A Note on Homogenesis, Part 2

SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENT 1

Nietzsche 1875

Translations by Walter Kaufman (Beyond Good and Evil; Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1966).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUPPLEMENT 2

Regional outgrowths of the Serbian – in Montenegro, in Bosnia, in Macedonia, in Lika, in Dalmatia, in the Baèka, Banat or Baranja regions of Vojvodina, in Slavonia, in Old Serbia, in Central Serbia – whether Muslim or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian – are really one racial family of peoples. The Croat (Khorvat) bears a heritage and fate similar to that of the Serb. The forms “Choratos” and “Chorouatos” have been found among inscriptions in ancient Tanais on the Don. According to the records of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (AD 912-925), the White Croats (Belochrobati), a “Slavic” people, occupied the upper Vistula and northern Bohemia. Arab travelers of the time noted certain Sarmatian characteristics among them: they had, besides the king, a viceroy called župan; they practiced artificial cranial deformation; and the names of their chiefs were non-Slavic. After the eclipse of the Huns, the Sarmatian Croats, like the Sarmatian Serbs, remained in northern Europe to rule the country themselves. Ultimately the Croats, like the Serbs, were slavicized, and their name was taken by the subject population. These new people were known as White (or Western) Croats just as the Serbs in Saxony were known as White Serbs (T. Sulimirski, The Sarmatians, pages 190-192). Such facts suggest that it may be more accurate to speak of the two modern peoples in adjectival form – the Croatian and the Serbian – to remind us that they are actually Sarmatian modifications of the West Slav.

20th-century Serbian scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla

 

 

 

 

SUPPLEMENT 3
From standard references at hand I draw the following illustrations of these other complexes:

 

Polish noble Stanisaw Antoni Szczuka (1652-1710) in a representative Sarmatian-style outfit: a red kontusz tied with a pas kontuszowy. Underneath a żupan with a low collar. Left hand holds a fur cap with a low band. Characteristic hair and moustache. Unknown Polish artist.

The Pole and the Russian. No certain historical data exists for the Pole until the tenth century, but traditions of the West Alan (possibly the Alanic Antae) survived among them for centuries after the Alan’s fifth-century invasion and the consequent mixing with the indigenous Slavs who had arrived in the area during the first century of our era. The belief in a Sarmatian origin of Poland was widespread among the nobility of that nation for centuries. The most striking survival is in Polish heraldry: ancient tamgas, the religious monograms of the West Alan, appear in stylized form as crescents, arrows, and horseshoes. The beliefs associated with the tamgas spread also among the conquered Slavic population further east. The symbols turn up again in the coats of arms of the Rurikovich dynasty of Old Russia. Evidently the West Alan ruler was gradually Slavicized (a process completed not earlier than the sixth century) and the new breed was subjected to the Turkic Avar and the Caucasian Khazar before this vast disarray of people invited the Viking Rurik and his Swedish followers to govern them. With the assimilation of the Finn, beginning in the ninth century, Russian settlers in the country of the Upper Volga acquired the mental characteristics of steadfastness and fatalism that made them a new type, distinct from the Old Russian of Kiev and Novgorod. (The Tatar invasion of Russia during the thirteenth century practically mixed no blood.)

20th-century composer, pianist, and conductor Igor Stravinsky circa 1920-1930 PHOTO: George Grantham Bain Collection

 

 

 

 

Bulgar warrior horseman of one of the steppe khanates 8th-10th century CE with captive, featured on an ewer from the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos.

The Bulgarian. Of the Bulgars, a Turanian race who came westward after the Huns, a small horde of the Utigari tribe broke off to invade the Balkan peninsula and gradually merged into the Slavic population to form the modern Bulgarian.

Tzvetan Todorov, 20th-century Bulgarian literary theorist, 2011 PHOTO: Ji-Elle

 

 

 

 

Statue of Dacian on triumphal Arch of Constantine, 4th century CE

The Rumanian. The eighth century blended the primary elements of the Rumanian nation: (1) a few remaining Dacians of the ancient Thracian stock called “Getae” by the Greeks and annihilated by the Romans; (2) the old growth of Roman colonists forsaken by Emperor Aurelian in the third century who had developed into bellicose, Latin-speaking nomads, the “Vlachs” or “Rumans”; (3) numerous Slavic newcomers. Not until the thirteenth century did Ruman state history begin.

Romanian gymnast Nadia Elena Comăneci, Olympic gold medal winner and the first female to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event, October 1977. PHOTO: Dave Gilbert

 

 

 

 

Francis II Rakoczi, 18th-century Hungarian aristocrat, 1724 PAINTING: Adam Manyoki

The Hungarian. The Hungarian nation appears in history under two names: “Magyar” (used by themselves) and “Hungarian” (used by foreigners). The predecessors of the Magyar, the Hun and the Avar, had ranged the Hungarian plain for two centuries before the Magyar arrived. At first, Roman emperors sought the aid of the seven tribes who were united under the Magyar chieftain to help them fight the enemies of Byzantium. In the ninth century perhaps as many as one million uninvited nomads, among them two hundred thousand men under arms, were led with discipline by their chieftain across the Carpathians. The new military state of Magyarska (Hungary) appeared about the year one thousand. In time, the Magyars mixed with the Slavs within the limits of their kingdom and with the descendants of Roman colonists to the southeast of it and thereby enhanced the complexion of their race. Attila “the Hun” was regarded as a Magyar hero. The national dress of the Magyar nobleman, worn until the early twentieth century, was named for him – the “Attila.”

Bela Bartok (1927), 20th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, and founder of ethnomusicology

 

 

 

 

The Spanish. While Greece, the parent of classical European civilization, was still in a state of barbarism, the Iberian and the Celt amalgamated at the center of Spain in admirable cities where they taught philosophy and the arts. This early population was cultivated and, for several centuries, increased by the colonial soldiers of Rome. During the fifth century, the Vandal, the Suevi, and the Alan burst in and chose lots for the three administrative units of Iberia apportioned by Rome. A state of division and confusion was inaugurated and sustained for a thousand years: first by the stern authority of the Visigoth; next by the inconstancy of the Frank; and finally by the Arab, whose imposing slave armies brought them first victory and then destruction. When the slave armies disassociated themselves from the Arab, the Mauritanian Negroes, who formed one of the slave armies, came to be known as Moors. References at hand do not make clear whether the members of the second slave army, Slavs who were sold by the Germans to the Jews and then to the Arabs, remained as settlers.

Spanish painter, sculptor, and stage designer Pablo Picasso (1962), co-founder of the Cubist movement and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century

 

 

 

 

The Berber. The Vandals, pushed westward by the Huns in the fifth century, joined the union of German tribes and crisscrossed the Alps in search of a new home before they took possession of southern Spain and gave their name to Andalusia (Vandalusia). Later the Roman governor of Africa invited them to assist in putting down a revolt against the Empire. The Vandals crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in a body, took possession of the Roman provinces along the north coast of Africa eastward as far as Tunis, and made of these provinces a kingdom for a hundred years . . . until the Romans restored the region to themselves. The Vandals disappeared as a race, but their descendants, with light hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, still live among the valleys of the Atlas Mountains, where they are known as Berbers and keep themselves distinct from the Arab population.

Banu Ifran Berber Emir Abd al-Qadir (1808-1883), Algerian Islamic scholar, Sufi, and political and military leader circa 1860

 

 

 

 

Alboin, king of the Lombards (560-572), led the Lombard migration into Northern Italy. IMAGE: woodcut from the Nuremburg Chronicle, 1493

 

The Northern Italian. The Lombards lent Attila their aid in his expeditions, and allied themselves with the Turkic Avars to drive out the Gepidae, before they descended from the Alps with their wives, children, wagons, oxen, and flocks to take possession of the whole of northern Italy. There, in the sixth century, this germanic people still drank liquor from the skulls of their enemies when they assembled at the festivals of Odin. The Goths, who had arrived before them, became a defeated people; those who remained gradually put aside their ferocious ways and mingled with the mild climate, the fertile soil, and the other Italians.

Contemporary Italian songwriter, singer, and pianist Paolo Conte.

 

 

 

 

Helmet from the 7th-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo, presumed to be of an East Anglian king.

The English. The ancestors of the modern English were known to the Britons of the fifth century (whom they displaced) as cruel and merciless pirates who captured men and women for the slave market and tortured to death one of every ten as a sacrifice to their gods. Those fierce and restless conquerors, for the most part young men who seized the daughters of slain Britons for their wives, gave to their new lands mild names: the South Saxons, Sussex; the East Saxons, Essex; the two gangs of Angles, the North folk and the South folk, the names Norfolk, Suffolk, and East Anglia.

The Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Star wave to American fans in 1964. PHOTO: UPI, photographer unknown

 

 

 

 

Swiss mercenaries crossing the Alps painted by Diebold Schilling (1513).

The Swiss. In the Swiss Alps, the Helvetian eked out an unquiet existence, and the Rhaetian and the Allobroge led wild lives of war and pillage, before Roman culture made the miserable conditions of these Celtic peoples vanish by degrees. The Allobroge exchanged the sword for the plow; the Rhaetian adopted the gentle habit of Alpine farmer or mountain guide. During the fifth century, the obstinate struggle between Roman and Teuton was decided in favor of the Teuton. The great migrations of the Alamanni and the Burgundians established in the Alps a germanic way of life. At the end of the fifth century, the Franks overcame the Alamanni who remained.

 

20th-century analytical psychologist Carl Gustave Jung

 

 

 

 

The “Dying Gaul,” an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost Hellenistic sculpture commissioned between 230-220 BC.

The French. The medieval French were a compilation of half-civilized Gauls, cultured Romans, barbarous Germans, and expatriated Britons – almost every physical type found in Europe – who had collected on the same countryside during two thousand years. The germanic Frank rudely shocked them all into transformation. Two peoples were exempted: the Celtic Gaul of Britanny and the Gascon, a descendant of the Iberian, were able to resist the germanic influx.

