Aristocratic Radicalism & Counter-Enlightenment Tunes

 

"Travel is a good thing; it stimulates the imagination. Everything else is

a snare and a delusion. Our own Journey is entirely imaginative. Therein lies its strength.

It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary. Its a novel, only a made-up story. The dictionary say so and it's never wrong.

Besides, everyone can go and do likewise. Shut your eyes, that's all that is necessary.

There you have life seen from the other side."

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Beethoven's Hellenic Awakening

 

THE COMPOSERS

The Ruins of Athens (Die Ruinen von Athen) written in 1811 by Ludwig van Beethoven. The music was written to accompany the play of the same name by August von Kotzebue, for the dedication of the new Deutsches Theater Pest [de] in Pest, Hungary.

THE CONCEPT

The goddess Athena, awakening from a thousand year sleep (No. 2), overhears a Greek couple lamenting foreign occupation (Duet, No. 3). She is deeply distressed at the ruined state of her city, a part of the Ottoman Empire (Nos. 4 & 5). Led by the herald Hermes, Athena joins Emperor Franz I at the opening of the theatre in Pest, where they assist at a triumph of the muses Thalia and Melpomene. Between their two busts, Zeus erects another of Franz, and Athena crowns it. The Festspiel ends with a chorus pledging renewed ancient Hungarian loyalty

Source : Wikipedia

The Etruscan Gate

 

"Returning with the Captives" at the Etruscan Gate (4th Century BC); Volterra - Italy. 

Oil on Panel (1884) by Alexander Svedomsky (1848-1911).

Volterra is a village built on a hill between the Era and Cecina valleys. With its double walls, both Etruscan and from the 13th Century, it's a medieval-looking city, where you can still enjoy the atmosphere of a historic village.

Volterra (Veláthri), was one of the main city-states of ancient Etruria and during the Middle Ages, it was the seat of an important episcopal lordship. The village has been known for centuries for the manufacture of alabaster whose artefacts are some of the most important products of Italian craftsmanship. Alabaster is a soft stone, much easier to work than marble, which is far harder. This malleability makes it perfect for carving small sculptures and richly detailed ornamental motifs. Historically, alabaster was used to carve the human face.

More than 2000 years have passed since Etruscans first began carving alabaster, but it is still crafted today in the hilltop town of Volterra. Although it no longer represents a significant part of the local economy, it is nonetheless a fundamental part of the town’s culture. Only a few authentic workshops are left in the old town centre, but these artisans are not only carrying on this old craft; they are also making it popular again.

Porta all’Arco - this remarkable example of architectural abilities of the ancient inhabitants of Volterra has witnessed the city’s history throughout the millennia.

Porta all’Arco gate is one of main Etruscan architectural monuments in Volterra. The gate, opening on the South side of the walls, is characterised by an arch made out of ashlars and decorated by three heads made out of stone. One can immediately notice that it was built with different materials and techniques, which shows that it has been restructured throughout the centuries. The jambs are made out of big blocks of sandstone, locally called “Panchino”. The three heads and the arch are made out of two different types of stone: the blocks of the arch are “tufo di Pignano”, a calcareous rock extracted in a quarry not far from Volterra, whereas the heads are carved into selagite, a rock extracted in area of Montecatini Val di Cecina.

Not only does the gate have an unusual structure, but the meaning behind the three heads on the arch is unknown, which adds an element of mystery to the monument. The most reliable hypothesis is that the heads represent the gods protecting the city of Volterra. An urn in the Guarnacci Museum dating back to 1st Century BC portraying a siege includes an image of the gate with its three heads, which probably makes it the oldest representation that we have of the Porta all’Arco.

SOURCE : Archaeo - Histories

Dante as Ideal

 "Dante embodies every national ideal"

"Today, we consider the Dante Alighieri [Society] as one of our most cherished and most glorious institutions; but if today its work is less solitary than it was yesterday, its task is broader."

THE POSTERS: Made by Dante Alighieri Society during the 1930s

THE QUOTES : By Benito Mussolini

Our Journey to the Kyffhäuserreich

 

One of our upcoming releases will be a return to the past. After the release of “Asgardsrei” in 1999, Absurd wanted to create a split release with Heldentum: “Kyffhäuserreich.” With this, we wanted to express our connection to our homeland, the mythical Kyffhäuser mountain range in northern Thuringia. According to legend, Emperor Barbarossa, an incarnation of Wotan, sleeps in an underground castle while ravens circle the mountain. Every hundred years, he sends a dwarf to check if the ravens are still there. Only when an eagle replaces the ravens will the Emperor awaken to liberate and unite the realm.

Based on this legend, DMD wrote five songs, but they were not recorded at the time. JFN had to go into exile at the end of 1999, and although DMD promised Wolf with a handshake the following year that “Kyffhäuserreich” would still happen (Heldentum recorded their songs the same year, which were released twenty years later as “Das Vermächtnis”), “Kyffhäuserreich” has remained a dream until now. This will soon change!

All five songs for “Kyffhäuserreich,” along with two songs intended for “Blutgericht” but not included on the album, will finally be heard 25 years after their creation and the idea for this release. This will also close this chapter in Absurd’s band history. The Emperor will awaken, and the Reich will return!

Zu Rotbart stehen wir in Treu’ und allezeit bereit,

dem Reiche haben wir uns einst in Stahl und Blut geweiht.

Der Kaiser in dem Berge

Blutweihe

Das Schwert

Der erste Schnee

Tod durch das Schwert

(Bonus) Volksaufstand

(Bonus) Im Glanz des Sonnenrades

SOURCE: www.hordeabsurd.com

Julius Evola : My Encounter With Codreanu

Among the various leaders of the movements for national reconstruction that emerged during the interwar period, which I had the opportunity to meet, I remember Corneliu Codreanu, the leader of the Romanian Iron Guard, as one of the purest, most righteous, and noblest figures. It was in the spring of 1936 that I met him in Bucharest during a study trip I had undertaken to various European countries at the time.

We enter the building and reach the first floor. Here we are met by a tall and slender young man in casual attire. His open face immediately gives an impression of nobleness, strength and loyalty.This man is Corneliu Codreanu, the leader of the Iron Guard. He is a distinctly Aryo-Roman type—like a contemporary embodiment of the ancient Aryo-Italic world.

While his grey-blue eyes convey the harshness and

cool will of a leader, on the whole his contour is marked by a peculiar note of

idealism, inwardness, strength, and human understanding.

His manner of speech is also characteristic: before answering, it is as if he became absorbed

in himself and removed; then suddenly he starts speaking, expressing himself

with almost geometrical precision in clearly articulated and well-constructed

sentences.

JULIUS EVOLA

The Maiden and Death as Archetypes in European Tradition & Music

 

Nikos Skalkottas’s (1904–1949) first ballet score, The Maiden and Death, was written in about 1938. It is one of his most important tonal works,its plot being derived from a well-known folk-poem that is included in Nikolaos Politis’s collection entitled Eklogai apo ta tragoudia tou ellinikou laou (Selection from the Greek folk’s songs). Antiochos Evangelatos’s (1903–1981) homonymous symphonic ballad, written three years later, uses verses from the same folk-poem. While Evangelatos’s work is faithful to the texture of the text and his music can, consequently, be heard as an elaborated structure of Greek demotic song, Skalkottas uses the first part of the verse (up to the maiden’s death) as an introduction, to be followed by a freer version of the plot in which love and death find their exuberant manifestation through music in the very romantic sense of the words.

The juxtaposition of a maiden (representing youth and the upsurge of life) with death (representing man’s unavoidable destiny) is an idea of central importance in both works under examination.

The death of a beautiful woman, according to Edgar Alan Poe (1809–1849), is the most poetic subject in the world. 

An overview of the aesthetics of death and, more specifically, of a youth’s juxtaposition with death, from ancient Greece onwards, would include important stories as is the case of Iphigenia’s sacrifice, a virgin who sacrifices herself in order to bring victory to the Greeks who were fighting against the Troyens, of Antigone’s self-denial who ignored the royal command of King Kreon by buring the dead body of her brother Polynikis in accordance with divine law, and of Persephone’s death for the sake of nature’s rebirth

In European art tradition, romanticism’s aesthetics focus on the notion of “death” as an expression of sublime ideas. 

The poet Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801) identifies the first experience of love with death. The first kiss is always a kiss of death and death is a more powerful union of two lovers. For the romantics, sexual differences and the reproduction of a dualistic nature (man-woman) are considered not only as a primal source of life but also as a passage to death.

The notion of the “aestheticization of death” is very important for manyLieder of Schubert as, for example, for An den Tod (1817), Der Jünglingund der Tod (1817), Der Tod und das Mädchen (1817), Todesmusik (1822), Todtenopfer (1814), Winterreise (1827), and so forth. The subjects of two of those Lieder – Der Jüngling und der Tod (poetry by Josef von Spaun, 1817) and Der Tod und das Mädchen (poetry by Matthias Claudius, 1817) – are based onthe juxtaposition between a maiden and death. In Der Tod und das Mädchen, in particular, death is treated as a welcomed refuge away from the turmoils and torments of life. The juxtaposition is an extreme one since the maiden representsthe peak of life while death the unavoidable fate of human existence. Through their symbolic juxtaposition death is revealed as an inviting to eternal rest. Both these Lieder, articulate the youth’s Weltschmerz through an idealization of femininity (“fair” and tender) and a friendly appearance of death.

Another characteristic example of a similar symbolism as above, in romantic music, is Brunnhilde’s sacrifice, or to put it differently, the “spirit” of her sacrifice, in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (1874); this “spirit” can be interpreted as acting as a healer for decadence (which iscaused by the thirst for power of the owner of the ring). Death, as the sublime union of two souls (male and female) in one whole, finds its most romantic manifestation in Isolde’s death, in Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (1959). At the end of the scene, the orchestra replaces Isolde’s voice in order to repeat the culminating point of the two lovers’ duet (second Act)articulating the wholeness of time (the real “present”, which according to Wagner and Hegel is pure memory); Isolde overcomes this notion through her death. The overcoming of time, death, in its very Hegelian essence, ismanifested musically and coincides with the eternal union of Tristan and Isolde in one “whole”. The idea of “death” is also articulated in narrations of epic tradition,that is, of narrations of heroic actions which acquire their meaning within apeople’s community. An individual’s death, in stories of heroic deeds, validates the idea of “collectivity”, or “nation”; moreover, the hero’s coming to termswith death articulates, at a deaper level, the idea of nation’s diachronicity

Music Performed by ICELANDIC SYMPHONY ORCHSTRA

Article by ANASTASIA SIOPSI

(You can read it in its entirety HERE )