767 words
Francis Parker Yockey
Imperium
Edited by Alex Kurtagić
Foreword by Kerry Bolton
Afterword by Julius Evola
Abergele, UK: The Palingenesis Project, 2013
This is not so much a review of Imperium, a book that is likely to be familiar to most readers here, as it is an assessment of this new edition by Alex Kurtagić. I feel that whatever edition(s) of Imperium one might have, every aficionado of Yockey will want, indeed must have, this edition.
Kurtagić brings traditional craftsmanship to his publishing projects. A feature is the use of his own cover-art. In 2012 Kurtagić published a hardback edition of Yockey’s Proclamation of London, with a significant introduction by Dr. Michael O’Meara. This 70 page synopsis of Yockey’s Imperium is likewise a must-have, with a gold-embossed, navy blue cover, and an imaginative dust-jacket incorporating a multiplicity of symbols.
The dust-jacket of Kurtagić’s edition of Imperium, like The Proclamation, also features an eagle, this time soaring skyward, as befits a Faustian symbol, with talons clutching a shield and the sword symbol of Yockey’s European Liberation Front. The cover is again navy blue with a gold embossed title on the spine.
This edition comes to a massive 926 pages and while the late revisionist David McCalden would dismissively view it as even more befitting as a “door stop” than the 1962 Noontide Press edition, Yockey’s devotees, of which there are an increasing number perhaps as never before, will regard the Wermod edition as befitting nothing less than veneration.
What then are the special features of this edition?
The type is clear and set out in a pleasantly readable manner.
The “Foreword” (with credit for advice from Dr. Michael O’Meara) by this reviewer covers around 50 pages, drawing on sundry manuscripts and articles by and about Yockey, and providing contexts for the past, present and future of Yockey’s work.
A very useful feature is Kurtagić’s “Chronology” of Yockey’s life, in which he has managed to piece together and list the major events from Yockey’s birth in 1917 to his death in 1960. This will thus be a very handy, quick reference for anyone writing on Yockey.
A feature of particular interest is an appendix in which Kurtagić has traced Yockey’s family origins and relatives, which is a unique contribution to Yockey scholarship, sourcing local community references and other material not hitherto researched.
The “Afterword” comprises a translation of Julius Evola’s 1951 critique of Imperium, “On the Spiritual and Structural Prerequisites for European Unity.” While there is much about Evola I admire, or at the least find interesting, as one might expect Evola’s critique of Yockey is esoteric and metapolitical, like his critique of Mussolini’s Fascism, and one might wonder how much practical advise there is to be gathered from such a critique, albeit a valuable contribution to Yockey studies. Evola, the aristocrat, does not find Yockey’s thought sufficiently lofty, in the same manner that he disdained as “plebeian” the elements of Italian Fascism, especially the Social Republic, which others – including myself – find to be the most significant achievements. While Evola is correct to reject the Europe then shaping up, and as it has been created today, as nothing but a travesty in the interests of money, Yockey no less rejected such measures as the posturing of the “michel” element in the service of the “culture distorter.” Evola’s cyclical perception of history is esoteric, theosophical; Yockey adopted and adapted the cyclical perspective as a more immediate means of analysing the political situation with the view to change in the aftermath of a war that saw Europe invaded by “extra-European” forces. He had strategies and contacts with which he was working and was pursued for a decade by Interpol, FBI and Military Intelligence, while Evola maintained the presence of a lofty guru. In particular, Yockey’s added perception of “cultural pathology,” hinted at by Spengler as “cultural pseudomorphosis” in The Decline of The West, to the cyclic view of history will remain an important method of analysis of the past, present and future, and is an example of the student surpassing the master. I do not know whether Evola contributed anything as unique and important.
Another significant attribute of the Wermod edition is Kurtagić’s painstaking annotations throughout Imperium. That is to say, Kurtagić has provided 556 footnotes for the main body of Imperium explaining all the characters mentioned by Yockey, and many of the historical events.
This is not only a new edition of Imperium, it is nothing less than a unique memorial to Yockey that will ensure his spirit continues to live among new generations. This edition is an historical achievement per se, and having been asked to provide the “Foreword” is one of the singular honors of my life.