Fifty years have passed since the death of Julius Evola, and 2024 has been marked by a variety of meetings and publications that have attempted to anatomize his figure. The latest editorial release, European nocturne. Evenings on the brink of catastrophe, published by Altaforte Edizioni and edited by Andrea Scarabelli and Adriano Scianca, it stands out for an original approach, far from conventional analytical perspectives, and adopts an innovative narrative construct. A collection of articles, almost all from the 1930s, to which are added two letters from Evola to Filippo De Pisis, and an essay by Scianca on a singular and unlikely correlation with Guy Debord. To top it all off, an enchanting cover that certainly captures attention.
In those years, Evola traveled across Europe as a foreign correspondent for various newspapers, operating under the protection of influential figures such as Roberto Farinacci, head of The Fascist Regimefor which he worked from 1934 to 1943, editing the column Philosophical Dioramaand Giovanni Preziosi, director of Italian Life.
Reading these articles dissolves the cliché around the image of Evola as an obscurantist intellectual, revealing a whole complexity that does not alter his distinctive features. Although he immerses himself completely in this nocturnal world, he is never overwhelmed by it. He explores it without inhibitions although he holds himself to the role of scrupulous observer, intent on discovering the most hidden and profound aspects, ignored by those who stop at a superficial analysis.
The cliché that has been handed down to us is that of an isolated thinker, foreign to a worldly vision of life and far from the limelight, dedicated to the rigor of his works, always characterized by a severe and peremptory style. Yet, surprisingly, a new facet emerges in the role of correspondent: his penetrating gaze turns to nightlife and remains enchanted by it. He carefully describes a vibrant and colorful humanity, without ever abandoning himself to the taste for frivolity. The reflections are intertwined with a search for the profound meaning in the music listened to in a luxury venue, in the dances or in the decadent atmospheres, which therefore do not appear to him only as instruments of a show but as eloquent symbols of an era.
The period covered spans a decade but the narrative context outlined by the curators develops through a map of symbolic places made up of cities and significant places: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Amsterdam, Bucharest and Belgrade, or destinations such as the Alps and Capri. European nightlife embodied the duplicity of the time, where cultural fervor was intertwined with growing political pressures. Some cities shone with dynamism and audacity, while others began to suffer from political restrictions, resorting to more discreet solutions. And therefore the narrative, less rigorous than the usual one of the one who has always been represented as the philosopher of Tradition, mixes with the animated nights of these cities and their vibrant cultural life. Adriano Romualdi had grasped these details and deciphered them with a clear explanation: «The real Evola is the one who disappears for months among the glaciers to write a book, which alternates fascinating women (and there were numerous) with those alpine climbs that serve to keep him fit. the spirit. (…) It is what divides free time between tabarins of Vienna and the Alpine cloisters of the Cistercians, to whose discipline he subjected himself for months.”
We are not chasing a contrast between opposites, much less a dissolute Evola completely overwhelmed by Dionysian intoxication. Faced with every “diversion”, he remains a vigilant observer, ready to grasp the deepest meaning of events.
That is a Europe that is approaching conflict, that is sliding towards war, and that Evola analyzes in the wedge of sunset, between nightclubs, delicious dishes, refined liqueurs, cinema and walks until dawn, when the mist stimulates visions dreamlike and descriptions that touch on the world of dreams, offering an unusual portrait.
Nocturnal everyday life is thus intertwined with “great history”, as happened during his stay in Vienna, when he found himself there on the very night in which the city was incorporated into Germany. In Bucharest, for example, he witnesses a gypsy party that borders on tantric rituals; in Capri, «the center of a special magnetism», he is confronted with what he describes as an aestheticizing paganism. The Parisian nights, however, are presented as a sort of “chastity school”, due to the ability – at the beginning – to have made female nudity a natural element and free of artificiality but then also part of a daily routine which is ended up standardizing entertainment models.
For the reader, the reports of the nightclubs, with the names of, will be particularly amusing tabarinsthe hours of attendance, the varied humanity that populates them, often immersed in an atmosphere of apathy and torpor. And then the careful descriptions of the choreography, of the more or less skimpy clothes of the dancers (called “the girls”), of the hairstyles and of the steps harmonized with the music. But, the episodes, narrated with an almost maniacal precision, and the experiences, even the most common, in the end are always enriched with an analytical dimension of considerable depth which, apparently, only seems to take a back seat.