On Literary Traditionalism
And Why Writers 'Free' Themselves From Their Culture At Their Own Peril
According to dictionary.com, the word ‘traditionalism’ is defined as: “adherence to tradition as authority, especially in matters of religion.” Merriam-Webster defines the word as: “adherence to the doctrines or practices of a tradition.” While I cannot share the full definition from Oxford due to my lack of an online account, one of the definitions on its “thumbnail” goes as follows until it peters out: “respect or support for tradition in any…” I suspect they mean any way or any form.
Oxford also indicates the word first emerged in 1840 in a Christian publication. But the word has since been applied in manners described in the first two definitions both as a part of religion and separate from it.
For my part, I’ve found that human beings need tradition. This need resides in us the way extra layers of skin reside between our outermost layer and our flesh. And while a few individuals are able to live without it, most people unwittingly replace traditions inherited from one’s cultural background and replace it with, say, political traditionalism or that of a profession. The former often allows ideological lobotomization to compound in the fabric of one’s soul until it is impossible to remove.
This realization, along with my deep appreciation of both my cultural background and that of almost all cultures around the world, has led me to accept that the term traditionalist applies to me and to how I see my fellow man. (I accept this in literature too, as the title implies) For this reason, I’m happy to consider myself a traditionalist in the basic meaning of that term.
The other day, however, a subscriber asked (in the form of a statement) if I am a follower of Julius Evola and Rene Guenon. While asked politely, this is a roundabout way of asking if I am fascist-adjacent given that Evola, who used the word Traditionalism to refer to his philosophy, is associated with Italian fascist political and philosophical thought. I like to think this subscriber (who I won’t name) was just asking out of curiosity; and I hold no hard feelings. But the framing of the question/statement was such that I cannot give the benefit of the doubt. It did not seem certain that this subscriber was aware of the word’s other meanings, and since there’s a culture war in our ‘post-truth’ era I have to anticipate that possibility.
I wrote back that I am a traditionalist in the way that James Joyce was a traditionalist. That is true: more on that in a bit. And that I would have to read Evola to make sense of what he said, and reckon with his use of the term. Also true: I have not read Evola. And I had never even heard of Guenon before. (He was apparently some kind of French Sufi dude)
In retrospect, however, I don’t think that was a satisfactory answer. If the attempt was to (politely) smear me with an Evola association, my explanation doesn’t deodorize the hallway sufficiently enough. Not to the extent needed in today’s atmosphere. Of course, such things in an ideal world where people operated by charity and intellectual nuance would be unnecessary. And as I originally hail from the lower middle class, I would, according to George Orwell (another traditionalist), smell either way. But whatever the intent of the comment, this just isn’t that kind of world.
But rest assured, my dear subscribers: this is not the Substack equivalent of a YouTube response video. For as I thought about it, I realized I’d poked the tip of an iceberg with my reference to Joyce. It had always occurred to me that almost all the best literature ever written has tradition in its genes in some form or another. Perhaps traditionalism - again, the neutral, non-Evola meaning of the word - could help explain that side of literature in an iteration of time when leftists who control literature would rather memory-hole this knowledge. At least in the West.
Of course, not every author is a traditionalist. And some (like Milan Kundera) are traditionalists of a modern tradition that stands apart from what began in the primeval era (in his case Habsburg Modernism); including him would be problematic since traditionalism tends to eschew modernity. (An exception in Kundera’s oeuvre is The Joke) Some don’t have any traditionalism at all, like Annie Ernaux whose stories are a low-common-denominator sum of scientific theories and processes she believes to be an honorable defense of her people. Others, like Jose Saramago, placed themselves in reaction to traditionalism (Cain) even as they enriched it elsewhere. (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis) Personally, I love modernism in literature (me being a Kafka guy) but find little else about modernity redeeming. It is fitting that the French Revolution was followed by Goethe’s Faust: the simplest way to describe the modern era is as a Faustian bargain on a civilizational level. It is fortunate that on our path to Hell, we can find a few beautiful flowers blooming.
I cannot, on one hand, tell you all that much about Evola. He was Italian. Those who keep him in print call him “the most misunderstood thinker of the 20th century.” Maybe that’s true: for what it’s worth, he is in print despite the tiny number of actual fascists in the West. Was he a fascist, or a tradition-driven philosopher who saw some potential in cultural preservation and traditional enlightenment through fascism? Hell if I know. One glance at his bibliography indicates his interests range from the rational and interesting (the decline of the West, corruption of tradition, tradition in postwar Europe) to topics I’d be hard-pressed to take seriously. (books on magic)
If people are gonna bring Evola references to my doorstep, however, then I guess I have no choice but to read his books. The serious-looking ones, anyway. (Though who knows, even the magic one might be useful for a fantasy novel) I am a lot of things, but an intellectual coward I am not.
