Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed

LEVEL2

  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Print September 27, 2010

Jonathan Bowden’s A Ballet of Wasps

John Michael McCloughlin

1,078 words

Jonathan Bowden
A Ballet of Wasps
London: The Spinning Top Club, 2008

A Ballet of Wasps is a collection of four short stories and a play. The stories (including two that are very short) are “A Ballet of Wasps,” “Golgotha’s Centurion,” “Wilderness’ Ape,” and “Sixty-Foot Dolls.” The play in question is called Stinging Beetles and very much relates to the book which follows it in the sequence, Lilith Before Eve. The entire volume appeared towards the end of 2008.

Like all of Jonathan Bowden’s works, this volume supports radical inequality and the courage which is necessary to view life tragically. The entire point of this corpus of stories is to raise courage and instill qualities of Stoicism, anti-defeatism, non-resignation, arrogance, and defeat’s absence. One is reminded of the anti-humanist intellectual Bill Hopkins here, who, in writing in the journal Abraxas commented that “the purpose of literature is to produce new Titans.”

This demarcates Bowden’s efforts from a lot of contemporary material—much of which oscillates between entertainment and a reconfirmation of liberal values. There is an important point here—since Bowden’s work avoids a great deal of the scatological, vegetative, or crepuscular horror of the area which he has made his own. If one compares his work to the eye-ball removing machine in Edward Bond’s Lear, for instance, then his fiction is positively genteel.

Nonetheless, in these particular stories, I believe that Bowden is attempting to go beyond mood music in order to impinge upon the reader beneath the conscious mind. Can authors really influence their readers in this way? It remains a moot point. Yet many people act as if there can be uncontrollable impacts (at whatever level) from work they find disagreeable. A large number of conservatives would be made deeply uncomfortable if they had to read through Bertold Brecht’s The Threepeeny Opera (replete with an Otto Dix painting on the Penguin jacket). Likewise, a fragmentary and volcanic narrative by Louis-Ferdinand Céline would make many a liberal humanist shudder. Imagine quite a few callow PC types having to wade through Castle to Castle or North—never mind Guignol’s Band (set in London) or the even more “transgressive” works like Bagatelles or Celine’s account of his trip to the Soviet Union.

In any event, the very fact of this tremulousness may lead to the idea of deep immersion—particularly in relation to highly imaginative material. I think Bowden’s work is an attempt, fictionally speaking, to re-engineer elements of the semi-conscious mind. Hence we see a certain aggression or voltaic energy which is redolent of many “conservative” creators like Belloc, Lewis, or Mencken, but that certainly alienates a conventional or middle-brow perspective.

Similarly, quite a few authors in the Gothic area—one thinks of Lovecraft or Poe—deliberately engage in mesmerism or a phenomenon similar to a séance. This ramps up the level of abstraction, illusion, dream-material, oneiric wonder, or phantasy via more and more baroque language. Yet is this more than dark poetry? Well, it depends upon how you wish to gaze upon it.

Mister Bowden’s “religious” ideas are not immediately discernible from his work, but certain items do stand out over time. One is the notion that every type of mysticism exists at this level—even if it doesn’t. Another viewpoint suggests that art is the praxis of religion. One has the idea with this creator that, passim. Goebbels, if asked whether human sacrifice was wrong he would answer: it depends how aesthetically it’s done. The British “conceptual” artist Damien Hirst got into very hot water indeed for expatiating on the Twin Towers (September the 11th, 2001) and referring to the aesthetic pleasure they gave him. This is the dandy’s position, if you will. Although my own view is that this author attempts to do more.

My suspicion is that he configures his work as a drug, a transmission mechanism, an occultism, and an estranging mystique. I dispute that he wishes to adopt a mood—rather, in my view, I think that he sees his artistic work as a magical act. This would explain its extreme conservatism—metaphysically speaking—when combined with certain modernist and gruesome aesthetics that many philistines can’t stomach. The old conundrum where ideologues who talk much about Western culture are not able to sit through Aeschylus’ Agamemnon raises its head here.

One is also reminded of the fact that the entire post-modern vista is the ’60s creation, and that Timothy Leary’s adoption of a drug addict’s lifestyle lay at its heart. Narcotics are about many things; over-coming boredom, the tediousness of a liberal society, a desire to escape, personal weakness, etc. Yet, in an artistic sense, I think something crucial is happening here. Bowden as an individual is probably quite puritanical or ascetic, but he believes in the sheer power of the imagination. I believe that if the unsuspecting voyeur opens up to what Michael Moorcock once described as fantasy’s implicit fascism then Bowden has seized a device with which to hook, de-program, turn around, and re-orient a generation. It must be said that your average liberal academic would regard this as preposterous and meaningless. And yet . . . why insist on an anti-essentialist or “politically correct” method for reading literature in every college if this weren’t so?

