The face of Classical Europe (I)

Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?

 

In 2013 I translated this article from the Spanish blogsite Evropa Soberana in fragmented form. Now that I am reviewing The Fair Race’s Darkest Hour for the 2015 edition, I would like to see it reproduced here in a single entry:

 

I remember a movie that came out in 2004. Troy was called. Naturally, many fans of Greece went to see it quite interested; some of them because they sincerely admired Hellas and its legacy. But some uncultivated specimens attended the theaters too. Everyone knows that, in our day, Greece is regarded as a mark of snobbery and sophistication even though you do not know who Orion was, or what was the color of Achilles’ hair according to mythology. The movie’s Helen (one with a look of a neighborhood slut) and Achilles (Brad Pitt) were rather cute. Adding the special effects, advertising and usual movie attendance there was no reason not to see this movie that, incidentally, is crap except for a few redeemable moments.

Upon first glance at the big screen, one of the many reactions that could be heard from the mouth of alleged scholarly individuals, was something like the following:

Outrageous: Achilles and Helen, blond and blue-eyed! Oh tragedy! Oh tantrum! Such a huge stupidity! Irreparable affront! It is obvious that Nazism, fascism, Nordicism, Francoism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and sexism are booming in Hollywood, because who would have the crazy notion to represent the Greeks as blond, when their phenotype was Mediterranean? Only the Americans could be so uneducated and egocentric and ethnocentric and Eurocentric and fascists and Nazis and blah blah…

These good people were not outraged by the desecration of The Iliad; for the absurd and fallacious script, for representing Achilles like an Australian surfer, or Helen as a cunt or the great kings as truckers of a brothel. No. They didn’t give a hoot about that. What mattered was leaving very clearly that they were sophisticated people, conscious of what was happening and that, besides being progressive democrats and international multi-culturalists without blemish, and able to pronounce “phenotype” without binding the tongue, they were also sufficiently “sincere admirers of Greece” to be indignant and losing their monocles before a blond Achilles.

The same could be said about the ultra-educated reaction to the movie 300. When it was released, we could see an outraged mass (and when we say “outraged” we are saying really outraged) complaining in the most grotesque way, by the presence here and there, of blond Spartans throughout the movie—fascist xenophobia by Hollywood and the like. How easy it is for the big mouths when there are large doses of daring ignorance involved, and when they have no idea what it stands to reason.

What I did not expect was to hear similar statements from the admirers of classical culture: people that one generously assumes they have read the Greco-Roman works or that are minimally informed—at least enough to not put one’s foot in it in a such a loudly manner. For Achilles, considered the greatest warrior of all time, and sole and exclusive holder of the holy anger, is described in The Iliad as blond, along with an overwhelming proportion of heroes, heroines, gods, goddesses—and even slaves considered desirable and worthy for the harem of the Greek warriors to seed the world with good genes.

The same could be said of the Spartans if we consider the physical appearance of their northern Dorian ancestors, who had come “among the snows” according to Herodotus. In fact, the movie 300 was too generous with the number of Spartans of dark hair, and too stingy with the number of blonds.

Whoever declares himself an admirer of classical European culture (Greece and Rome) and, at the same time, asserts that it was founded by swarthy, Mediterraneans-like-me folks is placing himself in the most uncomfortable form of self-consciousness. As I have said, if such individual really admired the classical world and bothered to read the classical works, he would have ascertained to what extent Nordic blood prevailed in the leaders of both Greece and Rome—especially in Greece. In short, those who claim being ultra-fans of Greece, Rome or both only throw garbage on themselves by demonstrating that they had not even read the original writings.

There are many truths about Nordic blood and Hellas but perhaps the most eloquent and overwhelming truth is that Greek literature is full of references to the appearance of the heroes and gods because the Greeks liked to place adjectives on all the characters, and nicknames and epithets representing their presence. So much so that it is really hard to find a swarthy character. In the case, for example, of Pindar, it is a real scandal: there is not a single character that is not “blonde,” “golden,” “white,” “of snowy arms,” and therefore “godlike.”

The blue eyes were described as γλαυκώπισ (glaukopis), which derives from γλαῦκος (glaukos), “brilliant,” “shiny.” The Roman writer Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights describes the concept of colors in a conversation between a Greek and a Roman. The Roman tells the Greek that glaucum (from which derives the Castilian glaucous) means gray-blue, and the Greek translates glaukopis into Latin as caesia, “sky,” i.e., sky blue. As Günther observes, the very word “iris,” of Greek origin, that describes the color of the eye, could only have been chosen by a people whom clear and bright eye colors dominated (blue, green or gray), and that a predominately swarthy people would have never compared the eye color with the image of the rainbow.

The Greek word for blond was ξανθός (xanthus), “yellow,” “gold,” “blond.” The xanthus color in the hair, as well as extreme beauty, light skin, high height, athletic build and luminous eyes were considered by the Greeks as proof of divine descent.