But I can tell people about cross-cultural affairs. Walt Whitman, standard bearer of a young yet vast tradition increasingly defined by the industrial era, once wrote: “Literature is big only in one way – when used as an aid to human growth, to further the cause of humanity, to reveal men to each other as brothers.”
Tradition falls under the umbrella of human growth: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and Leaves of Grass too, for that matter) is a contribution to American tradition irrespective of its universality. (By tradition, I am not only talking about folklore or fairy tales here) As Jose Saramago once explained: “Writers create national literature. Translators create world literature.” And Saramago, for all his universality and even genius, was a Portuguese writer in the greatest sense of the word who arguably did more to grow Portuguese culture (and, by default, humanity) than any other Portuguese man or woman of culture in the 20th century.
As divergent tradition is the source of diverse ideas - and especially diverse literature - tradition unquestionably furthers the cause of humanity. We cannot liquidate the world’s repository of rich, cultural ideas and replace it for a single, Anglo-American worldview. Well, we can. But we would deserve to collapse as a global civilization if we did that. Even Star Trek, for all its philosophy of coming-together, recognized that.
And through translation, tradition does function as a fraternal revelation. Through literary universalization - assisted in part by translation - I can read, say, Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum and find myself at home in German/Danziger culture in a way that might otherwise be a struggle for me. (With Grass it is less the story that is traditionalist and more the atmosphere and aesthetic; Grass’ titles are the most revelatory of a traditionalist streak in Grass’ oeuvre) Just as Oskar Matzerath allows me to feel a fraternal bond with Germans and Danzigers, so too does The Tin Drum allow me, a Polish-Californian, to feel a greater cross-cultural bond from across the psychosphere.
I mention Grass for a reason. In the recent liquidation of Polishness from the school curriculum by the Donald Tusk regime in Poland, curriculum casualties include The Tin Drum. This may be a strange choice of novels to remove at first glance, but it is understandable. An undercelebrated dimension of Grass’ masterful debut is its sympathetic depiction of Poles. Grass was a supporter of healing between Poles and Germans after the war; his depiction of the Polish resistance to the Nazi invasion at the Polish Post Office is one of the most powerful chapters in a novel full of meaningful moments.
But in a globalized world without tradition and cultural distinction, any motives for Poles to read The Tin Drum are obliterated, the entire premise of Oskar Matzerath’s uncertain heritage rendered redundant. Eventually, if Tusk is successful at turning the future generations of Poles into Eloi, their ability to comprehend The Tin Drum will be as challenging as the Spanish of The Song of the Cid is to contemporary Spaniards.
When globalization turns all of us, including Germans and Poles, into occupants of soulless economic zones who’ve forgotten their own story, the greatest literature in history is estranged from us. And much as media narratives will frame this as something that just happens as a consequence of benevolent “progress” and how we have to do away with “the old ways” anyway, a lot of it is by design and intent. The Polish regime’s haste merely gives us a present-day example through which to observe this in practice. And, in turn, make sense of what has happened elsewhere in the West. The motive is clear. Rather than use German literature (and Russian literature, in this case the fables of Ivan Krylov) to formulate rich, cross-cultural bonds between cultures that give meaning to society, Tusk and his education minister bimbo are apparently of the belief that the creation of tabula rasa societies around the world in an iteration of history completely devoid of meaning is the real way to bring people together. And it is their job to turn Poland into an economic zone with tabula rasa consumers as has been done elsewhere.
Without tradition - and again I don’t only mean folklore and fairy tales, but the entire essence of cultures - we cannot access literature in its entirety. We are handicapped. It is comparable to K. David Harrison’s famous study of information in endangered languages and “the erosion of human knowledge.” In his example, the Siberian languages of reindeer herders - languages that include single words for, say, a male castrated reindeer - enable greater efficacy in reindeer herding societies than Russian which, rich as it is, was not so centrally structured around that specific cultural-economic practice. It cannot access that same information, at least not in the same way. The loss of the language, therefore, alienates reindeer herders from their own profession in a very subtle manner.
This process is exactly what’s happening to us in the West. By losing touch with tradition, we are losing touch with the ability to comprehend our greatest literature. For this reason, I am calling for a new definition of traditionalist to add to the others: someone seeking the old ways to access the greatest human knowledge and wisdom. Namely, that found in literature. While tradition in this case is as enriching to oneself as the other definitions, its function is that of a key. The key not only to self-knowledge but the mere ability to appreciate both human similarities and differences at their richest and most divergent.
There is no solid argument to suggest that a motley of tabula rasa societies in a motley of soulless economic zones will overcome cultural differences. Even if they do, new ones will arise in their place: differences esoteric by their newness and harder to overcome due to the extreme divides currently setting apart classes and human beings in general through economic stratifications. I have already seen this take place abroad in the form of pop culture: a superficial manifestation, perhaps, but one that can go a long way. We need literature. We need its qualities for both self-discovery and cross-cultural discovery. We need its philosophical components as well as its empathetic ones. No other art form can do what literature can in these domains. And we need a mindset disposed toward tradition to access that.
I have already mentioned Günter Grass, Jose Saramago and Walt Whitman. I will continue with little sections describing many great writers who were, either consciously or subconsciously, traditionalists. Some may be familiar: others may surprise you. But I must clarify a couple more things: I am not talking about a genre, a partisan side like left or right, an ideology or even a refined philosophy a la stoicism and epicureanism. I am referring to what I always refer to when I use the word “dimension” in a literary context. Traditionalism coexists with other literary and individual elements, including those that stand far apart like realism. Also, I am also not saying that the authors listed here are complete traditionalists, or that they don’t have other sides to them. To quote Whitman again: “I am individual/I contain multitudes.”
Traditionalism is a multitude. And every author today needs it if they want to be remembered after they die. And the best part is: unlike me, none of you have to read Julius Evola to do that. Lucky you!
Dante Alighieri
Few works of genius speak universality as The Divine Comedy. Its Catholic nature is no doubt the obvious sign of traditionalism, even if the theologians might disagree. But it is because of Dante that standard Italian was founded upon the Tuscan dialect used by the exiled Florentine. While Heaven, Hell and Purgatory thrum with Christian universality, Dante’s original language thrums with linguistic tradition.
James Joyce
In Gordon Bowker’s excellent biography of Joyce, the great individualistic Irishman is painted - with the requisite, convincing evidence - as an iconoclast who never lost his attachment to his broken icons. A disbeliever in the holiness of St. Patrick who featured the saint in Finnegan’s Wake. A proclaimed atheist who continued to attend masses to hear the music and appreciate the liturgy. All while continuing to place great stock in the importance of dates, and not at the exclusion of the calendar of saints. (Such as the publication of Finnegan’s Wake on St. Monica’s Day) Later life comments suggest that Joyce’s real antagonism was toward Irish Catholicism, which he called “black magic.” In any case, the heavy reliance Joyce’s work has not only on his complicated relationship to Catholicism but Irish culture as a whole is well established. To argue that Joyce had no connection to traditional Irish culture and that his novel did nothing for Irish literature is a fool’s errand.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Yiddish literature’s only Nobel Prize Laureate was not only an iconoclast like Joyce, but a traditionalist iconoclast. When other Yiddish writers were intensely caught up in realism, Singer brought the traditional landscape of the Lublin area of Poland (today’s Lubelskie) to life. The Yiddish realists no doubt had themselves a few laughs: for who wanted to read about devils lurking around the shtetls when realist social issues demanded the right to extort their pens at the expense of all else? But as we know from history it was Singer, not the realists, who had the last laugh.
Hermann Hesse & Johann Peter Hebel
Both of the above authors were native to the Baden region or its environs. Hebel, with his Treasure Chest, unlocked the traditional beauty of the region. Hesse would later be deeply influenced by it. Much as we think of India due to Siddhartha and Sidney Bechet due to Steppenwolf, most of Hesse’s oeuvre owes a lot, if not everything, to his native region and its traditional aesthetic.
Italo Calvino
Calvino once described his best-known short novels - The Cloven Viscount, The Baron In The Trees and The Nonexistent Knight, collected under the very tradition-connoting name Our Ancestors - as designed to be found in an old attic from long ago. Such a statement reveals a desire to hone in on a greater Italian/Romance tradition, and those who have read his fine-quality essay collection Why Read The Classics? will be familiar with a debt owed more, at times, to the pre-Revolution era (Tirant Lo Blanc, Orlando Furioso, Giovanni Bocaccio, etc.) than the modern (and certainly the postmodern) era. Academics might continue to debate about the grotesque, the fetish and all the other concepts they believe apply varyingly across the board. But for writers, the legacy of Calvino isn’t rocket science: reinventing tradition in the present day is more powerful and conducive to the imagination than pretending it isn’t there, never existed or is too “old” and “fogey” to drag up at a New York cocktail party.