To finish, “A Ballet of Wasps” concerns a Woodsman’s discomfiture about boasting in front of a vampire. It is set in White Russia. “Golgotha’s Centurion” is a Sicilian revenge tragedy which owes something to the sweat off John Webster’s brow. “Wilderness’ Ape” deals with Haitian Voodoo and is quite clearly influenced by Spenser St. John, Revilo P. Oliver, and Lothrop Stoddard in doing so. “Sixty Foot Dolls” explores evolution, degeneration theory, and some of David Icke’s more fanciful conundrums. Whilst the play, Stinging Beetles, turns around the necessity for courage and involves a dilemma or choice at Life’s cross-roads. It is less William Styron’s exemplification of Sophie’s Choice than a man’s desire to rescue a beautiful blonde girl from a magicians’ village. In magical lore, such a hamlet only materializes on a windswept and torrential night.

Perhaps those who believe in the natural goodness of Man and liberal equity should bear in mind the poem at the volume’s start. It exists tucked away on the copyright page.

Study for Three Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon (1947)

Out they stand in orange
Screaming like blinded bats
Wrapped around in lintel
A mother’s angel sings:
Better were it, indeed, not to be born!

Note

A Ballet of Wasps can be read or purchased here.

 

Related

  • Morálka lidské mysli Jonathana Haidta, část druhá

  • Male Supremacism in the United States?

  • Work to Be Such a Man

  • Put Many Tools into the Toolbox

  • Paul Fussell’s Class 40 Years On

  • Winter Wheat:
    American Blut und Boden

  • Léon Bloy & the Symbolism of History

  • The Birth of Post-War American Conservatism in Detroit

Tags

book reviewshorrorJohn Michael McClouglinJonathan BowdenliteratureSavitri Devi

Next

» The Dark Knight

  • Recent posts

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Against the Negative Approach in Politics

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

    • What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America

      Robert Hampton

      12

    • “Should War Be Criminalized?”

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco:
      Parte 2, Extinção Branca

      Greg Johnson

    • Morálka lidské mysli Jonathana Haidta, část druhá

      Collin Cleary

    • Animals & Children First

      Jim Goad

      40

    • The Great Replacement Prize

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Julius Evola
      (May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974)

      Greg Johnson

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 445
      The Writers’ Bloc with Kathryn S. on Mircea Eliade

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco:
      Parte 1, Introdução

      Greg Johnson

    • Extremities:
      A Film from Long Ago that Anticipated Today’s Woke Hollywood

      Stephen Paul Foster

      8

    • The National Health Service:
      My Part in Its Downfall

      Mark Gullick

      10

    • Male Supremacism in the United States?

      Margot Metroland

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 444
      Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Fallen Castes

      Thomas Steuben

      18

    • Work to Be Such a Man

      Morris van de Camp

      6

    • Be a Medici:
      New Patrons for a New Renaissance

      Robert Wallace

      17

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 443
      Interview with Jim Goad

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 5, Die Wiederherstellung Unserer Weissen Heimatländer

      Greg Johnson

    • Where Do We Go from Buffalo?

      Jim Goad

      42

    • Rammstein’s Deutschland

      Ondrej Mann

      7

    • If I Lost Hope

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 4, Wie Können Wir den Weissen Genozid Beenden?

      Greg Johnson

    • Payton Gendron & the Buffalo Massacre

      Greg Johnson

      63

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Between Now and May 20th, Give a New Monthly Gift and Receive a New Book!

      Cyan Quinn

    • This Weekend’s Livestreams
      Jim Goad on Counter-Currents Radio & Kathryn S. on The Writers’ Bloc

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • Make Art Great Again:
      The Good Optics of Salvador Dalí, Part 3

      James J. O'Meara

    • Babette’s Feast

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      1

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 3, Weisser Völkermord

      Greg Johnson

    • Hey, Portland Synagogue Vandal — Whatcha Doin’?

      Jim Goad

      26

    • The Pro-Dysgenics Agenda

      Robert Hampton

      29

    • Make Art Great Again:
      The Good Optics of Salvador Dalí, Part 2

      James J. O'Meara

      4

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 2, Weisses Aussterben

      Greg Johnson

    • Now Available!
      The Enemy of Europe

      Francis Parker Yockey

    • Now Available!
      Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema

      Trevor Lynch

      1

    • Now Available!
      Jonathan Bowden’s Reactionary Modernism

      Jonathan Bowden

    • Why the Central European Elites Love War

      Petr Hampl

      34

    • Make Art Great Again:
      The Good Optics of Salvador Dalí, Part 1

      James J. O'Meara

      1

    • Memelord Dalí
      Remembering Salvador Dalí
      (May 11, 1904–January 23, 1989)

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

    • Morality Death Match:
      Lecter vs. Chigurh

      Mark Gullick

      2

    • Why I Write, Part II:
      Farewell to My Friend Robin

      Richard Houck

      16

    • Put Many Tools into the Toolbox

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 442
      Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 1, Einführung

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet:
      May 1-7, 2022

      Jim Goad

      39

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 441
      Interview with Richard Houck on Roe v. Wade

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Some Thoughts on the Hume-Rousseau “Philosopher’s Quarrel”

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • My Midlife Crisis

      Greg Johnson

      10

  • Recent comments

    • Nick Jeelvy What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Not necessarily. The kind of ideology that Fox News and evangelicalism spread tends to attract...
    • Scott The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor
      Very nice feature. Thanks.I’ve already tried it out. Editing your own posts after posting works...
    • Robbie Animals & Children First How about just get the hell out of the city and the ten thousand niggers living there?  ...
    • Scott Fallen Castes << @ Sepp<< Oh wow totally edgy Boomer found who just can’t get beyond LARPing Neo-...
    • DarkPlato The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor
      Shoot, now I’ll have no excuse!😉
    • DP84 What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America I’m not gonna dispute that the kind of Evangelical Christianity represented in that gathering with...
    • Nick Jeelvy What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Ah, well, that is unfortunate. But it reinforces the point of the article - Christian nationalism...
    • Nicolas Bourbaki Animals & Children First I don't know Jim, but I think you might've micro-aggressed that sweet 'lil Black child.  You...
    • Greg Johnson The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor
      The Edit option ends when comment threads close. Currently, that is in 100 days. You can't...
    • Vagrant Rightsit What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Well I don't think that's quite what Torba represents or how all strands of a Christian Right,...
    • Oliwier Saikowski The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor
      Another reason to get behind the wall. It grows more tempting each day... We are allowed to 'eat'...
    • John Morgan What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Actually Orbán has made it clear that Hungary is a haven for Christians of all nationalities,...
    • Calg What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America If we're going to scrap entire millennia-old concepts based on the fact that the way boomers do it...
    • Sepp Fallen Castes Oh wow totally edgy Boomer found who just can’t get beyond LARPing Neo-Nazism. The mass Jewish...
    • Nick Jeelvy What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Orban is himself a Protestant (reform Calvinist, I believe) as are about a fifth of Hungarians, but...
    • asierabadroa What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Sure, good point. Not exactly a demographic block with a future, maybe except for the Amish, who may...
    • Sinope Cynic What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America I think of Evangelicalism as distinct from Christian nationalism: the former being that which is...
    • Shift Animals & Children First Yeah, what's with Spanish-types and bulls?  Bull-"fighting" and that "running of the bulls"...
    • Magnus What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America I think this happens because something I am coming to realize is this silly theory of natural...
    • James J. O'Meara What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America Cazart! That's exactly how Bro. Stair, whom I written about several times on this very site, opens...
  • Books

    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Julius Evola
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Jason Jorjani
    • Ward Kendall
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • Andy Nowicki
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Savitri Devi
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Webzine Authors

    Contemporary authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Michael Bell
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Giles Corey
    • Jef Costello
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Ricardo Duchesne
    • Émile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Stephen Paul Foster
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Jim Goad
    • Tom Goodrich
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Richard Houck
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas R. Jeelvy
    • Greg Johnson
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • Trevor Lynch
    • Kevin MacDonald
    • G. A. Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Margot Metroland
    • Millennial Woes
    • John Morgan
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Hervé Ryssen
    • Kathryn S.
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solère
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunić
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Dominique Venner
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Michael Walker
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
    • Leo Yankevich

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Julius Evola
    • Ernst Jünger
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Alaska Chaga Antelope Hill Publishing Imperium Press American Renaissance A Dissident’s Guide to Blacks and Africa The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Editor-in-Chief
Greg Johnson
Books for sale
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • The End of an Era
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • Baader Meinhof ceramic pistol, Charles Kraaft 2013
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher, Second Expanded Edition
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Copyright © 2022 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment