In the timeless classic “The sunset of the West“, Oswald Spengler, philosopher of history and among the most significant voices of the conservative revolution in Germany between the two world wars and in the so -called” crisis literature “, identified the bright dawn of the Kultur European-western in the high-medieval epic, daughter of the Germanic peoples who settled on the remains of theimperium Roman. Dawn that Spengler himself contrasted at the twilight era of the zivilisationin which he perceived to live. It therefore appears providential and significant that, in these days whose 89th anniversary of its disappearance approaches (on May 8, 1936) and, at the same time, western civilization shows more and more the signs of a terminal and schizophrenic madness, the publishing house Cinnabar He has decided to publish, at the same time, a masterpiece of the Middle Ages literature and a collection of writings by Spengler himself, who reflect, as in his most known work, on the sad decline of Europe.
It is, in fact, of the last few days, the simultaneous exit of two volumes: “Seeing her of the Holy Grail“, By an unknown author and”Shadows on the West“, A collection of Spenglerian texts taken from his last work “Decisive years” and ordered at the dawn of the seventies by Adriano Romualdi for the publisher Volpe, who, if read below, allow to follow, symbolically, the trajectory of European culture from the illuminated glories of sacred and sapiential light of the middle age up to the perceived marching of the first decades of the twentieth century (and who knows what the poor Spengler would have said in the face of the smoking butser of this of the third millennium!).
Oswald Spengler-by Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R06610/CC-by-sa 3.0, CC By-sa 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5436219
The first of the two books, with a preface by Franco Cardini, represents one of the most important works of French medieval literature. Composed around 1220, it takes inspiration from the myth of the Grail, but is detached greatly compared to the novels of Chrétien de Troyes and the values of the Cortese love. The numerous descriptions dedicated to Cistercian monks, their lifestyle rules and their positions on doctrinal and liturgical issues, suggest that the text has been influenced by the spiritual environment of the Abbey of Cîteaux. It is an allegorical novel that tells a mystical path in search of the Grail, identified with the dish in which Jesus would have eaten the Easter lamb with his apostles: a symbol of unity among the opposites, of harmony between contrasting elements. The protagonists who will bring the long and demanding mission will be Bohort, Parsifal and above all Galaad, ideal figure and Christological, the only one to be able to contemplate the mystery of the Grail. The style is deliberately sober and linear and offers the reader a fascinating and engaging experience, similar to a majestic medieval fresco.
“Jahre der Entscheidung“(“Decisive years“, In fact), however, published in August 1933, it was a Spengler appeal to the new” Cesari “that emerged among the ruins of the West in decline. Mussolini welcomed him positively, reviewing him on The people of Italywhile Hitler and the National Socialists rejected him, criticizing him for the allusions to the “plebeism” of the brown shirts and for the aristocratic attitude of the author, contrary to the manipulation of the masses. The songs selected by Adriano Romualdi, with his long introduction and now accompanied by an essay by Gennaro Malgieri on the ties between Spengler, Romualdi himself and the conservative revolution, appear today as a prophetic manifesto of the European crisis, without a new “Caesar” capable of facing it.