The Greek Ideal — The Path of the Polymath, Part II

by Tristan Lefèvre

The Fallen Aristocrats

“Is there not some supreme rationality in Dionysian madness?” — Pietros Maneos (The Fallen Aristocrat)

Greek Heroism of 1164 BC fell to mere Reason. Aristocracy in the West, fell to the more imperfect Democracy. Maneos, fell from Rationality to Irrationality through his drinking binge at Sounio. His new book, The Fallen Aristocrats, likewise shows much moral degeneration. It lacks the wholesome unity with Nature that we find in Maneos’ early, optimistic works. Still, we humans take pleasure in our degeneration. We ennoble our lack of nobility; and we do it so well that one has trouble discerning whether or not “TFA” (The Fallen Aristocrats) is a rabbit or a serpent in the garden of Literature. Yet, by this very trait, it earns itself a place in the garden. It is likely to become a book that keeps scholars and socio-political theorists awake for the next Century or two. And its poetry, which has matured since Maneos’ early efforts, may enchant people for millennia. If any prominent leaders take the book to heart, the book could change the class system in their country, or the world. TFA argues for the re-institution of the aristocracy, on a personal as well as political level. All, like in politics, comes from a puppet. Maneos’ words come from the voice of its antihero Gabriele Paterkallos, as well as the replies from a destitute and disillusioned poet and wanderer, Odysseus Pane, whose faithfulness to his art and the Greek Ideal, have made him a casualty of “human progress.” Paterkallos is a remarkable literary creation. In some passages, Maneos writes this paradoxical man as well as the old Dostoevsky wrote his own dualistic slaves of passion. Paterkallos mirrors the fall of the Human realm, the fall of aristocracy, the degeneration of the human animal, the flawed nature of human progress; and he mirrors his author, a man who succumbs — like us all — to the ageing of himself and those around him; to the loss of idealism, and a loss of the faculties we use to discern beauty. Maneos demonstrates a preference for bureaucratic ruthlessness, a taste for ambition, a blind-spot for the beauty he sought as a youth. “To Kalon, Bramabella…” these are words Maneos celebrated when younger. When civilization falls and an author chronicles its descent — as TFA does in our pre-apocalyptic 2019 — is “beauty” even an appropriate word for anything? Or is it blasphemy? And, if so, which of gods and goddesses are most offended?

Unlike mortal men and women, the goddess of beauty doesn’t need a check from the bank to stay beautiful. And even with that check, mortal wrinkles come and wither us all. Degeneration is a fact, and Maneos is a realist.

— See Part III—