The relevance of Adriano Romualdi 50 years after his death

The relevance of Adriano Romualdi 50 years after his death

Traditionalist thinker of extraordinary depth claimed an "aristocratic, religious and warrior spirituality

by Mario Bozzi Sentieri

Source: https://www.barbadillo.it/110643-lattualita-di-adriano-romualdi-a-50-anni-dalla-morte/

Talking about Adriano Romualdi (1940-1973) today, fifty years after his tragic death on 12 August 1973 in a car accident, reminds us of the reasons and passions of a profound political and cultural commitment that was the hallmark of his life.

A university lecturer (of Contemporary History), on his way to a brilliant career, Adriano Romualdi knew how to combine the originality of his studies, towards strands, in the 1960s-1970s, that were marginalised and undervalued (think of the German Conservative Revolution, the rereading of Nietzsche's thought, integral Europeanism to the authors of 'Fascist Romanticism', to Plato) with a coherent and integral organic vision of the right, which the value of his studies has strengthened, bringing it out of the cone of shadow of certain easy environmental rhetoric, as he is acknowledged even by the most astute scholars of neo-fascism: From Marco Tarchi, who has described him as an 'acute author' (Marco Tarchi, Cinquant'anni di nostalgia. La destra italiana dopo il fascismo, Milan, Rizzoli, 1995) to Dino Cofrancesco who spoke of Adriano Romualdi as the 'strongest intelligence of the Italian (non-Catholic) radical right after Evola' (Dino Cofrancesco, La destra radicale dinanzi al fascismo, in: AA.VV., Nuova destra e cultura reazionaria negli anni ottanta, Atti del convegno di Cuneo, novembre 1982, "Notiziario dell'Istituto Storico della Resistenza di Cuneo e provincia", no. 23, 1982).

Along these lines of research, here then is the reading of Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht because of - he writes, in 1971 - the "...desire to work for the creation of a less pathetically clueless, more aware and fierce Right, because, of course, despite Longanesi's questioning, the old aunts will not save us".

Here is the fresco On the Problem of a European Tradition (1973), which becomes an exemplary synthesis of a metahistorical physiognomy of our West and at the same time knows how to be a future prefiguration, a problematic search for "a spiritual form capable of containing three and more millennia of European spirituality".

And again, explicitly, here is his questioning, in Ideas for a Right-wing Culture (1965, 2nd edition 1970), on 'being right-wing', fixed in the rejection of 'subversive' movements, offspring of the French revolution (from liberalism to socialism) and of the 'decadent nature of rationalist, progressive, materialist myths', supported by the vision of an organic state-totality, 'where political values predominate over economic structures', and by the proud claim of the 'right' to a 'political state', 'where political values predominate over economic structures'. and by a proud claim to an 'aristocratic, religious and warrior spirituality'.

This claim included some of the main strands of traditional culture: De Maistre and De Bonald, but also the Hegel of 'The Philosophy of Right', of course the aforementioned Nietzsche, the 'Konservative Revolution', Julius Evola. Strong" authors and references that did not, however, make Adriano Romualdi lose sight of the "new tasks" of a culture committed "to the right", which had to know how to deal with reality, integrating mythical visions with logical enucleations, scientific thought and anthropology, ecology (at the time in its infancy, but seen by Adriano Romualdi as the preservation of differences and peculiarities "necessary for the spiritual balance of the planet") and obviously historical research, supported by a non-trivially evolutionary vision.

Fascism itself is 'reread' in a 'dynamic' manner, eschewing - as he wrote in 1965 (in the 'Secolo d'Italia'), on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini - on the one hand the insult, the defamation the slander expressed 'against an adversary whose shadow gives no peace and no respite' and on the other from the 'pathetic and homely re-evocation of the faithful that risks deforming into a bourgeois oleography the personality of the most unscrupulous revolutionary in the history of Italy'.

On these spiritual foundations, barely sketched here, rests the idea of a 'non-qualitarian' political right. It was in September 1972 that Adriano Romualdi, on the occasion of the annual conference of the magazine 'L'Italiano', directed by his father Pino, a historical figure of the MSI, highlighted the distinction between right-wing (political and cultural) and qualunquism, in its various forms (political, patriotic, cultural qualunquism).

Adriano Romualdi's criticism is aimed at those who protest 'against something', without knowing 'for what'. It is criticism of the 'prudes', who complain in the shadows and in the ballot box, but do not want to analyse in depth the reasons for the current crisis. And so they are content with the small horizons of patriotic qualunquism, of 'any country in red-white and green, with many flags in their hands and silent majorities of housewives and pensioners. An ordinary homeland for qualunquists', where the dimension of the confrontation/clash - we are talking about the 1970s - is that between continental empires, between the US and the USSR.

Against political and 'patriot' qualunquism, it is essential - says Adriano Romualdi - to defeat the 'qualunquism of culture': 'the acceptance of culture for culture's sake, as if intelligence represented a value in itself and the intellectual a character to be defended as such'. There is also in this the rejection of a right-wing 'order' - as was the fashion at the time - that 'guards' the School, the University and therefore also the world of culture, without posing the problem of the contents that are conveyed in these spheres.

In this essential review of ideas and orientations, which - we hope - arouses curiosity and the desire for in-depth study, it is clear that talking about Adriano Romualdi today offers many opportunities for a non-trivial interpretation of today's reality, of the value of certain choices, of the sense of belonging, which, freed from contingent references, must be 'rethought' on the basis of a high vision of politics, of the culture that supports it, of the 'vision of life and the world' that must drive it.

In this direction, what Donoso Cortes predicted is well suited to Adriano Romualdi's work: 'I see the time of absolute negations and sovereign affirmations coming'. It is in this spirit that we remember Adriano Romualdi fifty years after his death. Steadfast along the summit lines he traced and travelled. And, at the same time, aware of the responsibilities of the present hour and of a future to be imagined and built.