The physical appearance of Greek gods and heroes

Demeter as it was conceived by the Greeks. We must remember that the statues had a deeply sacred and religious character for the Hellenes and that, in addition of being works of art, they were also the height of geometric feeling and engineering, since the balance had to be perfect. The Greeks, who had a great knowledge of the analyses of features, represented in their statues not only beautiful people, but beautiful people with a necessarily beautiful soul.

There is a persistent tendency among the Hellenes to describe their idols as “dazzling,” “radiant,” “shiny,” “bright,” “full of light,” etc., something that very obviously correspond to a barely pigmented, “Nordic” appearance. To be more direct, I’ll omit these ambiguous quotes and focus on the concrete: the specific references to the color of skin, eyes, hair, and more. Where possible I’ve inserted the works, specific chapters and verses so that anyone can refer to the original passage.

• Demeter is described as “the blonde Demeter” in The Iliad (Song V: 500) and in Hymn to Demeter (I: 302), based on the mysteries of Eleusis. It is generally considered a matriarchal and telluric goddess from the East and of the pre-Indo-European peoples of Greece. However, here we should be inclined to think that, at best, she was a Europeanized goddess by the Greeks, integrated into their pantheon. The very name of Demeter comes from Dea Mater (Mother Goddess) and therefore would, in a sense, be the counterpart of Deus Pater—Zeus Pater or Jupiter, Dyaus Piter.

• Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is described as “white-armed” by Hesiod (Theogony: 913). At least it is clear here that Persephone was not a brown skinned goddess, nor that her physique coincided with the “Mediterranean” type. It is more reasonable to assume that her appearance was, at best, predominantly Nordic.

• Athena, the daughter of Zeus, goddess of wisdom, insight, cunning and strategic warfare in The Iliad, is described no more no less than a total of 57 times as “blue eyed” (in some variations, “green eyed”), and in The Odyssey a comparable number of times. Pindar referred to her as xanthus and glaukopis, meaning “blonde, blue-eyed.” Hesiod is content to call her “of green eyes” in his Theogony (15, 573, 587, 890 and 924), as well as Alcaeus and Simonides; while the Roman Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, which tells the perdition of Arachne, calls the goddess “manly and blond maiden.”

• Hera, the heavenly wife of Zeus, is called “white-armed” by Hesiod (Theogony, 315), while Homer called her “of snowy arms” and “white-armed goddess” at least thirteen times in The Iliad (I: 55, 195, 208, 572. 595, III 121, V: 775, 784; VIII: 350, 381, 484; XV: 78, 130).

• Zephyrus, the progenitor of Eros along with Iris, is described by Alcaeus (VII-VI centuries BCE) as “golden hair Zephyr” (Hymn to Eros, fragment V, 327).

• Eros, the god of eroticism, considered “the most terrible of the gods,” is described by an unknown, archaic Greek author as “golden-haired Eros.”

• Apollo as it was conceived by the very Greek sculptors. We are talking about a Nordic-white racial type slightly Armenized. Along with Athena, he was the most worshiped god throughout Greece, and particularly loved in Sparta.

Apollo is described by Alcaeus as “fair-haired Phoebus.” Phoebus is Apollo. On the other hand, Alcman of Sparta, Simonides (paean to Delos, 84), and an anonymous author, call Apollo “of golden hair,” while another epithet of his by Góngora—a Spanish author of the Renaissance but based on classic literary evidence—is “blond archpoet.” The famous Sappho of Lesbos speaks of “golden-haired Phoebus” in her hymn to Artemis.

• The god Rhadamanthus, son of Zeus and Europa, is described as blond in The Odyssey, and Strabo calls him “the blond Rhadamanthus” in his Geographica (Book III, 11-13).

• Dionysus is called by Hesiod “golden-haired” (Theogony 947).

• Hecate, goddess of the wilderness and also of the Parthians, is described by an unknown Greek poet as “golden haired Hecate, daughter of Zeus.”

• Artemis (illustration), the sister of Apollo is described by Sappho and Anacreon (Hymn to Artemis) as “blond daughter of Zeus.”

• The goddess Thetis, mother of Achilles, is called by Hesiod “of silver feet” (Theogony 1007), and by Homer “of silvery feet” (Iliad, I: 538, 556, IX : 410; XVI : 574, XVIII : 369, 381, XIV:89). Needless to say that a brown-skinned woman cannot have silvery feet: this is an attribute of extremely pale women.

• The Eunice and Hipponoe mermaids are described as “rosy-armed” by Hesiod (Theogony, ll. 240-264).

• Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, goddess of love, beauty and female eroticism, is always described as a blonde. Its conventional title is almost always “Golden Aphrodite.” Ibycus (in Ode to Polycrates) calls Aphrodite “Cypris of blond hair.” Aphrodite held the title of Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) because the Greeks believed she was born in Cyprus, where she was particularly revered. In Hesiod’s Theogony she is called “golden Aphrodite” (824, 962, 975, 1006 and 1015) and “very golden Aphrodite” (980). In Homer’s Iliad we have “Aura Aphrodite” (IX: 389), and in The Odyssey as “golden haired.”

• The Graces were described by Ibycus as “green eyed” (fragment papery, PMG 288).

Above I listed Wilhelm Sieglin’s conclusions regarding the Hellenic pantheon as a whole. Let us now see the heroes.

• Helen, considered the most beautiful woman ever and an indirect cause of the Trojan War, was described by Stesichorus, Sappho (first book of poems, Alexandrian compilation) and Ibycus as “the blonde Helen” (Ode to Polycrates).

• King Menelaus of Sparta, absolute model of noble warrior, brother of Agamemnon and legitimate husband of Helen is many times “the blond Menelaus” both in The Iliad (a minimum of fourteen times, III: 284, IV: 183, 210, X: 240, XI: 125; XVII: 6, 18, 113, 124, 578, 673, 684, XXIII: 293, 438) and The Odyssey. Peisander described him as xanthokómes, mégas en glaukómmatos, meaning “blond of big blue eyes.” In Greek mythology, Menelaus is one of the few heroes who achieved immortality in the Islands of the Blessed.

• Cassandra, the daughter of Agamemnon and sister of Orestes, is described by Philoxenus of Cythera with “golden curls,” and by Ibycus as “green-eyed Cassandra.”

• Meleager is described as “the blond Meleager” by Homer (Iliad, II: 642), and in his Argonautica

Apollonius of Rhodes also describes him as blond.

• Patroclus, the teacher and friend of Achilles, is described as blond by Dion of Prusa.

• Heracles is described as strongly built and of curly blond hair, among others, by Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica.

• Achilles, considered the greatest warrior of the past, present and future, is described as blond by Homer in the Iliad when he is about to attack Agamemnon and, to avoid it, the goddess Athena retains him “and seized the son of Peleus by his yellow hair” (I:197).

• The Greek hero Ajax (Aias in the Iliad) is described as blond.

• Hector, the Trojan hero,[1] is described as swarthy in the Iliad.

• Odysseus, king of Ithaca, Achaean hero at Troy and protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey, is generally considered as swarthy. However, this can be tempered. Although he is described as white skinned and “dark bearded” in The Odyssey, his hair ishyakinthos, i.e., color of hyacinths. Traditionally this color was translated as “brown” but it was also said that the hyacinths grown in Greece were of a red variety. If true, that would make Odysseus red-haired.

• Odysseus in any case differs from the Greek hero prototype: tall, slender and blond. It was described as lower than Agamemnon but with broader shoulders and chest “like a ram” according to Priam, king of Troy. This could more likely be a physical type of a Red Nordid [2] than a typical white Nordid Greek hero. It should also be mentioned that Homer used so frequently to call “blonds” his heroes that, in two lapses, he described Odysseus’ hair as xanthos in The Odyssey.

• Laertes, the father of Odysseus, was blond according to Homer’s Odyssey.

• Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, and queen of Ithaca, was blonde in Homer’s Odyssey.

• Telemachus, son of Odysseus and Penelope, was blond in Homer’s Odyssey.

• Briseis, the favorite slave in the harem of Achilles—captured in one of his raids, and treated like a queen in golden captivity—was “golden haired.”

• Agamede, daughter of Augeas and wife of Mulius, was “the blonde Agamede” according to Homer (Iliad, XI: 740).

• In his Argonautica Apollonius of Rhodes describes Jason and all the Argonauts as blond. The Argonauts were a männerbund: a confederation of warriors which gathered early Greek heroes, many direct children of the gods who laid the foundations of the legends and fathered the later heroes, often with divine mediation. They took their name from Argos, the ship they were traveling and did their Viking-style landings.

Below I reproduce some passages of Nordic phenotypes in Greek literature. Note that these are only a few examples of what exists in all of Greek literature:

• “Blonder hairs than a torch” (Sappho of Lesbos, talking about her daughter in Book V of her Alexandrian compilation).

• “Galatea of golden hair” (Philoxenus of Cythera, The Cyclops or Galatea).

• “…with a hair of gold and a silver face” (Alcman of Sparta, praising a maiden during a car race).

• “…happy girl of golden curls” (Alcman of Sparta, in honor of a Spartan poetess).

• “…blonde Lacedaemonians… of golden hair” (Bacchylides, talking about the young Spartans).

• Dicaearchus described Theban women as “blonde.”

