The Empress and the General
Sometimes, you really need to take the long view, to detach yourself from the infinite noise that surrounds us. So, here is the story of how Galla Placidia regained the Imperial Throne of the West,...
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The Surrender of the Azovstal. Not exactly like the fall of Troy
In the Iliad, we read of how Achilles killed Hector, angered at seeing how the defeated Trojan warrior was wearing the armor he had taken from Achilles' friend, Patroclus. It is a recurring theme in...
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The Three Body Problem: Science Fiction is Alive and Well in China
Is science fiction dead? Probably not but, in the West, it doesn't seem to be feeling so well. At least, we are not seeing much in terms of innovation in the Western narrative sphere, apart from a...
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Finding God in a Bad Novel.
I don't know how many novels have been written from the time when they started being popular, about two centuries ago. An estimate that I found on the Web says that some 129 million books in total...
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One of Our Ancestors: Larthia Seianti
A realistic portrait of an Etruscan woman who lived maybe 2500 years ago. We can see her face, her eyes, her body: she looks like a robust woman, maybe a little overweight. She must have been in her...
View ArticleA modern rendition of a Sumerian Myth. Enkidu defeated by Shamhat
Some myths, really, are universal (h/t Raul Ilargi)
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Face Masks, the War, and the Virgin Mary of Prato
This image can be found in the Church of St. Joseph in the city of Prato, near Florence, Italy. It was made in 1909 by an unknown author. Clearly inspired by Byzantine images, it doesn't attain the...
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The Best Piece of Propaganda Ever Written
Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961) was Benito Mussolini's lover, confident, and mentor from when they met in Milano in 1911. Sarfatti was a Jewish intellectual, an artist, and a writer. But she was three...
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Human Sacrifices: are they Coming Back for Giorgia Meloni?
The victory of Giorgia Meloni's party in the recent Italian election has generated a wave of hate on social media, with many people showing on their social accounts pictures of the dead body of Benito...
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Of Bad People and Bad Novels: "The Cardinal's Lover" -- by Benito Mussolini
At 26, Benito Mussolini wrote and published a novel titled "L'Amante del Cardinale" (The Cardinal's Lover). It was something that always intrigued me, but only recently I found the time to get a copy...
View ArticleThe Spirit of Yuletide
The Lion King (1994) is the most amazing, most touching, and most beautiful modern interpretation of the cycle of rebirth that we can imagine. Watch it, listen to it, it IS Christmas without the...
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The Black Trains of the Dead
Image by Wallace ChuckThis text is based on Italian trains ("Red Arrows") and Italian mortality statistics that tell us that, every day, about 2000 Italians leave this world for the Elysian Fields. If...
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Novels and Novels: Leon Tolstoy vs. Larry Names
You know that I have been discussing the very concept of "novel" in this blog. It is a fascinating story because, right now, we are seeing the death of a form of expression that has been among the...
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The Creation of a Monster: Mussolini seen by his former mistress
Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), Jewish Intellectual and longtime mistress of Benito Mussolini, the Duce, wrote a book titled "My Fault" about her experience as his confident and counselor. By...
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After 50 years of Catastrophism, we are now facing the cliff. What would...
The Raft of the Medusa, a painting by Theodore Géricault (1818). It seems to illustrate how some people feel in the current situation: survival implies throwing other people out of the raft. Lucius...
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Renzo's Capons: how to go down bickering with each other
Here is an article published on May 20th by Tyler Durden on "Zero Hedge"https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/club-rome-how-climate-hysteria-being-used-create-global-governance It is, actually, a...
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Does the state have the right to plunge a needle into your arm? An Answer...
Manuel, "Mannie" O'Kelly, Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott, and Professor Bernardo de La Paz discuss how to start a revolution in front of a bottle of Vodka in a secret meeting at the Luna City Hilton. (image...
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The Bequest: Coincidences never are
Out of pure coincidence (or maybe not, who knows?), I met Joanna Margaret in Florence, actually two times in two weeks, when her first novel "The Bequest" came out. And, more or less at the same time,...
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Politics as Narrative and Narrative as Politics. "The Etruscan Quest"
Ugo Bardi's novel, "The Etruscan Quest," published in 2023 by "Lu::Ce Edizioni". In several ways, it is a homage to D.H. Lawrence's "Etruscan Places." In 1932, D.H. Lawrence published his "Etruscan...
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Margherita Sarfatti: the Woman who Destroyed Mussolini
A ghostly image of Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), a remarkably interesting Italian intellectual, known mostly because she was the lover of the Duce, Benito Mussolini, at the beginning of his career....
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The Suicide of the Valkyrie. The Story of Adolf Hitler's British Lover
Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford (1914 –1948). This story is obviously fictional but it is based on what we know of the weird story of this young British aristocrat who went to Germany in 1934 to seduce...
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The Parallel Lives of Galileo Galilei and Sherlock Holmes
I recently wrote a comment in Italian on the recent novel "Oscura e Celeste" by Marco Malvaldi, a prolific author of investigative stories. I won't comment here on the novel, since it is available only...
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The chain and ball of life: your books
“We must drag the chain and ball of our personality to the end. This is the price one pays for the infernal and divine privilege of thought; so in this life it is only the chosen who are convicts—a...
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Happy New Year with Leonardo da Vinci
The winter solstice is traditionally associated with rebirth, and that’s why we say that the year that comes is “new.” Rebirth means hope and the birth of a new era was announced long ago to a young...
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The "Chimeras" Blog Moves to Substack
The “Chimeras” blog moves to substack. After several years on Google’s blogger, I think it is an unavoidable step since it seems that at Google, they intend to kill, or at least silence, their own...
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