Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pikaiana Show
Speaker 1: and thank you. This is my thousandth episode. If you
Speaker 1: would have told me when I started this that I
Speaker 1: would have had a thousandth episode, I would have told
Speaker 1: you that you were probably insane and I'd probably be
Speaker 1: dead by now or something. But here I am, and
Speaker 1: I invited my friend Thomas seven seven seven to come
Speaker 1: on the show and do this with me.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Thomas, I'm very well, thank you and
Speaker 2: minored to be here for the for the millenerian episode,
Speaker 2: I guess. I mean, that's no, it's no small thing.
Speaker 2: A thousand episodes. That's a hell of a lot of content.
Speaker 2: That's a real milestone. And and it's a milestone that
Speaker 2: it's New Year's Eve. This has been a really incredible year.
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody says that. I mean that. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't mean it in a corny way. I mean
Speaker 2: it really has. And I'm profoundly optimistic for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: So we're in a good place.
Speaker 1: I am what I am as well. I'm very optimistic
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty four. I think if our people really
Speaker 1: concentrate on getting things done, taking care of business, this
Speaker 1: Year twenty twenty four. At the end, we're going to
Speaker 1: be much stronger for it. They will be much stronger
Speaker 1: for it too.
Speaker 2: I think there's a historical moment underway. Yeah, definitely. And
Speaker 2: I think I'm both old enough and I'm plugged in
Speaker 2: enough to the zeitgeist, because I mean, that's frankly, all
Speaker 2: I do is try and perceive these things. You know,
Speaker 2: I think I can. I think I can read the
Speaker 2: proverbial tea leaves more deeptely than some men. So yeah,
Speaker 2: these are exciting times. Man, It's good we're here on
Speaker 2: New Year's Eve producing content like the busy bees. We
Speaker 2: are not not not doing gross stuff for New Year's Eve,
Speaker 2: like like dodging pedals of vomit and stepping over like
Speaker 2: weeping fit chicks.
Speaker 1: Those days are gone for me. I like being I
Speaker 1: like being at home, being at home or being with friends.
Speaker 1: So well, what I wanted to do, what I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask is well, what I wanted to say is
Speaker 1: the reason I chose this to read is because it's
Speaker 1: something very different than what I normally read. A lot
Speaker 1: of this is poetry, is very poetic. I also think
Speaker 1: that I'm pretty sure this is probably the last thing
Speaker 1: that mister Degreaul wrote. It seemed definitely seems like it's
Speaker 1: probably the last thing that he wrote that it really
Speaker 1: meant something to him. I thought we'd open this up
Speaker 1: by tell us a little bit about what you know
Speaker 1: about Leon de Grell.
Speaker 2: I mean, in the Inner War yors, the girl was
Speaker 2: too young to have fought in the Great War. I
Speaker 2: think he was born in nineteen o six. He was
Speaker 2: born in a five or six like around there, okay,
Speaker 2: but he came of age. He was very much marriornate
Speaker 2: in the culture of the Inner War years. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that's lacking in court history accounts, even
Speaker 2: ones that aren't particularly punitive in terms of casting Germany
Speaker 2: as being taken swept up by a kind of cultural
Speaker 2: pathology that was both against precedent and not really connected
Speaker 2: to the spirit of the age other other than in
Speaker 2: a kind of contrarian way. But there, you know the
Speaker 2: things that were ripping through Germany, you know, very powerful,
Speaker 2: intense energies of a constructive and destructive nature, this kind
Speaker 2: of confrontation with the future and with the present, which
Speaker 2: had all the trappings of a kind of ominous future.
Speaker 2: Like this stuff was the stuff was impacting every culture
Speaker 2: in Europe, okay, rit large, and I mean that's why,
Speaker 2: like we talked about in the Spanish War, Sodes, you know,
Speaker 2: there there was a truly on the nationalist side of
Speaker 2: the fascist side, which you know is an incomplete characterization,
Speaker 2: which is for purpose as a shorthand description. I think
Speaker 2: that's at least adequate. You know, like we talked about,
Speaker 2: you know, there was the funerals at Vasili Marine and
Speaker 2: ion Mota, you know, these Romanian Iron Guard guys, and
Speaker 2: you know it was uh you know, Italians, German national socialists,
Speaker 2: you know, Hungarians, you know, uh Carlos types in Spain
Speaker 2: who supported the crown. You know, like all these all
Speaker 2: these all these anti communists, right wing elements, you know,
Speaker 2: turned out to literally salute like there this funeral procession.
Speaker 2: And similarly, the guys who staffed the ranks of of
Speaker 2: these frontline formations in the Spanish War, I mean they
Speaker 2: they were guys from all kinds of backgrounds and you know,
Speaker 2: all all the nations of Europe quite literally, and you know,
Speaker 2: they common bond was you know, a belief in like
Speaker 2: you know, in race, you know, like capital r you know,
Speaker 2: like a you know, faith in God, you know, a
Speaker 2: radically highest commitment to those things, you know. And in Belgium,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of high culture that comes from Belgium,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean it's it's not just it's not
Speaker 2: just this kind of like accidental convergence of German or
Speaker 2: Dutch culture and and you know, kind of like a
Speaker 2: Francophone state. It it really is a unique place. I
Speaker 2: got been there like many years ago. You know, the
Speaker 2: girl was the girl was a Walloon? Is it Belgian?
Speaker 2: Like a Francophone Belgian. The right wing tendency there that
Speaker 2: he was actually instrumental and kind of creating it was
Speaker 2: very much I mean it was it was the Rexist Party,
Speaker 2: and it was it was very much royalist, you know
Speaker 2: in terms of it's kind of in terms of it's
Speaker 2: kind of supervisual trappings. But it was very national Socialist adjacent. Okay,
Speaker 2: it was very other than me Catholic and openly Catholic
Speaker 2: and royalists like it was. I'd say it was more
Speaker 2: adjacent to to the national Socialist the culture than any
Speaker 2: other and any other of the the the the lesser
Speaker 2: access movements, say maybe the the situation in Croatia, but
Speaker 2: that's basically the that that's a culture from from where
Speaker 2: de Grelle emerged. And initially, Uh, there's a wild Loon
Speaker 2: legion that was incorporated into the Wehrmacht. The term legion
Speaker 2: was kind of loosely apply, like I think, UH, it
Speaker 2: could mean anything from a force that was, you know,
Speaker 2: slightly larger than than that company you know in AH
Speaker 2: in the US Army or the British Army of the day,
Speaker 2: you know, to something that was you know, the size
Speaker 2: of a like a battalion and a half, you know,
Speaker 2: so it veried. But the well in legion was it
Speaker 2: was it was comparatively small, but it was game enough,
Speaker 2: and it was it was populated enough by volunteers that
Speaker 2: you know, the UH it enjoyed the honor of being
Speaker 2: formally incorporated into the Verrimax and then later the Grille
Speaker 2: Uh proved himself an incredible an incredibly effective like infantry
Speaker 2: combat commander. Okay, first at squad and then platoon and
Speaker 2: then you know, company level and beyond. Is a very
Speaker 2: young man and all to the wild and legion became
Speaker 2: part of the WAFS and that was very much the
Speaker 2: Grell's That was much it is behest the Grell believed
Speaker 2: in the waf SS, okay, and that's important, Like, it
Speaker 2: wasn't just the reason why there was such the look
Speaker 2: kind of the delicately and very and powerfully uh evocative
Speaker 2: uh like they delicately crafted, and the and the kind
Speaker 2: of like the the powerfully evocative in design heraldry of
Speaker 2: the SS. Like that wasn't an accident. It wasn't just
Speaker 2: because it wasn't just because German artists attached to the
Speaker 2: attached to the officer schools were bored or something like.
Speaker 2: As an enterprise, it was it was supposed to be
Speaker 2: an enduring institution. It was supposed to represent the pan
Speaker 2: European idea. And moving forward after n SIG, you know,
Speaker 2: there there was gonna be a there was gonna be
Speaker 2: a European army, okay. And to what degree they would
Speaker 2: have butted heads uh with the Wehrmacht, that's hard to say.
Speaker 2: But operational integration on the ast front was actually very tight,
Speaker 2: and there was there's a lot of mutual respect between
Speaker 2: the here and between the SS that develops. I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think it would have been another like not
Speaker 2: a long night situation at all. But point being, you know,
Speaker 2: de Grelle. He wasn't just this kind of dreamy you know,
Speaker 2: pan europeanist to who else would be a war hero
Speaker 2: like he? You know, he the culture of the s S.
Speaker 2: It was guys like him. It was guys like Jack
Speaker 2: and Piper and Kurt panzer Meyer. It was Paul Hauser,
Speaker 2: who's who's a non military genius in my opinion. And
Speaker 2: he was kind of the big hous was kind of
Speaker 2: the big defector from the old sort of army elite,
Speaker 2: you know who I mean. He he he signed on
Speaker 2: for the s S immediately. And it's not like he
Speaker 2: was some It's not like he was a guy, you
Speaker 2: know who had problems like some of these early and
Speaker 2: S authors did, like who were great comic commanders, but
Speaker 2: you know they had a problem with womanizing or brawling
Speaker 2: or alcoholism or something like Howser could have done anything
Speaker 2: he wanted, you know, but he he believed in the
Speaker 2: vafn SS, you know, like as as a proposition and
Speaker 2: as an enterprise and to itself that was essential to
Speaker 2: you know, what was to become the new order. So
Speaker 2: the girl kind of embodied all those things, you know,
Speaker 2: That's that's why significant. And then he he he survived
Speaker 2: the war. He quite literally crashed landed in Franco Spain
Speaker 2: as a wanted man, and he he lived to be
Speaker 2: quite elderly. He lived until the nineteen nineties, early nineties
Speaker 2: memory serves, I know he lived beyond nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: I think he was alive until like ninety three, ninety four.
Speaker 2: But you know, he'd show up at IHR events and
Speaker 2: like mingle with people, and you know, he he very
Speaker 2: much positioned himself as kind of a defender of the
Speaker 2: historical record. He never shied from his war record. You know,
Speaker 2: up until the day he died, he'd on a formal occasions,
Speaker 2: you know, he he'd wear his like war decorations, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh he was he was proud of the vafinances
Speaker 2: on the day he died. So he was he was
Speaker 2: a real man and a real patriot. And especially you
Speaker 2: know because my like my generation, our generation, we were
Speaker 2: kind of like the last generation of young people you
Speaker 2: know who are like around like World War Two veterans.
Speaker 2: You know, I uh inappreciable numbers and uh de Grell.
Speaker 2: I've talked to a lot of guys who got to
Speaker 2: meet the Grell and stuff, you know, mostly European guys,
Speaker 2: but some with some of the some of the American
Speaker 2: dudes who were active, you know, with in IHR and
Speaker 2: and with like liberty lobby stuff, you know, ladies early nineties,
Speaker 2: and they who had a chance to meet him, and
Speaker 2: they just said he was like an incredible guy, you know,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure he was. But that's I mean that
Speaker 2: that's a significance and this that's something. Uh, I take
Speaker 2: up a peculiar interest in the vaf sss. And as
Speaker 2: you know and as the fellows know as well as
Speaker 2: you know, the even the casual subscribers. I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not a military guy. Obviously, I'm not like prior service
Speaker 2: and like I'm not I'm not a military science guy.
Speaker 2: I focus on the vaf SS like I do, like
Speaker 2: not just because it's cool, which it is, and I
Speaker 2: don't I don't run from the fact that like gravity
Speaker 2: towards things just because they're cool sometimes, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't think we ever outgrow that if we're intellectually curious.
Speaker 2: But it's also like the vaf SS is a model
Speaker 2: of European integration. I mean, that's essential, and that was
Speaker 2: after NCIGE, that that was the model for how things
Speaker 2: were going to be organized. Okay, so these guys like
Speaker 2: ian Ian Kershaw and some of these other kind of
Speaker 2: just midway court historians are like, oh, German chauvinism and
Speaker 2: German in nationalism. It's like, look, nobody there were There
Speaker 2: weren't a million like non Germans who signed on to
Speaker 2: the fight in the ass because they love the German nationalism.
Speaker 2: Like that's not how things work, and that's just not
Speaker 2: how this as nine like in you know, by the
Speaker 2: mid twentieth century, that kind of thinking was dead anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, like you had the whole the entire Raizone
Speaker 2: debt for the Third Reich in geostrategic terms and consequently
Speaker 2: in cultural terms, the two things can't be extricated. What's
Speaker 2: to make Europe a superpower? You know, so a this
Speaker 2: uh this kind of like this armed like protection echelon
Speaker 2: and like offten shoots staff like it quite literally translates
Speaker 2: to like armed protection echelon or like armed like defensive echelon,
Speaker 2: you know of kind of like replacing or as like
Speaker 2: a or representing you know, kind of a vanguard formation
Speaker 2: against uh, the enemies of Europe, racial and otherwise you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like a watch on the Rhine, like writ
Speaker 2: large that was where like all all the nations of
Speaker 2: Europe are represented, you know, and with with heraldic UH signification.
Speaker 2: You know that that's something that days so like Crusader era,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's that's very deep in the European
Speaker 2: kind of cultural like military cultural mind, so that it's
Speaker 2: important to you on the fact that it's just cool,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's why I was like very much
Speaker 2: not like a military type, like spend so much time
Speaker 2: with the vass because it's it's got an outsized importance
Speaker 2: in UH in the Third Reich and like the worldview
Speaker 2: that shaped it. But that's that that maybe that's probably
Speaker 2: a little bit outside of the scope, but that's that's
Speaker 2: that that was born to consider. We're talking about de
Speaker 2: Grill in history and what he represented.
Speaker 1: All right, well, this is UH. I guess once we
Speaker 1: start reading this, people will get people will get the
Speaker 1: notion that he's looking back upon his life and he's
Speaker 1: looking at not only what was, but what could have been.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that in here. But there's
Speaker 1: I think this is something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: should hear, So I'm gonna share it and start reading.
Speaker 1: All right, there we go, all right Part one, Empty
Speaker 1: hearts one, the flame and the ashes stop me anytime,
Speaker 1: Thomas to comment on anything here. I am nearly at
Speaker 1: the end of my life. I felt almost nothing, I
Speaker 1: felt almost everything, knew everything. More than anything I suffered.
Speaker 1: I saw dazzled the great golden fires of my youth arise.
Speaker 1: Their flames eliminated my illuminated my land. The crowds made
Speaker 1: the starry waves of their thousands of faces dance around me.
Speaker 1: Their fervor, their eddies existed. But did they really in
Speaker 1: fact exist? Wasn't all this a dream? Did I not
Speaker 1: dream that thirty years ago a nation called my name?
Speaker 1: And that on certain days that the most distant newspapers
Speaker 1: of the planet repeated it? Tucked away in my exiled sadness,
Speaker 1: I can no longer believe in my past itself? Did
Speaker 1: I live those times? Or not know those passions? Raise
Speaker 1: those oceans? I walk my terraces, I lean over my roses,
Speaker 1: I discern the sense Have I ever been another being
Speaker 1: other than this lonely dreamer who vainly clutches at memories
Speaker 1: frayed like mountain fogs. Wasn't all this something other than
Speaker 1: a hallucination. I cannot see, far away, far away, in
Speaker 1: faded lights, their bodies as if from a Greco painting,
Speaker 1: growing thinner and thinner. Did these men who have faded
Speaker 1: forever from the horizon know me? Did they follow me?
Speaker 1: Did I lead them? Did I exist in my memories?
Speaker 1: As in my hands. I no longer feel that fleeting wind.
Speaker 1: My eyes and what eyes should I have? Eyes of desperation.
Speaker 1: My eyes have searched the impassive sky, tried to see
Speaker 1: in the depths of the years, in the depths of
Speaker 1: the centuries. What did it mean the being that I am?
Speaker 1: In what way it is still the being that once
Speaker 1: carried my name, who was known, who was listened to,
Speaker 1: for whom many have lived, and for whom also many
Speaker 1: have died.
Speaker 2: This being?
Speaker 1: What this being? What does it have to do with
Speaker 1: the man who walks bitter endlessly alone upon a few
Speaker 1: meters of foreign land, rummaging through his past, losing himself
Speaker 1: in it, no longer believing in it, wondering if it
Speaker 1: is really who he who was tossed one hundred times
Speaker 1: in the tornadoes of an implacable destiny, or if this
Speaker 1: was no more than a dream So if I doubt
Speaker 1: my flesh, my bones, what my public action once forged,
Speaker 1: If I doubt the reality of my past and the
Speaker 1: part that I took in a few years of building
Speaker 1: up the history of men, what can I still believe
Speaker 1: of the ideals which were born in me, which burned me,
Speaker 1: which I projected, of the value of my convictions at
Speaker 1: the time, of my feelings, of what I thought of humanity,
Speaker 1: what I dreamed of creating for her. Each human being
Speaker 1: is a succession of human beings, as dissimilar from each other,
Speaker 1: as the passer adds, the passers by whose desperate faces
Speaker 1: we scrutinize in the street. At fifty, how do we
Speaker 1: still look like the young man of twenty, whom we
Speaker 1: are trying to remember, and whose survival we want at
Speaker 1: all costs. Even his flesh is no longer the same flesh.
Speaker 1: It is gone, has been remade, renewed, no more than
Speaker 1: a millimeter of skin is the skin of those times?
Speaker 2: You know? For context too, It like the girl just
Speaker 2: mentioned that he's fifty here and thirty years past the
Speaker 2: war hes like in his fifties and around that Yak
Speaker 2: and Piper died when he was about sixty but it
Speaker 2: the degree to which I mean his politics aside, you know,
Speaker 2: it had to be very very strange beyond I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's strange if anyone gets caught up in historical
Speaker 2: circumstances as a very young man and that kind of
Speaker 2: settles in a normalcy. I mean, that's strange. But particularly
Speaker 2: like Piper. You know, Piper went on to a prestigious job,
Speaker 2: like with Portia, Like you know, he was like an
Speaker 2: incredibly successful guy by like any metric. But he during
Speaker 2: like the last interview, gave the Spiegel when he kind
Speaker 2: of become marked man again during the kind of resurgence,
Speaker 2: and and I fish it's tendencies, you know. He was
Speaker 2: like you know, when I was you know, when I
Speaker 2: was in when I was in my twenties, I was, uh,
Speaker 2: I was leading a tank across the step against the
Speaker 2: Red Army, you know, and we were prepared to go
Speaker 2: all the way to Moscow, crush it and literally shake
Speaker 2: the world, you know, and then uh, you know, like
Speaker 2: nothing like like nothing later in life is gonna come
Speaker 2: close to that, and everything else is gonna seem this
Speaker 2: kind of like mundane. But it's also these guys felt
Speaker 2: like prisoners. I mean not just because of like the
Speaker 2: the kind of you know, the constant the constant threat,
Speaker 2: like a physical and spiritual of the regime that replaced
Speaker 2: the one that they fought on behalf of. But you know,
Speaker 2: everybody with hostage the Cold War at this time, and
Speaker 2: particularly like in Europe. And Piper made that point too,
Speaker 2: like when the Spiegel guy was trying to kind of
Speaker 2: like impeaches not you know, not it kind of impeaches
Speaker 2: moral credibility. Piper is like, well, you know, now we're
Speaker 2: that designated battleground of of World War three, Like we're
Speaker 2: better off now. You know. It's like basically saying like
Speaker 2: these distance we as Europeans live now is crushing the mundane,
Speaker 2: punctuated only by like the periodic terror of you know,
Speaker 2: a crisis that could resolve in in in the nuclear apocalypse.
Speaker 2: You know. It's I mean, so I think gravity of
Speaker 2: those things, that's it's a very strange place to be,
Speaker 2: you know. And yeah, in Degrell's case, you know, he
Speaker 2: personally he was personally decorated by Hitler. He was a
Speaker 2: he was a Knights crossholder, you know, he was a
Speaker 2: he was a hero of the Third Reich. You know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't uh, he wasn't just a run on the
Speaker 2: mill kind of war hero looking back on on his
Speaker 2: glory d's or whatever, you know, and to to go
Speaker 2: from that too in a few years, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of having to watch for you travel because you know,
Speaker 2: you might be you might you might be you might
Speaker 2: be assaulted and detained and find yourself, you know, indicted
Speaker 2: in some kangaroo courts in the Hague or Tel Aviv
Speaker 2: or the United States. I mean that they had to
Speaker 2: be almost kind of surreal, like I think about like
Speaker 2: those old TV shows like The Prisoner or something, you know,
Speaker 2: like the old BBC show or whatever. It's just it's
Speaker 2: a very strange way to live, and like anybody who's
Speaker 2: at all thoughtful or psychologically sensitive, as obviously the girl was,
Speaker 2: they had to really do a number on them. But
Speaker 2: that's that's all I want to do.
Speaker 1: Insinuate what then about the soul and our thoughts, the
Speaker 1: feelings that propelled us to action, and the feelings that
Speaker 1: passed to us like breaths or fire through the heart.
Speaker 1: How many distinct men do we carry with us? Who fight,
Speaker 1: who contradict each other, or who even ignore each other.
Speaker 1: We are good and we are evil. We are both
Speaker 1: the objection, the objection and the dream. We are both
Speaker 1: tangled and extricable nets. But it is not here that
Speaker 1: the horror of fate laws. The atrocious thing is to
Speaker 1: break these nets themselves, to throw your soul overboard. The
Speaker 1: horrible thing is to have to say that the essential
Speaker 1: in our lives was caricatured, disfigured by a thousand defilements
Speaker 1: and a thousand denials. Who has not experienced these debacles.
Speaker 1: Some realize their bankruptcy with pain. Others make the observation
Speaker 1: with cynicism or with an arrogant smile. Of those who
Speaker 1: no longer listen, who are convinced that the knowledge of
Speaker 1: man and the superiority of the spirit consist in engaging
Speaker 1: in all experiences deliberately exhausting the most perverse pleasures, without
Speaker 1: excessive astonishment, and without regret, having found in the use
Speaker 1: and in the desecration of everything information, the condescension and
Speaker 1: indifference of an ethics of decomposition, free from any spiritual counterbalance,
Speaker 1: without a doubt, the world in which we live has become,
Speaker 1: to a great extent, the world of these amoral people,
Speaker 1: so sure of themselves no doubt those who would persist
Speaker 1: in imagining a humanity of high virtues may fancy them
Speaker 1: to be anachronistic beings, non evolved, glued to old fads,
Speaker 1: living apart from men, apart from their time, apart from fashion,
Speaker 1: apart from reality.
Speaker 2: And that's the Catholic. The girl like the Catholic in
Speaker 2: comes out a lot, you know, like it's obvious, like
Speaker 2: a non Catholic National Socialist wouldn't write this way. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's nothing. I'm not putting shade on on on his
Speaker 2: tone at all, quite the contrary. But it's it's interesting
Speaker 2: because you know they grew the girl. The Catholic and
Speaker 2: the girl the National Socialists coexists very in a very
Speaker 2: complimentary and seamless way. And like that. The people who
Speaker 2: are ignorant of the topic it loved, the mouth off
Speaker 2: about it are always claiming like that's not possible, that
Speaker 2: some contradictory. But he's he's very much speaking as a
Speaker 2: Catholic through much of this memoir. That's all.
Speaker 1: It was here that I arrived. I dreamed of I
Speaker 1: dreamed of a century of knights, strong and noble, all
Speaker 1: dominating hard and pure. My banners said, I feel unbalanced
Speaker 1: with my bundle of old dreams. I know that feelings
Speaker 1: like the ones I have tried to express can hardly
Speaker 1: be felt anymore, or even seem painful to some. But
Speaker 1: I have seen so much, I've suffered so much that
Speaker 1: one more bitter thought will not tire me beyond my ability.
Speaker 1: So too bad these dreams, well, yes I had them,
Speaker 1: These impulses, yes I carried them. This love of others, yes,
Speaker 1: it burned me, It consumed me. I wanted to see
Speaker 1: in man a heart, to love, to excite, to raise
Speaker 1: a soul which, even if it was half exiciated by
Speaker 1: the pestilence of its slavery, aspired to find a pure
Speaker 1: breath and sometimes only waited for a word or a
Speaker 1: look to emerge and to be reborn. Let us be
Speaker 1: straightforward to interject, to use others the right to moral
Speaker 1: or spiritual consideration these I do not have. I know
Speaker 1: this only too well. I have had my share of
Speaker 1: miseries alast like so many others. And even if I
Speaker 1: hadn't suffered them myself, I've been loaned so many miseries
Speaker 1: from others that I can only feel when I analyze myself,
Speaker 1: confusion and unfathomable sadness. Yet the spirit of the Ideal
Speaker 1: that throws its fire into this book has devoured me
Speaker 1: every day of my existence. I should, of course have
Speaker 1: left it to others less affected, the care and responsibility
Speaker 1: of returning light and song to mankind. But that fire
Speaker 1: was burning me down today, suffocated by a relentless spell.
Speaker 1: The great fire of yesteryear leaves nothing but ashes. I
Speaker 1: come back to it anyway, stubbornly, because these ashes evoke
Speaker 1: the moment of fervor in my life, the deepest impulses,
Speaker 1: the very spiritual basis of my action. Here they are disarrayed,
Speaker 1: delivered to the wind, which will quickly disperse them. These thoughts,
Speaker 1: these dreams, are all in disorder. I have not made
Speaker 1: a plan.
Speaker 2: It is the height.
Speaker 1: I did not sit at my table like a distinguished
Speaker 1: and reasonable writer. I have not written a manual of
Speaker 1: the Idealist, chapter by chapter, calculating everything, measuring everything, not that,
Speaker 1: nothing like that, what to do? The impulses of the
Speaker 1: soul are not graduated like the flow of a gas.
Speaker 1: Appliance Hope, passion, love, faith, pain, and shame dictated to me.
Speaker 1: The writings that I tossed about at such and such
Speaker 1: a time, because I felt them then with great force.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was at the summit of my public action.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was in the abandonment the mud and the
Speaker 1: cold of my distant life as a suffering soldier in
Speaker 1: the vastness of the Eastern Front. But the soul that
Speaker 1: lived these impulses followed a common thread, invisible to many.
Speaker 1: It was nevertheless the artery that spiritually nourished my existence. Therefore,
Speaker 1: these know are not so much nonsense. They record the
Speaker 1: ups and downs of a soul among souls, all of
Speaker 1: which have their ups and downs. Certainly, the spirit which
Speaker 1: has arrived that the stale wisdom of cynicism can dominate
Speaker 1: by its cold smile, can display the icy marble of
Speaker 1: its interior tomb and engrave on them its findings with
Speaker 1: an impassive pen. But fire, it has many forms. It rises, lowers,
Speaker 1: is reborn, starts anew. This book is fire, with the
Speaker 1: exaltations of fire, the excess of fire. If only they
Speaker 1: could have the beneficent heat, If only the souls could
Speaker 1: find this comfort and vigor. As we find them meditating
Speaker 1: in the evening near a large, almost silent wood fire,
Speaker 1: the waves of its powerful life penetrate, and their radiation
Speaker 1: and their contemplation. They offer themselves completely, They deliver themselves completely.