The German scholar Wilhelm Sieglin (1855-1935) collected all the passages of Greek mythology which referred to the appearance of gods and heroes. From among the gods and goddesses, 60 were blond and 35 swarthy-skinned. Of the latter, 29 were chthonic-telluric divinities; marine deities such as Poseidon, or deities from the underworld. All of these came from the ancient pre-Aryan mythology of Greece. Of the mythological heroes, 140 were blond and 8 swarthy.

In this article, we have seen many instances of mythological characters, which is important because it provides us valuable information about the ideal of divinity and perfection of the ancient Greeks and points out that their values were identified with the North and the “Nordic” racial type. However, Sieglin also took into account the passages describing the appearance of real historical characters. Thus, of 122 prominent people of ancient Greece whose appearance is described in the texts, 109 were light haired (blond or red), and 13 swarthy.

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See also:

“The face of Classical Europe (II):
Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?”

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Footnotes:

[1] “Trojan”—i.e., a non-Greek.

[2] An explanation of terms like “red Nordid,” “slightly Armenized,” etc., appears in other article of the website Evropa Soberana, also reproduced in this blog.

Nordish Hellenes: the aristocracy of ancient Greece

As can be seen in my first comment of the last thread, a white nationalist has no idea of what nordicism is. Stubbs said in a VNN exchange that I included in The Fair Race, “Nordicism has come to refer the recognition that some parts of Europe have undergone significantly more mongrelization than others.” It is just that simple. But white nationalists, still under the firm grip of egalitarianism despite claims to the contrary, freak out before such no-brainer.

Below, a section that I forgot to translate last year into the article “Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?”

Adriano Romualdi said, cautious about the above information:

From all these data it would be unfair to infer that in all periods of Greek history blondes have constituted an overwhelming majority. But the truth is that they were numerous and, above all, set the tone for the ruling class (The Indo-European).

Exactly the same is true of India or Rome. Blond or redheads were the gods, heroes, kings, great men; in short, the Aryan people who formed the minority and dominant aristocratic caste. The mob, on the other hand, the numerous submitted people, were swarthy.

In fact, the American anthropologist J.L. Angel calculated in 1944, after a careful examination of the skulls of ancient Greece, that the Nordic predominantly constituted around 27 percent of the Greek population during the classical era. However, Angel is much concentrated in the area of Attica, i.e., the state of Athens, the Piraeus port, etc., where there was a strong foreign presence through trade and slavery. In other areas the Nordic aspect should have been more strongly represented, especially in territories that formed ponds of pure Hellenic blood and where there was no immigration from North African and Oriental slaves. Generalizing, the poet Bacchylides describes the Spartan youth as blonde, coinciding with another poet, Tyrtaeus of Sparta. Later Dicaearchus described the Thebans on the same terms.

Some will object that in the ancient representations of typical Greek jars the gods are represented as dark. Yes, sometimes scenes are depicted of homosexuality, that inevitably remind me of the Etruscans. But the craftsmen of Greece did not belong to the Greek aristocracy, but to the Mediterranean village of the conquered and subdued, who had adopted the gods of the conquerors and represented them as they pleased, that is, how they saw themselves. It is not there where we must seek information about the appearance of the gods, but in the art of the true Hellenes. The mythology and poetry of Greece, which itself was created by them, certainly describes the gods and heroes as Nordic-looking, as we have seen. And the Greek statues, made not by Mediterranean artisans but by real artists, imbued the Hellenes the sacred meaning of their art and also represent very clearly the Nordic ideal of beauty. Unfortunately, Christianity did a thorough job in eliminating most classic art, but the little of it that has reached us speaks for itself.

The Greeks were enthusiast physiognomists, interpreting the character and personality of an individual from the physical features, especially of the face. Few have seen it, but the Greek statues were made with that knowledge in mind and therefore represent not only a beautiful body, but a beautiful body that also carries a beautiful soul.

The Greeks, perhaps above any other Indo-European peoples, gave immense importance to the racial aspect: beauty, fitness and biological quality as a presentation card which connects closely with the cult of the body and sports, something typically Greek. The ideal beauty of the Greeks, without any doubt, was Nordic (precisely to distinguish themselves from the aboriginal, conquered people): Apollo, Adonis and Paris, three famous male idols for their beauty, were described as Nordic-looking. As for women, the most beautiful of all time, the legendary Helen of Sparta (later Helen of Troy and, even later, Helen of Sparta again): white, blond and blue-eyed like “Golden Aphrodite,” the goddess of love.

Even in the 4th century CE, when Greece had fallen, Rome itself was reeling, and anti-white and anti-pagan genocides were around the corner throughout the empire, the physician and sophist Jewish Adamantio described the “authentic” Greek, as opposed to the mestizo masses that were adopting Christianity, thus:

Where the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we see, well built, with fair skin and blond tall men a wide construction; the flesh is firm, the limbs straight and well made. The head is medium sized and is easily moved; the neck is strong, the hair clear, smooth and a little curly; the face is rectangular with thin lips, straight nose and bright, intense eyes full of light; because of all nations, the Greeks are those with lighter eyes.

Conclusion

Were the Greeks, then, blond and blue-eyed?

Depends on what you mean by “Greek.” The founders of classical Greek culture (and pre-classical, Homeric, Achaean or Mycenaean) as well as the posterior dominant and active Greek aristocracy, did not descend from the original inhabitants of the Greek soil. They were invading Hellenes (and maybe some Illyrian groups allied with them). That is to say: Indo-European peoples who entered Greece from the north, from the Balkans and Central Europe. These invaders of whom descended, among others, the Achaeans (Mycenaean civilization and “Homeric” Greece), the Ionians (Athenians), the Dorians (Spartans), people from Thessaly (Thebans) and Macedonians (like Alexander the Great) were predominantly Nordic.

If in the case of the Romans, a strong presence of Nordic blood is evident in their upper social strata (see “Were the Romans blond and blue-eyed?”), especially during the Republic, in the case of the Hellenes their taste for beauty and its relationship with Nordic appearance with the tall, with divine heritage and noble birth, absolutely infested the entire civilization, culture, literature, mythology and poetry. It was a world where the Oriental slaves had no place but at the bottom of the social pyramid. That is why the Jews worked hard to introduce Christianity in Europe: without it Europe would have been impregnable for them forever.

On the whole of the population of Greece, I do not think that the Nordics ever predominated. They may have been more than a third of the total population after the Second Hellenic wave (brought by the Dorians). In any case, despite being in the minority, they were the architects of the polis (city-state), culture, art and Greek civilization, while the rest of the population formed a mob that had little to do with the Hellenic culture as we know it today.

Bibliography

To dig deeper into the phenotype of the ancient Greeks it is recommended:

– GV De Lapouge L’Aryen: Social Rôle Son (1889).

– W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece (1901), Volume I.

– Hans FK Günther, Rassengeschichte hellenischen des Volkes und des römischen: Mit einem Anhang – Hellenische römische Köpfe nordischer und Rasse (1929).

– Hans FK Günther (1961) “Like a Greek God”, Translated by Vivian Bird Rassenkunde Hellenischen des Volkes. Northern World, VI (1), 5-16.

– Hans F.K. Günther, Rassenkunde Europas: Mit der besonderer Berücksichtigung Rassengeschichte Hauptvölker indogermanischer der Sprache (1929).

– J. L. Myres Who Were the Greeks? (1930).

– K. Jax, Die weibliche griechischen Schönheit in der Dichtung (1933).

– Wilhelm Sieglin, Die blonden indogermanischen Haare der Völker des Altertums (1935).

– O. Reche, Rasse und der Heimat Indogermanen (1936).

– Hans FK Günther, Lebensgeschichte hellenischen des Volkes (1956).

– JL Angel, (1943) “Ancient Cephallenians: The Population of a Mediterranean Island”. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, I, 229-260.

– JL Angel, (1944) “A Racial Analysis of the Ancient Greeks: An Essay on the Use of Morphological Types”. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, II, 329-376.

– JL Angel, (1945) “Skeletal Material From Attica”. Hesperia, XIV, 279-363

-. JL Angel, (1946) “Race, Type, and Ethnic Group in Ancient Greece.” Human Biology, XVIII, 1-32.

– JL Angel, (1946) “Skeletal Change in Ancient Greece”, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, IV, 69-97.

– JL Angel, (1946) “Social Biology of Greek Culture Growth”. American Anthropologist, XLVIII, 493-533.

– Moonwomon B., (1994) “Color Categorization in Early Greece”. Journal of Indo-European Studies, XXII, 37-65.

– R. Peterson, (1974) “The Greek Face”. Journal of Indo-European Studies, II, 385-406.

– W. Ridgeway, (1909) “The Relation of Anthropology to Classical Studies.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, XXXIX 10-25.

– And the whole of Greek literature which, alas, is not read anywhere near as much as it should. This is why the lies tend to thrive in this area, especially when there are inferior complexes involved.

(For the original in Spanish see: here)

Civilisation’s “Romance and Reality”

For an introduction to these series, see here.

Below, some indented excerpts of “Romance and Reality,” the third chapter of Civilisation by Kenneth Clark, after which I offer my comments.

Originally I posted this entry on April 15 of the last year, but now that I posted another entry about Spain’s Teresa of Ávila I would like to see some feedback in the comments section about my thoughts on St. Francis from those interested in child abuse as a subject.

Ellipsis omitted between unquoted passages:

I am in the Gothic world, the world of chivalry, courtesy and romance; a world in which serious things were done with a sense of play—where even war and theology could become a sort of game; and when architecture reached a point of extravagance unequalled in history. After all the great unifying convictions of the twelfth century, High Gothic art can look fantastic and luxurious—what Marxists call conspicuous waste. And yet these centuries produced some of the greatest spirits in the human history of man, amongst them St Francis and Dante.

