, as the media likes to claim, as well as the fact that the more realistic - and, thus, unimaginative - exhibits are invariably given the most pretentious-sounding names. Bowden also mentions the transience of Modern Art and the fact that Hirst’s work, in particular, is already in an advanced state of decay. I certainly found myself agreeing strongly with one particular exchange:
S: For man is but dust, and until dust he will return.
J: No, no, old man, I’m not with you there. Man thrusts forward, moves on to new planes of creativity. The individual dies, but his creations live on. [pp.191-2]
Bowden is convinced that as Modern Art continues to fall into decline, Art itself will have gone full cycle, or at least that it will eventually return to the age of Futurism where it all began and for which the author clearly longs:
S: But what you’re saying is that we may go forward to the past.
J: Or back to the future. [p.201]
The final debate, ‘Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your PC’, briefly summarises many of the issues discussed in the book. This time the dynamic duo find themselves aboard a coach, going to Edinburgh, and the conversation turns to Marxism, anti-Semitism and the usage, origins, selectivity and crass hypocrisy of political correctness and its attempts to contain and nullify ideological dissent.
What I like most about this book - apart from the fact that I tend to agree with Friedrich 99% of the time - is the wry humour that rears its head occasionally and keeps the feet of our intellectual adventurers firmly on the ground:
J: Could one even imagine the existence of Shakespeare’s writings without tragedy and pain? If everything were reduced to the blandness of the music we’re being forced to listen to in this hotel -
S: And the biscuits -
J: I quite enjoyed them, actually. [pp.55-6]
But Hale and Pace it most definitely ain’t and Friedrich - or ‘J’ as he appears in the book - can be quite ‘merciless’ when he wants to:
S: Well, I’m interested in people’s disabilities, and believe people should be helped if they need it, but I don’t want other people’s handicaps thrust in my face.
J: Absolutely. Particularly if they haven’t had a wash for a couple of days. The fact is, I do not go all gooey-eyed when the Elephant Man turns up on my doorstep.
S: Does that happen often?
J: Fortunately not! If it did, I’d say to him: ’Just wear a sheet, you suppurating bastard!’ [p.209]
‘Apocalypse TV’ is like spending several hours sitting in a room with Jonathan Bowden and his Christian alter-ego, which, depending on your opinion of Jonathan Bowden, could be pleasant and stimulating - which is my view - or monstrously obnoxious, which I’m happy to say is the view of the establishment!
Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, the enfant terrible of modern or post-war German cinema, was born in 1935 of vaguely upper class stock. His father owned landed estates in Eastern Germany before the war and his son lived in Rostock until 1945. Syberberg’s doctoral thesis – very much in the Germanic tradition – concerned the notion of existentialism or the absurd in Durrenmatt’s drama. He himself seems to have been influenced by two vast and yet ‘monstrous’ paradigms: these were Brecht’s notion of epic theatre and Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk – the total art-work. Without doubt, his seminal achievement has to be Hitler: a Film from Germany which appeared in 1978. Although Syberberg was to later furnish a retrospective and documentary feel to his ideas in a non-fiction treatment, The Ister, in 2004. It comes across as a companion piece or dialectical counter-point to the previous work. It’s definitely not a mea culpa.
