6,251 words
Some eminent notables have claimed that the American Civil War had substantial roots in literature. Mark Twain, for example, said of Sir Walter Scott that he was “in great measure responsible for the war.” That proposition is debatable, of course. This argument hinges on how much the widespread influence of his romanticized chivalric prose bolstered the South’s hyper-thumotic stance — in plainer words, piss and vinegar — which contributed to secession, and shortly thereafter a war that went horribly awry. (more…)
980 words
Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher. Cioran was born on April 8, 1911 in Rășinari (Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary and today part of Romania) and died stateless in Paris on June 20, 1995. A nationalist writer in his youth, after the Second World War he achieved fame as a French-language author of essays and aphorisms of a markedly dark and apparently nihilistic bent. (more…)
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Of peasant ancestry on his father’s side and boasting aristocratic (boyar) maternal roots, the Romanian poet, prose writer, and editorialist Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) had not put his modest inherited wealth to waste. Educated in the German language since childhood, Eminescu was culturally — if not always geopolitically — an enthusiastic Germanophile. (more…)
5,688 words
Editor’s note: This is the transcript of Charles Krafft’s talk at the 2015 London Forum, November 27, 2015. We wish to thank Buttercup Dew for finding a copy of this video after it had been deleted from YouTube and Hyacinth Bouquet for the transcription. (more…)
1,868 words
I have always wanted to visit Transylvania and Bran Castle, known throughout the world as Dracula’s Castle. Although having little connection to Vlad the Impaler or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the myths behind the castle have inspired countless horror films and heavy metal songs. (more…)
2,108 words
Ash Donaldson
Brother War: A Modern Myth for Those of European Descent
Independently published, 2019
More of Donaldson’s work is available through the White Art Collective.
Ash Donaldson’s latest novel Brother War: A Modern Myth for Those of European Descent combines the best of history, myth, and fantasy to spin an unforgettable story about World War I. Not only is it his best novel to date, but Brother War is also the first in his Mythology Series designed for an adult audience. (more…)
1,980 words
Emil Cioran
Apologie de la Barbarie: Berlin – Bucharest (1932-1941)
Paris: L’Herne, 2015
This is a very interesting book released by the superior publishing house L’Herne: a collection of Emil Cioran’s articles published in Romanian newspapers, mostly from before the war. (more…)
Mihai Eminescu
2,285 words
Nineteenth-century Romanian poet and editorialist Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) studied in Bismarck’s Prussia, where he immersed himself in Schopenhauer and studied under Eugen Dühring. His essays attack liberalism, usury, immigration, and the prospect of Jewish civil rights in Romania. The tone of his philosophically-driven poems, which are modeled after the golden age of German Romantic poetry, ranges from endearing to brutal. Adored in Romania, but without much of a reputation outside of his own country, he was killed by medical malpractice at the age of 39. (more…)
Michael the Brave, savior of Europe?
2,446 words
The history of Romania as a concrete country is generally assumed to have started with the Romanian, or Danubian, principalities, similarly to how the history of Russia as a concrete country starts with Muscovy. Both of these histories are of late medieval origin, having come into being in the wake of the Mongol invasions of Europe. In both comparable cases, however, the concrete starting point is not the same as the ethnologically related spiritual precursor from which the original states derived their patronage. In the case of Russia, the spiritual precursor was the Kievan Rus’, which was situated in present-day Ukraine. (more…)
1,761 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note: The following are excerpts from the preface to a collection of early articles by Emil Cioran translated from Romanian into French. I found this very interesting concerning the young Cioran’s embrace of fascism as embodying the “barbarism” he considered necessary to halt decadence. I have broken up some of the paragraphs. (more…)
3,000 words
English original here
Eladó életek
Írta és rendezte: Razvan Georgescu
2014 (more…)
6,251 words