A couple of pages later, Clark says:

Several of the stories depicted in the [Chartres Cathedral] arches concern Old Testament heroines; and at the corner of the portico is one of the first consciously graceful women in western art. Only a very few years before, women were thought of as the squat, bad-tempered viragos that we see on the front of Winchester Cathedral: these were the women who accompanied the Norsemen to Iceland.

Now look at this embodiment of chastity, lifting her mantle, raising her hand, turning her head with a movement of self-conscious refinement that was to become mannered but here is genuinely modest. She might be Dante’s Beatrice.

There, for almost the first time in visual art, one gets a sense of human rapport between man and woman.

About the sentiment of courtly love, on the next page Clark adds that it was entirely unknown to antiquity, and that to the Romans and the Vikings it would have seemed not only absurd but unbelievable.

A ‘love match’ is almost an invention of the late eighteenth century. Medieval marriages were entirely a matter of property, and, as everybody knows, marriage without love means love without marriage.

Then I suppose one must admit that the cult of the Virgin had something to do with it. In this context it sounds rather blasphemous, but the fact remains that one often hardly knows if a medieval love lyric is addresses to the poet’s mistress or to the Virgin Mary.

For all these reasons I think it is permissible to associate the cult of ideal love with the ravishing beauty and delicacy that one finds in the madonnas of the thirteenth century. Were there ever more delicate creatures than the ladies on Gothic ivories? How gross, compared to them, are the great beauties of other woman-worshiping epochs.

When I read these pages for the first time I was surprised to discover that my tastes of women have always been, literally, medieval; especially when I studied closely the face of the woman at the right in the tapestry known as The Lady with the Unicorn, reproduced on a whole page in Clark’s book with more detail than the illustration I’ve just downloaded. I have never fancied the aggressive, Hollywood females whose images are bombarded everywhere through our degenerate media. In fact, what moves me to write are precisely David Lane’s 14 words to preserve the beauty and delicacy of the most spiritual females of the white race.

Alas, it seems that the parents did not treat their delicate daughters well enough during the Middle Ages. Clark said:

So it is all the more surprising to learn that these exquisite creatures got terribly knocked about. It must be true, because there is a manual of how to treat women—actually how to bring up daughters—by a character called the Knight of the Tower of Landry, written in 1370 and so successful that it went on being read as a sort of textbook right up to the sixteenth century—in fact and edition was published with illustrations by Dürer. In it the knight, who is known to have been an exceptionally kind man, describes how disobedient women must be beaten and starved and dragged around by the hair of the head.

And six pages later Clark speaks about the most famous Saint in the High Middle Ages, whose live I would also consider the result of parental abuse:

In the years when the portal of Chartres was being built, a rich young man named Francesco Bernadone suffered a change of heart.

One day when he had fitted himself up in his best clothes in preparation for some chivalrous campaign, he met a poor gentleman whose need seemed to be greater than his own, and gave him his cloak. That night he dreamed that he should rebuild the Celestial City. Later he gave away his possessions so liberally that his father, who was a rich businessman in the Italian town of Assisi, was moved to disown him; whereupon Francesco took off his remaining clothes and said he would possess nothing, absolutely nothing. The Bishop of Assisi hid his nakedness, and afterwards gave him a cloak; and Francesco went off the woods, singing a French song.

The next three years he spent in abject poverty, looking after lepers, who were very much in evidence in the Middle Ages, and rebuilding with his own hands (for he had taken his dream literally) abandoned churches.

He threw away his staff and his sandals and went out bare-foot onto the hills. He said that he had taken poverty for his Lady, partly because he felt that it was discourteous to be in company of anyone poorer than oneself.

From the first everyone recognised that St Francis (as we may now call him) was a religious genius—the greatest, I believe, that Europe has ever produced.

Francis died in 1226 at the age of forty-three worn out by his austerities. On his deathbed he asked forgiveness of ‘poor brother donkey, my body’ for the hardships he had made it suffer.

Those of Francis’s disciples, called Fraticelli, who clung to his doctrine of poverty were denounced as heretics and burnt at the stake. And for seven hundred years capitalism has continued to grow to its present monstrous proportions. It may seem that St Francis has had no influence at all, because even the humane reformers of the nineteenth century who sometimes invoked him did not wish to exalt or sanctify poverty but to abolish it.

St Francis is a figure of the pure Gothic time—the time of crusades and castles and of the great cathedrals. But already during the lifetime of St Francis another world was growing up, which, for better or worse, is the ancestor of our own, the world of trade and of banking, of cities full of hard-headed men whose aim in life was to grow rich without ceasing to appear respectable.

