THEOGNIDUS. HELLENIC POETIC EUGENICS.

The expression“ aristocratic radicalism ”that you used is very successful. These, I will allow myself to say, are the most sensible words that I have so far read about myself ”- Friedrich Nietzsche in a letter to Georg Brandes in Copenhagen (Nice, December 2, 1887).

“Black would drink blood enemies!”
O come, good demon,
Give everything I
desire to fulfill , according to my will ”
– Hereinafter in quotation marks, excerpts from the verses of Theognis.

Theognidus from Megar was born in 546 BC, when his homeland stood at the turn of the eras: power in society finally slipped away from the reins of the clan Hellenic aristocracy, and in its place, the tumor of the power of the demos increased. He was expelled from Megar as an adversary of the “new order” and was forced to wander throughout Greece. The “wolf age” of Hellenic civilization and the utmost discernment of Theognis laid on his poetry his gloomy, and at the same time radical, gaze into the distance through the darkness of epochs – a view that, after centuries, we can interpret as ur-fascist. Friedrich Nietzsche carried the torch of his fire before us, admiring the very figure of Theognis, a wandering troubadour knight, and his legacy was reflected in the views of the ancestor of the eugenics of New time Francis Galton and influenced his cousin Charles Darwin.

The poetry of Theognis is built around meritocratic racism, addressed to the future generation in the person of the young aristocrat Kearn in the form of didactic teaching. Undoubtedly, the same motive of love for one’s own country and the need to awaken self-consciousness in one’s compatriots overwhelmed the work of Gobino and Grant. Theognidus is so strongly experiencing the fall of Tradition that it loses poetic interest in Sophia herself (philosophy and theology), that is, in the spiritual, and directs her gift to meta-pedagogy. Nevertheless, Theognidus writes an ode to Apollo, the fundamental god for “Those Who Came from the North,” and where Apollo every time returns in his chariot. We have repeatedly written what an important place the figure of the blond Phoeb takes for us to this day and how fundamental he is in the pantheon of the priestly and military caste. Understanding the Apollonian Logos naturally illuminated the last Hellenes of Greek history. And poetry itself, as a form of Apollonian art in its authentic Indo-European form, has an Apollonian, Nordic structure: rhyme and kenning imply the existence of a cosmic order, the deification, and concealment of the text.

Theognidus’s understanding of good and evil clearly correlates with the Nietzschean interpretation of the master and the mob (The Genealogy of Morals, part I chapters 4 and 5). The first is a priori good: it is righteous, beautiful, high and bright, that is, it has divine, heavenly features. Plato interprets the understanding of Heaven (“Uranos”) in this way: this is a lookup of the High (Higher man) towards Aphrodite of Urania. Atopon, at the same time, is the low, ugly creatures of Mother Earth, gravitating by themselves downward and being what Europeans of antiquity and the Middle Ages called the “mob.” The mob carries bad heredity in itself and therefore has an evil essence, which Theognidus understands not only as ignorance, but as a kind of Cybella’s logo, expressed in the natural tendency to “commune”, acquiring material wealth, lies, deceit, and the overthrow of the Lord.

“Having done good to a low man, thanks for waiting for the service.
Same as throwing a seed into white furrows of waves.
If you sow the deep sea, you will not remove the sowing;
By doing good evil, you yourself will not wait for good.
For the soul is insatiable with them. At least once offended them –
They immediately forget their old friendship.
The good ones accept everything from us as a great blessing, the
Good remember the deeds and are grateful for them ”

But the eschatological battle of the Hellenes with the barbarians (like“ barboros ”- the contemptuous name of the Hellenes as a stranger. Even wider – of all those who surrounded the Hellenes) was already lost, the blood of the Greeks mixed up and the border of good and evil was erased. The noble went to war without leaving an inheritance, while others were ostracized and executed:

“So don’t be amazed, my friend, that the breed is smaller than the citizens.
Plutos reigns: he mixed the good with the bad. ”

The figure of the young aristocrat Kirn, a student of Theognis, to whom he directs his didactics, is perceived by us as a personified appeal to all subsequent generations of nobles. We find a similar understanding of paternal instruction from Seneca to his student Lucius, that is, to all Seneca’s students outside the time frame. Comparing marriage with breeding in animals, Feognid speaks of the need to preserve the purity of noble blood in humans, using the classical eugenic approach. In fact, Theognidus thus embodies the Nordic idea in its broad sense.

“Is gold gold, Kearn, silver is false – the trouble is small,
Yes, and he will always be able to recognize a smart fake.
If the soul of the person whom we call a friend is
False and hides his insidious heart in his chest,
Gods for mortals have done this the most deceitful,
and to make sure of such a lie is harder for us.

You will know the soul — men, women — only then will you
How to experience it like an ox under a yoke.
It’s not like entering your barn and measuring stocks.
Very often people appear to deceive people.

Kearn! We choose horses, donkeys, and rams of the
Good breed, we make sure that the
best couples give offspring. And the best
Low woman to take does not hesitate to marry  – it would only be with money!

A woman also willingly marries a low husband, –
It would be rich! For her, this is the most important.
Money is held in high esteem. Wealth mixed breeds.
Noble, low – everyone marries each other.

Polypaid, do not marvel at the fact that the breed of fellow citizens.
Everything is getting worse: the blood was mixed in it.
He himself knows that she is of a bad kind, and yet,
flattering at her wealth, she brings into her house, the
Low noble. To this people are compelled by a mighty
Necessity: the spirit pacifies everyone with it. ”

Theognidus organizes his “Rebellion against the Modern World” in the admonition that the noble must again unite in closed communities on the basis of the Race and the Spirit, now resembling the military phratries of antiquity and having the essence of knightly orders. He strives for his own kind, avoiding the mass of mob – disgust for which people like Theognis and Bertrand de Born are just natural – Nietzsche believed. “From noble and very noble thing you learn” and “Only the noble go” as well as Shakespeare’s motives in verses such as:

“Kirn, noble everywhere retains the presence of mind
Poor eh him good eh – bears up always”

“angry himself. And let the language always be pleasant.
Short temper is, believe me, the quality of low people ”

” Just as calmly as I, go in the middle of the road,
Kearn, don’t worry about where the rest will go. ”

They serve as the excellent instruction of Theognis to all those comrades-in-arms, whose motto, Noblesse oblige, is carved in their blood and banner.