Hitler: ein film aus Deutschland ran to 442 minutes and happened to be co-produced by the BBC (somewhat paradoxically). It starred Heinz Schubert and had no definite plot other than an intriguing series of tableaux. In a different set of circumstances (or primarily dealing with variegated meats) many would have found it avant-garde or occult. Its matter proved to be episodic, mannerist, arcane and dream-like. Syberberg, its director, made extensive use of rear projection amid an orgy of declamation, dramaturgical feel and topical onrush. Tropes are introduced, not like Natalie Sarraute, but after the fashion of a flickering magic camera or F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu in 1924. (A film which came to be suppressed by the German authorities owing to copyright tiffs). The first part deals with the issue of Hitler’s personality cult; it’s dark, deliberately baroque and romantic in its aesthetic. It is quite clear that Syberberg wishes to plunge headlong into the thicket of what George L. Mosse called Nazi Culture; that’s to say, the volkish underpinnings of German ‘irrationalism’ in the nineteenth century. National Socialism emerged out of this heady stew, but contemporary Germany has repudiated it or deliberately buried this memory. It allows itself the backward glance of Elias Canetti’s auto-da-fe when spliced with Henze’s agit-prop. The second part of this monumental piece of cinema (which is almost as long as Gance’s silent Napoleon from the ‘twenties) explores Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in every sense. The film’s third section deals with the Shoah and Himmler’s various attitudes towards it – the latter very much seen in vignette. Whereas the epic’s fourth quartet – sign-posted as We Children of Hell – consists of a personal appearance by Syberberg as the director. This is by no means either solipsist or Hitchcock-like, merely a desire to intrude an authorial and personal insistence. Having done so, he strides around with a large Hitler puppet (ventriloquism originated in Germany) and enters into debates over the bitter harvest of German romanticism and the plight of artists in the federal republic.
What does Hans Jurgen Syberberg hope to achieve by means of this activity? Well! his enormous filmic canvas sets up a challenge to every known rule of Hollywood cinema. Whereupon the work’s visual Weltanschuaang also happens to be partly French, being strongly influenced by Henry Langois’ set designs. Likewise, the fact that the work’s stasis or static vortex involves one location --- one set --- brings it very close to Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio in Latin. Influential critics pontificated about its significance upon arrival, but neither Susan Sontag or Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe could hammer out definite conclusions. Most of them miss the fact that the clue to this piece lies in its visualisation: its medium is truly the message in terms of Marshall McLuhan’s hectoring. For the film’s visual language exemplifies its deeply romantic, roseate, ethereal, Germanic race soul, anti-modernist, dream-like, oneiric and Wagnerian climacteric. It happens to be deeply fascistic but purely on an auric or eye-sensitive level; at once happening to be lit up by a post-modern mantra. The film comes across as heroic in its anti-heroic indeterminacy. Superficially – and with the objective part of the mind – Syberberg appears to be opposed to what Moeller van den Bruck called The Third Empire. But not really… since, if we enter into back-brain subjectivity, then we are dealing with a fantasy or phantasmagoria which mourns the fact of Germany’s defeat. What Syberberg is doing literally confuses the rational, practical and political mind (perforce). For, by virtue of adopting an apodictic structure, he can remain aesthetically entranced while preserving a strict ideological neutrality. Like the Australian effort Romper Stomper, this film is ultimately neutral and neither for or against --- at the level of the journalist’s page. In reality, such a transgression proves to be deeply blasphemous under Bonn’s republic…if we conceive of Adenauer’s construction as a second Weimar.
Moreover, the inner methodology of Syberberg’s attitude can be seen in various articles – one in particular, “Spiritual Reactionaries after German Reunification” by Diederichsen and Cametzky, springs to mind. Likewise, Syberberg sought to clear up any confusion with his own polemic – On the Misfortune and Fortune of Art in Germany after the last War, (1990). This contained a strong attack on Bonn’s philo-semitism. Michael Walker, the editor of Scorpion magazine and by then a German citizen, warned that Syberberg faced ‘un-person’ status as a result. For his filmography has little real appeal either on behalf of NDP supporters or contemporary liberals. In this overall regard, his visualisation might be considered to be a splicing of Caspar David Friedrich and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. It’s not a tabernacle of the ruins, a la Wolfgang Borchert’s stories about the “year zero” of 1945, but an aesthetic Germanicism which remains cool, cynical, acidic, upper class and even ‘subversive’. Hitler: ein filme aus Deutschland appears to be “anti” on the surface of its discontinuous images; themselves a kaleidoscope of Cranach, Pacher and Kraceur’s over-flowing Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Yet the inner or sub-conscious mind that directs this movie proves to be spiritually, not factually, revisionist in character.
His earlier cinema history testifies to this. For example, his first effort – Romy, Anatomy of a Face (1965) – deliberates on a classic German actress’ profile. It is an exercise in phrenology which concentrates on Romy Schneider. Whereas his second example in 1966 deals with the aged actor Fritz Kortner – a star of German theatre earlier in the twentieth century who specialised in one event: Shylock’s eternal scream of vengeance. Syberberg described the rushes for such an epiphany as ‘superhuman’.
You can view Hitler: ein film aus Deutschland for free online at www.syberberg.de
Click here for Jonathan's talk on Syberberg
Troy Southgate, formerly a leading member of the National Revolutionary Movement and currently one of the main exponents of the European New Right, has over the last two decades produced a large number of articles, essays and poems. This book is a selection of the best of these. It presents revolutionary ideas which, while transcending the conventional left-right dichotomy, propagate the abandonment of modern society and its all-pervasive decadence to set up autonomous, anti-establishment communities; it discusses metaphysical and spiritual issues from a Traditionalist and Wodenist perspective; it gives practical advice on the benefits of home schooling; it deals with everything from the struggle of the Revolutionary Conservative movement in WWII Germany to the Islamic Revolution in Iran; and contains a critique of modern life in the form of excellent, and at times humorous, poetry.
Tradition & Revolution also contains Troy Southgate’s famous essay, Militant Imperium: A Chapter-by-Chapter Summary of Julius Evola's 'Men Among the Ruins'. All in all, this book will have something of interest to every man of a revolutionary disposition.
“This man is an artist, a poet and a musician, a father and a relentless idealist … Troy Southgate’s work as presented speaks for itself here, but what is extraordinary about it is that it is as complex as it is clear and transparent … As a driving force within the English New Right, Troy Southgate has clearly shown that he is indeed interested in broader alliances between leading men, … not within a purely conservative and outdated Right of yesteryear …, but of the Right understood as the real and contemporary opposition with alternatives to the egalitarian ideas that pervade the current dominating political systems of the world.”
Tord Morsund
Available to buy at www.integraltradition.com
This interview was conducted in the summer of 2007 by Troy Southgate - the Organising Secretary of the New Right. This interview also appears in issue 4 of the New Imperium metapolitical journal, of which Troy Southgate is the editor.
I would like to take this opportunity to respond to various postings which have been placed on the website ‘Stormfront’ in recent weeks. I would like to thank those people who have been supportive of my efforts – including ‘glasgow bnp’, ‘fraser’ and ‘Dux90’, who was kind enough to describe the work as “excellent”.
Other correspondents have been less charitable however. These include ‘Son Of Britain’, ‘Byzantium Endures’ (probably named after a novel by Michael Moorcock) and ‘brummie76’ among others. Now I’m not responding to their comments directly – primarily because most of them are semi-literate and scatological in tone. These persons are also hiding under false names. Their identities are known to me though by virtue of my status and links with the American owners of the Stormfront website. (Byzantium Endures, for example, is an Irish Republican and National Socialist who has been on the site for many years).
But amidst all of the silliness and abuse these people are contriving to make a serious point, and this is: the status of modern or modernist art.
This happens to be a completely legitimate debate and one which I will respond to now. What large numbers of western individuals have missed is that a seismic shock went through the art world at the end of the nineteenth century. This was completely adjacent to the creation of photography as both an art and a science. Once a classic early photographer like Edward Muybridge produced an interconnected series of images featuring Greco-Roman wrestlers and running horses, the world was forever changed. Fine art now had a choice – it either replicated photography badly or in a stylised way which was loyal to a tradition running from Rembrandt to Orpen or it contrived to do something else. What it did was to go inside the mind and tap all sorts of semi-conscious and unconscious ideas, fantasies, desires and imaginative forays. All these relate to iconic art, religious painting and the art of the occult, spiritualism, pornography and even the images of the insane or the marginally so. It also relates to religious art as exemplified by Pacher, Giotto, Cimabue, Bosch, Brueghel, Grunewald and various modern masters of a similar sort. The point about this art is that it is highly personal and powerful because it comes from inside. This means that people often of a highly rigid and morally defensive character find this work heretical, blasphemous, evil and even degenerate. (Indeed the theory of degenerate art originates from the 1880’s when this change of direction took place). A large number of modern masters like Bacon, Buffet, Ernst, Paolozzi, Balthus, Dali and Labisse have all dealt with these themes. What has happened to art in other directions is that representational, classical, traditional and academic work has been taken over by cinema. The moving image and the tens of thousands of individual films produced for well over a century now are a testament to this. Great filmmakers like Lang, Hitchcock, Stroheim, Gance, Truffaut, Renoir, Syberberg and Tarkovsky are all examples of this. They inherit the tradition of representation which has gone elsewhere. In the end you either love or loathe this. Two regimes in the twentieth century tried to prevent painters and sculptors producing modernist work. These were Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both failed. The reasons for this are the dynamism of the modern current – even though German sculptors like Arno Breker and Gustav Thorak were excellent artists but they were also copyists who were returning to the Greeks and Praxiteles. The dilemma which painters and sculptors have faced is either to create purely imaginatively or just to make films in another medium.
Turning to my own work various currents are discernable. These are the demonic, strength and a concern with pure power, ugliness and fury as well as erotica and shape, or purely imaginative formulations. In my own mind the softer material balances the harsher, more violent and aggressive work. Nonetheless, I have also done a large number of relatively traditional pieces which hark back to classic art by Bosch, Rops and Caravaggio. Some are also based on Hellenistic form. Obviously a subjective element intrudes into art but I believe that modernistic fury is the correct vehicle for elitist and hierarchical values.
I always sign everything I produce – whether in writing, on film or as an image – with my own name.
Jonathan Bowden
This important new book, Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, provides a well-informed and brilliant examination of the American national character. The author, a former US professor and former Croatian diplomat, reviews the country’s founding myths and its legacy of Calvinist Puritanism, boundless economic progress, and self-choseness, and their role in shaping the messianic impulse in US domestic and foreign policy.
In modern America, contends Dr. Tomislav Sunic, notions of “democracy,” “multiculturalism, “ “political correctness” and hyper-individualistic “freedom” now threaten the country’s European heritage, and the cultural-ethnic heritage of all peoples. With a foreword by Prof. Kevin MacDonald.
Tomislav (Tom) Sunic is a former US professor, author, translator and a former Croat diplomat. He did his undergraduate work in literature and languages in Europe. He obtained his doctoral degree in political science at the University of California. Mr. Sunic has published books and articles in French, German, English and Croatian on subjects of cultural pessimism, the psychology of communism and liberalism, and the use and abuse of modern languages in modern political discourse.
This remarkable work is now available from www.amazon.com
I have to respond to Alisdair Clarke's homosexualism in New Imperium's second issue. The truth of the matter is that Uranian discourse remains fey and counter-propositional. For, contrary to Weininger's doxa in Sex and Character, orientation comes from physiology - hence its division into male and female. The notion, anthropologically, that Indo-European development consists of male-bonded warriorship vis-a-vis the Family is fanciful. More accurately, a primal sexuality always embodies Heterosexuality. It alone relates to blood, genetics, racial causation and gender's polarity. All culture springs from a child's birth - it's in accordance with Nature. A factor which necessitates the weakness of all alternatives: whether these are same-sex, infantilistic or paedophile, bi-polar, necrophile, coprophiliac, trans-gender or hermaphroditic, et cetera...
Another stream in this particular argument involves a defence of women. All sexual beauty has to be female given the divinity of the woman's body. Without it there's nothing - in terms of Erotica's stream of consciousness... When one considers three-dimensional art - Rodin's The Muse, Cybele or Aristide Malliol's study for Action in Chains - one recognises the Anima at work. For representation of the female corpus is cardinal to mental creativity in many fields. In Hellenistic art, the Aphrodite of Melos - more commonly known as the Venus of Milo - glistens in its marble splendour in the Louvre. But even this doesn't do justice to the subliminal eroticism given off by this work. For, in refutation of Edward Carpenter's notion of The Third Sex, there were only two of them! Whereas all forms of Zoophytic, inverted or 'alternative' sexuality are biological in origin; they result from a female hypothalmus in inverse males and its reverse in Gluck's kindred. Given this, culturalised sexual discourse falls sheer - whether or not it happens to be championed by the New Left. This also gives the lie to the idea that Judaeo-Christianity is uniquely anti-homosexual. Paganism, being polyvalent, can appear more adaptive but its primitivism would tear most epicene forms to pieces. For instance, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian happens to furnish heterosexuality with an attractive front... whether or not Frank Frazetta's water-colours depict it.
Another fallacy needs to be confronted: and this must be the notion that family life, male-female bonding, the nuclear enclave, children, et cetera... are somehow negative, restrictive, reactionary, unalternative, 'square' or Bourgeois. Au contraire, the First Sexuality remains primal, chthonic, volcanic, and biologically productive. It erupts, like one of Norman Lowell's abstracts, from fundamental fissures. In terms of flesh, without a penis in the vagina nought else exists - even inversion. Perhaps the best analysis has to be the masterwork which convened modern sexology. This was Count Richard von Krafft-Ebing's work, Psychopathia Sexualis, that appeared in the eighteen seventies. It posited the notion that the Heterosexual or Straight world's all that exists, and, by definition, every other tendency happens to be its penumbra, shadow, affectation or deliquescence. By this lexicon, Basquiat's doodles represent less under-class graffiti than a form of advanced immune deficiency syndrome within art. Wouldn't Baumler, Gunther and Rosenberg have christened it Degenerate Art?
This, inter alia, leads on to a further rightist deconstruction of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality. For Ancient Greece's upper-class poetics, a la Theognis, may have incorporated homo-eroticism... yet one has to ask what it means if half of Sappho's surviving staves concern men and family life. Like Enoch Powell's own chronicle and Oeuvre; does a disaknowledged or inactive bisexuality really matter if one's married with children? Perhaps one can take a leaf out of Dr. William Pierce's book here. Given that the National Alliance's former leader forced all of its members to marry, on pain of expulsion, lest Kramer's postlapsarian snake intrude.
Finally let's provide a critique of Mister Clarke's exemplum for Manism: namely the collected works of William S. Burroughs (these were his Last Words; so to speak). Nonetheless, one shouldn't shy away from the fact that Burroughs' carnival embodies a paedophile aesthetic - in the case of a text like Wild Boys explicitly so. But in all of his effusions, from Queer to Cities of the Red Night, the abiding themes are non-masculine, anti-heroic, separatist, anti-heterosexual and heroin induced. They recall Pasolini's Salo as an attack on Mussolini's post-dated Republic. Truly, one inscribes the Latin tag: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (put literally: I see the better and approve it, yet pursue the worse).
With this poetical work, Necessary Words, Tong joins a number of relatively unknown Nationalist poets like Dick Cardmore (possibly a pseudonym for Right Now's Derek Turner), Michael Cope and Steven Taylor. All in all, these verses are a poeticisation of various articles in Voice of Freedom. For example, Necessary Words, the title refrain, deals with the unassailable nature of English identity. Whereas the next scald in, Feeding the Pigeons, laments the universalism of a charity which forgets everything happening here. Does it take reference from the fact that Mayor Ken Livingstone banned feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square but Hizb ut-Tahrir regularly meets there? Where In a Strange Land and My Home both analyse the disorientation and alienation of the English as their country becomes 14% non-White. Poems as diverse as The Arbiters, Observing the English, To a Hostel Warden and A Commonwealth Conference Photograph, all appear to dissect media distortion and lies, moral laziness, hypocrisy and a sort of Middle English blindness. Mister Tong's essential point, in these stanzas, seems to be an attack on the milksop ethics of the philosopher G.E. Moore, and the liberal platitudes they evince.
Poems like St. John and St. Anselm, Triolet for St. John's and an Anglican Bishop appear in the book's middle section. They confer an obviously Christian and Anglican identity on the poet, but definitely of a militant and rather Evangelical hue. In these works our bard's adopting a muscular Christian tone, redolent of Victorian and Imperial divines, yet alienated from documents like "Faith in the City".
Verses towards the book's second half, such as Televised Protest, Other Eden, In Another's Place and Stamp Issues rehearse and extend original themes. They choose to look at Japanese cultural imperialism, Anglo-Saxon aimlessness and the 'Right to Shop', together with the luxury of Animal rights at a time when one's society is in free fall. Four other staves - Great Storm, Bosworth 1485, On the Statue of Oliver Cromwell at Westminster and Milton 1660 - adopt a new tone. They are more historical, rooted, vanguardist and cross-referenced than before. While the references to the Commonwealth's Minister of Latin (i.e. foreign secretary) and Lord Protector give an English Protestant and heroic demeanour to Tong's efforts. Alternatively, Gulls and The Pond embody a more pastoral and evergreen temperature - a rallying cry to the fact that our poet is an English version of R.S. Thomas' aboriginal cymric. Figures on a Desolate Landscape and After the Explosion, however, seem rather more restless. Could our versifier be a New Apocalyptian without knowing it?
Finally we need to end this review by concentrating on two bardic offerings. They carry the titles an English Prayer and I Let it Happen respectively. The first is a 'politically incorrect' liturgy reminiscent of the Reverend Robert West's delivery. The second reads like a moderate cri de coeur towards the author's lack of nationalist action.
Raymond Tong's Necessary Words (ISBN 1-903313-05-8) is available from most booksellers.
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most remarkable philosophers of all time, irrespective or whether he happened to have written in the nineteenth century. In fact, he has more in common with pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus, born two and a half thousand years ago on Ephesos in the Aegean. Did not Aristotle gloss his great work, On Nature, in order to inform us that seething beneath all agency is the reality of Fire … or pure energy? Yet another example of the fact that ancient theory and modern physics seem to run on parallel lines.
Nietzsche – to speak of his own life – came from a long line of Lutheran pastors, and there remains a decidedly Protestant cast to his thought. Born in 1844, he specialized in classical philology, wrote his thesis on Theognis, an aristocratic radical, and found himself offered a professorship at the tender age of 24! Enoch Powell happened to be granted a similar academic posting, in Australia, at the same age. Nor need it surprise us that Powell was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, before a decisive turn back to Anglicanism a la T.S. Eliot.
Nietzsche’s first act involved blowing his own discipline wide open. This resulted from issuing The Birth of Tragedy from the press. It effectively sought to kill off his own specialism with one sword thrust to the heart. In it, he posited the dialectic of Apollonian vis-a-vis Dionysian in Greek theatre, placed Aeschylus above the other tragedians, and sought in the shambles of the House of Atreus a solution to Western decadence. Like a mortician, he dissected contemporary mores, found them wanting, and offered Wagnerian opera as a lance to an ever-present boil. He soon dispensed with this, given the perennial Christian stance in Parsival. His Grail lay elsewhere.
How to sum up his thinking? When we recall that the Karl Schlechta edition, in its pomp, runs to eighteen volumes, including poetry and letters. He even composed music, although, rather like Anthony Burgess, it has never been performed. Perhaps, reminiscent of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, he could always hear the threnody welling up in his own ears?
First up, he declared that God is dead in men’s minds, and that mortal life must be totally visualized at our level. Second, he asserted the non-normative or spendthrift quality of truth, but denied relativism through the epistemology of a Strong Man’s hammer. Rather like the circus, did not life beat out its meaning on a purposive anvil? Next, or third in our trajectory, he uttered the prophecy of the Superman; the one who exists beyond Good and Evil, and who will recreate intention by utilizing the masses as putty. Contrary to democratic license, he sees life as quintessentially divided into masters and slaves. Which group do you identify with, or, in the words of the Kentucky miners’ anthem from the nineteen-forties, ‘whose side are you on, boy, whose side are you on?’ To follow: he notates Will to Power, or desire to control energy within a form, as a relocation of teleology or future perfect. If we might adapt the Tofflers, it is not a future shock – merely a shocking future. Again, and to close, he requires all of this to be foregrounded by the Endless Return, so as to cheat death by a karmic insistence not on reincarnation but on Renaissance.
To him, existence was a bullet passing through screens, life is death, all circumstances recur, ethical insight remains pagan, aesthetics constitutes a new master class, pity can be characterized as the sentimentality of worms, and Spencer’s natural fallacy isn’t one. In other words, Might constitutes right, the world is as it should be, heroic struggle mitigates stoicism, and suffering must be lightly borne with aristocratic sang-froid. It might even be schadenfreunde … For him, Christianity as a mass faith will perish, but the little people deeply require it as a socialist opiate, held aloft with feminine compassion, and beholden to one Hippy’s auto-da-fe.
All of these ideas were put forward in a series of books, from Untimely Meditations to Ecce Homo, the autobiography at life’s end. An existence whose closure, almost scripted by Theodore Dreiser and Jack London, ended in madness due to tertiary syphilis. Contrary to the thesis of My Sister and I, a forgery, this was probably contracted from a brothel during his student days. Try to imagine the thesis of Ibsen’s Ghosts, when crossed with the anti-metaphysics of Epstein’s Rock-drill.
For Nietzsche, unlike Evola in his revolt against modernity, preaches a type of modernism which is subtly different. One that revolves around an illiberal and elitist rendition of modern life – its acceptance, its merging in, its energisation, its over-coming. Finally, accompanied by the eagle who evinces courage and the pet snake who beguiles wisdom, Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s Aryan sage, wanders out into the mountains to face Life.
A signification of death … or is it the coming of a great Noon-time?
H.E.R.R.’s compact disc represents what might be called Francis Parker Yockey’s absent musicology. In the first track, The Fall of Constantinople, there are the following ingredients: a classical threnody, the rhythms of poetry and a skald or ecstatic stave. (The latter feature embodies bardic composition, after the fashion of those who extemporised Beowulf.) It is, if you will, a variant on Laibach’s themes without irony. Similarly, a reversal of Shostakovitch’s Leningrad Symphony seems to occur – albeit at one remove, and by making use of Carl Orff as a medium. A tincture of Gregorian or High Catholic music shimmers, together with piano and synthesiser arabesques. Might it recall a politicised version of Rheinberger, with overlain proems – after the fashion of a post-modern Kipling? Green is definitely not the colour here; nor are the Satanic Verses a correct response by way of Sufi dissent. All in all, Constantinople’s Fall relates to G.K. Chesterton’s novel about an Islamic conquest of Britain, with a beer barrel rolled around the country by dissenters. The second track deals with football fanaticism and Ultra culture. It essays Stewart Home’s Prolecult from a telescope’s other end, in a way which appends a reverse semiotic to past New Waves. A Blue Tuesday rather than a Blue Monday, one might say… Also, this mixture brings about a medley of Joe Pearce’s British Bulldog, Attila the Stockbroker, Skrewdriver and a garrotted Public Image Limited. A militarist drumming supervenes throughout, primarily so as to combine the marching bands of the Royal Marines with Shostakovitch’s Eighth Symphony. Is it a social Reich or merely a parallax view?