Of course, Clark could not say that Francesco’s life was a classic case of battered child. Profound studies about child abuse would only start years after the Civilisation series. Today I would say that, since Francesco never wrote a vindictive text—something unthinkable in the Middle Ages that would not appear until Kafka’s letter to his father—, he internalized the parental abuse with such violence that his asceticism took his life prematurely.

What is missing in Clark’s account is that Francesco’s father whipped him in front of all the town people after Francesco stole from his shop several rolls of cloth. After the scourging inflicted by his father, with his own hands, and public humiliation, a citizen of Assisi reminded him that the town statutes allowed the father to incarcerate the rebellious son at home. Pedro shut Francesco in a sweltering, dark warehouse where “Francesco languished without seeing the light except when his father opened the door for Pica [the mother] taking a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.” After several weeks of being locked Francesco escaped and, always fearful of his father, hid in a cave. The earliest texts add that in the cave he often wept with great fear.

Francesco then embarked on a spectacular acting out of his emotional issues with his father. He made a big scene by returning to Assisi, undressing in the town’s square in front of Bishop Guido and addressing the crowd: “Hear all ye, and understand. Until now have I called Pedro Bernadone ‘my father’. But I now give back unto him the money, over which he was vexed, and all the clothes that I have had of him, desiring to say only, ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven,’ instead of ‘My father, Pedro Bernadone.’”

To everyone’s surprise Francesco broke with his wealthy parents forever, thus renouncing any possible reconciliation. So resolute was his parental repudiation, writes a Catholic biographer, that from that day on Pedro and Pica disappear from all the biographies of their son. There is no historical evidence of reconciliation, and no information about his parents or the circumstances of their death.

But I don’t want to diminish the figure of St Francis. Quite the contrary: in my middle teens I wanted to emulate him—and precisely as a result of the abuse inflicted by my father on me. And nowadays our world that has Mammon as its real God—trade, banking and dehumanized cities that are rapidly destroying the white race—, this will always remind me what Clark said about St Francis.

Nevertheless, despite my teenage infatuation with the saintly young man of Assisi, I doubt that poor Francesco’s defence mechanism to protect his mind against his father’s betrayal could be of any help now…

Uncle Adolf’s table talk – 5

“I have dipped into Mein Kampf but never read it: it was written only partly by Hitler, and that is the problem. More important are… Hitler’s table talks: daily memoranda which first Heim (Bormann’s adjutant, whom I interviewed) and then Picker wrote down at his table side”. —David Irving

 
Night of 21-22 July 1941

[Gratitude to the Jesuits – Protestant fanaticism – Similarities between Germany and Italy – Dante and Luther – The Duce is one of the Caesars – The march on Rome – a turning-point in history – Delightful Italian towns – Rome and Paris.]
 

When all’s said, we should be grateful to the Jesuits. Who knows if, but for them, we might have abandoned Gothic architecture for the light, airy, bright architecture of the Counter-Reformation? In the face of Luther’s efforts to lead an upper clergy that had acquired profane habits back to mysticism, the Jesuits restored to the world the joy of the senses.

It’s certain that Luther had no desire to mould humanity to the letter of the Scriptures. He has a whole series of reflections in which he clearly sets himself against the Bible. He recognises that it contains a lot of bad things.

Fanaticism is a matter of climate—for Protestantism, too, has burnt its witches. Nothing of that sort in Italy. The Southerner has a lighter attitude towards matters of faith. The Frenchman has personally an easy way of behaving in his churches. With us, it’s enough not to kneel to attract attention.

But Luther had the merit of rising against the Pope and the organisation of the Church. It was the first of the great revolutions. And thanks to his translation of the Bible, Luther replaced our dialects by the great German language!

It’s remarkable to observe the resemblances between the evolution of Germany and that of Italy. The creators of the language, Dante and Luther, rose against the ecumenical desires of the papacy.

Each of the two nations was led to unity, against the dynastic interests, by one man. They achieved their unity against the will of the Pope.

I must say, I always enjoy meeting the Duce. He’s a great personality. It’s curious to think that, at the same period as myself, he was working in the building trade in Germany. Our programme was worked out in 1919, and at that time I knew nothing about him. Our doctrines are based on the foundations proper to each of them, but every man’s way of thinking is a result. Don’t suppose that events in Italy had no influence on us. The brown shirt would probably not have existed without the black shirt. The march on Rome, in 1922, was one of the turning-points of history. The mere fact that anything of the sort could be attempted, and could succeed, gave us an impetus. A few weeks after the march on Rome, I was received by the Minister Schweyer. That would never have happened otherwise.

If Mussolini had been outdistanced by Marxism, I don’t know whether we could have succeeded in holding out. At that period National Socialism was a very fragile growth.

If the Duce were to die, it would be a great misfortune for Italy. As I walked with him in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, I could easily compare his profile with that of the Roman busts, and I realised he was one of the Caesars. There’s no doubt at all that Mussolini is the heir of the great men of that period.