20th-century French poet Saint-John Perse (pen name of Alexis leger), who won the 1960 Nobel prize for Literature “for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry.”

 

 



A Note on Homogenesis, Part 1

 

Il nous est souvenu du lieu natal
o nous n’avons naissance

[With us is remembered the natal place
where we were not born]

— St. John Perse, Amers, IV

The process of human generation is psychic as well as physical. The fact of psychic phylogenesis was corroborated in clinical research a generation ago by the analytical psychologist Carl Jung. The dialectical process itself was intuited by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche three generations before that. Many years ago, as a university student, I traced out the principal facts of human genealogy in Nietzsche’s pages without complete awareness of their significance. I trace them again here, in these pages, with, I hope, more understanding.

In Beyond Good and Evil, section 257, Nietzsche observed:

Let us admit to ourselves, without trying to be considerate, how every higher culture on earth so far has begun. Human beings whose nature was still natural, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey who were still in possession of unbroken strength of will and lust for power, hurled themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races. . . . In the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul–they were more whole human beings (which means, at every level, “more whole beasts”).

Foreseeing objections, he added in section 264:

One cannot erase from the soul of a human being what his ancestors liked most to do and did most constantly. . . . It is simply not possible that a human being should not have the qualities and preference of his parents and ancestors in his body, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is the problem of race.

In section 260, he had already stated:

There are master morality and slave morality – I add immediately that in all the higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities, and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at times they occur directly alongside each other – even in the same human being, within a single soul. (SeeSupplement 1)

This invention of history, the subjective relationship of master and slave, predator and prey, grows into a conjugal relation which seems to me no less fantastic than the inventions of biology: Two peoples become absorbed in one another, they mingle and exchange what is in them, until they evolve or become a new kind of human being, collectively and individually.

The triangle of European plain below the Baltic Sea, delimited on the west and east by the rivers Saale and Elbe and on the south by the Ore Mountains. PHOTO: Wikipedia

On a triangle of European plain in the fifth century of our era, such a relationship was consummated along the banks of the Elbe River between the Alan Serb and a handful of Western Slavic tribes. From that moment in time there has been the Sarmatian Slav – the East Alan Slav – identified in our time as the Serbian. Before that moment there had been two separate series of parental incarnations. On the paternal side, the Sarmatian East Alan, it is said, arose through a genealogy of cultures and races from the early nomads of the North Kazakhstan steppes, who themselves had derived from others who had peopled the Androvian or Alarodian culture of the Bronze Age, and earlier, from some as yet unknown people of neolithic times. On the maternal side, the Western Slav, through a vague genesis of circumstances and events, derived from the primordial Slav, the first Slavic race, who was born to a mother race sometimes called the “Veneti” and a father who is still anonymous to us.

This remembrance (I do not hesitate to use this ghostly noun) has not only convinced me of the barbaric origin of my mundane soul and human nature, my homogenized supersentient anima; this remembrance has also brought me face to face with the fact that my psyche is, among other things, a juncture and a blend of the mentalities, cultures, and primal natures of overlord and subject, master and slave, predator and prey. I am awed by the mere fact of this fierce marriage, but moreso by its proximity in time. Fewer than fifty or sixty couplings separate me from the origin of what nineteenth century historians had called my “nationality” and what twentieth-century anthropologists call my “racial stock.” The number of couples, men and women, involved in the direct line of my ancestral descent from that distant point of origin on a central European plain is fewer than the number which I, with modest means, might entertain at my own wedding. So it is with us all. No one alive – no one who has lived – escapes this sequence or this pattern. What a miscarried world that exists and reproduces itself in so rude a manner!

I offer these pages as an analogy, and my countenance as a parallel, to the reader’s own. The origin of every person of European descent is subject to the same irrefutable laws and is a reflection of similar ignominious events. What happened, for better or for worse, during the fifth and sixth centuries of our era to create the modern Serb and the Croat (See Supplement 2), the Pole and the Old Russian (both new and separate breeds of the Slav and the West Alan), the Avarized Slovene and the Germanized Czech, happened, in kind and at about the same time, to create the Bulgarian, the Rumanian, the Hungarian, the Spaniard, the African Berber, the North Italian, the English, the Swiss, the French, and another of the more recent complexions of the Russian (See Supplement 3); and what happened to create them happened also at other, earlier, times to create the Lapp, the Finn, the Basque, the Greek, the Irish and Scot, the German, the Scandinavian, and the Frison of the Netherlands. The same holds true for any of the myriad peoples who inhabit the valley of Mesopotamia or the Iranian plateau. Several times each millennium a new predator race drives out another from the steppes to introduce a new complication to the human event. (About 560 CE one of the most recent strains of the Turk sprang up there and extended itself, over a thousand years, across half of Europe.) The Indian and the Chinese, since neolithic times, have been shaped and revitalized continuously by the antagonists of the north and the south. The African, the dweller on the coast of Asia, the islander of Oceania, the American of pre-Columbian times – all are inventions of other rude, and nearly timeless, marriages.

Robert Petrovich 1995

 

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