Speaker 1: The gift, the real gift, is thus annihilating until the
Speaker 1: last brand from me. My fire is dead, my life
Speaker 1: has plunged into the abyss, has been submerged by the
Speaker 1: black dawn that has smothered everything. But I still want
Speaker 1: to believe that these impulses, which animated the action of
Speaker 1: a man already dead in the eyes of most, though
Speaker 1: he has the misfortune to still live for himself, will
Speaker 1: still be able to join spiritually from here to there
Speaker 1: in the world. Anxious hearts, I remember these words that
Speaker 1: I had deciphered one day on a tomb of black
Speaker 1: marble therein dumb in Flanders, in a church of my
Speaker 1: lost homeland, at Seymour Tuus. Or it even dead, it burns,
Speaker 1: may these pages the last fleeting fire of what I
Speaker 1: was burn for a moment, warm for a moment. Souls
Speaker 1: haunted by the passion of giving and believing, believing in
Speaker 1: spite of everything, in spite of the assurances of the
Speaker 1: corrupt and the cynics, despite the sad, bitter taste that
Speaker 1: leaves us with the memory of our falls the awareness
Speaker 1: of our misery and the immense field of moral ruins
Speaker 1: of a world that is certain to have no more
Speaker 1: of salvation, which prides itself on it, and which nevertheless
Speaker 1: must be saved, must more than ever be saved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the you know, that's the point. I'm
Speaker 2: always drawing a parallel between crusader orders and the waff says,
Speaker 2: that's not that's not just ex post facto romantic interpretations,
Speaker 2: and it's not just a you know, a way of
Speaker 2: superficially drunk a parallel owing to the kind of multinational character.
Speaker 2: This is the like the degree to which I mean,
Speaker 2: for better or worse, And however anybody feels about the
Speaker 2: Third Reich and adjacent regimes, and you know, institutions like
Speaker 2: the vaffin As says, which were kind of like the
Speaker 2: tie that bound like these regimes together in terms of praxis. Like,
Speaker 2: these guys really did view themselves as as crusaders, and
Speaker 2: they the the imperatives that they were abiding were very
Speaker 2: much metaphysical and and uncompromisingly moral ones like not moral
Speaker 2: in the sense of you know, what is morality, but
Speaker 2: you know, owing to ah, their their world view was
Speaker 2: populated by you know, by by values directed things. You know.
Speaker 2: It was not it was it was not conventional kind
Speaker 2: of uh, twentieth century politics. Okay. I know that some
Speaker 2: people their rebuttal would be the well, this is a
Speaker 2: sort of like window dressing for you know, typically crude
Speaker 2: power political activity. And yeah, there's always some degree of that,
Speaker 2: But these institutions don't just spontaneously develop mythologies to substantiate
Speaker 2: you know, the needs of of like a war executive,
Speaker 2: even even a messianic type person like get off Hitler.
Speaker 2: That just doesn't happen. Okay, this is obviously something that
Speaker 2: these men felt very deeply in. Uh, it was very
Speaker 2: extant in their in their minds and hearts as it were,
Speaker 2: and that they can't be overstated. I mean, yeah, there
Speaker 2: was there was a there's there's a radicalism obviously that
Speaker 2: animated the communists to do what they did, and that
Speaker 2: kind of uh, a kind of reckless indifference to what
Speaker 2: the consequences would be, you know, if their revolutionary ambitions
Speaker 2: fell short or whatever. But it wasn't the same thing.
Speaker 2: You know, it the place from where it emerged in
Speaker 2: emotional in the most primitive kind of emotional terms, you know,
Speaker 2: might have been the same, but what it uh what
Speaker 2: what what it what it's what what its intentions were
Speaker 2: and ultimately what populated that kind of worldview was like
Speaker 2: very very different, you know. And you it's not just
Speaker 2: to Grill who makes these points, you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: like if you read what Piper wrote, I mean even
Speaker 2: guys except Dietrich, who was a you know very much
Speaker 2: kind of a like a like a like a rough
Speaker 2: human Bavarian, you know, like he he talked about, you know,
Speaker 2: his role as a commanding leaf standard and basically like
Speaker 2: religious terms, you know. And that's that's some that's very authentic.
Speaker 2: Like whether you believe that it's right or not, that's
Speaker 2: not what we're talking about. Like we're talking about what animated,
Speaker 2: you know, the men who actually took up our arms
Speaker 2: in the service of these institutions, and and the and
Speaker 2: the idea that uh, these institutions you know, created to serve.
Speaker 1: All right onward to the agony of the century. Love
Speaker 1: Why why Love? Human beings have barricaded themselves behind their
Speaker 1: selfishness and pleasure. Virtue has abandoned its natural song. We
Speaker 1: laugh at our old rights, soul suffocate. Perhaps they were
Speaker 1: already liquidated, the evidence hidden behind the decorum of habits
Speaker 1: and conventions. Happiness has become for man and for a
Speaker 1: woman a heap of fruit, which they devour in a hurry,
Speaker 1: or in which they plant their teeth without more and
Speaker 1: reject them pell mell damage, bodies, damaged souls, quick exhausted
Speaker 1: by the fleeting frenzy, already looking for other, more exciting
Speaker 1: or more perverse fruits. The air is charged with all
Speaker 1: moral and spiritual denials. The lungs drawn in vain for
Speaker 1: a breath of fresh air, the freshness of a spray
Speaker 1: thrown close to the sands. Man's interior gardens have lost
Speaker 1: their colors and their bird song. Love itself is no
Speaker 1: longer given. And besides, what is love, the most beautiful
Speaker 1: word in the world, Reduced to the rank of physical pastime,
Speaker 1: instinctive and interchangeable. The only happiness lays in the gift,
Speaker 1: the only happiness that consoles, that intoxicates, like the full
Speaker 1: fragrance of the fruits and leaves of autumn, happiness only
Speaker 1: exists in the gift, the complete gift. His selflessness gives
Speaker 1: him the flavor of eternity. He returns to the lips
Speaker 1: of the soul with an intangible sweetness. Give to have
Speaker 1: seen eyes that shine, to have been understood, touched, fulfilled.
Speaker 1: Give feel the grand happy tablecloths floating like dancing water
Speaker 1: on a heart suddenly adorned with sun. Give to have
Speaker 1: reached the secret fibers that weave the mystery of sensibility,
Speaker 1: the mysteries of sensibility. Give to have this gesture which
Speaker 1: unburdens the hand, which relieves its carnal weight, which exhausts
Speaker 1: the need to be loved. Then the heart becomes as
Speaker 1: light as pollen. Its pleasure rises like the song of
Speaker 1: the nightingale, a burning voice that lights the darkness. We
Speaker 1: pour forth with joy. We have emptied this power of happiness,
Speaker 1: which was not to be partaken self fishly, which encumbered us,
Speaker 1: which we had to pour out in the same way
Speaker 1: that the earth cannot endlessly contain the life of springs
Speaker 1: and lets them burst under crocuses and daffodils, or in
Speaker 1: the fault of the green rocks. But today, in a
Speaker 1: thousand withered wells, the springs of life have ceased to flow.
Speaker 1: The earth no longer pours out this gift which swelled it.
Speaker 1: She holds back her happiness. She chokes. The agony of
Speaker 1: our time lies here. The century does not fail for
Speaker 1: lack of material support. Never before has the universe been
Speaker 1: so rich, filled with so much comfort, helped by such
Speaker 1: productive industrialization. Never have there been so many resources or
Speaker 1: goods offered. It is the heart of a man, and
Speaker 1: this alone, which is bankrupt. It is by a lack
Speaker 1: of love. It is by a failure of believing and
Speaker 1: of giving oneself that the world has overwhelmed itself with
Speaker 1: murderous blows. The century wanted to be no more than
Speaker 1: the century of appetites. This century wanted to be no
Speaker 1: more than the century of appetites. Its pride was wasted.
Speaker 1: It believed in miracles, stocks, and ingots over which it
Speaker 1: would be the master. It believed just as much in
Speaker 1: the victory of carnal passions projected beyond all limits, in
Speaker 1: the liberation of the most diverse forms of enjoyment, constantly multiplied,
Speaker 1: always more degraded and degrading, endowed with a technique which
Speaker 1: is after all, generally only an accumulation, without great imagination,
Speaker 1: of rather impoverished vices, of emptied beings.
Speaker 2: Even people who are critical of, you know, the fascist
Speaker 2: regimes and of the Third Reich. You know, people like
Speaker 2: Julius Evil and to some degree Rene Gillone. You know,
Speaker 2: they acknowledge that most significant about these movements was that
Speaker 2: there was an ambition for something transcendental that was fundamentally
Speaker 2: lacking in.
Speaker 1: Not just.
Speaker 2: Opposing ideologies, but in adjacent ones too. And I mean everybody,
Speaker 2: everybody who's I mean everybody is at all practically minded,
Speaker 2: realizes there's limitations to politics. I mean, as there should be.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't you don't swap out religious piety
Speaker 2: for politics, and you don't you don't decide that you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, you don't. You don't decide that
Speaker 2: you know, there's a political path, the cultural renewal or
Speaker 2: something on its own terms. But there is not an
Speaker 2: accident that there's not really you know, you don't you
Speaker 2: don't find you don't find communists, and you don't find
Speaker 2: guys who uh you know, you don't find tories in
Speaker 2: the UK from the epoch core like writing and talking
Speaker 2: this way. You know the fact is there's like mid
Speaker 2: Hampson said, Hampson, Uh, you know, he got the Nobel
Speaker 2: Price for literature and then he essentially like eulogized Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 2: and they made a bunch of people really mad. But
Speaker 2: he you know, Selene made the same point, you know
Speaker 2: that there was a that this was, you know, Europe's
Speaker 2: historical moment to try and redeem something of of cultural
Speaker 2: life by way of political mechanisms. Like however, however is
Speaker 2: a guide that may have been in terms of you
Speaker 2: know what an improper instrument instrumentality being employed to that effect.
Speaker 2: But that's why, that's why, that's why it's laughable when
Speaker 2: people are like, oh, you know, the right is uneducated.
Speaker 2: It's like what what what what what do educated people
Speaker 2: talk about? You know, like labor and capital paradigms and
Speaker 2: like what what people are doing with their genitals? I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's what educated people are into. Like it's i mean,
Speaker 2: it's laughable. But you know, to grow obviously, to Gull
Speaker 2: is an outlier in the sense of, you know, he
Speaker 2: was a he was a remarkable guy, both you know,
Speaker 2: as a as a as an infantry commander as well
Speaker 2: as like a man of letters and stuff. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't it wasn't remarkable that you know, these are the
Speaker 2: kind of like this is the kind of like passion
Speaker 2: that animated his commitments, you know, and that's important to consider.
Speaker 1: That's all from his conquests, or more precisely, from his mistakes,
Speaker 1: than from his falls. Man acquired pleasures that seemed supremely
Speaker 1: exciting at first, and which were in fact only poison,
Speaker 1: filth and falsehood. For this falsehood, this filth, and this poison, however,
Speaker 1: the man and the woman had abandoned, had desecrated through
Speaker 1: their dreams and their devastated bodies, Inner Joy, True Joy,
Speaker 1: the great son of true Joy. The puffs of pleasure
Speaker 1: from possessions matter of flesh, must, being illusory and compounding
Speaker 1: in their flaws, sooner or later vanish. What remains is
Speaker 1: only the passion for taking, seizing in bouts of anger
Speaker 1: that set them against all obstacles and against the stale
Speaker 1: orders of decay, Clinging to their ransacked and rotten lives,
Speaker 1: vain emptied, their hands dangling, they do not even see
Speaker 1: the moment approaching when the artificial work of their time
Speaker 1: will collapse. It will collapse because it is contrary to
Speaker 1: the very laws of the heart. And let's say the
Speaker 1: big word, to the laws of God. He alone, so
Speaker 1: strong that we laughed at him, gave the world its
Speaker 1: balance directed the passions open to us. The gates of
Speaker 1: complete giving and authentic love gave a meaning to our days.
Speaker 1: Whatever our happiness and our misfortunes. We can gather all
Speaker 1: the conferences of the world, gathered by herds, the heads
Speaker 1: of state, the economic experts, and the champions of all
Speaker 1: the techniques. They will weigh, they will decree, but essentially
Speaker 1: they will fail because they will ignore the obvious. The
Speaker 1: disease of the century is not in the body. The
Speaker 1: body is sick because the soul is sick. This is
Speaker 1: what is essential, whatever it may take to cure the
Speaker 1: real the great revolution to be made. Is there spiritual
Speaker 1: revolution or the ruin of the century? The salvation of
Speaker 1: the world is in the will of souls who believe
Speaker 1: Section three. Here is the right path. Those who hesitate
Speaker 1: in the face of struggle are those whose souls are numb.
Speaker 1: A grand ideal always gives you the strength to overcome
Speaker 1: the body, to suffer from fatigue, from hunger, from cold.
Speaker 1: What matters sleepless nights, overwhelming toil, stress, or poverty. The
Speaker 1: main thing is to have at the bottom of your
Speaker 1: heart a great force which warms and which pushes forward,
Speaker 1: which revives the loose nerves, which makes the tired blood
Speaker 1: beat with great blows, which puts in the eyes that
Speaker 1: fire which burns and which conquers. Then suffering is of
Speaker 1: no consequence. The pain itself becomes joy because it is
Speaker 1: a means of enhancing one's legacy, of purifying one's sacrifice. Yes,
Speaker 1: ease sedates the ideal. Nothing writes it better than the
Speaker 1: whip of hard life. It makes us understand the depth
Speaker 1: of the duties to be assumed, the mission of which
Speaker 1: we must be worthy. The rest does not count, health
Speaker 1: does not matter. We are not on earth to eat
Speaker 1: on time, to sleep on time, to live one hundred
Speaker 1: years or more. All this is vain and foolish. Only
Speaker 1: one thing matters, having a useful life, sharpening your soul,
Speaker 1: improving it at all times, monitoring your weaknesses and exalting
Speaker 1: your impulses, serving others, throwing happiness and tenderness around you,
Speaker 1: giving your arm to your neighbor to rise all to rise,
Speaker 1: all by helping each other. Once these duties are accomplished,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to die at the age of
Speaker 1: thirty or one hundred years? To feel the fever throbbing
Speaker 1: at the hours when the human beast cries out at
Speaker 1: the end of its power. Let him get up again.
Speaker 1: Despite everything, the ideal appears to give its strength only
Speaker 1: at the breaking point. Only the soul counts and must
Speaker 1: dominate everything else. Short or long, life is only redeemed
Speaker 1: if we have no cause for shame at the moment
Speaker 1: we have to give it back, when the sweetness of
Speaker 1: the days calls to us, and the joy of loving,
Speaker 1: and the beauty of a face, a perfect body, a
Speaker 1: light sky, and the call of distant races. When we
Speaker 1: are close to giving in to the lips, to the colors,
Speaker 1: to this light, to the number, to the numbness of
Speaker 1: the relaxed hours, let us tighten in our hearts all
Speaker 1: these dreams on the verge of the golden escape. The
Speaker 1: true escape is to quit our dear is to quit
Speaker 1: our dear, sensitive prey, at the very moment when the
Speaker 1: sweet scent invites our bodies to fail. At this hour,
Speaker 1: when you must abandon softness and place love above desire,
Speaker 1: when everything is painful to the point of cruelty, a
Speaker 1: sacrifice really begins to be whole, to be pure, then
Speaker 1: we have surpassed ourselves. We are finally giving something before
Speaker 1: we looked only to ourselves, and the concern for pride
Speaker 1: and selfish glory corrupted what flows out from our souls,
Speaker 1: and it was used instead of given. One gives for
Speaker 1: good without calculation, because all is given and nothing remains
Speaker 1: of the giver only when one kills the love of
Speaker 1: the self. This does not come easily, because the human
Speaker 1: beast is reluctant. We understand so poorly what can be
Speaker 1: learned from bitterness. It is sweet to dream of an
Speaker 1: ideal and to build it in your mind. Still, to
Speaker 1: tell the truth, this is precious little. What is an ideal?
Speaker 1: If it is just a game or a sweet dream,
Speaker 1: You have to build it after all. In reality, each
Speaker 1: stone must be torn from our comfort, from our joys,
Speaker 1: from our rest, from our heart. When despite everything, the
Speaker 1: building rises over the years. When you do not stop
Speaker 1: along the way, when faced with heavier and heavier stones
Speaker 1: to be placed, you continue. Only then does the ideal
Speaker 1: begin to live. It lives only to the extent that
Speaker 1: we died to ourselves. What a drama deep down that
Speaker 1: righteous life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's heavy stuff, and it's also just more generally
Speaker 2: not simply related to the epoch and from which you
Speaker 2: know de Greel emerged in things that's Demeestra makes those
Speaker 2: points too, that there's not there's not this like there's
Speaker 2: there's not this you know, intractable tension between you know,
Speaker 2: men of action and and people prone to asceticism. You know,
Speaker 2: like the latter are the ones who who bleed quite
Speaker 2: literally to bring those things into reality, you know. And
Speaker 2: I mean it's I mean plus two. I mean that
Speaker 2: that those two functions were literally combined, you know, in
Speaker 2: the nightly orders that serve the Roman Church. You know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I I realize that can be overstated too,
Speaker 2: because it's not that was a discreete epoch as well.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like the final statement on soldiering
Speaker 2: or on or on piety or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 2: this idea, that this idea that these things are fundamentally
Speaker 2: at loggerheads and like irreconcilable. It's this nonsense, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's not people people draw upon them like the
Speaker 2: birth of tragedy and the genealogy of moral as well
Speaker 2: as like beyond good and evil like Niche, it's like
Speaker 2: trying to flesh out their conceptual biases. That's not what
Speaker 2: Niche is talking about. It's far more conceptually nuanced, and
Speaker 2: his notion is basically that these it's a self defeating
Speaker 2: enterprise because salvation comes in the form of repudiating that
Speaker 2: which it sets out to confirm. I mean, that's like
Speaker 2: outside the scope of what we're discussing now, but I people, uh,
Speaker 2: people have this like very very like literalist and like
Speaker 2: rigid idea of you know, oh, like the the soldier
Speaker 2: or the partisan is at odds with you know, the
Speaker 2: priest or the or the religious person. Like that's not
Speaker 2: the case at all. Like not only is that not
Speaker 2: the case, but they're they're essentially one and the same.
Speaker 2: And unless you understand that, you're not going to understand,
Speaker 2: you know, like how how politics as we know it
Speaker 2: developed in the West that we're talking about if by
Speaker 2: politics we mean you know, not I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: the day to day business about like this the village
Speaker 2: council figures out, you know, how to keep the water running,
Speaker 2: like I'm talking about you know, I'm talking about these
Speaker 2: how conceptual horizons develop, you know, and how these things
Speaker 2: come to you know, how these things come to embody
Speaker 2: like prime symbols of of cultural reference and things, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's and in that regard, you know, the the
Speaker 2: Third Reich and the s S and the various fascist
Speaker 2: movements and and these uh, these difficult that you know,
Speaker 2: categorized movements of the Iron Guard. Like on the one hand,
Speaker 2: there was not a lot of precedent for that, because
Speaker 2: the stroke conditions that created those tendencies hadn't existed before.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, the like the the underlying
Speaker 2: kind of impulse that gave Riseley's movements like within the
Speaker 2: minds of UH or the men who created them, Like,
Speaker 2: that's something that that that's something that's not that that's
Speaker 2: something that's well well known to the Indo European mind.
Speaker 2: And I'd argue it's so ancient as to be primordial.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, that's that's heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Yeah, all right, we're gonna start getting into some
Speaker 1: heavy stuff here, because it's gonna start getting real personal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Part two, whilst Springs of Life the Land of our Birth.
Speaker 1: Part four. As men, we belong always to a people,
Speaker 1: a land, a history. We may not know it, we
Speaker 1: can try to forget it, but evens eternally return us
Speaker 1: to these sources of life. They bring us back first
Speaker 1: to the men of our blood shameful or bright. Family
Speaker 1: binds us together ever tighter and firmer with time. It
Speaker 1: can even be suffocating. We never get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Where our blood is concerned, we are bound to it.
Speaker 1: Blood comes always before reason. We are one with these ties,
Speaker 1: as if our veins were only one organism and the
Speaker 1: family had only one heart, a heart that pumps the
Speaker 1: same blood in each of us and reminds us of
Speaker 1: our vital hearth. The same is true of our homeland.
Speaker 1: We cannot escape it. The sight of a yellowed print
Speaker 1: of our cathedrals, the memory of the smell of the dunes,
Speaker 1: or the gray hue of our hillsides, of the curve
Speaker 1: of our rivers, brings up to our throat a love
Speaker 1: that stifles us, that makes our voices hoarse. The country's
Speaker 1: past is embodied, is embedded in the depth of our
Speaker 1: consciousness and our sensibilities. Everything about us is survival, rebirth,
Speaker 1: even if unconsciously. The past of a country is reborn
Speaker 1: in each generation, as spring returns, always in new sprout.
Speaker 1: We may be unburdened traverse the world, lose our mind,
Speaker 1: the native soil still sends into our hearts an essence
Speaker 1: that we do not create and that dominates us. All
Speaker 1: that it takes is the voice of a radio station
Speaker 1: picked up in a distant country, brought by imprecise waves,
Speaker 1: so that memories, ties, and laws emerge again, real water marks,
Speaker 1: indestructibly embedded in the fabric of our tormented days. Part five,
Speaker 1: Hearth and Stone. You must have one wandered over the
Speaker 1: most distant seas, known the red knights of the tropics,
Speaker 1: the cane fires, the songs are the negroes, the deserts,
Speaker 1: with their pink sands, their leafless shrubs, the skeletons of
Speaker 1: horses bleached by the winds. You must have climbed frozen
Speaker 1: lakes and hot snow, picked mimosa flowers from the ruins
Speaker 1: of carthage, grapefruits in Havana, a blade of grass near
Speaker 1: the fluted pillars of the acropolis. To fully love your homeland,
Speaker 1: that which we first saw with the only lucid eyes
Speaker 1: in the world, the eyes of a child, it is
Speaker 1: necessary to have known other journeys with furniture and clothes, books, tables,
Speaker 1: the simple material goods. It is necessary to have bend
Speaker 1: this nomad of the anonymous apartments, where one sits as
Speaker 1: one sits in a train to know the passion and
Speaker 1: the nostalgia. First of the first of all landscapes, of
Speaker 1: this place, in the heart that is home, we can
Speaker 1: speak without regret of the great joys of foreign lands.
Speaker 1: They still gild our eyes the days. The day rises
Speaker 1: yellow and silver on the palm trees which skirt the
Speaker 1: Sea of the Antilles, Clouds of fog in the olive
Speaker 1: trees of the Delphi Valley, fishermen rowing in the clear
Speaker 1: blue knights of the Cyclades, the palm grove streaked with
Speaker 1: red sun near the red walls of the Marrakesh. But
Speaker 1: the memory of wandering journeys in the prisons of our
Speaker 1: solace lodging weighs us down and suffocates us. What remains
Speaker 1: in our life of these impersonal relays. The walls where
Speaker 1: we heartlessly hung and removed, the paintings, the apartment next
Speaker 1: door where you were surveilled, the mingled chatter of telephones,
Speaker 1: the staircase where we met without knowing each other, the
Speaker 1: cell car of the elevator with his double bars. We
Speaker 1: look at this decora of life and death with dull eyes,
Speaker 1: charged with veritable despair. What do these partitions tell us?
Speaker 1: The kitchen opened to a horrible courtyard a few meters long,
Speaker 1: without an unexpected nook, without a quirk, with that barren
Speaker 1: of natural foliage, without a cozy nest. What's say these
Speaker 1: beds and furniture, always awkward and embarrassed, as if they
Speaker 1: feel out of place, poor, unhappy, vaguely nomadic. Even furniture
Speaker 1: has a soul. The old sideboard that clutters the corridor,
Speaker 1: the clockcase that no longer resonates, so as not to
Speaker 1: annoy anyone once lived, once knew a real house had
Speaker 1: for one hundred years, two hundred years, their place, their touch,
Speaker 1: their scent, poor sideboard and poor clock, far from the
Speaker 1: polished parquet, from the smell of lavender, the worn and
Speaker 1: water stained staircase, the conversation all about it, the salute
Speaker 1: of the sun entering suddenly through an open door. We
Speaker 1: alienated moderns, dragged from apartment to apartment in soulas cities
Speaker 1: feel a little more torn from our hearts each time
Speaker 1: we have to cross a new threshold. Light up, the
Speaker 1: sterile white corridors. Get used to these handles, these shutters,
Speaker 1: this door that does not hold, this gas stove that
Speaker 1: flares up too quickly, these buses that pass by with
Speaker 1: awful horns that crush the soul. We are silent, but
Speaker 1: we forget everything. I'm sorry, that's very much hideger Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and man like the old sideboard and the big clock,
Speaker 1: motionless looks and sees the land of our birth returns
Speaker 1: to life in our memories. Here it is a little
Speaker 1: foliage lights up the facade, two blue stone steps, a
Speaker 1: large vine encumbered balcony in the gardens. Everything is in
Speaker 1: its place, Everything has a meaning, a smell of form.
Speaker 1: We go to the cupboard, the cupboard, that beautiful, full
Speaker 1: serious word, because it holds our, nourishing bread, so familiar
Speaker 1: we can navigate it with our eyes closed. This corner
Speaker 1: smells the tobacco. That one the cat who always purred
Speaker 1: in the warmest place. That noise is Father rising from
Speaker 1: the office chair. The halting footstep is Mother who in
Speaker 1: the dining room waters are flowers. These rooms are not
Speaker 1: merely places to stop. This one is the room above
Speaker 1: the living room. This one is the room above the office.
Speaker 1: This one is the room of the little ones, even
Speaker 1: when they have become men with heavy thoughts. Each of
Speaker 1: these rooms has its history, has known its vigils, its maladies.
Speaker 1: We left it one morning, carrying a darling body in
Speaker 1: our arms. Ah the horror of our children being born
Speaker 1: or dying in anonymous apartments, surrounded by living furnishings since departed,
Speaker 1: where other nomads have, in their turn, resumed their awkward
Speaker 1: life without soulful memories, not even daring to remember. So
Speaker 1: out of place are they. House of yesteryear, with your
Speaker 1: poor draperies, your occasional bad taste. This ball on the railing,
Speaker 1: These photos of children in a cue Lulu, the grand piano,
Speaker 1: the blackfire place, the tin bathtub where people wash one
Speaker 1: after the other. These steps that we still scale twenty
Speaker 1: years later in memories, The breadths that we hear again
Speaker 1: passing close to us, The face of the mother who
Speaker 1: appears first in the distance, then right there before our eyes,
Speaker 1: almost inscrutable. We feel like children desiring again her soft caress.
Speaker 1: Calls of immense tenderness rise with distant sense of flowers
Speaker 1: and foliage, Songs of water pass at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the garden, the soft sunshine filling our entire world. Everything
Speaker 1: we are comes from that time. Unfortunate our children, who
Speaker 1: have never had a house of their own, and who
Speaker 1: do not collect these memories from which our life flows.
Speaker 1: It is the home that forms us into who we are.
Speaker 1: How can we have a soul in a faceless house,
Speaker 1: one that has changed like a carnival mask. Life is
Speaker 1: fixed on hearth and stone. The rest flows away like
Speaker 1: broken wood floating on a winter stream. Home our tender fortress.
Speaker 1: It takes on a unique face little by little, built
Speaker 1: over time, through common hardships and the birth of children.
Speaker 1: The walls hold love and dreams. It's furnishings, beautiful or ugly,
Speaker 1: are our companions and witnesses. A sweetness rises slowly from
Speaker 1: the souls within. It becomes a place of contemplation, rest,
Speaker 1: and certainty, rather than a brief stop on the journey
Speaker 1: of our existence. Softness, balance points of reference, testimony, self examination.
Speaker 1: Without mother and home, tell me, my soul, where would
Speaker 1: we be.
Speaker 2: This him?
Speaker 1: You always talking about living historically. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to live historically when you live a nomadic life.
Speaker 2: No exactly. And it also, you know, epigenetic memory is
Speaker 2: you know, what does it crude during people's lifetime times.
Speaker 2: There's no reason to believe that that's not passed on
Speaker 2: at the biological level. In addition to you know, simple
Speaker 2: cultural learning and things. You know, when we talk about
Speaker 2: a way of life or quite this is quite literally
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, you know, and that kind of
Speaker 2: like linear natal experience of of the culture. So not
Speaker 2: only is it disruptive, obviously, you know, if if there
Speaker 2: if there's literally no rootedness to anybody's life, and you know,
Speaker 2: not only every generation who you know, does uh does
Speaker 2: the does does the family like up and and moves
Speaker 2: you know, to totally strange environs, but even like within
Speaker 2: people's lives like in the present epoch, it's it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be normal for you to just you know, radically
Speaker 2: alter your surroundings and your pattern of life if in
Speaker 2: day to day terms, you know, multiple times, And that's
Speaker 2: that's crazy. I mean obviously that doesn't lend itself to
Speaker 2: psychic or spiritual stability, but it also it makes it
Speaker 2: basically impossible to sustain any kind of any kind of
Speaker 2: cultural learning over time. But I mean, that's that's that's
Speaker 2: that's the point, you know, And the what consciousness is
Speaker 2: that's a huge question. But whether it is, you know,
Speaker 2: whether he is the Heidegger remains relevant is because he
Speaker 2: was finding like fundamentally concerned with the question of consciousness.
Speaker 2: You know, we we can't talk about culture as a
Speaker 2: as an intergenerational experience without discussing consciousness and the and
Speaker 2: the degree to which it is actually like literally transmitted. Okay,
Speaker 2: and that's a controversial subject, but nobody would deny that
Speaker 2: basic hostulate and to deliberately aim to eradicate that process,
Speaker 2: you're basically murdering cultures. Like you're basically destroying people's ability,
Speaker 2: you know, not just within their own discreete like individual
Speaker 2: life to like, you know, drive meaning and to participate
Speaker 2: historically like within their life. You're essentially like removing their
Speaker 2: ability to the constitute you know, a component of of
Speaker 2: of of an enduring cultural enterprise of phenomenon. And that's
Speaker 2: that's that that that's an incredibly evil thing to do,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think people detect that, even if
Speaker 2: they don't have the knowledge base or the sort of
Speaker 2: conceptual signifiers to coherently identify what's underway. I believe that
Speaker 2: it's one of the reasons why so many people are
Speaker 2: in comparative terms, revolting against you know, the the global regime,
Speaker 2: because they're realizing what it's trying to do to them.
Speaker 2: I mean not just them personally, but like what it's
Speaker 2: trying to do to people and and and kind of
Speaker 2: retool the human condition. It is something that you know,
Speaker 2: basically doesn't doesn't just render individual lives meaningless, but you know,
Speaker 2: like murders cultures, which means that you know, it's basically
Speaker 2: basically erasing people's entire peoples from history as if they
Speaker 2: never existed. That's like, that's like committing homicide times a million.
Speaker 2: But that's probably been outside the scope. But i it's
Speaker 2: fundamental to understand that what I just described to understand
Speaker 2: where Degreel is coming from. I mean, that's the core
Speaker 2: of what national socialism was aiming to address, as well
Speaker 2: as you know, the rectist movement that he found himself
Speaker 2: at the helm of, as well as any number of
Speaker 2: other movements that constituted the resistance to the you know,
Speaker 2: to the capitalist Bolshevik paradigm.
Speaker 1: Part six, The breath of Life. Men can debase themselves,
Speaker 1: they can live in increasingly frenetic agitation, as millions of
Speaker 1: mad men engorged themselves. Yet the nobility of motherhood preserves, preserves,
Speaker 1: among thousands of natural and vibrant hearts, its own pale radiance. Today,
Speaker 1: the maternal essence moves just as it did in the
Speaker 1: days when the first women felt their bodies stirred by
Speaker 1: its indescribable thrills. From that hour, women are no longer
Speaker 1: the same yesterday They were hurried, their eyes clear, their
Speaker 1: souls empty, their lips distracted. The life born in them,
Speaker 1: like a hidden flowering, suddenly gives them gravity, confidence, a
Speaker 1: great and proud force, the certainty of creating, of giving,
Speaker 1: and the emotional charm of the living mystery that will
Speaker 1: one day be borne Through their pain. They remain mirthful,
Speaker 1: but their gaze becomes deeper. They carry within them a
Speaker 1: treasure whose pulses intimately link to their own, Their vigor,
Speaker 1: their melancholy, This great ideal, sometimes undeclared, which lifts or
Speaker 1: torments them. Thoughts and regrets, joys and desires become one
Speaker 1: with its hidden life, ever present for the one who
Speaker 1: gives it blood gives its blood and soul. In this
Speaker 1: perfect communion of flesh and heart, they are brave and weary,
Speaker 1: tired of the overburdened body of their youth, bent like
Speaker 1: branches laden heavy with fruit, weary of sun and wind,
Speaker 1: yet still valiant, knowing what their knowing, what renewal their
Speaker 1: bodies now tenderly contain in this flesh that their most
Speaker 1: delicate tremors shape. They know that this flower soul, barely
Speaker 1: open in the night, will bloom tomorrow. The innocent heart,
Speaker 1: which they cover like the cover, like the night sky,
Speaker 1: is filled with sweetness and peace of the stars and
Speaker 1: the silence among the clamorous world. They carry this glimmering night.
Speaker 1: Their dreamy eyes contemplate these great moonlit landscapes, where a
Speaker 1: world known only to them lies dormant, powerful, and immense.
Speaker 1: They see blue mountains, black and smooth waters, enchanted skies
Speaker 1: studded with fires, set in the jet black of evening,
Speaker 1: like ethereal gems. They advance under these nocturnal lights, the
Speaker 1: heart taught but unsure. No one walks beside them. The
Speaker 1: universe looks elsewhere. They alone watch, They alone have the
Speaker 1: eyes to see it. They go on, body heavy, soul,
Speaker 1: tents and elevated, as if drawn by the greatness of
Speaker 1: this secret night. These months when the flesh blossoms are
Speaker 1: their private springtime, when only the shadow, the shadows, and
Speaker 1: the scents, the colors and the lights reach their great
Speaker 1: love stretched out with arms open to life, like an
Speaker 1: orchard of the heart. They will experience the birth of
Speaker 1: this new life sundered from the great dream. Then are
Speaker 1: faced with constant efforts in the service of these bodies
Speaker 1: and these souls which enchant them and which frighten them. Royalty,
Speaker 1: trembling and radiant. What will be reborn in these hearts?
Speaker 1: Will they keep the song and purity of mountain waters?
Speaker 1: Will these naive eyes ever make you cry? Will this
Speaker 1: little curly head, the color of the sun and the
Speaker 1: stone wall carry good and clear thoughts the Mother's dream
Speaker 1: like fiery sword lilies. It is best not to fear
Speaker 1: too much to show the straight course, but to leave
Speaker 1: it lined with greenery and woodlands, and to let them
Speaker 1: travel pure and bright the earth and past the earthen
Speaker 1: path of the horizon. The Mother will put in the
Speaker 1: hearts of the little ones once again, only what she
Speaker 1: will have nourished herself. Their soul will contain what hers
Speaker 1: will have contained. The images of her heart will trace
Speaker 1: great reflections on them, like shadows advancing in the fields
Speaker 1: under the white clouds of the great summer sky. She
Speaker 1: can only bear their gaze if her soul is as
Speaker 1: clear as theirs. All that is not flesh and pure
Speaker 1: astonishes children and leaves a mark on their hearts. They
Speaker 1: will not later have strength and renunciation, wisdom and simplicity,
Speaker 1: virtue and enjoy unless their spiritual nourishment is as pure
Speaker 1: as mother's milk. The faces of mothers are noble, supremely clear,
Speaker 1: rejuvenated by the presence of wilfully innocent lives, even though
Speaker 1: a thousand even through a thousand days of hardship, women
Speaker 1: are greatly blessed by the body that trembles, turn towards
Speaker 1: the inner dream, and which dwells the grand secret of
Speaker 1: the breath of life. Part seven, the task of happiness.
Speaker 1: The more we walk among false smiles, greedy or unclean eyes,
Speaker 1: grasping hands, withered bodies, the more we are disappointed by
Speaker 1: the mediocrity of existence. We quickly realize that only the
Speaker 1: joys put in our hearts when we were young remained
Speaker 1: solid and eternal. It is in youth that we are
Speaker 1: made happy or unhappy forever.
Speaker 2: If we had a.
Speaker 1: Calm childhood, soft as a big golden sky, if we
Speaker 1: learned to love and to give of ourselves, if we
Speaker 1: enjoyed when we were very young, the enchantment that the
Speaker 1: sky and the light gave us at all times, nature
Speaker 1: always within our reach and always changing. If we were
Speaker 1: made with a simple heart, naive as the morning, human
Speaker 1: sensitive good linked to real and natural affections, then life
Speaker 1: will remain for us until the end of our troubled days.
Speaker 1: Like the sky are rayed powerful and clear over even
Speaker 1: the most treacherous roads. There is a task to happiness.
Speaker 1: We either develop it or suffocate it. If we train
Speaker 1: children simply in deep but elementary joys, they will advance
Speaker 1: in life by keeping in their eyes the light of
Speaker 1: their inner life, balanced, persevering. But if we ruin their childhood,
Speaker 1: if they have seen too much or heard too much,
Speaker 1: if they have caught, if they have been caught in
Speaker 1: a whirlwind, if years of calm, tenderness have not strengthened
Speaker 1: in them the tender happiness of their innocence, then their
Speaker 1: life will be what their childhood was, witnessing disorder. They
Speaker 1: will become disordered, having never been made steady in their tastes,
Speaker 1: their feelings, their thoughts. They will be at the mercy
Speaker 1: of the winds, possessing only illusory joys that will burn them,
Speaker 1: and immensurate and emiserate them at the whims of others.
Speaker 1: It becomes far more difficult to change. Later, a hardened
Speaker 1: tree cannot straightened. One can at most clear the foliage
Speaker 1: and cut back branches. But when it was young, full
Speaker 1: of sap, we could have straightened it with an agile
Speaker 1: finger guided it helped it to flourish. It is at
Speaker 1: a time when children simply seem to be playing, watching,
Speaker 1: simply observing a sparrow or a lark, spelling words and
Speaker 1: giving kisses that they photograph in their hearts and their imagination.
Speaker 1: Exactly that which we give them life is just the
Speaker 1: development of this photograph, of this photography, the acids of
Speaker 1: existence will imprint on them the images beautiful and powerful
Speaker 1: or troubled and sad, which we have offered to their
Speaker 1: curious little eyes, to their clear hearts, like sheets of
Speaker 1: shiny paper. What we deprive them of by our pride
Speaker 1: or our agitation, or a last, by our passions, will
Speaker 1: be cruelly repaid to us. And seeing them unstable, dissatisfied,
Speaker 1: the soul weakened and ravaged by our own fault. You
Speaker 1: got anything on that, No, I.
Speaker 2: Mean nothing, I think anything I'd add as addendum would
Speaker 2: kind of take away from what I suggested a moment ago.
Speaker 2: Not because what I said was so profound, was because
Speaker 2: it would you know, detract from the kind of core
Speaker 2: yeah message, Yeah, I mean that's we should get more
Speaker 2: into without going too far outside the scope. We should
Speaker 2: get more into you know, the era in which the
Speaker 2: girl was looking back, you know, sixties, seventies, eighties, and
Speaker 2: the implications there ran. And that's also when you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, Heidiger's last public statement in the former like
Speaker 2: an interview was nineteen sixty five, and then there was
Speaker 2: But I mean, I this this, this stuff all the
Speaker 2: kind of enduring perspective of of dissident traditionalists, you know,
Speaker 2: the capital t or unreconstructed national socialist and fascists of
Speaker 2: the era, and uh they agree to which that became
Speaker 2: like a truly underground tendency which now is somewhat emergent
Speaker 2: in ways that was not possible before. But I mean,
Speaker 2: this is all important stuff. It's not just you know,
Speaker 2: a conversation starter about you know, why, oh why is
Speaker 2: the girl interesting to read today? You know? It it
Speaker 2: relates to the origins of the movement that de Grell
Speaker 2: served and why the stakes became so truly desperate when
Speaker 2: Europe was threatened existentially by the kind of twin hydra
Speaker 2: of Sovietism and and and Americanism. But uh yeah, I uh,
Speaker 2: I'll be more. I'll be more with it too. And
Speaker 2: this when we reconvene, I'm getting over another flare up.
Speaker 2: But I'm but well, uh, if it's not gonna screw
Speaker 2: up what you want to accomplish, we'll we'll deep dive
Speaker 2: a little bit into you know, Heideger and and kind
Speaker 2: of the Aristotilian aspects of national socialism that also dovetail
Speaker 2: with Catholic metaphysics. If that's agreeable to.
Speaker 1: You, Okay, well, part three we're gonna I'm gonna finish
Speaker 1: up Christmas Time right here, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: take a break and and then when we come back
Speaker 1: for part three. Part three is the Misery of Mankind.
Speaker 1: It may starting off with what you want to talk
Speaker 1: about would probably be a very be a good introduction
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 1: Another page and a half part eight Christmas Time. We
Speaker 1: were only little children from the ardends. The snow blanketed
Speaker 1: the horizon, piled above the eaves of the roofs, and
Speaker 1: packed itself tight into the bottom of the bottoms of
Speaker 1: our shoes. We were sure we saw Saint Joseph turn
Speaker 1: around the corner of the Rue de Malone. To climb.
Speaker 1: The way to the church was tough going in the
Speaker 1: midnight darkness. At the last deep slope were resorted to
Speaker 1: carrying our shoes in our hands. Suddenly, the night of
Speaker 1: frozen darts gave way to the warm smell of the
Speaker 1: dazzling naves. Our heads were spinning a bit. The smell
Speaker 1: of the incense intoxicated. The Douyene himself was pale. But
Speaker 1: from behind the choir screen came a din powerful enough
Speaker 1: to drive away the wild boars ten kilometers from our
Speaker 1: tangled woods. The organ blower pedaled as if he feared
Speaker 1: arriving late. The director brought to the brought the choir
Speaker 1: to a wild turbulence. By the time of midnight Christians.
Speaker 1: The emotion and the noise had been such that we
Speaker 1: were climbing atop the straw of the chairs, expecting to
Speaker 1: see the angels suddenly appear above the choir. But the
Speaker 1: angels had continued to stand quietly among the candles, with
Speaker 1: their large wings at rest. We approached them hands clasped
Speaker 1: under our big woolen gloves. We were kneeling on the marble.
Speaker 1: The brown ox and the gray donkey were close by.
Speaker 1: We were burning to touch them, to see if their
Speaker 1: hair would part like a fountain of water. But we
Speaker 1: children loved our children even more than we loved animals.
Speaker 1: We loved other children even more than we loved animals.
Speaker 1: Jesus was lying on the straw. It softened our hearts
Speaker 1: to think he must be cold. Nobody had given him
Speaker 1: thick stockings like us, no shoes, no scarf to wrap
Speaker 1: around his nose, no green woolen gloves to cover his hands.
Speaker 1: We looked a little astonished as the father Saint Joseph,
Speaker 1: who humbly stood doing nothing to glorify himself, and the mother,
Speaker 1: clad in blue and white, so still and so beautiful.
Speaker 1: We knew only beautiful mothers with pure eyes in which
Speaker 1: we saw everything. We had looked into those eyes so often,
Speaker 1: But those of the mother of little Jesus entranced, enchanted
Speaker 1: us to the extreme, as if Heaven allowed children to
Speaker 1: see more in them than men did. We said nothing
Speaker 1: when going down to the coast. When children say nothing,
Speaker 1: it is because they have because they much to say.
Speaker 1: At home, the smoky chocolate and the big table covered
Speaker 1: with cakes never managed to tear us away. On the
Speaker 1: return from invisible conversations between the children of human mothers
Speaker 1: and the little child of the Mother of Heaven, on
Speaker 1: the top of the piano, a crib had been erected,
Speaker 1: where we could, standing atop a stool, take the ox
Speaker 1: and the donkey in our hands. Little pink and blue
Speaker 1: candles were lit every night. Each child had their own
Speaker 1: on which they would blow a deep breath at the
Speaker 1: end of the prayers. Behind, kneeling near a chair in
Speaker 1: the dark, the Mother led our religious impulses, guided us
Speaker 1: when it was all over. When we turned to her
Speaker 1: in order to obtain the right to put out our
Speaker 1: little lights, we saw in her two eyes shining so
Speaker 1: much emotional fervor. Paradise comes into the hearts of children
Speaker 1: through the examples, through the example of the mother. At
Speaker 1: that hour, humble and poignant, the mother knew that little
Speaker 1: souls had been marked forever. That we could blow out
Speaker 1: the little candles near the manger, but they would never
Speaker 1: be extinguished in our hearts. Every winter, when Christmas returns,
Speaker 1: the little flames lit by our mothers once again burned
Speaker 1: high and bright.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great Uh Christmas, steven Man, Yeah,
Speaker 2: very timely, and I realized Christmas has passed us, but
Speaker 2: on New Year's Eve, I consider it kind of part
Speaker 2: of the same un going event, you know, between Christmas
Speaker 2: and New Year's So yeah, that very timely and very
Speaker 2: very inspiring stuff, very edifying as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am still saying Merry Christmas to people I
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean that's yeah. I what's like I
Speaker 2: said the other day too, like even where I I mean,
Speaker 2: I obviously like don't give a fuck about a biting
Speaker 2: regime convention, but it's like, what what what other holiday
Speaker 2: is on December twenty fifth? I don't know about it.
Speaker 2: It's like a competitor holiday, you know. It's yeah, I
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, No, that's really uh, really beautiful stuff. Man.
Speaker 2: And thanks again. Sorry, I'm I'm uh, I'm dragging a
Speaker 2: little bit, but I hope, uh, I hope people got
Speaker 2: something out of my commentary on this episode.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're going to continue to part three in
Speaker 1: the Burning Souls by Degrel, But Thomas, you want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the about the thought and
Speaker 1: about the basically what would have been guys like Kim
Speaker 1: at the time he's writing this, what would have been
Speaker 1: their thoughts, especially looking back upon the war.
Speaker 2: There's a context that's not appropriately addressed when we're talking
Speaker 2: about national socialism and fascism and adjacent movements as a
Speaker 2: political philosophy. Ironically, some of the only people I know
Speaker 2: who've addressed that correctly were Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey
Speaker 2: when both through at the University of Chicago. They published
Speaker 2: this huge value just a history of political philosophy, and
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. Like, it's not Strauss, it's not
Speaker 2: kind Yeah, yeah, it's not Strauss's own. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't generally recommend Strauss to anybody unless they're trying to
Speaker 2: I kind of trace the trajector of, you know, the
Speaker 2: American right post Nuremberg. But as as an intellectual historian,
Speaker 2: he's very useful. And the book I mentioned, it's it's
Speaker 2: very it's it's very straightforward, and it's very much correct.
Speaker 2: That's there's not there's not polemic in it, and it's
Speaker 2: not it's not colored by you know, a stain of
Speaker 2: the author's ideological biases, but other than that, there's there's
Speaker 2: just not And Carl Lowith too, who obviously my peters
Speaker 2: Strauss was inspired by, but who he parted ways with
Speaker 2: on unfundamental issues not just of ethics, but uh you know,
Speaker 2: ontological ones about kind of the history of European thought.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's this idea that and it's it's
Speaker 2: it transcends too, just like rationalizations for for dismissing any
Speaker 2: merits of of of the movements that animated the countries
Speaker 2: that constantly excess powers. It goes beyond just the you know,
Speaker 2: the the kind of pragmatic affair of discrediting them. People
Speaker 2: honestly believe that these things just emergent as some kind
Speaker 2: of stop gap measure to to either prevent revolutionary communism
Speaker 2: or to you know, from from dominating the political landscape,
Speaker 2: or to rationalize what amount to do a power grab
Speaker 2: by a coterie of extremists who who only had a
Speaker 2: loosely defined city grievances as uh as they're kind of
Speaker 2: political ambitions. That's not true at all. And in fact,
Speaker 2: there was the inner warriors the right, whether we're talking
Speaker 2: about you know, the fascists, the fascist movement around Mussolini,
Speaker 2: whether we're talking about the National Socialist movement post Drexler,
Speaker 2: whether we're talking about you know, the Romanian Iron Guard,
Speaker 2: all these movements attracted a dispports and amount of intellectuals,
Speaker 2: you know, like middle class intellectual type, you know, the
Speaker 2: kinds of people who spent a lot of time with
Speaker 2: political philosophy and with things abstracted from the kind of
Speaker 2: day to day business of politics. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the things that within their own dialogue with themselves and
Speaker 2: with each other, they were aware of that and lamented
Speaker 2: that this tended to be harmful to praxis. Okay, but
Speaker 2: if you want to really understand where the rubber meets
Speaker 2: the road, you've kind of got to read Heidegger, and
Speaker 2: you kind of have to look at these things through
Speaker 2: it a wrist Italian lanes, through a twentieth century continental perspective. Okay,
Speaker 2: And this can't be overstated. And like generally, like I
Speaker 2: wouldn't bring this up in a discussion or reading of
Speaker 2: a war memoir, but Lean de Grell is so very
Speaker 2: much in that tradition that I don't think it's something
Speaker 2: can be overlooked. And it also too, I think Heidiger
Speaker 2: some will disagree with me, including up to some of
Speaker 2: the guys who who followed Bronze Age pervert. I'm not.
Speaker 2: It's not like a slam on him or anything or
Speaker 2: or the people I'm disgusting, but they seem to view
Speaker 2: heidiger Is like as somebody who sort of like broke
Speaker 2: with Nietzsche and like was with some kind of like
Speaker 2: neo scholastic That's very misguided and it's incorrect. And what
Speaker 2: Heidegger clarified to like what Nietzsche's objection was to Christianity
Speaker 2: and like why it was problematic, and it's not. It's not.
Speaker 2: It's not because Christianity is proportaly like pacifist, or because
Speaker 2: it's Semitic or like anything like that. There's nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it at all. The the Heidigerian view and
Speaker 2: thus what became the national socialist view. And I'm not
Speaker 2: saying this synonymous. I'm saying they share this kind of
Speaker 2: ontological view or a view of like political and philosophical
Speaker 2: and ontology and common It's that like the beginning of
Speaker 2: the West as like a cultural form, you know it, uh,
Speaker 2: it began with it began with the pre Socratics, and
Speaker 2: it began with a question of being you know, like
Speaker 2: what it is to literally be conscious and to exist
Speaker 2: in the world. There's an understanding of this as being. Essentially,
Speaker 2: it's being a characterized by a certain dynamism and a
Speaker 2: tendency towards change and reconstitution and creative destruction. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to condense it as much as possible. But this, uh,
Speaker 2: this understanding of being was was superseded by the emergence
Speaker 2: of Plato and Platonism, which of course too informs in
Speaker 2: indispensable ways, you know, the Christian metaphysics, regardless of your sect. Okay,
Speaker 2: being as characterized through the lens of Platonism is an
Speaker 2: eternal presence. It's absolutely unchanging. It's accessible by coming and
Speaker 2: though if you want to look at this way like
Speaker 2: a realm of uh, of perfect existence that can only
Speaker 2: be accessed by a difficult dialectical ascent. Now, human beings
Speaker 2: can't experience it directly, obviously in the Christian view, you know,
Speaker 2: in mortal life. But the only way they can even
Speaker 2: come to understand it at all is basically through a
Speaker 2: combination of grace and piety like the four of which,
Speaker 2: depending on your interpretation and confessional heritage and soteriology, they're
Speaker 2: in like is exclusively in the hands of God. But
Speaker 2: the crisis of the modern age to people like Heideger
Speaker 2: and thus too fascist and national socialists, is that what
Speaker 2: modernity did was it created conditions whereby people could no
Speaker 2: longer believe in God. Like not that they'd be punished
Speaker 2: if they did or something. What I mean is that
Speaker 2: just by being in the world as it existed in
Speaker 2: the modern age, and it's the scientific and technological perspective
Speaker 2: crowded out all other possible ways of knowing it simply
Speaker 2: wasn't possible to believe in this in in in this
Speaker 2: perfect and mutable the form of being that way that
Speaker 2: was God. Okay, Like even if what's set about to
Speaker 2: believe in it, you know, they they it'd be it'd
Speaker 2: be a it'd be dead on arrivals of proposition, because
Speaker 2: like what would you do? Would you would you mathematically
Speaker 2: aculate God? Would you would you identify you know, the
Speaker 2: essential characteristics of God and then attempt to access those
Speaker 2: things discreetly and then you know, through some kind of
Speaker 2: like discourse of the learned man, like come to know God?
Speaker 2: You know, like obviously I'm being obtuse on purpose. But
Speaker 2: the it's it's it's essential understand we're not talking about
Speaker 2: something like deliberate turn towards atheism as we think of
Speaker 2: atheism today. We're talking about a literal impossibility of holding
Speaker 2: a belief in God is understood, you know, from ah
Speaker 2: from very very ancient, a very very ancient epoch and
Speaker 2: to the present. Okay. The problem with this is that
Speaker 2: if you look at the way people exist politically, again
Speaker 2: in the view of Heideger and the view really Aristotle
Speaker 2: as a you know, accounting for the you know, kind
Speaker 2: of modern conditions and the limitations they're in, as well
Speaker 2: as you know, possibilities that weren't in the classical world.
Speaker 2: What being is it's inextricably related to time and temporal experience.
Speaker 2: That's how the human mind structures itself in individual persons
Speaker 2: as well as within cultures, in races, any kind of
Speaker 2: human organization writ large socially and politically. I mean to
Speaker 2: like literally, what your ethnos is is like the experience
Speaker 2: of a people and they're being over time, and the
Speaker 2: way that that develops is this kind of immediate consciousness
Speaker 2: in the mind of any man and woman that they
Speaker 2: are in the world, that somebody they will die, that
Speaker 2: others around them are like them in some way, and
Speaker 2: the language they speak, you know, the physical artifacts they're
Speaker 2: attracted to, you know, the things they hold to be sacred,
Speaker 2: the things they hold to be profane. You know what
Speaker 2: they consider it beautiful, what they consider ugly. You know
Speaker 2: what they identify with in intimate capacities and what repels
Speaker 2: them similarly and intimate capacities. That's related to, quite literally,
Speaker 2: the experience of a people over time that could be
Speaker 2: said to be their people in the past, in the future,
Speaker 2: and in the present until that person or those people die. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is the only way one can say it be
Speaker 2: said to experience beating in the world in some capacity
Speaker 2: other than an animal. Okay, because this is the only
Speaker 2: thing that is facility is to production of culture. The
Speaker 2: grave danger of not just the modern age, but specifically
Speaker 2: the twentieth century is that the twin kind of hydras
Speaker 2: of communism and Americanism. Heideger spoke of Americanism when he
Speaker 2: meant what we'd probably say is capitalism. That's not him
Speaker 2: like trashing peckerwoods or saying Americans are the almost all
Speaker 2: the people. Ever, so don't get upset, And that's actually
Speaker 2: accurate what he is. It's more accuracy Americanism than capitalism.
Speaker 2: But he said that the enterprise, the whole raizon detra
Speaker 2: of these ideologies is to utterly eradicate the ability of
Speaker 2: people to exist in time and live historically. It's to
Speaker 2: totally eradicate culture so that there's no potential of any
Speaker 2: kind of identitarian existence, so that there's no human existence
Speaker 2: as we thought of it, heretofore, and instead we can
Speaker 2: replace culture with the things that really matter in terms
Speaker 2: of eliminating inequities and in managing people in in secular life,
Speaker 2: you know, and that is, you know, mastering technology to
Speaker 2: bring nature within you know, a productive domain, you know,
Speaker 2: so that we can do away with shortages, we can
Speaker 2: do away with, you know, inequalities of status and power.
Speaker 2: Going to the fact that you know, productive technique can
Speaker 2: avail everything in our environment, you know, to to to
Speaker 2: and avail it to being marshaled as a consumable resource. Okay,
Speaker 2: So as you're talking about the world literally devouring itself
Speaker 2: for the sake of keeping humans alive, for the sake
Speaker 2: of keeping them alive, you know, you're literally eradicating the
Speaker 2: ability of man to exist temporally you know, and that's
Speaker 2: a monstrous enterprise. And when you add in the understanding
Speaker 2: of the human being as not just inheriting as culture
Speaker 2: in some loose metaphysical way, but in a very direct
Speaker 2: and biological way, as you know, is becoming clear is
Speaker 2: one part of the equation in terms of eptic memory.
Speaker 2: That's one of the fascinating aspects of the human genome project,
Speaker 2: among many. And I'm not saying that biological process takes
Speaker 2: precedent over anything else at all, but I'm saying that
Speaker 2: the fact of this discovery of these such things for
Speaker 2: the confirms that we already knew, okay, And that is
Speaker 2: I realized that that wasn't short when I've just kind
Speaker 2: of laid out there. But as a condensed that's the
Speaker 2: condensed version of why the right became so radical and
Speaker 2: what its enterprise was, and why it's somewhat difficult to define, okay,
Speaker 2: Like you ask, like what the communist program was. There
Speaker 2: was a certain complexity inherent, because there's a certain complexity
Speaker 2: adherent to economics. Even if your economic schema is not
Speaker 2: really founded upon falsifiable premises but is basically just you know,
Speaker 2: like an ideological statement, you're still drawing upon tremendous valumes
Speaker 2: of data. Okay, that is, you know, within the terms
Speaker 2: of its own processes and assumptions. It's complicated. Okay, if
Speaker 2: you're talking about Americanism. If Americanism is you know, the
Speaker 2: capital L liberal tradition I'm talking about in purely, purely
Speaker 2: in terms of political philosophy. You know, from Hobbes to
Speaker 2: uh to Locke, you know, to Pain and then to
Speaker 2: uh you know, Adam Smith and things like that. There.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there is a certain complexity there despite
Speaker 2: its reductionism. But it's a complexity that can be pretty,
Speaker 2: but they can be you know, I described in terms
Speaker 2: of very concrete variables and phenomenon. Okay, if you were
Speaker 2: a fascist or a national socialist, or today if you're
Speaker 2: you know, a capital T traditionalist or a dissident, wherever
Speaker 2: you follow in the equation. You know, whether you're you know,
Speaker 2: whether you're AH, you know, whether you're a national socialist
Speaker 2: in the twenty first century sense. You know, like i'd
Speaker 2: say I am in large part, whether you're a CAPITALT traditionalist.
Speaker 2: You know, whether you're whether whether you're a view of
Speaker 2: things is kind of like that. Guys who you know
Speaker 2: servant hes blah or on the other side of the divide,
Speaker 2: you know, are you know, serve with these like Musha
Speaker 2: Dean groupings on the sunny side. It's difficult. It's not
Speaker 2: as simple as saying it's not as simple as stating like, well,
Speaker 2: I just believe in my race, or like, well, I
Speaker 2: you know, I just I believe in Christ, or well
Speaker 2: like I'm a Maslam or you know, well, I believe
Speaker 2: in tradition and preserving you know, tradition as an essential
Speaker 2: to culture and culture being in inextricable aspect of the
Speaker 2: human and the human experience and and the human soul.
Speaker 2: You know, there's like you're talking about things a tremendous
Speaker 2: significance that also you know, can't can't can't just be
Speaker 2: broken down into discreen sentences, you know. So that's I
Speaker 2: know that people there are buttle is gonna be like, well,
Speaker 2: you're just trying to my mythologize something that's a base
Speaker 2: course and as simple as any other political ontology. I
Speaker 2: don't think that's the case, okay, And I don't see
Speaker 2: how this is arguable. And that's when you're reading a
Speaker 2: guy like de Grell or Kadriannu or Francis Yaqui. Those
Speaker 2: three men came from very different places, Okay, a very
Speaker 2: different background as well. Point the tie that binds is
Speaker 2: a commitment to this perspective that I just described and
Speaker 2: kind of the condensed version. And uh, these guys aren't
Speaker 2: just uh, they don't just love hearing them so they
Speaker 2: just love hearing themselves talk or you know, they it's
Speaker 2: not like they were getting paid by the words. They
Speaker 2: decided to be as you know, voluminous as possible. When
Speaker 2: it's not like these guys were literary figures who were
Speaker 2: trying to try to capture the perfect sentence or something.
Speaker 2: You know, it's because what they were dealing with it
Speaker 2: wasn't reducible to the same concrete kind of schema of
Speaker 2: a you know, a liberal Americanist or or a communist
Speaker 2: or these days, you know, like a secular humanist kind
Speaker 2: of statement of rights or like of you know, what
Speaker 2: constitutes the dignity of the person or what you know,
Speaker 2: what we consider to be, what we can consider to
Speaker 2: be you know, due process and in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of the modern state, and uh, you know
Speaker 2: what the individual can expect in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: his his his intrinsic claims to liberty is a good
Speaker 2: in itself, being honored, you know, when confronted with the
Speaker 2: great power of that modern state. And i'll, i'll, I'll
Speaker 2: end now because I don't want to take up on
Speaker 2: the oxygen in the room, but I consider that's to
Speaker 2: be very important. And like when we're discussing any of these,
Speaker 2: we're discussing this topic just in general terms, you know,
Speaker 2: approaching it philosophically, you know, tending to unpack like what
Speaker 2: constitutes its philosophical core, but also specifically, when you know,
Speaker 2: any any discussion of any author, in part you're going
Speaker 2: to be dealing with, like not just the character that author.
Speaker 2: I mean when I say character, I don't just mean
Speaker 2: moral behavior and stuff that's part of it, but like
Speaker 2: what actual like what characteristics are most paramount in his personality,
Speaker 2: but also you know, like why, why why he configured
Speaker 2: his thoughts the way that he did in terms of
Speaker 2: trying to convey to others, you know, what what the
Speaker 2: what his experience of of of of life as a
Speaker 2: partisan was, So that that's that's all I've got on it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I wanted to get that out.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think That's important because if you
Speaker 1: bring up the names like to Grell and Jacky and
Speaker 1: I mean anyone basically from that, from that quadrant, it's
Speaker 1: just dismissed as they were evil they yeah, they were
Speaker 1: doing this just because they were evil men. And it's
Speaker 1: that's a real easy way to dismiss and to promote
Speaker 1: what the regime propaganda has been since then.
Speaker 2: It's also just like grossly simple minded. Like I'm always
Speaker 2: making the point if you're a per if you're a
Speaker 2: guy like then or as now, like the girl, or
Speaker 2: like Francis Jacky, or like Kadrian who or like Johann
Speaker 2: von Leers, who's like different than all those guys. But
Speaker 2: you know, I'm something of an orientalyst myself, so I
Speaker 2: take an interest in what he did. If somebody like
Speaker 2: really takes an interest in race, you know, like as
Speaker 2: not just his own and you know, an interest in
Speaker 2: the posterity of his own people, but you're truly interested
Speaker 2: in like race, I'm truly interested in politics. You're sure
Speaker 2: you're interested in race and interested in the race. You know,
Speaker 2: you're interested in in what its origins are, you're interested
Speaker 2: in its implications, and you're interested into nuances. So like
Speaker 2: you're gonna you'ren you're gonna spend time around like other
Speaker 2: people's just because you want to observe them. And I
Speaker 2: do that all the time. And I've realized like every
Speaker 2: like major national socialist like did that all the time.
Speaker 2: So like this idea of like, oh, you know fascists
Speaker 2: or guys who just like hate in words and like
Speaker 2: don't refuse livings and like segregations, refuse living anything but
Speaker 2: the most segregative environments, I'm like, actually, they're like the opposite.
Speaker 2: They can say that like people like us like are
Speaker 2: looking down on people or like we're reducing people to
Speaker 2: you know, these kinds of like non human integers because
Speaker 2: we're curious about them. Like I don't accept that if
Speaker 2: you can like say that. But this idea of like
Speaker 2: that basically like a fascist or like a or like
Speaker 2: a contemporary partisan you know who holds you know, similar
Speaker 2: sympathies adjusted for epoch is some guy who just quote
Speaker 2: hates people and wants to like live in some mall
Speaker 2: of America environment where everybody's exactly like him. Like that's
Speaker 2: that's really really off base. That's like not at all all,
Speaker 2: Like you're basically there's some kind of caricature that's some
Speaker 2: kind of combination of a caricature of like of of
Speaker 2: kind of like a pussy Reagan Republican and like some
Speaker 2: weird communists like this. Like it's not like it's not like,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong. It's not to say that people
Speaker 2: like mere people like us. We want some like multicultural
Speaker 2: environment around us because it gives us a chance, you know,
Speaker 2: to augment our research. But the point is that, you know,
Speaker 2: first of all, genuine multiculturalism is is is very robust
Speaker 2: and rich when you're talking about exclusively like white people
Speaker 2: on deck, because there's many many cultures that constitute a race. Okay. Secondly,
Speaker 2: it not what what I think, what I approve of
Speaker 2: or don't approve of, like politically relates nothing to do
Speaker 2: with like who I like or dislike. Like it's it's
Speaker 2: in some ways it's the opposite, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: the tragedy of power politics is that you may have
Speaker 2: to kill people individually are at scale who not only
Speaker 2: do you not have any problem with, but you might
Speaker 2: not even dislike, you know, like this idea that politics
Speaker 2: is just some sort of highly scaled expression of crude
Speaker 2: human passions of not particularly intelligent people who like don't
Speaker 2: like other people like that's that's oddly illiterate, and like
Speaker 2: this is not the way humans act, you know, like
Speaker 2: uh like at all, like like anywhere. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's like you know it, uh, it's it's it's really
Speaker 2: really really fucking bizarre. But it's also I mean even
Speaker 2: people again who have a somewhat more sophisticated take on it,
Speaker 2: yet nonetheless you know, erect an endless kind of army,
Speaker 2: a straw man to try and tear down the right
Speaker 2: as an intellectual tendency. Like they like like they don't
Speaker 2: they don't get it either, you know, like the you
Speaker 2: can you know, you can say that, uh you can
Speaker 2: say that people like Heideger were crazy, I guess, or
Speaker 2: you can say that, well, you know, how was just
Speaker 2: he was afraid of what he was afraid of a
Speaker 2: process that translates approximately to practical transcendence, you know, and like, oh,
Speaker 2: for all of us talk about the pre socratics, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like the immediate, the sense, the sensuous presence,
Speaker 2: immediate presence of the human individually and at scale. You know,
Speaker 2: that's what makes culture for all, for all his talk
Speaker 2: of dynamism and change. You know, he really was just
Speaker 2: kind of attached like the state forms of the past.
Speaker 2: I think that's a gross and deliberate misreading of him.
Speaker 2: But like I'll accept that. But just saying that, like
Speaker 2: this is all some like elaborate this is all some
Speaker 2: sort of like elaborate charade so that people can you know,
Speaker 2: go around doing mean or evil things, or so that
Speaker 2: you know, they can rationalize the fact that they have
Speaker 2: some personal animosity towards like X, Y or Z group
Speaker 2: of people. Like that's literally retarded. That that the suggestion
Speaker 2: that such things are are the motivations or you know,
Speaker 2: constitute the commitments in the minds of the people who
Speaker 2: advocate such things or who suggest uh that what it
Speaker 2: is described, you know, is a is a matter of
Speaker 2: imperative significance to to anybody who you know wishes, which
Speaker 2: is for human life to not deteriorate to the level
Speaker 2: of peace. But yeah, that I don't again, I want
Speaker 2: to I don't want to take up all of our time,
Speaker 2: so I will I will shut my mouth and let
Speaker 2: you get on.
Speaker 1: With our well, let us uh on that note, Let's
Speaker 1: get to part three here, which is the misery of mankind,
Speaker 1: I will start reading again, and like I said, stop
Speaker 1: anytime you wish to comment on it. Okay, So Part
Speaker 1: Part nine. The blind men, the money, the honors, and
Speaker 1: the mess of bodies. The eagerness to seize and earthly
Speaker 1: happiness which leaks between the fingers and always escapes, has
Speaker 1: made it The human heard, a pitiful horde, ruining itself,
Speaker 1: tearing itself apart to find a liberation which does not exist.
Speaker 1: Only the false laughter rising from the rabble serves to
Speaker 1: remind us that it is not a question of herd animals,
Speaker 1: but of men. This stampede of the damn seized first
Speaker 1: the individual, then the people as a whole. It is
Speaker 1: no longer a solitary game in which one is enthralled
Speaker 1: by personal passions or vices. Whole communities are sucked in
Speaker 1: by the vertigo of impossible desires, the desire to be first,
Speaker 1: that is to say, the desire to trample upon, the
Speaker 1: desire for purely material power, that is to say, the
Speaker 1: desire to suffocate and destroy the spiritual. All will power,
Speaker 1: all effort becomes useless in the face of this human dissolution.
Speaker 1: And it is here that the spiritual always reappears as
Speaker 1: rebuke or as a curse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to insinuate just that's an important point
Speaker 2: because as you do, do you believe in the intrinsic
Speaker 2: value of high mat or a gamn shoft you know,
Speaker 2: blood and like you know, folk community or whatever, even
Speaker 2: when when those things are taken away and all you
Speaker 2: have basically is you know, it's like if if something
Speaker 2: like you know, if something like the Soviet system, like
Speaker 2: the you know, is realized as it was you know
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties, and people basically like you do succeed,
Speaker 2: like you being you know, the revolutionary vanguard, you do
Speaker 2: actually succeed in transforming you know, what was previously you know,
Speaker 2: a community based on ethnos and temporal being in the
Speaker 2: world or generations, if you just like reduce that to
Speaker 2: a labor camp like people does are tearing each other
Speaker 2: apart because it's like, first of all, I gotta look
Speaker 2: out for myself and my family. Like second of all,
Speaker 2: I want I want to be a chief, not an
Speaker 2: Indian or at least you know, like a shot caller,
Speaker 2: you know, So I'm I'm going to attack whoever has more,
Speaker 2: whether it's cloud or whether it's you know, what passes
Speaker 2: for wealth, whether it's proximity to you know, the party apparatus,
Speaker 2: Like you're actually like you're you're actually encouraging people to,
Speaker 2: you know, to kind of tear out the root even
Speaker 2: further and kind of do your work for you, I mean,
Speaker 2: which is very mu's by design in my opinion, that's
Speaker 2: not some kind of accident, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1: This baseness has poured out from the limited circles of
Speaker 1: the elites into the extended circles of the masses, tossing
Speaker 1: them about on waves of infinite desire, ambition, and pseudo pleasures,
Speaker 1: which are just character caricatures of joy. The clear water
Speaker 1: of the heart has been clouded to its outer limits.
Speaker 1: The river of men now carries a putrid stink. The
Speaker 1: disorder of the century has upset this river that was
Speaker 1: once light reads and plunging flights of swallows. Men and
Speaker 1: peoples regard each other with violent with violent eyes, their
Speaker 1: hands seared and bitter by their avarice. Every day the
Speaker 1: world is more selfish and more brutal. This is great
Speaker 1: hatred between men, between classes, between peoples, between everyone, because
Speaker 1: everyone is bent on the pursuit of material goods which
Speaker 1: ultimately avail nothing but all abandon the goods proffered to
Speaker 1: all of the moral universe and the eternity of the soul.
Speaker 1: We run madly, bloody our foreheads, beating our heads against
Speaker 1: the walls, on paths of hatred, or of objection, abjection,
Speaker 1: or of madness, shouting our passions, throwing ourselves wildly at everything,
Speaker 1: desiring to gain that which we can never have. Part
Speaker 1: ten the lines of sorrow. There are few hearts that
Speaker 1: have not been soiled with villainy, sordid axe, leprous faults,
Speaker 1: leaving telltale cracks for those with eyes to see them.
Speaker 1: Even hearts washed of the stains of the moral swamp
Speaker 1: will still keep a bitter taste of imperfection and ashes.
Speaker 1: Cracked porcelain can be fixed, Yet whoever saw it broken
Speaker 1: will forever recognize the lines. However, finally repaired of the break,
Speaker 1: he knows that the invisible unity of the perfect will
Speaker 1: never return, but it is gone forever. The longer one lives,
Speaker 1: the more the heart is marked by these lines of sorrow,
Speaker 1: imperceptible for all those who have not seen or not
Speaker 1: known what made them, but heartbreakingly by all they contain
Speaker 1: of broken delicacy, like fine silks, which runs slightly, which
Speaker 1: runs silently, happy again, those are who are purified by
Speaker 1: invisible suffering. How many others, whatever value vice may have,
Speaker 1: strive to convince themselves that this abasement was useful, forever
Speaker 1: marked by this burning apparel, which has cooled on their
Speaker 1: skin and sticks to it, corrupts their flesh and becomes
Speaker 1: one with it. Whose eyes can one meet without trembling?
Speaker 1: What are they hiding? Who has not been vile on
Speaker 1: one day? Who does not carry within himself worryd's gestures, desires,
Speaker 1: shameful abdications, or the mummified corpse of his inner life?
Speaker 1: How many men, how many women, do not even hide
Speaker 1: the bankruptcy of their senses, their oaths, and the miserable
Speaker 1: desecration of their bodies, sometimes with remorse, most of the
Speaker 1: time without remorse, or rather even with a touch of
Speaker 1: triumph and insolent provocation. In the final account, those who
Speaker 1: have liquidated everything, decency, modesty, respect for one's self, for
Speaker 1: one's body, for one's word, and God with the rest
Speaker 1: are only the results of hundreds of smaller prior denials,
Speaker 1: denied or hidden from the start, the whole is destroyed
Speaker 1: only when the innumerable fibers of the heart have been
Speaker 1: sheared one after the other by lies and ill intent,
Speaker 1: followed by multiple abandonments, more and more irredeemable, irre irremediable,
Speaker 1: with the conscience assassinated. At the end, disaster SAPs to
Speaker 1: mind before spending, before spreading throughout the whole body. The
Speaker 1: body does not yield, does not allow itself to be
Speaker 1: to debase, trapped and defiled to death until long after
Speaker 1: the soul, negligent or intoxicated by the appeal of sin,
Speaker 1: has abandoned. The oars, which at the beginning trace straight
Speaker 1: paths on pure waters. Part eleven. The Saints check on's
Speaker 1: up here?
Speaker 2: Okay, good, all right?
Speaker 1: The Saints varying in intelligence by possessing a heart given
Speaker 1: without limits, whom the fallen and corrupt hold in such esteem.
Speaker 1: The Saints show us to perfection is that perfection is
Speaker 1: open to all. They too were simple men, simple women,
Speaker 1: charged with passions, weaknesses, and often faults. They too sometimes
Speaker 1: did to tire, give in and tell themselves that they
Speaker 1: would never be able to get rid of the smell
Speaker 1: of muck and sin that accompanies us. But still they
Speaker 1: did not renounce themselves.
Speaker 2: And that's important as visa v what we were talking
Speaker 2: about or what I raised in the industry, like about
Speaker 2: if you if you're looking for like a fascist practice,
Speaker 2: it borrows heavily from the understanding of from the Roman
Speaker 2: Church's understanding of martyrdom. And and for this reason is
Speaker 2: what the grill just said. And that's you know, the
Speaker 2: uh getting you know, the this idea that like well
Speaker 2: you know we we we when one one can't come
Speaker 2: to know the eternal, one can't come to know providence,
Speaker 2: you know, through through dialectic. You know, it's just it's
Speaker 2: just completely kind of off and unavailable. So you know,
Speaker 2: how how can we how can we partake of you know,
Speaker 2: what's essentially godly? Then you know it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: through martyrdom. That doesn't mean like running out looking for
Speaker 2: ways to kill ourselves or like running out and becoming
Speaker 2: you know, holy warriors all over. Some men that and
Speaker 2: some women too, that is their vocation martyr as uh
Speaker 2: are a Roman Catholic. Friends will tell you literally needs witness, okay,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't mean that obvious I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: fashion The National Socialists somehow corner of the market on
Speaker 2: martyrdom in the contemporary age, nor even that you know,
Speaker 2: Christian or Catholic concepts are intrinsic to the national socialism
Speaker 2: or fascist I'm not saying that at all. But what
Speaker 2: I'm saying is that this concern with the UH abandonment
Speaker 2: of God and you know, the literal death of God
Speaker 2: by way of UH. You know, the the the triumph,
Speaker 2: the total and complete triumph of the UH of the
Speaker 2: rationalists and and and and scientific perspective, and UH, the
Speaker 2: destruction of the ability to live historically. You know, which
Speaker 2: UH and and and again, like living historically is simply
Speaker 2: the human being individually in at scale, you know, confronting
Speaker 2: death and thus, like living in time. You know, the
Speaker 2: only way to reconstitute that is through through is through
Speaker 2: the practice of religion, you know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: returning to Catholic UH Catholic practice, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: discovering you know, reawakening the inner witness if you're a Protestant,
Speaker 2: or like awaiting you know that the conferring of grace,
Speaker 2: you know, through God's will awakening that inner witness, or
Speaker 2: you know, if you're like an agnostic national socialist, which
Speaker 2: a lot of our comrades are, and that's fine. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: you know, it's uh. It's like the practice of what
Speaker 2: we're talking about, of reconstituting the sacred entails murderdom, and
Speaker 2: that's hugely important.
Speaker 1: They too, sometimes did to tire give in and tell
Speaker 1: themselves that they would never be able to get rid
Speaker 1: of that smell of mucking sin that accompanies us. But
Speaker 1: still they did not renounce themselves. With each fall, they
Speaker 1: straightened up, determined to be all the more vigilant as
Speaker 1: their strength failed them. Virtue is not a sudden dazzle,
Speaker 1: but a slow, hard, and sometimes very painful conquest. They
Speaker 1: had the superhuman joy of finally feeling victorious over their
Speaker 1: bodies and their thoughts. Their struggle tells us that happiness
Speaker 1: on earth and beyond the earth is within everyone's reach.
Speaker 1: Every one of us has a choice to make. Before
Speaker 1: the body fails, it is the spirit that triumphs or capitulates.
Speaker 1: And even when the body has given way, the spirit
Speaker 1: can lift it up or let it corrupt itself even
Speaker 1: more than poison itself. Forever we are our own masters.
Speaker 1: We can sink into the chasms or stand in them
Speaker 1: up to the shoulder, or climb out of them and
Speaker 1: over come them. Everything can be avoided, and everything can
Speaker 1: be done. Part twelve, The Eternal Crucifixion. Faced with the
Speaker 1: contemptuous ironies of Hedonis and skeptics, one hardly dares to
Speaker 1: recall that for two thousand years the greatest human drama,
Speaker 1: that of the Passion, has been spiritually repeated each spring.
Speaker 1: Who will suffer? Who will be there near cavalry? In
Speaker 1: these new days of agony? In the desert of time
Speaker 1: stands the cross. The mundane, shady, and perverse life of
Speaker 1: men flows on like a dull river. Christ will receive
Speaker 1: the blows in the thorns. He will collapse to the ground.
Speaker 1: The wood of the cross will crush, crush his flesh.
Speaker 1: The hammer will strike great blows against the hard beams.
Speaker 1: They pierced my hands, in my feet, I can count
Speaker 1: all my bones. What will the world know? His blood
Speaker 1: will slowly come down on his pale body. His eyes
Speaker 1: will seek both his father and our souls. What will
Speaker 1: our souls understand about this tragedy? They have not shuddered
Speaker 1: or cried, nor even thought about it, nor seen Christ
Speaker 1: moves well alone alone, The souls sleep or are sterile
Speaker 1: or have committed suicide. While it is to pull them
Speaker 1: out of their torpor, mud and death that this body
Speaker 1: hangs between heaven and earth in pain. The distress of
Speaker 1: this heart mainly launches a launches a cry of despair,
Speaker 1: which should freeze the earth and stop the breath of men.
Speaker 1: Yet it is because a man's spiritual suffocation that the
Speaker 1: world is falling apart. It is hope, charity, justice, humility
Speaker 1: that the world needs to find fresh air. We have
Speaker 1: received this spiritual life as a gift. We are the bearers.
Speaker 1: And our hands are dangling at our sides, and our
Speaker 1: eyes are dry, and our lips do not tremble in
Speaker 1: fervor and emotion. Our hearts are like dry sand. Our
Speaker 1: souls lay lifeless where they died. Faith is worth anything
Speaker 1: only as long as it conquers love, as long as
Speaker 1: it burns charity, as long as it saves Part thirteen nobody.
Speaker 1: A palm tree trembles, the sand slides between the tan
Speaker 1: fingers of a child. Lambs marked with blood collide with
Speaker 1: stubborn little foreheads. Tiny donkeys' eyes wet come down from
Speaker 1: the hill. The easter lands escape, clean and shiny, The
Speaker 1: air is still fresh. Daisies are scattered on the hillside.