Despite their weaknesses, the Italians have so many qualities that make us like them.

Italy is the country where intelligence created the notion of the State. The Roman Empire is a great political creation, the greatest of all.

The Italian people’s musical sense, its liking for harmonious proportions, the beauty of its race! The Renaissance was the dawn of a new era, in which Aryan man found himself anew. There’s also our own past on Italian soil. A man who is indifferent to history is a man without hearing, without sight. Such a man can live, of course—but what a life?

The magic of Florence and Rome, of Ravenna, Siena, Perugia! Tuscany and Umbria, how lovely they are!

The smallest palazzo in Florence or Rome is worth more than all Windsor Castle. If the English destroy anything in Florence or Rome, it will be a crime. In Moscow, it wouldn’t do any great harm; nor in Berlin, unfortunately.

I’ve seen Rome and Paris, and I must say that Paris, with the exception of the Arc de Triomphe, has nothing on the scale of the Coliseum, or the Castle of San Angelo, or St. Peter’s. These monuments, which are the product of a collective effort, have ceased to be on the scale of the individual. There’s something queer about the Paris buildings, whether it’s those bull’s-eye windows, so badly proportioned, or those gables that obliterate whole façades. If I compare the Pantheon in Rome with the Pantheon in Paris, what a poor building—and what sculptures! What I saw in Paris has disappeared from my memory: Rome really seized hold of me.

When the Duce came to Berlin, we gave him a magnificent reception. But our journey in Italy, that was something else! The reception when we arrived, with all the ceremonial; the visit to the Quirinal.

Naples, apart from the castle, might be anywhere in South America. But there’s always the courtyard of the royal palace. What nobility of proportions!

My dearest wish would be to be able to wander about in Italy as an unknown painter.

The White Queen

Recently I watched the black-and-white 1935 and 1952 film adaptations of Les Misérables. But I also watched the much more recent 1998 color adaptation starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, and Claire Danes. In Victor Hugo’s novel the revolutionist Enjolras is said to have the appearance of a good-looking ephebe, with “long fair lashes, blue eyes, hair flying in the wind, rosy cheeks, pure lips, and exquisite teeth.” Now, in this politically-correct fin de siècle adaptation, Enjolras is a nigger!

This vindicates what I recently said in “My Fair Lady”: forget recent films and see only the films that our grandparents liked. This said, once in a while there are rare exceptions. The premier episode of the first and only season of The White Queen, which was broadcast last June, is a gem.

You don’t have to watch the entire season since, right on episode 2, the extremely nasty court instigations began—as most of the season is set against the backdrop of the War of the Roses: two royal houses, Lancaster and York, fighting for the throne of England. Backdrop aside, I found the very first episode absolutely inspiring. In fact, that is precisely the world that we must fight for, at least visually!

There’s a scene that lasts less than a minute when, in the gardened path leaving their home, the commoner Rivers family wears white roses to honor Edward IV. The scene, which depicted a beautiful, rather large family, elevated my spirit to the heights of my inner world (so to speak): the world I would like to create on Earth. The blond children together with their elder brothers and beautiful sisters and parents in bucolic England are the perfect embodiment of why the fourteen words must be our creed and religion.

I highly recommend renting the season and watch the very first episode: the series premiere. (The whole season on the other hand will only make you suffer because of the nasty court intrigues of the War of the Roses.)

Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?

– II –

 
This piece has been chosen for my collection The Fair Race’s Darkest Hour. It has also been merged within a single entry.

Quotable quote

“We need a regime that (1) bans pornography and (2) erects statues of gorgeous naked nymphs and athletes in every public square and crossroads.”

 —Greg Johnson

Were the Greeks blond and blue-eyed?

This piece has been chosen for my collection The Fair Race’s Darkest Hour. It has also been merged within a single entry.

Die Götzen-Dämmerung, 2

Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “Christian,” that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that transposes the philosopher’s soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all exalted things into such beautiful soil.

Another queer saint! One does not trust one’s ears, even if one should trust Plato. At least one guesses that they philosophized differently in Athens, especially in public. Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual web-spinning of a hermit—amor intellectualis dei [intellectual love of God] after the fashion of Spinoza. Philosophy after the fashion of Plato might rather be defined as an erotic contest, as a further development and turning inward of the ancient agonistic gymnastics and of its presuppositions... What ultimately grew out of this philosophic eroticism of Plato?

A new art form of the Greek agon: dialectics. Finally, I recall—against Schopenhauer and in honor of Plato—that the whole higher culture and literature of classical France too grew on the soil of sexual interest. Everywhere in it one may look for the amatory, the senses, the sexual contest, “the woman”—one will never look in vain…

Sparta – XII

This specific chapter of Sparta and its Law has been moved: here.

If you want to read the book Sparta and its Law from the beginning, click: here.