The third stratum, Hagia Sophia, begins with militarised Bach. A situation where organ music fuses with electronic swoon. Jet engines cut across the Brandenburg Concertos, themselves morphing into synthesised constellations. Could it be Gary Numan’s architectural nemesis? Furthermore, Bulgaria’s Sophia is envisaged as a new Constantinople, turned around, or conceived as a New Rome pointing Eastwards. Musically, Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance meets Eric Coates’ RAF sound-world. But, early on, can Eastern Orthodox laments be heard, or may these dictums be a somersaulted Umma? Whereby mangy Grey Wolves are overwhelmed by Westernisation. Our fourth departure introduces piano music unadorned by silence. ‘Constantinople’s Dance’ is an orchestral piece which boosts or gives muscle to Chopin and Erik Satie. An accompanying cello bequeaths relaxing social action without words. Surely it introduces a new genre: neo-classical dance music? Will it indicate a renewed ballet’s implicit authoritarianism, as yet unwritten? One thinks, en passant, of Arthur Bliss’ Red King in Checkmate at Sadler’s Wells.
The fifth fiat, Requiem, announces its presence with a gentle piano playing, betokening a peaceful luxuriance. Colin Ireland springs to mind, as does a Beethoven purged of emotional dissonance. Yet a John Cage-like interruption, or atonal spasm, introduces a girl’s voice to these proceedings. A sounding which susurrates into relaxing synthesiser music, or the custodianship of bells. Does it hint at Plainsong’s observance, or a Gregorian chant without bent votaries? Certainly it drifts into a melodic minimalism. A mellifluous quality, this, which recalls both Steve Reich and John Adams (the latter increasingly viewed as an ‘anti-Semite’). One’s sixth demarche, A New Rome, sees a fusion of advanced Pop, electronic and classical music… with a cut-off point prior to Modernism, as witnessed by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It reveals Michiel Spape as a classical composer in Arnold’s and Bax’s footsteps. Whereas No. 7, Fruhlings Erwachen, denotes a paramilitary resurgence. Significant drumming reverberates in forest clearings, within which Miklos Hoffer’s voice makes poetic readings. There’s a similarity to war-film music, much condensed, or the full orchestration to Eisenstein’s second part of Ivan the Terrible. A work left unfinished; Ogpu proving the ultimate censor. Likewise, the piece brings back Mozart as a Spartan fanfare, occasionally punctuated by ritual chant or call. Number Eight, however, introduces a Folk element. Guitars figure prominently, serenading us with examples drawn from Julian Bream’s or John Williams’ craft.
A Germanic interlude eventuates, spoken by Frederick van Eden (1860-1932). Should it intoxicate Orff’s lost semantics; thereby cadencing Revisionism? After all, a certain Viennese architectural painter’s favourite line in Goethe’s Faust remains: “In the beginning there was an action…” Mephistopheles uttered it. Surely, this music involves Rahn meeting Butz – all of it hollowing out Wolfgang Borchert’s temple, in prose, to those post-war ruins? Mightn’t this band’s secret be that they’re producing High Bourgeois music, with an undertow or skinhead menace amid classical revival? The ninth cutaway, Arise, emboldens a lyrical skein. It exalts Grieg, Chopin, Liszt, Poulenc et al… Words filter throughout it, resembling records of Ezra Pound giving Imagism vent. A threnody or Legionary anthem also reverberates that recalls a dissident source, namely Ayn Rand’s The Romantic Manifesto. Wouldn’t such a poultice mix Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, Robinson Jeffer’s verse and Lucien Rebatet’s History of French Opera together? Oral humming continues during such anti-Hollywood music… a case of Bernard Herman meeting VMO, so to speak. In closing, John Tyndall wouldn’t have liked this CD but he’d be pushed to describe why. Can H.E.R.R. really be seen as an underground musical accompaniment to a Fourth World War between the West and Islam?