Speaker 1: Why does Christ again suffer the most heartbreaking agony in
Speaker 1: these days when fans of mimosa flowers decorate the twisting roads,
Speaker 1: These clear, warm roads bring him back every year, silent
Speaker 1: in agony, to the nails and thorns, to the blood
Speaker 1: and sput them. Lord, we are following you and your
Speaker 1: dusty procession, mingled with those rough and cowardly fishermen who
Speaker 1: loved you, but who loved you like us with measure,
Speaker 1: as if measure was not an insult to your love.
Speaker 1: We are like unto them, no worse than others. Our
Speaker 1: eyes sometimes beaming with joy in serving you, we dismiss intruders,
Speaker 1: We wave the palms. We believe we are very close
Speaker 1: to your heart. We think ourselves better than we are
Speaker 1: in your sad eyes. It is our vanity that we project,
Speaker 1: and in this hour of agony, because our love hung
Speaker 1: always by a thread, we will turn away from your wounds,
Speaker 1: your blood and sweat, and that great icy cry that
Speaker 1: will pierce the earth. Lord, We're coming back to your
Speaker 1: blued feet. We clasped this wood of the cross between
Speaker 1: our trembling arms. How dare we look up at your
Speaker 1: bloody head. We dare do nothing but extend our dismayed
Speaker 1: hearts to you. It would have been so sweet to
Speaker 1: give our souls to you in a complete act, to
Speaker 1: be with you from the garden of olives to this
Speaker 1: mound where you hang inert in the evening wind. We
Speaker 1: did not even have the fate of the penitent thief,
Speaker 1: the one who loved you last, who regarded you as
Speaker 1: he fell into heaven. We suffer the overwhelming force of
Speaker 1: our weaknesses, our cowardice, our tepidy, our tipidity. Lord, you
Speaker 1: brought us to the essential and the eternal, the blood
Speaker 1: and the drink, the breath and the sun. You animated
Speaker 1: our hearts. You gave us strength. We should have jumped.
Speaker 1: We should have jumped light with heart and celebration, freed
Speaker 1: forever from all bond all regret, all other hope. Yet
Speaker 1: we remained fearful, hidden in the shadow of a doorway
Speaker 1: or under the bright olive tree. You went crushed and
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with insults. Ah, my God, in these minutes of
Speaker 1: pain and salvation, we have not grasped the cross. We
Speaker 1: have not kissed your wounds and your thorns, put to flight,
Speaker 1: your put to flight. Your executioners broken their whips, refuted
Speaker 1: their insults. We did not know how to love. At
Speaker 1: the moment of this complete giving, our hearts were lifeless.
Speaker 1: My God, there you are abandoned by all, silent and dismal,
Speaker 1: stiff limbed, there was nobody. Nobody. We squeezed the dead
Speaker 1: wood and depart without raising our heads, laying our defeated
Speaker 1: hearts at your feet. You'll return to the light. Lord,
Speaker 1: at this hour, have mercy on the destroyed souls. Have
Speaker 1: mercy on empty souls. We suffer so much from our
Speaker 1: mean and vile sentiments, so imbued with ourselves, so preoccupied
Speaker 1: with our selfishness, our ambitions, our vanities. We let you suffer.
Speaker 1: We saw your blood flow, saw you plant your cross,
Speaker 1: saw the life fade from your face. Will we ever
Speaker 1: dare to look upon your open wounds and to meet
Speaker 1: your weary eyes? Lord, The hour is near. Your light
Speaker 1: will suddenly burst forth upon the hill. We will still
Speaker 1: be there, ashamed and sad. Burn our hearts with your
Speaker 1: dazzling sweetness. Give us the warmth and purity of this
Speaker 1: divine fire from which you will spring. We are overwhelmed
Speaker 1: at the threshold of your tomb Lord, make the spark
Speaker 1: of the resurrection bloom in our defeated souls.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, this book is essentially it's probably nine Christian
Speaker 2: apologetics and and beatification of the murders by a layman.
Speaker 2: And this is a this is like a s S
Speaker 2: officer you know who wrote this. And again it I
Speaker 2: mean I realized there was very must like a Catholic
Speaker 2: moment of a sort in in Francophone Europe underway, which
Speaker 2: was the girl's culture. But it you know that, But
Speaker 2: this wasn't accidental. And again, you know, the girl wasn't
Speaker 2: some outlier. You know, the the understanding of uh, you know,
Speaker 2: martyrdom being uh being the essential vocation of the racial
Speaker 2: patriot or the holy warrior, and you know, the understanding
Speaker 2: of the understanding the ability to live historically being an
Speaker 2: extricately bound up to man's confrontation with death, you know,
Speaker 2: and and you know, religious faith, you know, being the
Speaker 2: only way not just the man comes to terms with that,
Speaker 2: but I mean comes to understand it, you know, like
Speaker 2: that's really the only like the like the metaphysical discourse
Speaker 2: on man's relationship to death is is is his religious confession? Okay?
Speaker 2: You know, and again, the girl wasn't. The girl wasn't
Speaker 2: just this kind of like random guy you know who
Speaker 2: ended up on the Eastern Front or something. I mean,
Speaker 2: he had he was a war hero, he had serious cloud.
Speaker 2: He'd met Hitler personally, and like he was known to
Speaker 2: Hitler personally. You know, he had NCIG been realized, he
Speaker 2: almost undoubtedly would have been, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful men in what was formerly Belgium, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like he was. He was a guy
Speaker 2: with serious cloud, you know, within the kind of the
Speaker 2: the greater, the Greater Reich. And and he's also like
Speaker 2: in a secondary sense too, which shows you how it
Speaker 2: shows you the degree to which, you know, what was
Speaker 2: animating the Third Reich was very much becoming a European movement.
Speaker 2: I mean, the seeds of that were always kind of
Speaker 2: president just doing to geostrategic realities and and kind of
Speaker 2: the shrinking of of the world into kind of like
Speaker 2: one place, as it were conceptually. But you know, this
Speaker 2: idea that like, oh there was this sho there was
Speaker 2: this you know, chauvinistic kind of like backward looking nationalist party,
Speaker 2: you know, capital and nationalist party in the NSDAP, but
Speaker 2: you know, just kind of like out of military necessity,
Speaker 2: you knows, came about and some of these European guys
Speaker 2: you know, decided they were going to get theirs too,
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of forced acknowledgment of of of
Speaker 2: their own you know, nations and government. So that's that's
Speaker 2: not the case at all, you know, it's you got
Speaker 2: to look at national socialist socialism as a European phenomenon,
Speaker 2: and you got to look at the Grell specifically as
Speaker 2: you know, like an exemplar of you know, kind of
Speaker 2: the the European and SS, you know, as as well
Speaker 2: as uh, you know, Francophone fascism. But you know, everything, everything,
Speaker 2: every everything, every testament. This man ever put the paper
Speaker 2: was absolutely inundated with his Catholic faith. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just want to insinuate.
Speaker 1: That perfect part nine or is yeah, where am I at?
Speaker 1: Part part?
Speaker 2: Is that? As part fourteen? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How do I? How have I forgotten in my old
Speaker 1: age to read Roman numerals?
Speaker 2: They can be confusing? Man?
Speaker 1: Thank you so honest.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Just think just think of the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2: I think when I'm like, okay, now what is the
Speaker 2: ex simple way? Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, is the only time anybody uses the vermneuvererals
Speaker 1: anymore as a freaking it's you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Like on the street and shy town, like for ten
Speaker 2: dollars worth of drugs, where a ten dollars bill like
Speaker 2: street dog is still a saw book because literally like
Speaker 2: an X looks like a sawhorse, so like the last
Speaker 2: hundred years in the street like a ten or ten
Speaker 2: dollars or like a little bit of drugs saw book.
Speaker 2: It's like weird that's endured. That's so funny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: This is the last part of Part three. Last section
Speaker 1: of Part three. Two have loved. In the icy, pale
Speaker 1: gold sky, a lark quivered. What was she thinking up there?
Speaker 1: She shuddered, She uttered, strident cries, swooning every yeah, swooning
Speaker 1: every second, clinging to the sky with a flutter of
Speaker 1: wings that passed like a lightning bolt. She loved to
Speaker 1: love until broken, Broken with happiness, She felt like a
Speaker 1: pebble in a furrow. So does the soul soar she
Speaker 1: cries of love. She remains, She remains, suspended in mystical immensity,
Speaker 1: only by the wonder of invisible wings support her. She
Speaker 1: no longer even knows that she can fall, that the
Speaker 1: ground is under her. She is there detached from everything, trembling, pulsating,
Speaker 1: as if speaking. The lark swooning upon the warm earth
Speaker 1: must also feel, must also feel this great joy of
Speaker 1: fulfilled love. The soul is panting. Love returns and waves
Speaker 1: and breaks into effort, giving and joy. The great tragedy
Speaker 1: of sin, which causes so much suffering, is that on
Speaker 1: account of it we give less of ourselves, or give badly,
Speaker 1: offering only a portion of what we might have, a
Speaker 1: portion with hints of indelible defilement. To love is to give,
Speaker 1: and to give is to give everything. The punishment for
Speaker 1: falling is the pain of having trampled on your love,
Speaker 1: of having reduced the love you might have given. If
Speaker 1: only we could remove from our bodies, our hands, our eyes,
Speaker 1: these forces that pulse in them at the hours of
Speaker 1: weakness and objection, too late, much to our shoes, we
Speaker 1: may cry all the tears in the world. No matter what,
Speaker 1: we can never recover that which we so carelessly lost
Speaker 1: the day of the fall, despite all our repentance and remission,
Speaker 1: or remain the black hole into which the good of
Speaker 1: the world is eternally lost. We may endeavor to love
Speaker 1: thereafter as ardently as we can. Yet we will not
Speaker 1: create the lost. We will not recreate the lost purity,
Speaker 1: nor regain the most beautiful part of love which was annihilated.
Speaker 1: Our love could have been so much greater what we
Speaker 1: yet possessed to offer at the hour of the highest
Speaker 1: Love will carry whatever we do this terrible mark. This
Speaker 1: is why, having profaned his gift of self, makes the
Speaker 1: heart which yearns for the absolute suffer until the end
Speaker 1: of life. We would like to be God ourselves, to
Speaker 1: take back this day or these times, to give them
Speaker 1: the freshness of dawn, and to guard them fearfully until
Speaker 1: the night. From the first misstep, we know that we
Speaker 1: will no longer love as much as we could have.
Speaker 1: That is what makes repentance, because it cannot repair a
Speaker 1: broken man so heartbreaking. When we have known this pain
Speaker 1: of the irreparable, we seek beyond the possibilities of our heart,
Speaker 1: so that a few moments of sublime love, seized upon
Speaker 1: with great effort, can compensate what fell in the swamps
Speaker 1: and in the shadows. Part four, The Joy of Men,
Speaker 1: Part fifteen, Strong and Hard. The sun is gone. In
Speaker 1: half an hour it will be shade. The birds who
Speaker 1: sang madly in the gardens perceive it. There are roses everywhere,
Speaker 1: so gorged with light that they will soon perish. The
Speaker 1: wood is already sleeping around a few tiled roofs. As always,
Speaker 1: the birds now begin to utter their sharp cries and
Speaker 1: their pleas. No doubt for the two lovers sitting there, dreamy,
Speaker 1: with a huge white hat lying across their knees, all
Speaker 1: of life seems condensed here. Nothing lives apart from these birds,
Speaker 1: this dog which barks at the end of the world,
Speaker 1: and that these two hearts, which steadily beat in the
Speaker 1: evening calm, heavy with the vibration of June. How can
Speaker 1: one believe in hatred? Has one never seen the last
Speaker 1: roses go dim in the light evening silence. We will
Speaker 1: have to tear ourselves away from this great country oasis.
Speaker 1: Later it will be necessary to take again at the
Speaker 1: end of the path, the road where the cars tear
Speaker 1: up the ground through a sputtering, relentless rain. There will
Speaker 1: be brutal lights, empty faces, soulless eyes. This evening landscape
Speaker 1: is so clear, it is given with such a complete generosity,
Speaker 1: These dying roses, these bouquets of trees, these oat field
Speaker 1: shimmering and gray, these gray fir trees are so pure
Speaker 1: and so simple that a childlike wonder arises in our beings.
Speaker 1: Near this eternal youth of grasses, trees and flowers, we
Speaker 1: cannot hear anything anymore. The night slicks down the roses, and.
Speaker 2: Then in this heighten this Heidegger and Heidegers ontology, like
Speaker 2: all over there. You know the the immediately present, the
Speaker 2: sensus presence of the immediate. You know human consciousness, you know,
Speaker 2: constituting what it is to live. You know historically you live,
Speaker 2: You know as a European is as simple as you
Speaker 2: know what what? What the grill just described?
Speaker 1: You know in that in that passage, the woods cut
Speaker 1: their jaggets silhouette, and the dying gleams. The last singing
Speaker 1: bird stops, as if he too, from time to time,
Speaker 1: must simply listen to the silence. The two lovers have disappeared,
Speaker 1: hands trembling a light wind in their hair. I should
Speaker 1: move on. I will go slowly, without disturbing the branches
Speaker 1: and the variety of life which slides through the shadows.
Speaker 1: I will guess the outline of things. I will feel
Speaker 1: the dew blooming at the end of the grass, which
Speaker 1: will refresh the sun tomorrow when it climbs the top
Speaker 1: of the world, top of the wood, where is the
Speaker 1: night of hearts, from which the tender morning would spring.
Speaker 1: We will have to renew our sorrows, resume our journeys
Speaker 1: through the fields and lost woods among cold hearts. Who
Speaker 1: will understand later in the savage glimmers before our trembling eyes,
Speaker 1: that we have just left the forest and the wheat fields,
Speaker 1: the shade and the silence. But why falter at the
Speaker 1: end of the path we watch as cruel life snatches
Speaker 1: everything up in wolf's teeth. In wolf's teeth, we no
Speaker 1: longer look at anything, We no longer think, We no
Speaker 1: longer breathe this air, charged with a sense of passing death.
Speaker 1: Put out the lights, Let the night weigh upon our hearts. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: when daybreak reaches the crest of the trees, we will
Speaker 1: have before us only the closed horizon of man. We
Speaker 1: will have to be strong and hard, joyful through nothing
Speaker 1: but the radiance of our souls. Dying evening, silent and
Speaker 1: sure of dawn. Give us the peace of awaiting the
Speaker 1: light that is reborn renewed from the immense and auspicious night.
Speaker 1: The price of life, we must reiterate the price of life.
Speaker 1: Life is the admirable instrument put in our hands with
Speaker 1: which we forge our wills, raise consciences, and build a
Speaker 1: monument of reason and of heart. Life is not a
Speaker 1: form of sadness, but joy made flesh. Joy of being useful,
Speaker 1: Joy of mastering what could demean or weaken us, Joy
Speaker 1: of acting and giving, Joy of loving all that trembles
Speaker 1: spirit and matter, because everything under the impetus of a
Speaker 1: righteous life rises, lightens, instead of weighing down. You have
Speaker 1: to love life. Sometimes in times of weariness and discuss
Speaker 1: we nearly lose our love of life. You have to
Speaker 1: pull yourself together, straighten up. Too many men are debased,
Speaker 1: but alongside, in an opposition to those whose baseness is
Speaker 1: a blasphemy to life, there are all those who see
Speaker 1: or don't see, who redeem the world and bring honor
Speaker 1: to all life. Seventeen disfoliation. Happiness born of ignorance is
Speaker 1: not flattering. It is a kind of narrow, vegetative happiness.
Speaker 1: Intelligence has nothing to do with it, and neither does
Speaker 1: the body. True happiness, happiness.
Speaker 2: Worthy of man.
Speaker 1: That which raises him up is the happiness assured by
Speaker 1: the spirit, happiness born by the stripping of the soul.
Speaker 1: From the renunciation of the soul in contemplation of human
Speaker 1: pleasures is always made or broken by circumstances. Happy is
Speaker 1: he who is not a slave to circumstances, he who
Speaker 1: knows how to enjoy pleasure as well as privation, as
Speaker 1: long as one suffers from such a deprivation, as long
Speaker 1: as one suffers. By comparing his material fate to others,
Speaker 1: we are neither happy nor free to remain in good spirits,
Speaker 1: even to live with one soul apart from the world,
Speaker 1: when the exterior universe holds nothing but a yawning void.
Speaker 1: To live intensely in this material absence, to live without regret,
Speaker 1: master of your desires, having bent them to the complete
Speaker 1: domination of the Spirit, marks the victory of man, the true,
Speaker 1: the only victory, next to which the greatest conquests and
Speaker 1: dominions are merely caricatures of power. Any comparison seems laughable
Speaker 1: next to the liberation brought by the mastery of the
Speaker 1: Spirit over our possessions, our needs, and our chains. We
Speaker 1: are freed from the old rusty chains that rivetted us
Speaker 1: to mediocre conformities. We hold destiny in our hands, destiny
Speaker 1: clearly discovered in its liberating nudity. Happiness can be borne everywhere.
Speaker 1: It comes not from without but from within us, holding
Speaker 1: within it infinite possibility. Eighteen. The power of joy. There
Speaker 1: are so many things that can bring you joy. Even
Speaker 1: when through our strength we are free of our desires,
Speaker 1: we are happy. Just the joy of living is itself
Speaker 1: so powerful. Joy of having a radiant heart. The joy
Speaker 1: of having a sturdy heart, arms and legs as hard
Speaker 1: as trees, lungs that draw life and air. Joy of
Speaker 1: having eyes that take on colors and shapes in their
Speaker 1: soft curves. Joy of thinking, of spending hours drawing out
Speaker 1: the straight lines of reason, or feasting on dreams. Joy
Speaker 1: of believing, joy of loving, of giving oneself, of striding
Speaker 1: through life flexible as water. How can one be unhappy?
Speaker 1: It is so simple, so basic, so natural. Through the
Speaker 1: worst calamities, happiness always bursts forth like a geyser, which
Speaker 1: we try to obstruct in vain happiness in life for
Speaker 1: the same thing. To be no longer happy is to
Speaker 1: doubt one's body, the warmth of one's blood, the consuming
Speaker 1: fire of one's heart. To doubt these great lights of
Speaker 1: the spirit which bathe all of existence. Even misfortune still
Speaker 1: brings us to joys of the soul, which gives its
Speaker 1: own blood, which weighs out its sacrifice, which feels deeply
Speaker 1: miss which feels deeply misfortune's bitter sting, a cruel joy
Speaker 1: at a higher joy, a joy reserve for the man
Speaker 1: who's broken heart understands.
Speaker 2: And that's I I can't emphasize enough if one's looking
Speaker 2: for something a little bit less remote to apply to
Speaker 2: their own circumstances. That's not to say that once you
Speaker 2: read plitical philosophy in order to discern, you know, prosaic
Speaker 2: in order to discerain remedies to compare to the prosaic problems.
Speaker 2: But there really, there is no such thing as a
Speaker 2: bad experience one hundred percent. Like that's not that's that
Speaker 2: that's not just a cliche or something that you know,
Speaker 2: religious people pull out to, you know, in the phase
Speaker 2: of challenges too. You know how one's supposed to negotiate
Speaker 2: horror and pain in in everyday life. You know, I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't regret anything that's happened to me
Speaker 2: because it brought me to this point. And I mean,
Speaker 2: my life now is incredible. I never thought that where
Speaker 2: I'm at now would be possible, and I'm just unbelievably blessed.
Speaker 2: But you know, I my life was horrible, I mean
Speaker 2: for for years, you know, And I don't I don't
Speaker 2: regret that, Like, I learned more during that period, and
Speaker 2: I came became firmer in my faith during that period
Speaker 2: than would have been possible otherwise. And it also, you know,
Speaker 2: owing to the proximity of death, because the life style
Speaker 2: I was living, it forced me to contemplate it in
Speaker 2: very immediate terms in a way that I otherwise probably
Speaker 2: would not have because I was quite a bit younger
Speaker 2: than you know, And that just kind of whether you
Speaker 2: want to or not, you you develop a tendency towards
Speaker 2: contemplation of a few ideological principles, you know, and unless
Speaker 2: you're truly like a dullart or something like, when you're
Speaker 2: within such circumstances. So, I mean, I can't emphasize enough
Speaker 2: that there's practical value in reading things like de Grill.
Speaker 2: You're not just you're not just doing a credit to
Speaker 2: our forebears. If in fact, you know you're you're committed
Speaker 2: to these ideological principles like I am, you know you're
Speaker 2: also you're you're also you know, contributing to the strengthen
Speaker 2: of your own piety and faith by by studying such things.
Speaker 2: That's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 1: All right, nineteen to dream, to think. The hours of
Speaker 1: dreams are hours of profound life, where all the poetry
Speaker 1: that floats in our consciousness gets up and runs and lists.
Speaker 1: Then the sun comes, the snowy fog descends, as if
Speaker 1: called down by the river, we see before us the bright,
Speaker 1: clear sort of water, and reason reorders and assembles this
Speaker 1: scattered discoveries sprung from the dream, unifies them under its dominion.
Speaker 1: Joy to find, to compare, Joy of giving meaning and direction,
Speaker 1: Joy of understanding and of scaling the slopes in the
Speaker 1: summits of the true, the beautiful, and the useful. The
Speaker 1: mind orders it into clear parallel lines and extracts the
Speaker 1: laws revealed within. Man feels then that he is master
Speaker 1: of all the elements, master of this disproportionate universe, where
Speaker 1: his brain, no bigger than a bird or a fallen fruit,
Speaker 1: imposes a comprehensive order and harmony. Whoever does not know
Speaker 1: how to enjoy the possibilities of dreaming and thinking offered
Speaker 1: to man every second, ignores the nobility of life. We
Speaker 1: can always be enchanted, for dreams are secret cellos. One
Speaker 1: can always think, that is to say, having the mind
Speaker 1: not only occupied, but vibrant, tending towards a domination more powerful,
Speaker 1: more exhilarating than the fire of a thousand desires. To
Speaker 1: be bored, to give up the dream and the spirit.
Speaker 1: Boredom is the disease of empty souls and brains. Life
Speaker 1: quickly becomes a horribly dull chore. Love itself is exalted
Speaker 1: and amazed only to the extent that the superior being nourishes.
Speaker 1: The superior being nourishes Poetry strengthens the impulses of sensitivity.
Speaker 1: One must still dream and ponder over their love twenty Patience.
Speaker 1: Patience is the first of victories, victory over one's self,
Speaker 1: over one's nerves, over one's weaknesses. As long as we
Speaker 1: have not acquired it, life is only a cascade of capitulations,
Speaker 1: capitulations made in struggle, certainly crying out in what we
Speaker 1: perceive to be manifestations of authority, but which are in
Speaker 1: fact only an abdication to petty pride. To be patient
Speaker 1: is to wait for one's hour finger to the trigger
Speaker 1: as one watches for prey. It is to build each
Speaker 1: of the day's actions and consideration of order and balance,
Speaker 1: laying carefully the foundation stones that will support the building.
Speaker 1: Patience delivers the joy of not having given in Impatience
Speaker 1: leaves to heart with the reproach of having been exiled
Speaker 1: and of having been the author of vanity and vain
Speaker 1: agitation twenty one Obedience. No great work is accomplished in
Speaker 1: selfishness and pride. Obeying is a joy because it is
Speaker 1: a form of gift, of clairvoyant gift. Obeying is fruitful
Speaker 1: multiplying the results of efforts tenfold. Obeying is a duty
Speaker 1: because the common good depends on the discipline coming together
Speaker 1: of many energies. Human society is not formed by a
Speaker 1: cloud of fierce and fanciful mosquitoes rushing in the wind
Speaker 1: according to their personal interest in their mood. It is
Speaker 1: a large, sensitive complex. It is a large sensitive complex
Speaker 1: made sterile in made sterile or dangerous by anarchy, to
Speaker 1: which order and harmony give unlimited possibilities. A rich people
Speaker 1: of millions in population but selfishly isolated and atomized is
Speaker 1: a dead people. A poor people. Where everyone intelligently recognizes
Speaker 1: their limits and their communal obligations, obeys, and works as
Speaker 1: a team is a people with life. Obedience is the
Speaker 1: highest form of the use of freedom. It is a
Speaker 1: constant manifestation of authority, authority over oneself, the most difficult
Speaker 1: of all. No one is really capable of commanding others.
Speaker 1: Who is not first able to command himself to tame
Speaker 1: in him the proud wanderer who would have liked to
Speaker 1: throw himself madly into the winds of adventure. After having obeyed,
Speaker 1: one may command not as a brute enjoying the right
Speaker 1: to crush others, but because command is a magnificent prerogative
Speaker 1: when it aims to discipline unruly forces, to lead them
Speaker 1: to the fullness of obedience, to this superior source of joy.
Speaker 2: Twenty two.
Speaker 1: Kindness sometimes a word, a single word, an affectionate gesture,
Speaker 1: a look full of sincere friendship can save a man
Speaker 1: on the brink of the abyss. By affection and by example,
Speaker 1: we can do anything. Shouting and Storming about real rarely
Speaker 1: leads to the source of problems. You have to be
Speaker 1: good hearted, discover what is going on among the fog
Speaker 1: of each heart. Temper the necessary reproach with a friendly
Speaker 1: joke that gives hope. Always put yourself in the shoes
Speaker 1: of the other, in the soul of the other. Think
Speaker 1: of your personal reaction if you had received the observation,
Speaker 1: the encouragement, the reprimand instead of addressing it to others.
Speaker 1: Most of the men are grown ups, quite vicious, but
Speaker 1: still sensitive toward tends towards affection. There are not thirty
Speaker 1: six routes to guide them. There is only one, that
Speaker 1: of the heart. The other roads sometimes seem easier to take,
Speaker 1: but ultimately they do not lead anywhere. Twenty three Happy isolation.
Speaker 1: The company of others is most of the time nothing
Speaker 1: but restlessness, noise, troubles, revolving around mutual loneliness. To constantly
Speaker 1: search for what is called a stimulation is to be
Speaker 1: afraid of being in the presence of yourself. It is,
Speaker 1: in reality, to take flight morally. How can you confuse
Speaker 1: joy with being constantly mixed up in the tumultuous crowd?
Speaker 1: Why would one absolutely have to be swallowed up among
Speaker 1: other beings to believe oneself happy? One is then only
Speaker 1: in contact with the tree bark of others, one enjoys
Speaker 1: only their artificial or superficial attitudes. This can obviously give distraction,
Speaker 1: temporary pleasure, a kind of breath of wind or fresh air.
Speaker 1: But what a gulf between the shallow pleasure and the deep,
Speaker 1: essential joy of conversation with yourself, the analysis of one's
Speaker 1: own intimate thoughts and one's most secret sensitivity. There we
Speaker 1: see everything. We go to the source of everything. To
Speaker 1: deny the power the magnitude of this true joy is
Speaker 1: to deny whole, the whole inner life. Loneliness is a
Speaker 1: wonderful opportunity for the soul to get to know itself
Speaker 1: and to keep watch to learn. Only empty heads or
Speaker 1: fickle hearts are afraid of remaining silent in front of themselves.
Speaker 1: It is at such times that we see if our
Speaker 1: feelings are solid or if they were nothing but noise.
Speaker 1: High feelings can live alone without physical presence. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: isolation purifies and grows them. The joy, the joy that
Speaker 1: spreads like a block of granite under the water of
Speaker 1: flowing life, the one that never gives up and which
Speaker 1: never disappoints, lies in the inner struggle. In the inner exultation,
Speaker 1: to watch over oneself, to dominate oneself, to purify oneself,
Speaker 1: to rise, to have the courage to think because it
Speaker 1: is so simple to be lazy or cowardly in the
Speaker 1: face of spiritual work. Have the energy to expand inner
Speaker 1: your hidden world. To love intensely, that is to say,
Speaker 1: to give oneself silent without reluctance. We prefer to forget
Speaker 1: or deny that these fundamental joys exist, to be satisfied
Speaker 1: with immediate enjoyments that we believe to be superior to everything,
Speaker 1: and after which we have nothing, very often if not
Speaker 1: dust in the heart and a wilting of the wings.
Speaker 1: The mystics have long known that this constant animation of
Speaker 1: the interior life. Were they less happy? Did they have
Speaker 1: less joy than we who chatter mingled with faces, where
Speaker 1: we only discover appearances fed by words that die with
Speaker 1: the echo. The joy of the mystics is just one example.
Speaker 1: The same inner joy exists at other stages of spirituality
Speaker 1: and sensitivity. The presence of others is not even essential
Speaker 1: at all. One can perfectly love be possessed by the
Speaker 1: highest joys of the heart in physical distance and even
Speaker 1: in death, as long as we have not once freed
Speaker 1: ourselves from external elements, as long as we have not
Speaker 1: been able to live alone, that is to say, in
Speaker 1: the most real come that nothing can disturb we have
Speaker 1: not yet reached a very threshold of joy. Instead of
Speaker 1: complaining about loneliness, you have to bless it. You have
Speaker 1: to take advantage of this unexpected possibility of examining yourself
Speaker 1: in silence and dominating yourself lucidly completely, even in your
Speaker 1: most contradictory thoughts. Doors closed to the world, wilful termination
Speaker 1: of the contract with out of wilful termination of contact
Speaker 1: with the outside. So much the better, because it means,
Speaker 1: if you like, doors open to the soul, exact contact
Speaker 1: with oneself, exhilarating joys of knowledge, spiritual fulfillment, and mystically
Speaker 1: the most delicate and complete gift. And this is the
Speaker 1: last part. This is part twenty twenty four Grandeur. It
Speaker 1: is often by doing this is the last part for
Speaker 1: this section here. It is often by doing with maximum
Speaker 1: nobility a thousand bothersome little things that you are great.
Speaker 1: It is infinitely more difficult to stretch your soul a
Speaker 1: thousand times every day without relief than to give a
Speaker 1: single grand impulse at the moment of a visionary event,
Speaker 1: merit to be given. There is slight. The magnitude of
Speaker 1: the fleeting opportunity alone gives us the strength to act
Speaker 1: and desire to the desire to astonish, while allowing us
Speaker 1: to have the highest opinion of ourselves. You can do
Speaker 1: a great thing wonderfully and be far from real greatness.
Speaker 1: Greatness is the nobility of the soul, wearing down, dripping
Speaker 1: with the desire to give each according to our duties,
Speaker 1: especially when they are stripped of those things that give
Speaker 1: rise to vanity. For both women and men. Greatness for
Speaker 1: a woman is often to give herself hour by hour
Speaker 1: to dull even prosaic housework. Yet who will admire it?
Speaker 1: Who will know the thousand battles fought in the bottom
Speaker 1: of the heart, in laziness, in pride, in singing passions,
Speaker 1: in the softness which cause the soul and the body
Speaker 1: towards the warm sands of easy life. Who the one who,
Speaker 1: despite all this advances, resists, progresses, progresses is great, since
Speaker 1: the gift of herself was total, without requiring the vanity
Speaker 1: of recognition. So many high status people always complain find
Speaker 1: everything unpleasant never know how to rejoice frankly, of nothing.
Speaker 1: Everything seems boring to them because they never give themselves up,
Speaker 1: because they approach each moment even when it would require
Speaker 1: only a small exertion, with the firm intention of delivering
Speaker 1: only the bare minimum, and even with that reluctance, everything
Speaker 1: is a question of giving freely. Happy people are those
Speaker 1: who give themselves. The dissatisfied are those who strangle their
Speaker 1: existence with a perpetual retraction, constantly wondering what they will lose. Virtue, greatness, happiness.
Speaker 1: Everything revolves around that. Give yourself, give yourself completely all
Speaker 1: the time. What you have to do bravely, with maximum application,
Speaker 1: even if the object is merely housework without apparent grandeur.
Speaker 1: Wherever you are above or below man or woman, the
Speaker 1: problem is exactly the same. It is giving that differentiates
Speaker 1: clear souls from troubled souls. And that's the end of
Speaker 1: that part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's essential the monastic tradition. I mean there's a
Speaker 2: lot there, I mean to the monastic tradition, but you
Speaker 2: know the understanding that through silence and through introspection, that's
Speaker 2: the way one comes to know God. That's something that
Speaker 2: a lot of Protestant congregations have gotten away from and
Speaker 2: that's really unfortunate. There's nothing intrinsic to dissenter faith structures
Speaker 2: that that makes it axiomatic. Like if anything, I think
Speaker 2: that you know, the the understanding, the inner witness you
Speaker 2: find in Calvin basically says you should that that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's that's basically like the core of of of faith
Speaker 2: as as as a practice. But I I really enjoy
Speaker 2: being around like people I love and who love me back,
Speaker 2: and you know, enjoying that kind of community we've developed
Speaker 2: among our peoples, Like it's fucking incredible, you know, Like
Speaker 2: and I'm really really lucky. But I I I don't
Speaker 2: just like being by myself a lot of the time,
Speaker 2: Like I need to be by myself because that's you know,
Speaker 2: it's a you're The mind is its own place in
Speaker 2: ways that they're both good and bad and like beyond
Speaker 2: bead Like that can be terrifying because it can create
Speaker 2: an environment that's either not livable or that has been
Speaker 2: compromised by by by by evil things. And some of
Speaker 2: those things may be entities into themselves. I mean, I
Speaker 2: that's a metaphysical question. I don't want to get into
Speaker 2: on the tail end of our stream. But and in
Speaker 2: the event, a lot of that. That's one of the
Speaker 2: ways that people are kept under control by officialdom, you know, Uh,
Speaker 2: is this inability of people to really be alone and
Speaker 2: and to be alone properly. I mean, people are isolated,
Speaker 2: but they don't not truly be alone, you know. That's
Speaker 2: why they're always seeking out that. That's why, that's why
Speaker 2: social media is like they're standing for you know, actual
Speaker 2: social life and things. It's like it also an inability
Speaker 2: of people to be alone with their own mind, you know.
Speaker 2: And uh, I'm always talking about you know, my mind.
Speaker 2: I think of it as an ice cathedral. It's other
Speaker 2: things too, but you know that's like the the ice
Speaker 2: cathedral is where I would draw into myself and uh.
Speaker 2: With then it's perverbial walls. You know, I can I
Speaker 2: can go any where, you know, like I not not
Speaker 2: like actual projection in a literal sense, but you know,
Speaker 2: praggately speaking, you know, I I I go all kinds
Speaker 2: of places in my mind. And it's not because you know,
Speaker 2: I'm some rarefied case, you know that. I suppose that's
Speaker 2: what some people are up on, if they say they're
Speaker 2: getting into meditation you know. I mean, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: if people want to call it that, that's fine. I
Speaker 2: think I think there's some hookey stuff attached to those interpretations,
Speaker 2: But I'm not going to criticize anybody for, you know,
Speaker 2: for welcoming or cultivating an impulse in that direction. Like
Speaker 2: guess all I got for that? All right?
Speaker 1: Section five stop me any time, Thomas, I think you
Speaker 1: may you may have some some comments on this section,
Speaker 1: because this is part five Amand's Duty Notes from the
Speaker 1: Eastern Front twenty five The great retreat. To die twenty
Speaker 1: years too early or twenty years too late is of
Speaker 1: no consequence. All that matters is to find a good death.
Speaker 1: Only with this goal in mind can we truly begin
Speaker 1: to live as a simple soldier. I would gladly die tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The humility life of my lot in life at the
Speaker 1: Front reconciled me such an outcome. Not having lived as
Speaker 1: a saint, to die as a soldier's soul would be
Speaker 1: the most suitable thing. Are my weeks numbered, then it
Speaker 1: is best to make the most of these chances to
Speaker 1: purify our souls. I once dreamed of dying after a
Speaker 1: long illness to better prepare myself for the inevitable. But
Speaker 1: such a death necessarily takes place in an atmosphere of
Speaker 1: pollution on the front, our preparation takes place, and a
Speaker 1: feeling of power in the unfolding of the will I
Speaker 1: realize how lucky I am. Perhaps I return alive, more
Speaker 1: alive than ever before. Either way, this great retreat, which
Speaker 1: life or death will close will have been a blessing.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it freely fully, like a nourishing and beautiful son.
Speaker 1: Why should I tremble under its fire? The soldier learns
Speaker 1: to be great among the most mundane or the most
Speaker 1: painful things. Heroism is to stand, to struggle, to be
Speaker 1: always alert, happy and strong, and nameless, unrecognized misery of
Speaker 1: the front, in the mud, the excrement, the corpses, the
Speaker 1: mist of the water and snow, the endless and colorless fields,
Speaker 1: the total absence of outer joy. Every day we move
Speaker 1: further away from the blissful world of yesteryear? Are we
Speaker 1: not already half dead? We who advance, gritting our teeth
Speaker 1: through the mists, always look at those who have less
Speaker 1: than you, and rejoice in what you have, Never lusting
Speaker 1: after ephemeral desires. Life is always beautiful when you look
Speaker 1: at it with peaceful eyes, the light of a soul
Speaker 1: at peace. We soldiers, we have nothing, and we are happy.
Speaker 1: The joy of an unencumbered soul can only flourish when
Speaker 1: one has cast off this jumble of mental slavery. War
Speaker 1: is not just combat, above all. It is a long,
Speaker 1: sometimes exhausting streak, sometimes stretching into tedium, of silent renouncements,
Speaker 1: of daily sacrifices without relief. Virtuous forged in the same
Speaker 1: way everywhere, the privations endured with humility, waiting patiently for
Speaker 1: death's arrival, the giving of oneself. Far from the spotlight,
Speaker 1: one plays one's part in an unknown field, in unknown
Speaker 1: fields and groves, in this wasteland, far from all human joy,
Speaker 1: such as the real war, the one waged by millions
Speaker 1: of men who will never know ostentious, ostentatious glory, and who,
Speaker 1: if they do not die, will return home with their
Speaker 1: faces tight their lips closed, for others would not comprehend
Speaker 1: the heartbreaks and renunciations, and their obscure heroism. The crowd
Speaker 1: is only struck by heroism when it is bright and loud.
Speaker 1: What impresses the public is to brilliance, and not the
Speaker 1: painful and slow ascents of souls who rise in silence
Speaker 1: and shadow to greatness. But are we ever understood? Do
Speaker 1: we hear? Do we see anything other than the superficial?
Speaker 1: The bottom of hearts is such an abyss of desires, denials,
Speaker 1: sorrows that we prefer not to approach it. It is
Speaker 1: simpler more pleasant to stick to the superficial, and, without
Speaker 1: thinking too much, to enjoy the words and attitudes that
Speaker 1: we have, the tapestry of human drama. We soldiers stand
Speaker 1: behind that tapestry. What souls will imagine our journeys? Who
Speaker 1: will have the strength to join us spiritually zeal Even
Speaker 1: intelligence cannot be enough. To have culture is to have
Speaker 1: a balance of mind, illumination, wisdom, which can only be
Speaker 1: the result of a long discipline of the higher faculties,
Speaker 1: where the only proven method is the application of extensive
Speaker 1: contact with the most fundamental works of human intelligence. The
Speaker 1: disinterested study of ancient civilizations, mothers of ideas and systems,
Speaker 1: the study of philosophy, the study of mathematics, the secret
Speaker 1: fabric of all the arts, the comparative study of the
Speaker 1: lessons of history. This alone can bring about the harmony
Speaker 1: of the human faculties, without which the most dazzling successes
Speaker 1: always have a character of miracle and fragility. Intellectual maturity
Speaker 1: is not irreconcilable with genius. Maturity makes genius exact and human,
Speaker 1: channeling it towards a desirable end. Its strength is not
Speaker 1: thereby diminished, only more useful. Richelieu would not have given
Speaker 1: France half of the blessings of his genius if he
Speaker 1: had been self taught. The origin of our century's mental
Speaker 1: debilitation is that it is a century of the self taught.
Speaker 1: Their work has a disorderly, inhuman, unstable character. True genius,
Speaker 1: or at least beneficent genius, is balanced, which brings happiness,
Speaker 1: progress and order. The instinctive genius is stunning, dazzling, but
Speaker 1: always at a great cost. When the fireworks fade, the
Speaker 1: sky only looks darker than before. The banal and the
Speaker 1: vulgar are neighbors of the grandiose and the eternal. Earlier
Speaker 1: I watched a pig going to slaughter. He was keen
Speaker 1: on life, poor thing, almost bloodless. Still he gasped and moaned.
Speaker 1: Beasts and men in the face of death. We are
Speaker 1: the same, Yet our honored demands, and we must take
Speaker 1: great care to ensure that at the hour of our death,
Speaker 1: we have the courage to face it with dignity. Soldiers,
Speaker 1: we risk our own skins all the time, and so
Speaker 1: we take very simple joy and merely existing. Death is
Speaker 1: always right before our face, death is everywhere. Therefore we
Speaker 1: understand the greatness of life better than others. If the
Speaker 1: soul did not rise straight as the barrel of a gun,
Speaker 1: straight as the crosses over the graves, we would quickly
Speaker 1: sink into moral decay. Our whole world consists of woods fields, marshes,
Speaker 1: striped trees, near which one is on the lookout day
Speaker 1: or night, warming his hands with his breath, rubbing his ears,
Speaker 1: trampling over ground that today is hard and unforgiving as granite,
Speaker 1: where just yesterday it was a sea of mud. In
Speaker 1: the evening from four o'clock we watch the shadows. We
Speaker 1: must guard our hearts closely so as not to weep
Speaker 1: in the face of such an abyss. The soul is
Speaker 1: faced with total surrender, and yet she is proud, and
Speaker 1: she sings because strip bears in the bygone days of innocence.
Speaker 1: She is aware of the gravity of the mission offered
Speaker 1: to those who tread this lonely abyss those who will
Speaker 1: redeem the cowardice and filth of a world peopled by
Speaker 1: empty souls. Here her wings start to beat again, shaking
Speaker 1: off the dried mud that once had dirtied them. They
Speaker 1: find joy again in the returns of clean air, open space,
Speaker 1: distant lines. If we here have made good of our suffering,
Speaker 1: we will have achieved our true victory. But will but
Speaker 1: will we who suffer be able to remain peer to
Speaker 1: the end? Won't we feel ridiculous in our angelic garb
Speaker 1: on our return? Well, we have the courage not to
Speaker 1: be ashamed when we hear the countless years of those
Speaker 1: who have soiled their souls and who insolently believe themselves
Speaker 1: to be triumphant something important.
Speaker 2: And you find this again and again inass memoirs. And
Speaker 2: there's a peculiar irony. I think at least you know
Speaker 2: modern modern infantry elements, the degree to which they owe
Speaker 2: not just you know, not just doc trintal things and
Speaker 2: atactical preferences to the wafs, but the kind of organizational
Speaker 2: spirit and the breaking down of barriers between officers and men.
Speaker 2: You know that that all came from the and that
Speaker 2: was specifically Paul Hauser, you know, who's kind of like
Speaker 2: an unsung uh figure, I think not just because of
Speaker 2: his battlefield aptitude, but you know, the kind of organizational
Speaker 2: model ad for the Vaines. This wasn't just the Grel
Speaker 2: being some romantic and like you know talking about like
Speaker 2: oh the you know, the the glory that is, you know,
Speaker 2: to be the common soldier or the NCO, you know,
Speaker 2: leading the common man, like like Vabina says, officers actually
Speaker 2: did lead from the front, you know, and like they
Speaker 2: ate with their men and like they you know, there
Speaker 2: wasn't I mean, it wasn't just mission oriented tactics, you know. Uh.
Speaker 2: And what we almost think of is the precursor to
Speaker 2: special operations in some cases, you know, particularly the case
Speaker 2: of people like Scorsanese commandos that kind of created a
Speaker 2: sort of like egalitarian spirit like that was very much cultivated,
Speaker 2: you know. And so it's corny as well as just
Speaker 2: you know a lie, you know in these old movies
Speaker 2: or even in this kind of more contemporary stuff where
Speaker 2: they cast you know, like the Verhmacht or the I
Speaker 2: mean they cast the bafan assess and even the Hrmacht
Speaker 2: which still had these kinds of class based issues, but
Speaker 2: I look at the same degree, but they cast like
Speaker 2: any German military forces. It's kind of like these like
Speaker 2: cruel like Prussian Martinette types, you know, LIKEU have contempt
Speaker 2: for the men and like there's no recourse if you're
Speaker 2: a if you're an enlisted man or an NCO, you know,
Speaker 2: against an officer read if he's in the wrong. I
Speaker 2: mean somewhat it's like a combination of like the worst
Speaker 2: of like the way the Soviet Army was with you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a caricature of the nineteenth century Royal Navy
Speaker 2: or something like. They could not be farther from the truth,
Speaker 2: you know, I point there's a reason why, uh, there's
Speaker 2: a reason why modern militaries like literally look like the
Speaker 2: wafan SS too, from like the rifles they packed to
Speaker 2: their helmets, you know, to to uh you know some
Speaker 2: of the ways uh they deployed, especially in the early
Speaker 2: Cold War, you know, as uh, the distinction between you know,
Speaker 2: light medium and heavy light medium and heavy armor was abolished.
Speaker 2: You know that they can't be overstated, and that really
Speaker 2: comes out in Bigrell because he was obviously like a
Speaker 2: man of letters, what a certain there's like a certain
Speaker 2: ash and lyricism what he wrote. And finally then we
Speaker 2: can move on. You know this this idea that like
Speaker 2: wars is horrible. Uh, that's only reasons I object to
Speaker 2: all quite in the Western Front, not just because it's
Speaker 2: cry baby stuff, but it's just kind of at odds
Speaker 2: with you know, the way humans are, like if you're
Speaker 2: if you're a if you're an infantryman at war. I've
Speaker 2: had guys relay to me that they're big terror, especially
Speaker 2: especially guys in Vietnam who are their flyers or on
Speaker 2: long range reconnaissance or in long range of continence rolls.
Speaker 2: There's a terror of being captured, which made sense. And
Speaker 2: there's an ongoing terror hell in the in the mind
Speaker 2: of reentrument, of imma treatment of being being wounded, particularly
Speaker 2: and I mean not not to be crass, but being
Speaker 2: wounded below the waste. But you know, the worst thing
Speaker 2: that happens is you die. You don't have anything else
Speaker 2: to worry about. You're free, you know, And uh, there's
Speaker 2: not any distinction between principle and action. And you know
Speaker 2: that the idea that there's some kind of like horrible
Speaker 2: hell to like be uh serving the infantry in a
Speaker 2: modern war, like compared to what compared to to working
Speaker 2: in like a mid twentie century factory. I mean, like
Speaker 2: are compared to working in uh, you know, compared to
Speaker 2: like having the life of Willy Lowman as like a
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty salesman. Like it's there's something really at odds
Speaker 2: with reality about it. I mean not just kind of
Speaker 2: like puss a fed and coward yellow it's that too,
Speaker 2: but just like nakedly at odds with reality. And uh,
Speaker 2: I think that that's important. Like a lot of yak
Speaker 2: and Piper didn't write any formal memoirs, but what he
Speaker 2: did put the paper about what it was like on
Speaker 2: the Eastern Front, you know, like he didn't romanticize it
Speaker 2: like there. You know, he talked about how awful some
Speaker 2: of that kind of duty was. I mean, not just
Speaker 2: in what was called for in moral terms, but like
Speaker 2: you know, the physical brutalities that the modern infantry man
Speaker 2: had to put himself through. I mean it certainly was
Speaker 2: not fun, but it but it's profounding was guided when
Speaker 2: people act like, you know, there's some like horrible fate
Speaker 2: you know, to befall you as a man, like to
Speaker 2: be a soldier in war. That's all I want to do.
Speaker 1: In Sinuwait Okay, Part twenty six, The Taming of Horses.
Speaker 1: Fleas cling to our uniforms in serried ranks, Mice run
Speaker 1: all about. In the middle of the night, I awake
Speaker 1: to find a rat nestled against my nose. These companions
Speaker 1: strengthen us against vanity and pride, we who cannot escape
Speaker 1: even the smallest of beasts, and the most ridiculous and
Speaker 1: the dirtiest. But poetry is everywhere in front of our guns.
Speaker 1: Thousands of sparrows jump in the hedges, round bellied birds,
Speaker 1: slowly dancing about. They listen a meter away to the
Speaker 1: little compliments that we offer them. Then they settle in
Speaker 1: wild flocks in the rushes. They cry, chirp, and hiss,
Speaker 1: as if the silver sky had thrown fistfuls of pure
Speaker 1: joy over the frosty landscape. There are also passing ravens,
Speaker 1: like black lightning, few and silent. From time to time
Speaker 1: they utter their great horse cry no doubt, to remind
Speaker 1: us that death awaits us, harsh like them, ravenous like them,
Speaker 1: on dark and deadly wings. We strive to always smile
Speaker 1: at the singing sparrows at the solemn crows that pass.
Speaker 1: But the heart is the heart, and every man, though
Speaker 1: smiling with his mouth and eyes, hides underneath the awful
Speaker 1: secrets of a suffering animal. We feel that death watches
Speaker 1: on every side. Each step exacts a cost. Our steps
Speaker 1: grow heavy and must be made light, despite the heavy guns,
Speaker 1: the stumbling feet, the fields of overripe grain that scratch
Speaker 1: the skin, the massive shell holes in which a misplaced
Speaker 1: step could drop one into the abyss without a word.
Speaker 1: This is it, the thankless life of a soldier, which
Speaker 1: knows neither exhilaration nor glory, where at any time one
Speaker 1: can be stabbed, shot, or dragged off as a prisoner
Speaker 1: by the enemy. On the other side, you have to
Speaker 1: move forward, calmly, meter by meter, even when shots may
Speaker 1: ring out suddenly from ten paces away. Shots ring out
Speaker 1: in the night between the outposts, a hoarse cry, and
Speaker 1: the night rolls on, impervious, frozen, relentless. At these times,
Speaker 1: our entire being wishes to rebel. We care for our
Speaker 1: lives those of our comrades, the blood coursing powerfully through
Speaker 1: their veins. We are beings of the flesh. We want
Speaker 1: the light to be reborn with vigor and heat. The
Speaker 1: human beast roars and cries out for his will to unfold,
Speaker 1: to burn, to resound, to remain huddled, subdued, to remain
Speaker 1: in the shadows, ready for the final act, or take
Speaker 1: or the final breath. Takes a terrible discipline. It inflicts
Speaker 1: terrible injury on our will. But our taste for life
Speaker 1: will be even stronger because we have more intensely experienced
Speaker 1: the value, the flavor, the burning sweetness of every second
Speaker 1: falling like a drop of silence in this great tension
Speaker 1: of ready hearts. We love with unchained power, our carnal existence,
Speaker 1: the rhythm of our thoughts, the momentum of our senses,
Speaker 1: which a single bullet in the night could shatter, our arms,
Speaker 1: our legs, our eyes, to surround, to cross, to regard
Speaker 1: with passion and domination. All this screams man's right to life,
Speaker 1: the right of the animal that wants to run and seize,
Speaker 1: the right of the intelligence that wants to enchant and
Speaker 1: create life. How beautifully, how beautiful, indescribably beautiful, exhilarating softness
Speaker 1: of body, light of midday, ardor of fire. We clenched
Speaker 1: this life in our wilful fists, those of silent, attentive,
Speaker 1: patient shadow watchers. We have learned to tame ourselves, to
Speaker 1: tame the wild horses which ran across the vast fields
Speaker 1: of our dreams. But holding them in our hands with
Speaker 1: a steel fist, we close our eyes and inhale the
Speaker 1: powerful smell of life that gathers above life.
Speaker 2: Life.
Speaker 1: It is so cold that the medicine vials shattered, the
Speaker 1: alcohol itself froze in the ambulance. Poor feet, poor ears,
Speaker 1: for poor frostbitten noses, mummified in the atrocious, howling, whistling night.
Speaker 1: This morning, the order to leave for another combat sector arrived.
Speaker 1: We will go where we are ordered, smiling in the snow, which,
Speaker 1: since we awoke has been falling in heavy flakes. Our
Speaker 1: feet will be cold, our lips will be raw, our bodies,
Speaker 1: huddled over against the cold, will be heavy and awkward.
Speaker 1: But our inner fire will continue to rise and fill
Speaker 1: our eyes with glimmers of the sun. Here our souls
Speaker 1: are strained, these low hills, these rows of firs, these
Speaker 1: abandoned millstones, watch us go, regarding our lines with shining eyes,
Speaker 1: This black sky that I contemplate now for the last time,
Speaker 1: I have filled it with the brilliant streaks of tracer bullets,
Speaker 1: while the enemy's rounds uttered their chill cries like pouncing
Speaker 1: cats all about me. Already my bag is ready. I
Speaker 1: look at the crushed straw broken into small pieces on
Speaker 1: the spot I habitually rested after returning, tired and frozen
Speaker 1: from late night patrols. The smoky little lantern cast a
Speaker 1: yellow light over my last daily report. A few more shirts,
Speaker 1: a few handkerchiefs freshly washed, already covered with dust, rough
Speaker 1: mud walls, the oven that we heated with debris from barracks,
Speaker 1: little frozen tiles painted with designs of white ferns. We
Speaker 1: picked up, our battered bowls, our canteens, our weapons, emblazoned
Speaker 1: with black lightning. No doubt to this place will one
Speaker 1: day return plants laden with fruit, Christian icons, a woman
Speaker 1: clad in heavy petticoats, and the thick smell of vegetable fat.
Speaker 1: But forever gone will be the humble and bustling life
Speaker 1: of many young foreign boys lost in the depths of
Speaker 1: step who left in the middle of the night with
Speaker 1: calloused hands and frozen blood. This miserable, poorly lit square
Speaker 1: has been the center of an intense spiritual life, that
Speaker 1: life will leave with us and will be reborn at
Speaker 1: random from the frozen roads, improvised lodgings, embankments, and trenches
Speaker 1: from which we watch for and track down our opponents,
Speaker 1: or avoid his blows. We may return to these spots
Speaker 1: one day, but the essential character will be gone, and
Speaker 1: so we leave at dawn without looking back. Life is ahead,
Speaker 1: even if life is death bah. The greater the sacrifice,
Speaker 1: the more we give of ourselves, And it was to
Speaker 1: give of ourselves that we stood up with radiant hearts.
Speaker 1: Take a sip twenty seven the apocalyptic cycle. The wind
Speaker 1: blows and biting us, whipping the snow against our skin
Speaker 1: like darts. The river is frozen, frozen, its little tributaries
Speaker 1: which ran through the crevices, frozen the hills, the thistles
Speaker 1: of the embankments, the ruined factories. My heart itself has
Speaker 1: caught cold, cold from these months of soul tension, a
Speaker 1: withdrawal into inhuman solitude. Cold is these rigid black trees
Speaker 1: which the north wind whips to stress in everything. Everyone
Speaker 1: feels to chill. We break our cold bread, We scrape
Speaker 1: the huge chunks of mud from our clothes. With a knife,
Speaker 1: we cut away great clumps of the blackish glue from
Speaker 1: our shoes and gaiters. No water, you have to go
Speaker 1: three kilometers to obtain a dirty brown liquid filled with
Speaker 1: grass clippings. Let us love our misery anyway, as it
Speaker 1: uplifts us, prepares us for destinies that call for pure
Speaker 1: and strong hearts. The cycle of wars is now apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: The waves widen more and more, grow in speed and
Speaker 1: force to spread in a fabulous, gyrating movement. Wars have
Speaker 1: become universal revolutions. The whole world is caught up in
Speaker 1: its whirlwind. Armies collide, economic forces clash, They tear each
Speaker 1: other apart. The forces of the spirit engage in a
Speaker 1: merciless duel. The universe will have to bleed, struggle, know
Speaker 1: the pangs of flight, the agony separation. Thousands of men,
Speaker 1: millions of men, will have to look with frozen or
Speaker 1: feverish eyes at death, always the same, that is to say,
Speaker 1: always cruel, tearing the heart at the same time as
Speaker 1: the flesh. This drama was inevitable. Only the blind and
Speaker 1: the foolish, that is to say, almost everyone believe that
Speaker 1: these were conflicts of rival nations. Conflicts which could be localized. However,
Speaker 1: these are implacable pseudo religious wars, quite similar to all
Speaker 1: religious wars, but which will take almost limitless proportions, reaching
Speaker 1: up to the little to the last little island or
Speaker 1: ice flow, so that all people, be Theyia, Tahitians or Laplanders,
Speaker 1: will have to choose like everyone else. When how will
Speaker 1: this prodigious settling of accounts end? Our skies will long
Speaker 1: be crossed by this lightning. Our children will grow up
Speaker 1: amid the blinding flashes of falling or triumphaning ideas at
Speaker 1: arms entry, where the scale of the drama chills the blood.
Speaker 1: But a sorrowful century in which the whole universe is
Speaker 1: being remade more by spirit than by iron. Tragedies such
Speaker 1: as the world will never know, tragedy such as the
Speaker 1: World has never known, so complete, in which we are
Speaker 1: all actors. But where it is hearts that play. Millions
Speaker 1: of hearts are on the scene, still young and naive,
Speaker 1: or old and silent, or ruined and confused. To walk
Speaker 1: one hundred meters between the bloody lines. We come back broken,
Speaker 1: as if every step took all our strength, nothing to do,
Speaker 1: nothing to read. We only have a miserable kerosene lamp
Speaker 1: with a small yellowish flame that lights up a square
Speaker 1: meter of our shelter. It takes more courage to live
Speaker 1: like this, hold up in the mud, than to advance
Speaker 1: on the enemy with the machine gun under your arm.
Speaker 1: You can feel the temptation, the muffled voices, the demoralizing questions,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? Can't you see you're wasting
Speaker 1: your time, your efforts, your sacrifices. Does anyone even remember
Speaker 1: that you exist? Shall we leave you alone to rod
Speaker 1: away into oblivion? But the soul quickly regains its serenity.
Speaker 1: She knows that nothing is more precious than this renunciation,
Speaker 1: this silent descent into the depth of consciousness. Can the
Speaker 1: real victory, the victory over oneself, be better acquired elsewhere
Speaker 1: than in the midst of these humiliations? Welcomed with the
Speaker 1: head held high by straightforwardly opposing this hostile environment, the
Speaker 1: loneliness of the heart and the cunning of the enemy
Speaker 1: which assault the spirit twenty eight Enlightenment. War for US
Speaker 1: soldiers is to become among poor companions with grim faces,
Speaker 1: men huddled under the frozen earth, defined by dark, suffering
Speaker 1: without comfort. It is mud it is a snow, it
Speaker 1: is bottomless despair. It is feet torn by the endless steps.
Speaker 1: It's the hundred shameful little miseries which surround the life
Speaker 1: of the soldier at the front, like a clinging and
Speaker 1: fog of sadness. The stifled life ceaselessly calls for the
Speaker 1: calling up of energy, the leap of the soul, which
Speaker 1: must tear itself out that missed in order to shine again.
Speaker 1: This life bears no resemblance to the brilliant ideas that
Speaker 1: the public has about the exploits of war. But they
Speaker 1: ought not to be disabused of this notion, we would
Speaker 1: thereby spoil their beautiful and brightly colored image. Yet I
Speaker 1: lie down in exhaustion at the end of each day
Speaker 1: with a joy that is a little bit sad, but powerful,
Speaker 1: because it is an incomparable lesson in patience, self mortification,
Speaker 1: the elevation of the soul. We should never try to
Speaker 1: cheat the ordeal of or stifle its voice. If the
Speaker 1: lesson were to be useful, if we did not return
Speaker 1: as men changed by the experience, there would not be
Speaker 1: this wall between on one hand, those who are afraid
Speaker 1: of the ordeal, and on the other hand, those who
Speaker 1: looked hardship in the eye and learned from it. Life
Speaker 1: sinks its fangs into us time after time. I escape
Speaker 1: this time, like so many others, with a weary, worried,
Speaker 1: chewed up heart. I wish now to return there at peace,
Speaker 1: having found innocence and confidence. It is Christmas. I watched
Speaker 1: the snowfall tirelessly, and despite its lightness, I feel that
Speaker 1: I am suffocating. Soldiers passed bent double against the wind
Speaker 1: going quickly around me. Nothing around me, nothing, always the
Speaker 1: wind blowing, a man nervously biting his nails, others collapsing
Speaker 1: into sleep, exhausted by the knights in the watch. Jesus
Speaker 1: could have been born in our little shelter sincerity, the
Speaker 1: good animals about the manger, who offered themselves entirely, the
Speaker 1: honest hearts of the shepherds, who did not doubt for
Speaker 1: a second, did not hesitate, and who immediately gave everything
Speaker 1: at their disposal. They only had sheep, and they gave
Speaker 1: their sheep, who remembering them, who remembering them, would not
Speaker 1: take heart. What counts is not what you give sheep
Speaker 1: or great treasures. It is the fervor of the heart
Speaker 1: that weighs upon the sun scales. Sometimes life seems too
Speaker 1: exhausting to carry, painful even to think about. Today, it
Speaker 1: is almost an anguish to forget your own existence, your
Speaker 1: screaming soul. What could let us forget? We have spent
Speaker 1: a day killing by the dozens, the liights that chew
Speaker 1: at our skin, that is all. And yet the soul
Speaker 1: must stand tall, proud, steadfast, and it must stay that way.
Speaker 1: But great muffled voices deep in the background moan, we
Speaker 1: are not men differently built than the others. We too
Speaker 1: would like, when we listen only to the calls of
Speaker 1: that outer life, to do not but pile up money
Speaker 1: earned without labor. All men desire this, whose bodies run hot,
Speaker 1: whose eyes are alight with the mixture of desire and pleasure.
Speaker 1: The human beast youth that need to dominate rears up
Speaker 1: in distress. Are you not wasting your years of radiant
Speaker 1: life watched by death every hour? Don't you have any regrets?
Speaker 1: Feel the desire to break everything in, to throw yourself
Speaker 1: towards pleasure, towards luminous faces, towards beautiful women. As the
Speaker 1: other boys of your time, these are times when you
Speaker 1: have to stifle your passions, to feed your soul and
Speaker 1: your faith at the expense of such human desires that
Speaker 1: shine before our eyes like a mirage. We stand guard
Speaker 1: on icy parapets, with a touch of bitterness in our hearts,
Speaker 1: but supremely happy, yet at the sacrifice renewed every day,
Speaker 1: without even knowing if we will be ever if we
Speaker 1: will ever be understood. End of the year, I recap
Speaker 1: the line of dying days, this year, with its secrets
Speaker 1: and its illuminating lights. The secrets that are hidden behind
Speaker 1: a smile, but which often bleed like wounds, never close,
Speaker 1: and then the light light shone upon our character and
Speaker 1: our deeds. There are the lights that we may show others.
Speaker 1: These they are the least beautiful, these heroic lights we
Speaker 1: show to others. They maintain an air of theatricality and falseness,
Speaker 1: even when displayed in modest fashion. It is only with
Speaker 1: great difficulty that one can keep a truly naive heart
Speaker 1: and yet also take care to avoid an excess of pride.
Speaker 1: These lights, these imperfect lights, will remain superficial. But these
Speaker 1: glorious lights hurt our eyes. We are blinded when we
Speaker 1: leave them, and we are so often plunged from these
Speaker 1: brick lights into the shadows of everyday banality or minor setbacks.
Speaker 1: I remember those lights. I love them only to the
Speaker 1: extent that they illuminated that ideal towards which I walk.
Speaker 1: I should only like these lights for this reason, But
Speaker 1: I know very well that I have often let myself
Speaker 1: be taken in by my own self satisfaction. Finally, these
Speaker 1: lights necessary to arouse us to action, sadden me because
Speaker 1: they show me that over and over again, I find
Speaker 1: myself biting down on the hook of vanity or pride.
Speaker 1: And then there are the other lights, the ones that
Speaker 1: no one else sees from the outside. They let up
Speaker 1: our souls like x rays. Then you know exactly what
Speaker 1: you are worth. Caught these lights, we are no longer
Speaker 1: very proud. We see ourselves. We see clearly all of
Speaker 1: our weaknesses, We see clearly the poverty, the excuses we
Speaker 1: have made for one hundred mistakes always the same. But
Speaker 1: it is precisely because we know our own mediocrity all
Speaker 1: too well that we experience intoxicating joys when the lights
Speaker 1: that emerge from the depths of the soul end up
Speaker 1: illuminating a heroic work of our own doing. Though it
Speaker 1: be only a small act. It was born after so
Speaker 1: much secret cowardice, that that first inner smile plunges us
Speaker 1: into unspeakable raptures. Twenty nine intransigence who kept us on
Speaker 1: their thoughts, the lost boys of the steps, who had
Speaker 1: nothing to drink to the new year, but melts it
Speaker 1: snow streaked with bits of yellow grass, or a few
Speaker 1: steps of artificial coffee that smelled of soap. Miserable details,
Speaker 1: humiliating details, the evocation of which seems out of place.
Speaker 1: Who else could imagine how the biting cold made a
Speaker 1: herculean effort of even minor tasks, For example, the miserable,
Speaker 1: inevitable sickness of dysentery. Of course, we had no sewers.
Speaker 1: Fifteen twenty times, in just a few hours you would
Speaker 1: have to run into the blizzard to relieve yourself, allowing
Speaker 1: your body to be cut by a wind as sharp
Speaker 1: as a blade, as sharp as a whip. Vanity of
Speaker 1: our bodies in which we often took such pride, the
Speaker 1: beautiful human beasts, strong, burning with life, must submit to
Speaker 1: these humiliations. The body rebels, but must give in the
Speaker 1: body that was so satisfied with the pleasant rhythms of
Speaker 1: life body which has been caressed, kissed love, and we
Speaker 1: heaped such shame upon you. Yet nothing can reach the
Speaker 1: mind that is master over itself. If the body is humiliated,
Speaker 1: it is because the will has led him into these
Speaker 1: whistling snows, to the bottom of these sordid shelters. Yesterday
Speaker 1: it was lce. Today the cold claws at our skin.
Speaker 1: We willed it to be, so we do not care
Speaker 1: that we are scourged by this hostile, ferocious situation. One
Speaker 1: day the cral winds will die off with the return
Speaker 1: of the leaves to the trees. Our bodies, stretched out
Speaker 1: in the waters of the rivers and the sun and
Speaker 1: in the winds, will feel life beating more ardently than
Speaker 1: ever around their bones, strong as metal under a living
Speaker 1: flesh like the flesh of flowers, hard and clean like marble,
Speaker 1: but golden, full, vibrant. Having suffered in triumph, we will
Speaker 1: open our arms to the sun, and our smooth, powerful
Speaker 1: and rough bodies will flow with blood like the sap
Speaker 1: of the great virgin trees. Our wills will bring back
Speaker 1: to life the beautiful human beast, prancing with life, now tamed,
Speaker 1: the whole step caught up in the turmoil might well
Speaker 1: crackle whistle rise in gigantic waves. Despite the cold that
Speaker 1: scorched us, despite the gusts of hailstones it riddled our face,
Speaker 1: I faced a mailstrom a hundred times to fill my
Speaker 1: eyes with this grandeur, I felt carried away by the squalls.
Speaker 1: I communicated with this epic power, where the white plane,
Speaker 1: the sky, and the wind mingled their strength, their leaps,
Speaker 1: their icy flames, their long cries springing from the horizon
Speaker 1: and howling away at the end of the quivering plane.
Speaker 1: What are at such moments the forces which rise up
Speaker 1: in us in communion with the great natural outbursts. I
Speaker 1: then feel transported, and immense bliss rises from all my body,
Speaker 1: as if fabulous correspondences were established between my blood which
Speaker 1: runs and the wind which blows, between the life which
Speaker 1: boils in my limbs and the savage life which blows
Speaker 1: past under the great sky. There is not one of
Speaker 1: us soldiers who does not have to be prepared for
Speaker 1: the most gruesome endings. But do we give only with reservation?
Speaker 1: Death in humiliation isn't a way of giving? Death in humiliation?
Speaker 1: Isn't it a way of giving even more? True sacrifice
Speaker 1: cannot be calculated, cannot be given with reservation. We listen
Speaker 1: to cynics more readily than to the message of righteous hearts.
Speaker 1: Yet pure hearts will have victory. Only idealists will change
Speaker 1: the world. I am writing near a rusty barrel, at
Speaker 1: the bottom of which floats the last bits of step
Speaker 1: grass suspended in our icy water. This poverty, this isolation,
Speaker 1: we know them because we desired sincerity. And more than ever,
Speaker 1: in this solitude, where bodies and hearts feel invaded by
Speaker 1: mortal cold, I renew my odes of intransigence more than ever.
Speaker 1: I will go straight ahead, without giving in, without rest
Speaker 1: hard on my soul, heart, on my desires, heart of
Speaker 1: my youth. I'd rather see ten years of cold and
Speaker 1: abandonment than one day feeling my soul emptied, voided of
Speaker 1: its living dreams. I write these words without trembling, which
Speaker 1: nevertheless make me suffer in the hour of our world's bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Souls are needed, which may stand hard and tall as
Speaker 1: rocky cliffs, beaten in vain by raging winds. Thirty the cross,
Speaker 1: which moment will be our end. Death passes unresponsive and
Speaker 1: his hands strangle hearts at random. The machine gun fires
Speaker 1: it whizzes, it cracks, or it pierces with its deadly
Speaker 1: fingers a young man's body. What to do if not
Speaker 1: to have a pure heart, a quiet regard to the
Speaker 1: timely sacrifice made freely. If it comes, our eyelashes will
Speaker 1: not quiver, and we will leave with the faint, sad
Speaker 1: smile of the tender memories to surround our last seconds.
Speaker 1: If we come back, even though the warmth of life
Speaker 1: will have made us forget this icy breath, our hearts
Speaker 1: will forever have the composure of a life that has
Speaker 1: not trembled or death. May fate always find us strong
Speaker 1: and worthy. You still have to love happiness as you
Speaker 1: love the song of the wind, however fleeting it may be,
Speaker 1: as you love the colors of the evening, even though
Speaker 1: you know they are going to die. For the great
Speaker 1: winds are reborn and sing again, and every day the
Speaker 1: colors return to the blazing axis of the risen sun.
Speaker 1: It is up to us to keep the winds from dying,
Speaker 1: or to prevent the sun from fading, but to draw
Speaker 1: strength from them while they yet live. Joy is the
Speaker 1: fire of indomitable heart, of indomitable hearts, and no reversal
Speaker 1: can extinguish or stifle its burning colors. When you see
Speaker 1: the waves retreating from the sands, returning to the dark
Speaker 1: depths of the sea, think of the great outpouring that
Speaker 1: will return a few hours later, white shimmering in the sun,
Speaker 1: bold and strong, as if these waves were the vanguard
Speaker 1: of an assault on the world itself. To be happy
Speaker 1: is to be unselfish. Happiness is just that giving all
Speaker 1: of one's self. There are so many mediocre things on earth,
Speaker 1: low or ugly, that one day we would be overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by them if we did not carry them within our ourselves.
Speaker 1: The fire which burns away ugliness, which consumes it and
Speaker 1: purifies us. Art is our inner salvation, our secret garden
Speaker 1: that constantly refreshes and soothes us. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music,
Speaker 1: anything but to escape from the mundane, to rise above
Speaker 1: the drying dust, to create something grand instead of submitting
Speaker 1: to the small, To let out that sparkle, the extraordinary
Speaker 1: that each of us possess, and convert it into a grandiose, devouring,
Speaker 1: indistinguishable fire. The dead and dark sentries are those where
Speaker 1: souls hesitated before this effort. The luminous centuries are those
Speaker 1: which have seen that these great fires souls mark out
Speaker 1: dominate the mountains of the spirit. The only true joys
Speaker 1: are not those that others give us, but those that
Speaker 1: we carry within us, that our faith creates, that fill
Speaker 1: us with dynamism. The rest comes from the foam of
Speaker 1: the comes like the foam of the sea, shining at
Speaker 1: the tip of the waves, quivering for a moment on
Speaker 1: the edge of the sand, then quickly dies or withdraws
Speaker 1: with the waves. This is the happiness that others bring
Speaker 1: us from time to time. The joy that arises from
Speaker 1: our passion for life and our will is like the
Speaker 1: great force which rumbles and rolls at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea, which springs up to meet the sun, and
Speaker 1: is renewed every second. As if hanging from a boat,
Speaker 1: we watch the mighty sea throw its waves like immense
Speaker 1: leopard skins, spread out, supple and shiny, standing up like
Speaker 1: a silver flame, or like a prodigious spray of white flowers.
Speaker 1: This life, this life, constantly returns rebounds. We know that
Speaker 1: nothing until the end of the world will stop this momentum.
Speaker 1: So it must be our hearts brash, but like this
Speaker 1: wonderful rhythmic force, ordered chanted like an eternal song. During
Speaker 1: their day we are caught up in pour often trivial concerns.
Speaker 1: But at night, the imagination weaves itself through our dreams,
Speaker 1: takes us into it, takes us in its fantasies, its
Speaker 1: reconstruction or anticipation. Sometimes I'm amazed by the relentless lucidity
Speaker 1: of dreams. Of course, the dream is often a wild folly,
Speaker 1: of phanfasm, but it is often also for me a
Speaker 1: meeting with my conscience and with my first intuitions. I
Speaker 1: see myself naturally as I am, when my will is
Speaker 1: not there to lock its brakes upon the movement of
Speaker 1: my passions. I then know exactly on which points I
Speaker 1: doubt myself each time I must say to myself, look here,
Speaker 1: you falter. I thus have the almost daily proof that
Speaker 1: I can resist a thousand temptations, lead my life with
Speaker 1: honor only to the extent that are renewed effort, masters
Speaker 1: and restraints. Every day. Deep within myself a wild horse
Speaker 1: which can never be fully tamed, and which only the
Speaker 1: whip of the will, wielded unceasingly, can contain. If the
Speaker 1: world were relaxed, everything would come undone. I see this
Speaker 1: in my dreams will the will itself fall asleep. I
Speaker 1: awake to feed the dream has cut me adrift. There
Speaker 1: is no more decisive examination of conscience for me than
Speaker 1: the unfolding of dreams. Dreams lay bare my soul before me,
Speaker 1: leaves deep marks upon my thoughts, with the knowledge that
Speaker 1: we must always be on guard over our baser impulses.
Speaker 1: Because these baser elements do not naturally run towards, but
Speaker 1: on the contrary, run from it as soon as they
Speaker 1: are tempted by beautiful falsehoods. The soul, freed by the
Speaker 1: gift it has made of itself, flies, sores and sings.
Speaker 1: Because we hear within us these great songs of serenity,
Speaker 1: we know that the work we embark upon will be beautiful,
Speaker 1: for the great and the beautiful can only be created
Speaker 1: in joy and in faith. If we love virtue only
Speaker 1: insofar as it has taken notice of, we defile it
Speaker 1: with pride. We are no longer virtuous the moment we
Speaker 1: desire the virtue which we believe we have achieved to
Speaker 1: be seen and admired. So it is with all virtues.
Speaker 1: They are beautif full, soft, radiant if we love them
Speaker 1: for themselves, if we cultivate them for the unique pleasure
Speaker 1: of having reached them. We come to life without thinking
Speaker 1: or caring that we might not be understood by others.
Speaker 1: Uncomplicated hearts cannot imagine the complications of others. Fresh hearts
Speaker 1: cannot imagine other hearts being hateful or defiled. Suffering is
Speaker 1: the most wonderful of companions, pathetic and angelic, washing souls
Speaker 1: of all desire, raising them to the heights they had
Speaker 1: dreamed of for so long. Defeats, victories, dreams, or material
Speaker 1: successes pass away are forgotten fires that shine for a moment,
Speaker 1: since swept away by a passing wind. But the essential,
Speaker 1: the unique, is for us the great spiritual conflagration, without
Speaker 1: which the world is nothing. So long as there remains
Speaker 1: a little fire in some corner of the world, all
Speaker 1: miracles of greatness remain possible. Everything in life is a
Speaker 1: matter of faith and tenacity. Trust cannot be begged for
Speaker 1: it has to be won, and the best way to
Speaker 1: conquer it. To conquer is to first give of yourself.
Speaker 1: We all carry our cross. We must carry it with
Speaker 1: a proud smile, so that we know that we are
Speaker 1: stronger than suffering, and also so that those who seek
Speaker 1: to harm us understand that their arrows reach us in vain.
Speaker 1: What does it matter if you suffer, if you have
Speaker 1: what did? What does it matter if you suffer, if
Speaker 1: you have had a few immortal hours in your life,
Speaker 1: at least we have lived.
Speaker 2: It's important, I think, to give particular attention to the
Speaker 2: fact that, you know, does a basic dishonesty in the
Speaker 2: way warfare is discussed, not just in the abstract, but
Speaker 2: in the concrete experience of it, you know, by by uh,
Speaker 2: you know, by realistic types as well as you know
Speaker 2: liberals and and what remains at least of you know,
Speaker 2: Marxist types and academia who you know, assigned productive force determinism,
Speaker 2: you know, to their analysis of warfare and its causes
Speaker 2: and it's it's systemic function, and you know, kind of
Speaker 2: sociological affairs at scale, you know, by the twentieth century
Speaker 2: wars of pure ideology, which is what the Grell's getting
Speaker 2: at when he talks about, you know, warfare itself being
Speaker 2: a revolutionary process, and all warfare by the juncture at
Speaker 2: which you know, he and his mentoring the field of battle,
Speaker 2: you know, being a theological crusading enterprise. That's that, that's
Speaker 2: that's totally accurate. You know. That's one of the reason
Speaker 2: that this bizarre. When you hear American academic types, Leather's
Speaker 2: strategic forecasting types who've got, you know, their own kind
Speaker 2: of conceptual biases, or they're just talking about kind of
Speaker 2: you know, court historian types, they always come up short
Speaker 2: in describing warfare as a process or as like an
Speaker 2: ontological postulate. You know, they're always like grasping at some
Speaker 2: sort of some sort of concrete variables, you know, beaut
Speaker 2: of an economic nature or or there or or they're
Speaker 2: falling back on on, you know, the systemic remedies assigned
Speaker 2: by the system that they themselves serve, you know, in uh,
Speaker 2: and in kind of you know, referring to warfare in
Speaker 2: terms of legalisms, you know, and and bad actors and purportedly,
Speaker 2: you know, actors who are abiding what amounts to you know, uh,
Speaker 2: a juristic moral precedent. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 2: incredibly misguided, even if you issue the fact that it's
Speaker 2: it's at odds with you know, kind of the the
Speaker 2: human reality of it. You know, nobody like World War
Speaker 2: Two wasn't waged because you know, the German arch needed
Speaker 2: to capture markets to to to you know, needed to
Speaker 2: capture you know, destination markets for for evaluated manufacturers, you know,
Speaker 2: and it was it wasn't waves because you know, the
Speaker 2: like the British wanted need to guarantee that they could
Speaker 2: access their rubber plantations you know that were in Japan's backyard.
Speaker 2: Like that's not that's not reality, and uh, I mean
Speaker 2: and this endured throughout the Cold War obviously because the
Speaker 2: the the Cold War literally was ah the conflict that determined,
Speaker 2: you know, what what world order would would be constituted of,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of not just concrete structures that
Speaker 2: you know kind of the term and uh the you know,
Speaker 2: human life and labors at scale, but also you know,
Speaker 2: like what what what values for lack of a better
Speaker 2: term to invoke, would would would reign and what and
Speaker 2: what kind of what what conceptual horizon would would uh
Speaker 2: be triumphant over all others.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's why that's why America had such problems in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: because it couldn't within within its own intellectual and moral paradigms,
Speaker 2: like it couldn't it couldn't rationalize what it was doing
Speaker 2: because uh, the war in Vietnam was an ideological war,
Speaker 2: as as all twentieth century wars were, and it was
Speaker 2: incidental that it took place in Southeast Asia. It was
Speaker 2: incidental that, you know, the people who was waived against
Speaker 2: we were easiatic and uh, the logic of that body
Speaker 2: count wasn't just a performance metric of success. It was
Speaker 2: and then in itself, because if you're going to eradicate communism,
Speaker 2: you've got to eradicate the standard bearers of it. And
Speaker 2: the standard bearers of any of any concept are human beings,
Speaker 2: you know, So you're talking about the eradication of human
Speaker 2: beings at scale in order to exterminate a concept and
Speaker 2: the ability that concepts to exist in the world, let
Speaker 2: alone constitute an enemy forced to oppose you like you're talking,
Speaker 2: you're talking about the You're talking about the slaughter of
Speaker 2: human beings. You know. That's why too people like another Frenchman, uh,
Speaker 2: Christian dale MANZERI I'm from Butchering that pronunciation. You know.
Speaker 2: He wrote the book The Captive Dreamer, and he joined
Speaker 2: Uh he joined the s S late in the game.
Speaker 2: I think he didn't go into action until late nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four. He fought with Charlemagne, who were incidentally the
Speaker 2: among the last defenders of of Berlin. But you know,
Speaker 2: in this book he made that point that it was
Speaker 2: you know, he heven it was clear that Europe was
Speaker 2: going down. You know, He's like, I, I wasn't, I
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna not participate in, you know, in in the
Speaker 2: crusade to save it from you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: ideological and racial enemies, and that that that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's very much a crusader spirit, and that's really the
Speaker 2: only spirit that they can animate people at scale towards
Speaker 2: a modern war and in turn, at least in some
Speaker 2: of the stakes that were on the table for the
Speaker 2: for the Germans and for the Russians. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a little more complicated when you deal with America insinuating
Speaker 2: off into these wars of choice. But that that's kind
Speaker 2: of a different thing. I mean, that's that's born it's
Speaker 2: born of a I mean of a purely ideological imperative
Speaker 2: as well. But there's there's a complexity there that is
Speaker 2: the subject for a different discussion. But no, that's all
Speaker 2: I had, That's all I had to contribute right now.
Speaker 1: All right, the final part part six to give completely
Speaker 1: Part thirty one the reconquest, the turmoil that agitates public opinion.
Speaker 1: The wars of shake up nations are just episodes. Partial
Speaker 1: reforms will do away with such periodic chaos. To attempt
Speaker 1: to change people would be a very disappointing work if
Speaker 1: it were, if it were not accompanied by the essential
Speaker 1: work of changing that which lies deep in the soul,
Speaker 1: by a transformation of the very foundations of our times.
Speaker 1: All the scandals, the decline of honesty and honor, shamelessness
Speaker 1: in the in the certainty of impunity, the passion for
Speaker 1: money which sweeps away conventions, dignity, self respect, ammorality which
Speaker 1: has become uncons unconscious, indicate the existence of a deep
Speaker 1: seated evil which calls for remedies of equal magnitude. It
Speaker 1: is not suddenly that we lie, that we break all
Speaker 1: moral laws, supernatural or natural, and more simply the laws
Speaker 1: of the public code. It is not overnight that you
Speaker 1: work yourself up to bold hypocrisy, to speak truth only
Speaker 1: with reticence, to lie with virtuous words. This deformation of consciousness,
Speaker 1: which amazes, which frightens today, or which puts on an
Speaker 1: air of sarcastic superiority, is the only conclusion of a
Speaker 1: long decline in human virtues. It is the passion for wealth,
Speaker 1: the will to be powerful no matter what, it is,
Speaker 1: the frenzy to be honored. It is materialism. It is
Speaker 1: the unscrupulous gratification of instincts which have corrupted men, and
Speaker 1: through men institutions. The world is more and more preoccupied
Speaker 1: with banal, material or simply animal joys. It maintains itself
Speaker 1: only by the principle of maximizing material wealth. Each man
Speaker 1: lives only for himself and allows a domination of life
Speaker 1: both within his own home and within the country by
Speaker 1: a constant egoism which has converted men into hateful, embittered,
Speaker 1: greedy wolves, or corrupt and soulaced half men. We will
Speaker 1: come out of this downfall only through an immense moral recovery,
Speaker 1: by reteaching men to love, to sacrifice themselves, to live,
Speaker 1: to struggle, and to die for a higher ideal. In
Speaker 1: a century when we live only for ourselves, it will
Speaker 1: take hundreds thousands of men to live no longer for
Speaker 1: themselves but for a collective ideal, Accepting in advance all
Speaker 1: the sacrifices, all the humiliations, all necessary heroism. All that
Speaker 1: matters is faith, brilliant confidence, the come complete absence of
Speaker 1: selfishness and individualism, the pulling of the whole being towards
Speaker 1: service without promise of reward in any place by any means,
Speaker 1: toward a cause that goes beyond men asking him everything,
Speaker 1: promising him nothing. The only things that count are the
Speaker 1: quality of the soul, the pulse, the total gift, the
Speaker 1: will to hoist an ideal above all else, in the
Speaker 1: most absolute selflessness. The time is coming when saving the
Speaker 1: world will require this handful of heroes and saints to
Speaker 1: make the great reconquest thirty two flotilla of souls. Nations
Speaker 1: recover rapidly from financial setbacks, they may reconstitute without too
Speaker 1: much difficulty a new political framework. All that is needed
Speaker 1: is skilled technicians and a willingness to work together. Revolutions
Speaker 1: are not political or economic. They are small revolutions, changes
Speaker 1: of purely mechanical needs. When the specialists put the pieces together,
Speaker 1: when the engines have found their rhythm, and sternfaced foreman
Speaker 1: have been set to watch over them, the material revolution
Speaker 1: is accomplished. The rest will only require repairs from time
Speaker 1: to time, a modification here and there. The machine is
Speaker 1: fitted or overhauled, the gears turn most of the work
Speaker 1: is done. The real revolution is far more complicated, one
Speaker 1: which brings together not the machinery of the state, but
Speaker 1: the secret life of every soul. There it is no
Speaker 1: longer a matter of automatic review and monitoring. It is
Speaker 1: about the vices and the virtues, the impulses towards profundity
Speaker 1: and weaknesses, the desperate hopes that are so dear to us.
Speaker 1: What is there at the bottom of that gaze, behind
Speaker 1: those eyes that remained on us for a long moment,
Speaker 1: as if great secrets lie upon our eyelids, A hidden heart,
Speaker 1: a soul, its secret crises, its outbursts, its despairs, the
Speaker 1: desire of the body, and its indelible decline, the sorrows
Speaker 1: that are so difficult to hide or guess at. The
Speaker 1: uncertain and troubled struggle towards happiness is the great drama
Speaker 1: of men. But there too is the real revolution, bringing
Speaker 1: light to spirits caught in the shadows, to aid in
Speaker 1: the restoration of failing souls, to relearn that we consist
Speaker 1: of more than just a body. To perfect the imperfect,
Speaker 1: to rise to heights of virtue, no matter how great
Speaker 1: are the efforts required of us, The revolution alone can
Speaker 1: be enchancing but terrifying. We all walk through a labyrinth,
Speaker 1: that thin bowed head, and that beautiful golden hair, laughter
Speaker 1: that bursts too suddenly, that arm that descends ten faces,
Speaker 1: ten abysses. Who cheats us, who is mistaken? Who seeks
Speaker 1: to deceive us? We only see the deceptive shadows of beings.
Speaker 1: Everyone tries to deceive themselves, to deceive others by simplifications
Speaker 1: and by more or less skillful artifices. And it is
Speaker 1: among these subter futures, however, that we must advance. Our
Speaker 1: flames burning white in the darkest night. What is there
Speaker 1: to take hold of? What can we do about these beings?
Speaker 1: Who are to who? To our impotent eyes appear only mysteries.
Speaker 1: Mystery is all the more poignant as we observe their laughter,
Speaker 1: vivacious eyes, pale foreheads, this soft caress of flowing hair, which,
Speaker 1: with joyful light, oppose all our regrets, anguish, weariness, and corruptions.
Speaker 1: We all make our way along distant paths. The bottoms
Speaker 1: of our hearts. Alone know our true face, the false
Speaker 1: secrets of our soul, its hopes and faults, our true joys,
Speaker 1: and our true sorrows. There were so many joys and
Speaker 1: so many tears that the others thought they knew, shared
Speaker 1: and assuaged. We look, in the hours of solitude, at
Speaker 1: our real selves, where no one else alas never go.
Speaker 1: This innerself tells us who he loves and to whom
Speaker 1: he belongs, what overwhelms him and causes him to stumble,
Speaker 1: and tells us what raises up his spirit. Perhaps if
Speaker 1: by fortune, the breath of truth brushes aside the invisible veil,
Speaker 1: to be this current, this great, warm and long wind,
Speaker 1: which rises from the depths of our spiritual horizons, which
Speaker 1: gives souls, this first movement. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: sail undergoes an impalpable swelling, rounding off in the light.
Speaker 1: The whole slips across still waters. The inflection of the
Speaker 1: white sails gently pushes the air away. We think of
Speaker 1: those thousands of motionless sails, waiting for what will give them,
Speaker 1: imperceptibly at first, then with quivering forth life and movement,
Speaker 1: the joy of moving through air and water, advancing through
Speaker 1: the clear line of the horizon in the distance. The
Speaker 1: boats are heavy, the water is dark and sluggish, everything
Speaker 1: is silent. Be this breath that will come at last,
Speaker 1: to rouse these souls, to push them off, clumsy at first,
Speaker 1: left after so much waiting and stagnation, then happy and firm.
Speaker 1: Is to strength that sustains them, and the life that
Speaker 1: revives them is confirmed. Show all these beings that existence
Speaker 1: can be beautiful and pure and great, even after all
Speaker 1: the weaknesses and all the disenchantments. To bring up from
Speaker 1: these drier, numb or perverted hearts, the fountain of renewal.
Speaker 1: This is the task, the real one, the hard one,
Speaker 1: the necessary task, terrible task. We would like to take
Speaker 1: these half dead people in our arms, look deeply into
Speaker 1: their eyes, ward off these creeping doubts and hesitations, to
Speaker 1: run our trembling fingers through their silken hair. But what
Speaker 1: a stir upon meeting those eyes which return the light
Speaker 1: of others, those eyes which show us so quickly from
Speaker 1: their first lie or their first confession, the confusion that
Speaker 1: inhibits us ourselves, how to look at a face without
Speaker 1: hearing cruel questions? Are you lying? How shall you fare
Speaker 1: under fire? Under privations of the flesh? And what will
Speaker 1: remain tomorrow of the hopes and aspirations, painfully suspended buoyed
Speaker 1: by this gaze, the source of all redemption lies there, however,
Speaker 1: to give life to drifting souls, to calm the storms
Speaker 1: which break their masts and tear their sails, to give
Speaker 1: them sun and breath, to make serene the seas of men,
Speaker 1: to make their horizon clear, free from the shadows and
Speaker 1: perils of violent and tormented skies. Breathe resume, believing in virtues,
Speaker 1: in beauty and goodness, in love. Feel dancing around you
Speaker 1: on the waves, a thousand other sails full of wind,
Speaker 1: carried with the same momentum, towards the same call when
Speaker 1: the Golden Sea. When the Golden Sea sees these white
Speaker 1: sails rush forth, the revolution will be on its way,
Speaker 1: carried onwards by this flotilla of souls thirty three summits.
Speaker 1: Your road is hard, you come short of breath. There
Speaker 1: are times when you would like to throw away this
Speaker 1: burden that weighs you down. Let yourself go downhill and
Speaker 1: return to those idyllic farms that welcome you back. At
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hill, blue streams against the green
Speaker 1: and gray backgrounds of meadows and slate roofs. You feel
Speaker 1: nostalgic for the quiet waters and the clear rushes, the
Speaker 1: ore that lapse against the surface, the flat, effortless path
Speaker 1: along the banks. We would like to think of nothing.
Speaker 1: Wash away the memories of men from your thoughts, and
Speaker 1: with your back against the grass, watch the passing sky,
Speaker 1: lightened by flocks of birds. No more weariness. You won't
Speaker 1: let go of your bag and your stick. You won't
Speaker 1: attend to your bleeding knees. You won't listen to the
Speaker 1: clamor of hatred. You won't look at the smiling eyes
Speaker 1: and the wickedness they hide. It is to the summit
Speaker 1: that you must cast your eyes. Your body should live
Speaker 1: only for these twisting paths. Your heart should dream only
Speaker 1: of these heights, that you and the others should reach
Speaker 1: what lies at the root of your what lies at
Speaker 1: the root of your confusion. I thought you would find
Speaker 1: immediate joys in climbing this pathole on the sea and
Speaker 1: raising this human host. You have often suffered. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: feel nauseous. Yet you needed it. You had to learn
Speaker 1: that ambition does not pay off, that sooner or later
Speaker 1: it tires out the heart it possesses. You know it now.
Speaker 1: You know that you should not expect any constant joy
Speaker 1: from outside. You have learned to doubt the comfort of men.
Speaker 1: Your face is flushed, not from the tenderness they gave you,
Speaker 1: but from the blows that you were dealt by them.
Speaker 1: Of course, you did not think it, would you imagine
Speaker 1: that along the road your hands and eyes would find
Speaker 1: what you so feverishly desired. You look back and you say,
Speaker 1: I am going back down. No, it is only then
Speaker 1: that life becomes noble, when it beats you down, when
Speaker 1: you no longer having the enthusiasm to carry on. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the early days you wanted a very beautiful climb.
Speaker 1: It is true you were leaving this way to free
Speaker 1: your soul. You knew that men must always overcome his limitations.
Speaker 1: Didn't you believe in this obscure pleasure of honor and discipline?
Speaker 1: Are you crying out? You did not think for it
Speaker 1: to be like this. You rejected comfort with sincere enough words,
Speaker 1: but it still hemmed the edges of your actions, as
Speaker 1: to foam borders the edge of the sea. You honestly
Speaker 1: thought that you only lived for this threat of light,
Speaker 1: beautiful only from afar, on the edge of the sands.
Speaker 1: The temptation was there in your heart. You wanted something grand,
Speaker 1: something real, But you still had the thought of yourself
Speaker 1: near you. You announced your readiness to do your duty,
Speaker 1: but you made this silent addition that to fulfill your
Speaker 1: duty would bring glory to your name and satisfy your
Speaker 1: own desires, would make you golden with pride. It's because
Speaker 1: you don't see this phantasm before you anymore, that your
Speaker 1: eyes reflect only shadows. You are looking in the dark,
Speaker 1: confront it the fact that you loved something false. Those
Speaker 1: who have disgusted, those who have disgusted you one hundred times,
Speaker 1: with their wickedness and injustice, have carried you more than
Speaker 1: your own strength. Are you giving up? You give your
Speaker 1: flesh and your breath, your heart, and your mind, and
Speaker 1: you think now it is all in vain, in vain?
Speaker 1: Why because you no longer give them in service and
Speaker 1: your selfish pride. Only now can you start to give
Speaker 1: of yourself. That wickedness had to overwhelm you. By the
Speaker 1: time you were almost fainting at the end of your effort,
Speaker 1: the jeers would rise, and contempt would drive you on.
Speaker 1: It was necessary that all your gestures of love be
Speaker 1: covered with hatred, that all your impulses be soiled, that
Speaker 1: each throbbing of your heart command the new blow to
Speaker 1: fall upon your face. You have known so many times,
Speaker 1: those exhausting last few meters where you smiled on the
Speaker 1: threshold of the gold, despite your sweat and your parlor.
Speaker 1: The next moment you were falling among the rocks, betrayed
Speaker 1: by your own, overwhelmed by the others. Everything had to
Speaker 1: be redone and always, the charming emptiness of the valley
Speaker 1: below hailed you. The trembling poplars called you like a
Speaker 1: line of ships on the sea of easy days. You
Speaker 1: suffered from the harshness of the fighting. You said to yourself,
Speaker 1: whatever the victory, the price is too expensive, and I
Speaker 1: no longer desire it. You always thought of yourself, Yes,
Speaker 1: for you, for the human pleasure of having reached the top.
Speaker 1: You made a fool's bargain. But if life had not
Speaker 1: slapped you a hundred times, which you ever have understood
Speaker 1: that there are other pleasures than pride, than smiles, than glory.
Speaker 1: You have felt the hypocrisy of so many faces around you.
Speaker 1: You have guessed all the lies, all the gall all
Speaker 1: the meanness that is in store for you. Every time
Speaker 1: you start climbing again, you are no longer entitled to anything.
Speaker 1: You hear the swarm of slithering horrors. You know you
Speaker 1: will go through with the objection, and with the objection anyway.
Speaker 1: It is at the hour when you have given everything
Speaker 1: that you will be said to be greedy. It is
Speaker 1: at the hour when your heart will suffer the most
Speaker 1: abandonment that will be given the basest of demands. You
Speaker 1: turn around with tears that well up in spite of you.
Speaker 1: Why are you still thinking of yourself? Do you still
Speaker 1: suffer from injustice? Is it all about you? How hard
Speaker 1: is it to be free from our humanity? Let them
Speaker 1: come crashing down on your life like jackals, Let them
Speaker 1: trample your dreams, Let them open your heart to all
Speaker 1: the winds. Suffer from being thrown to the beasts of envy, calumny, baseness,
Speaker 1: endure above all. And this is what bruises the most.
Speaker 1: That at the moment when you cannot take it any longer,
Speaker 1: when your knees bend, when your eyes cast about for
Speaker 1: a supportive look, your arm search for and ard in
Speaker 1: hand support, while you are hanging on a word, a
Speaker 1: look that this word falls down to break you, that
Speaker 1: look to hurt you, Except that it is those who
Speaker 1: are closest to you who finish you off those to
Speaker 1: whom you had left everything you love, so naively, without
Speaker 1: reserve and without hesitation, your eyes have a bewilderment worse
Speaker 1: than tears. Do not cry out. Expect that everything you
Speaker 1: suffered yesterday tomorrow will be renewed. Accept this in advance.
Speaker 1: Do not even turn around when you hear that step
Speaker 1: behind you. Bless the blows received, Love those who will
Speaker 1: bring them. They are more useful to you than a
Speaker 1: thousand hearts. That love you did you get it you
Speaker 1: may find tomorrow, or perhaps you may have found already
Speaker 1: that tenderness that comes see you like a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air, or like the scent of a cluster of
Speaker 1: country flowers. You are now without weakness in front of them.
Speaker 1: You will only enjoy dignity. Dignity to the extent that,
Speaker 1: by dints of suffering you have learned to do. Without it,
Speaker 1: This you would never have obtained had you not paid
Speaker 1: the price one hundred times, hundreds of times, without ever
Speaker 1: being sure of receiving anything in return. If one day
Speaker 1: this appears to you, enjoy it as a sublime landscape
Speaker 1: glimpsed in passing. But it is not for this that
Speaker 1: you came. It is the air. It is the light
Speaker 1: of the Summit's calling you. You are breathing better already
Speaker 1: You will slowly attain true joy at those great peaks
Speaker 1: of consciousness, shining unsullied. Think only of this, see only this,
Speaker 1: Try to get there, light, pure, radiant, with sunlight. It
Speaker 1: is your weaknesses and your faults on which you should
Speaker 1: weigh on them alone, your pride, your name. The vain
Speaker 1: appeals of the departing men, throw them beyond the rocks.
Speaker 1: Did you hear them break as they bounce down the slope?
Speaker 1: May it all perish. May bitterness and abandonment instead of rebellion,
Speaker 1: keep you on the path. These two howling dogs are
Speaker 1: the guardians of the herd of your thoughts. Without them
Speaker 1: you would stop, you would pull away. Do not waste
Speaker 1: a moment. It is far, and you must reach the summit.
Speaker 1: They reach, these pure immensities behind you will be a
Speaker 1: great silence. All those who screamed after you, who hated
Speaker 1: or trampled you, despite the smiles on their faces, all
Speaker 1: those who just to strike at you, followed you on
Speaker 1: the road, will suddenly realize that at this game they
Speaker 1: have they too, have reached the snows, the new air,
Speaker 1: and the horizons cut out in the sky. They will
Speaker 1: forget to hate you. They will have wonderfully childish eyes.
Speaker 1: They will discover the essential. Their souls will have been
Speaker 1: lifted to heights they would never have agreed to reach
Speaker 1: if your back, that had received their blows had not
Speaker 1: hidden the length of the road. So you will have
Speaker 1: it your victory. You will be able, having given the
Speaker 1: final effort, suddenly to fall, arms outstretched from the top
Speaker 1: of the mountain into the rocks below. You will be done.
Speaker 1: You will have one reaching the end of your own
Speaker 1: journey by the last effort. Will no longer matter if
Speaker 1: the others are there on the brink of the of
Speaker 1: the pure immensities of redemption. You are so happy, deep
Speaker 1: down you know that only happiness is there. Sing, may
Speaker 1: your voice thunder in the valleys, regrets in tears. The
Speaker 1: most unremarkable man among you has suffered this, and you
Speaker 1: would reject him. The hardest thing is done. Hold on,
Speaker 1: clench your teeth, silence your heart, think only of the top.
Speaker 2: Go up.
Speaker 1: And that is the message from mister de Greel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite it's a there's a positive tendency I've
Speaker 2: discerned there's a lot more people taking an interest in
Speaker 2: not just revisionist topics, but you know, real testimony of
Speaker 2: of officers and men who who fought for the German
Speaker 2: Reich and affiliated adjacent forces. It's not unlike the kind
Speaker 2: of renaissance of lost cause of historians in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: who uh, that's when Shelby Foot became really kind of popular.
Speaker 2: And that's also when The Killer Angels became this beloved book.
Speaker 2: And kind of the tail end of that was when
Speaker 2: you know, The Killer Angels was made into Gettysburg, which
Speaker 2: people have mixed feelings about that movie, but you know,
Speaker 2: the very early nineties was kind of the the end
Speaker 2: of that sort of tendency, both in in in war
Speaker 2: academia as well as in kind of pop culture. But
Speaker 2: obviously that that's got profound implications. That's something similar to
Speaker 2: underway visa the the German Reich and the experience of
Speaker 2: World War Two, and that, I mean, that's very exciting
Speaker 2: and it's very much corrective because it's not this this
Speaker 2: stuff directly impacts the structure of the world we live in,
Speaker 2: you know, conceptually, physically, you know, every every way you
Speaker 2: can imagine. So the fact that the fact that you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not ever we got the ability to kind
Speaker 2: of fascinate the public imagination to the point that you know,
Speaker 2: not only are revisionist perspectives crowded out, but that it's unthinkable,
Speaker 2: you know, on in as regards the prevailing morality. For
Speaker 2: you know, any any kinntervailing narrative is going to enter
Speaker 2: public spaces just perfectly speaking, is or was it the
Speaker 2: sea change? But it's very exciting. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's important to make people aware of stuff like the
Speaker 2: Grill's memoir because again too, Debrill is obviously like a
Speaker 2: man out letter isn't very much you know, like a
Speaker 2: cultured European type. And you know that's people that even
Speaker 2: people are sympathetic to the to the axis cause in history,
Speaker 2: they've got a sense of the thet they got a
Speaker 2: sense of the Germans is being consessed of a certain
Speaker 2: kind of rigidity in their cultural output, which is not
Speaker 2: entirely fair, but I understand why they think that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that was great man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The what it really makes me think is that
Speaker 1: those people who are waking up to it, who are
Speaker 1: genuinely seeking the kind of enlightenment that someone like mister
Speaker 1: de Garrell had, they really need to put aside their
Speaker 1: pet causes, especially if their pet causes are divisive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's also too like these people they're not
Speaker 2: you know, like where the rubber meets the road, people
Speaker 2: like they grow are they're uh, they're they're ethical plantments
Speaker 2: as wellth their ascetic ones were informed pretty much by idealism,
Speaker 2: but it's through a filter of concrete political realities. And
Speaker 2: like most of these like most of these guys, most
Speaker 2: of these guys who are the most kind of stalwart
Speaker 2: proponents these divisive pedodiologies, like it's there their creatures who
Speaker 2: exist only in the Internet, Like there's nothing remotely concrete
Speaker 2: about their ship, you know. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: means why they're so inflexible, because it's it's never it's
Speaker 2: never been challenged by you know, the the nuances of
Speaker 2: of of Warren peace questions. And when I say Warren
Speaker 2: peace questions, I mean things that impact anybody of a
Speaker 2: partisan mindset, even in day to day life. You know,
Speaker 2: like there's a spectrum of war and peace of you know,
Speaker 2: on the the most extreme ends are you know, hostas
Speaker 2: and Animicus, and on the other end is you know,
Speaker 2: a splendid piece where within the confldical space only friends
Speaker 2: capital f exists. But you know there's a there's there's
Speaker 2: an infinite gradations between one side of the spectrum and
Speaker 2: the other. So you know, you're very much you're very
Speaker 2: much at war and metaphysical and unfortunately sometimes concrete terms.
Speaker 2: Although I certainly don't advocate anybody to undertake violence other
Speaker 2: than and defense themselves, their property, to their loved ones.
Speaker 2: But you know, people are people are closer to these
Speaker 2: processes in a very same winary sense. Then they realize
Speaker 2: if they're truly engaged and not just you know, somebody
Speaker 2: playing a game, you know, from some anonymous and remote location.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's uh, that's very good man.
Speaker 1: Well, before I have you do your plugs and everything,
Speaker 1: we have to thank the I don't believe this was
Speaker 1: ever translated into English before Anselope Hill did it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they were a great publishing house. I'm on
Speaker 2: their mailing list and they they they release great stuff. Man,
Speaker 2: I can't recommend them enough.
Speaker 1: All right, do your plugs, and once again thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me for a thousand episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's great. Yeah, you can always find me
Speaker 2: at Thomas seven seven seven dot com. That's the one
Speaker 2: stop location for links to all my content. It's number
Speaker 2: seven H seven seven seven dot com. Substack is going
Speaker 2: to continue to be my primary home for podcast content
Speaker 2: as well as longer form content. And I'm debating releasing
Speaker 2: the third book in my science fiction series exclusively on
Speaker 2: on substack now, like you know, the subscribers like Chapter
Speaker 2: by Chap, I haven't decided yet, but because I won
Speaker 2: my war with Stripe in their effort to d platform me,
Speaker 2: for the time being, we're going to remain on Substack.
Speaker 2: I'm probably also gonna set up a gum Road account too,
Speaker 2: for among other things, like repository for video content which
Speaker 2: I'm actively shooting. But that's that's new to me. So
Speaker 2: thanks for bearing with me, I mean not I mean
Speaker 2: everybody who subscribes. But you can always find me at
Speaker 2: substack at real Thomas seven seven seven at subsec dot com.
Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram as well. You can link through my website,
Speaker 2: and I'm on exit uh real Capital r e A
Speaker 2: L Underscore number seven hm as seven seven seven dot com.
Speaker 2: That's where we're at right now. I'll be announcing some
Speaker 2: of these changes I mean, I have been and will
Speaker 2: continue to announce some of these changes on my sub stack.
Speaker 2: Things are kind of normalizing and I've got my workflow
Speaker 2: locked in now thanks to our dear friend Jay Burden
Speaker 2: as well as some of the people you plugged me with.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm having to report that, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: finally be up on you know, fresh content every fourteen
Speaker 2: days again, as was as was the case, uh for
Speaker 2: most of the last year. That's all I got.
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, thank you, thank you so much for doing this, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, just little tease. Thomas and I before where
Speaker 1: we started recording this started talking about the next series,
Speaker 1: and I think that would be a it's gonna be
Speaker 1: of great interest to a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of I think a lot of people have already commented that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd like to see, uh like to see that that
Speaker 1: subject covered, but let's not tell them what it is.
Speaker 2: And just no, I'm very excited, and yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 2: the guy who suggested it very much. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty excited. Man.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, likewise,