Orhan Pamuk
The last of the best among us, Pamuk is best known in the Anglosphere for bridging East and West through his home city of Istanbul. But his mission for Turkish readers transcends bi-civilizational bridges. When asked in an interview if he worries whether Westerners will understand his references to Turkish culture and society, Pamuk explained that 95% of Turkish people weren’t familiar with the Turkish culture he was talking about. While his reputation is affected by national politics right now, I hope the Turks will one day recognize what he has done for their culture. In the meantime, us in the West can read literature that, like several of the authors listed here, is iconoclastic not by attacking tradition, but by utilizing tradition.
Zora Neale Hurston
Despite the at-times inaccessibility of her utilization of dialect, Zora Neale Hurston is unusual among Black writers in that her artistry, not her race and its accompanying advocates, defined her reputation for the right reasons. Those reasons being: tradition, albeit tradition from a very feminine perspective. The anger felt by authors such as Richard Wright toward Hurston back in the day takes on other connotations when considered in this light: culture, when utilized to make a difference, doesn’t need politics.
Jorge Luis Borges
Any Borges scholar can tell us that Fictions is only the tip of the iceberg. In the Spanish-speaking world, for instance, his essays are regarded just as highly as his stories and his poetry. It is his relationship to Argentina, however, that seldom gets a lot of attention. Both in many of his short stories and a lot of his fiction, Borges probably did more than any author in the 20th century to make his countrymen aware of who they were and what their country was about. A lot of which was conducive to tradition. I don’t envy the inflation that the enemy of “shit leftists” Javier Milei is trying to take care of. But I do envy that.
Leslie Marmon Silko
Not counting short story retellings of American Indian stories and myths, Ceremony is arguably the most “Native” work of literary fiction when measured on the spectrum of “otherness.” Ceremony follows different rules from other American literature and even other novels written by Natives: a pop-culture-on-the-Rez Sherman Alexie novel it is not. Ceremony does not follow the happy directive, for instance: in fact, it rejects it outright. It does not aspire to cram a ton of details and pretend that quantity = literary merit. It is stark. The closest we Westerners get to feeling that way is in The Magician’s Nephew, when we visit the dead civilization of Charn. But whereas Lewis causes his protagonists to unleash a witch onto the world, Silko unleashes otherness.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
While magic realism is a failed genre that eventually succumbed to the will of the cliche, Colombia’s best-known author wouldn’t have been able to grant the style its brightest moment without Colombian folklore and tradition. Magic realism is evidence that leftist authors - who, driven by visions of progress at the expense of all that is old, are often fundamentally irreconcilable to tradition - can be traditionalists too.
George Orwell
On the topic of leftist authors, imagine my surprise at hearing Robert Colls, author of George Orwell: English Rebel, refer to Orwell as a traditionalist. And it’s true. Colls proves that Orwell’s entire oeuvre is framed, permeated and even defined by his Englishness. At some point it dawned on him, which may have been a good thing: had 1984 been set in any other country other than what was once Britain, it would have lost a lot of its power.
Conclusion
This is just a selection of the numerous authors out there who are literary traditionalists in some form or another. There are many others: Yuri Vynnychuk, Adam Mickiewicz, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Again, not every writer was a traditionalist in this manner. But many who don’t fall under this category most probably fall under a similar category of tradition separate from ethnicity, religion and national identity. That, or they prop something up somewhere with a stick and hope it does’t snap.
You’ll notice I don’t have many Americans on the list: as a culture that not only lacks a primeval origin but is proud to lack one, this multitude in American literature has been routinely unsatisfied. And the greater American literary tradition (with the noteworthy exception of Southern literature) has suffered for it. Whitman is one of our magnanimous exceptions.
I’d like to know what you think. What is your tradition? Does it manifest itself in your novels? If not, why do you think that is? And do you agree that literature requires traditionalist authors? If not, why? Let me know what you think in the comments!
In almost complete agreement. We both esteem the great writers of our Western tradition, while being open to other civilizations and cultures. I'm more resistant to Modernism than you are, and even more enamored with the best of our Judeo-Christian culture, from Dante and the Renaissance to the literature of Solzhenitsyn and Tolkien. (Maybe Dickens and Austen and Eliot were all Christian writers; hard to say for sure.) Certainly all five of these were traditionalists, in my view, and great traditionalists. We've never discussed Shakespeare, but should sometime. So you and I have a very similar philosophy and approach, although I may be even more traditionalist than you. I win.
I had to.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw