Temple of Apollo Epicurius - A Cinematic Poem

This film, shot in 1964 and awarded at the Paris Biennale in 1965, was never shown in cinemas. It's screening at the event "Epicurius Apollo by the Moonlight" was one of the rare ones and combined with the place where it was filmed and dedicated, it was a unique experience for the viewers.

Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae: collectible documentary before the temple is covered! It is the first film about the temple of the epicurean Apollo that Iktinos built on top of a mountain.

The director (Jean-Daniel Pollet) was enchanted and said that this temple was the center of the world for him. So he filmed him with the rhythm of a sacred ritual and the result rewarded his efforts. The temple is built mainly with limestone stone and is without the statue of the god Apollo. Impressed by the charm of the archaeological site of Basso, the excellent director Jean-Daniel Pollet, as soon as he discovered it, found an existential refuge saying "Here you can exist".

He characterized the place as the unheard end of magic and for a decade considered it the center of the world. He visited it many times and three of his films have references to the temple of the Epicurean Apollo. One of these "Vasses" is dedicated to the temple. It is a cinematic poem. The director himself has described his relationship with Vasses as follows: "I first saw the temple of the Basses while circumnavigating the Mediterranean. So I have to say why I left, why I did this round. I had marked the temple in a lithograph (not a photo) of some book because it said that it was the only one built on the heights of the Peloponnese and without a view of the sea.

Source: HERE

Florian Geyer, Goetz von Berlichingen and Their Divisions

They named SS divisions after men like Florian Geyer and Götz von Berlichingen, and there is nothing strange about it. Because these weren’t “anti-authoritarian rebels” in the liberal sense. They were Teutonic avatars of the freeman-soldier, the wild nobility of blood and oath, untamed by throne or mitre and yet bound by the higher principles of honour, wrath, and destiny.

Florian Geyer led the Black Company like a mythic revenant of Wotan. He

was a knight against a fallen world who turned his sword against both

crown and cross in wrathful remembrance of a higher order betrayed. “No

cross, no crown” because both had become parodies.

“In a society that no longer understands the figure of the ascetic and

of the warrior; in which the hands of the latest aristocrats seem better

fit to hold tennis rackets or shakers for cocktail mixes than swords or

scepters…” 

Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, p. 163

The world is no longer fit for warriors, and the aristocracy is no

longer worthy of rule, but Geyer’s sword remembered, and so did the SS

who named a cavalry division after him.

 Götz was a man of fire-forged defiance. When flesh failed, he forged

a fist of iron. When emperors betrayed the folk, he cursed them in

immortal tongue. He was loyal to the ancestral blood that still surged

in his veins and his allegiance was to the Germanic will, to that sacred

axis of sword-law, clan-right, and divine fury.

Those who still feel the call of war, of legend, of the sacred flame,

will always be called “strange” by the gelded moderns, but National

Socialism reached backward in remembrance. It sought the archetypes of

the wild knight, the folk-warrior, the god-killer, the iron-handed

revenant of a race that once walked with the gods. These were living

symbols: figures who rose in the twilight between Reichs, and whose

legend burned with the raw flame of pre-Christian sovereignty.

Aesthetic? Yes. Mythic? Absolutely. But above all, ancestral.

Because as Savitri Devi noted, “National Socialism is the only modern

“ism” that is anything but modern.” It was an attempt to reconnect the

severed thread of blood and myth, to reawaken the thunder beneath the

cross and the spear beneath the crown.

SOURCE: Dispatches from the Past

The Ballad of Lenora

 

THE PAINTING: The Ballad of Lenora (1839) by Horace Vernet

The story comes from a German ballad written in 1773 by Gottfried August Bürger , a poem so haunting it inspired everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Bram Stoker. It even gave Dracula one of its most famous lines: "The dead travel fast."

Here's what happens:

It's 1763. The Seven Years' War has ended. Lenora is waiting for her fiancé William to return from the Battle of Prague. The army comes back. Everyone's reunited with their loved ones.

Except William. He's not among them.

Lenora spirals into grief. She curses God. She loses hope.

Then, at midnight, there's a knock at the door.

It's him. William. On a black horse. In full armor. He tells her to come with him , they'll be married before dawn. They have to ride fast. Very fast.

She climbs on. They gallop through the night. Past forests. Over rivers. Through graveyards. The wind howls. Spirits chase them. She asks why they're going so fast.

He answers: "The dead travel fast."

As dawn breaks, they arrive at a cemetery. The horse stops. And William transforms.

The armor crumbles. The flesh falls away. He's not her lover.

He's Death itself.

SOURCE: Stories Behind Art