By Perrin
Lovett
https://perrinlovett.me/
Last fall, I had the privilege of
reviewing Eschatological Optimism by the late Daria Dugina
(1992-2022), a book I learned of thanks to a very good friend. Earlier this
year, I was reminded by another great and lovely friend that a second
posthumous Dugina book was forthcoming in English from PRAV. One simply cannot
have enough literarily in-tune friends in this life. Nor can one get enough of
Russia’s brilliant and ever-rising star of intellect and steely determination.
Dugina, Daria, For A Radical
Life: Meditations By Daria Platonova Dugina, Tucson: PRAV,
2024.
It’s a shorter work, only 70 pages. Yet
each and every sentence in it, every word lifts the spirit, touches the heart,
and engages the mind. It is a compact gem, expertly translated, compiled, and
edited by Jafe Arnold and John Stachelski. I strongly recommend it to anyone
interested in life, death, philosophy, and the eternal battle between Divine
good and lowly evil. I also suggest the book would make a fine gift for, say, a
college student or a young adult. Or for anyone.
In Arnold’s excellent Foreword, I
learned of yet another Dugina book, now only available in Russian, Топи
и выси моего сердца (Depths and Heights of My Heart), ACT,
2023. I recommend that one even without having read it—a feat I mean to
accomplish once I achieve perhaps A2/B1 Russian proficiency.
As for For A Radical Life,
it is a radical and informative mental excursion presented in short, referenced
paragraph form. The collected material draws from sources in Eschatological
Optimism with which the reader may already be familiar, along with
assorted media quotes and personal diary entries. As for the latter, the reader
certainly has not previously considered the meanings of those elements. One
such entry from 2019, on page 46, appears as the back cover quote: “Wherever
there is death, there is truth.” These words, or any similar sentiment, from
this particular author, while deeply meaningful, necessarily leave the reader
pained and sorrowed. Arnold pointedly gets to the exact truth behind one
horrible death in a sea of carnage: “Her life was cut short by a car bombing
carried out as part of Ukrainian special operations initiated, armed, trained,
and funded by the CIA.” For A Radical Life, at 4. He notes the
wicked powers of the postmodern West have, by their murder, “opened a Pandora’s
box.” We will briefly look inside it, ere the end of this review.
Dugina self-identifies as a warrior, an
intellectual, steel, a proclaimer of “No!”, and the “Minister of Defense.” The
reader will learn the context of these labels upon a full perusal. I was very
happy to see this new book repeat a declaration I’ve praised before and what
may be my favorite quote by anyone this century: “In the conditions of the
modern world, any stubborn and desperate resistance to this world, any
uncompromising struggle against liberalism, globalism, and Satanism, is
heroism.” Id, at 22.
Dugina was and is a hero, physically
(and only physically) struck down by the liberalism, globalism, and satanism of
the West. However, something else she wrote may poetically place their heinous
deeds in proper perspective. In her diary, on September 2, 2021, she wrote, “I
once said that I’m becoming and will become Antigone. Prophecy and
recognition are coming to be. I am becoming Antigone.” Id, at
51 (emphasis mine). And in a way, she may have well become like
that precise character of Sophocles.
Antigone’s death in her eponymous
tragic play is brought about by her reluctant if unrelenting uncle Creon, King
of Thebes, a harsh punishment for her defiance of his order not to mourn or
tend her deceased brother, Polynices. Though Creon does eventually relent and
abate his judgment, it is already too late. The heroine is dead. Her death
prompts the death of Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé. Haemon’s death
begets the death of his mother, Queen Eurydice. By tormenting Antigone to her
death, the king inadvertently brings down his own ruling house.
Creon is a somewhat inconsistent
character in general, within and without Antigone, and his
placement into my analogy is maybe an equal contrariety. Being a tragic figure
himself, he is far more sympathetic than the rulers of the postmodern West.
However, if we transpose Dugina’s diary entry upon the play, then, as she
becomes Antigone, the West becomes and represents Creon. Extending the imagined
interchange, it is conceivable that, in conjunction with so many other crimes,
the West may have sealed its fate by murdering Daria Dugina. When NATO and the
USA are catastrophically defeated in Ukraine and elsewhere, their losses may be
traceable, at least symbolically, back to her car bomb murder.
The final lines of Antigone belong
to the choregos herald*: “Wise conduct hath command of
happiness before all else, and piety to Heaven must be preserved. High
boastings of the proud bring sorrow to the height to punish pride. A lesson men
shall learn when they are old.” Creon was a victim of allegiance to his own
“rules-based” order. Nearly driven mad with remorse, nonetheless, he did learn
his sad lesson. Yet his understanding came at the exorbitant cost of his
posterity, his lineage destroyed with unyielding irony. Unlike Creon, the
rulers of the faux West are evil rather than tragic. We may hold little hope
that they learn anything from the consequences of their misdeeds and their
inevitable defeat. But they will be defeated.
Any one of you may participate in the
pending triumph over this current iteration of the devil’s transient empire of
lies and death. One simple way is to join with the wit, charm, wisdom, sorrow,
joy, and iron defiance of Daria Dugina. Read her Meditations and
live your own radical life.
*The symbolism keeps flowing. On
February 26, 2024, in Moscow, Princess Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca noted of Daria Dugina: “It was only
when, confronting the Empire of Chaos, Daria raised her name Platonova like a
flag to affirm that being a woman today means choosing between two opposite
archetypes, that finally the enemy noticed her.” Again, may their attention to
her detail destroy them! Of course, the raised name of “Platonova,” of the “new
Plato,” is essentially self-explanatory with even a little understanding of the
philosophy of Daria Dugina. In the foregoing context concerning Antigone,
it is most interesting to also know that the old Plato was upon a time himself
counted among the Athenian choregoi. There comes a time when too
many coincidences begin to look like prescient ordination. Regardless of the
allegorical, raise your flag, sound your chorus, and be a radical!
Deo vindice!
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
