Dimitrije Mitrinovic: New Perspectives 9788661536960

Citation preview

DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ NEW PERSPECTIVES

DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ NEW PERSPECTIVES Edited by Nemanja Radulović

Belgrade, 2022

DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ NEW PERSPECTIVES Editor-in-Chief Nemanja Radulović, University of Belgrade Publisher Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade 3 Studentski trg, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia, +381 11 2638 622 For the Publisher: Prof. Iva Draškić Vićanović, Dean of the Faculty of Philology Reviewers Karolina Maria Hess, Jagiellonian University Sergej Macura, University of Belgrade Predrag Petrović, University of Belgrade Printing MAB, Belgrade ISBN 978-86-6153-696-0 https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022

On the cover: Živorad Nastasijević, Dimitrije Mitrinović (1929). University of Bradford Library-Special collections-New Atlantis Foundation.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD 

4

Margaret Shillan PERSONAL MEMORIES OF NORFOLK LODGE

7

Mike Tyldesley THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY LEAGUE. GUILD SOCIALISM IN THE 1930s AND 1940s

14

Andrew Rigby TRAINING FOR COSMOPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP IN THE 1930S: THE PROJECT OF DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ 

31

Nemanja Radulović THE SEXUAL-MYSTICAL SOPHIANISM OF DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ 

56

Vasilije Milnović AESTHETIC CONTEMPLATIONS BY DIMITRIJEMITRINOVIĆ OR: ABOUT AN ALTERNATIVE GLOBALIZATION 

73

Slobodan G. Markovich DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ IN THE QUEST FOR GNOSIS. FROM NATIONAL TO COSMOPOLITAN IDENTITY 

89

Guido van Hengel WORLD CONQUEST THROUGH HEROIC LOVE. HOW THE FORTE KREIS INSPIRED DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ 

139

AUTHORS 

159

NOTE ON THE SOURCES 

161

3

FOREWORD The name of Dimitrije Mitrinović (1887-1953) had been neglected for a long time. The memory of him had been kept in the New Atlantis Foundation (today the Mitrinović Foundation), Great Britain, in which gathered his students, and on the rims of Serbian literary history. Since the seventies Mitrinović had started being researched as a name of Serbian and European cultural history. Predrag Palavestra published one biography in 1977, Andrew Rigby another in 1984. In a synthetic way, they gave an overview of his life and work, remaining the works of reference to this very day. This became the impetus for research which continued throughout the nineties and in the 21st century. New contributions were in the forms of new material and new interpretations alike. Mitrinović was becoming more and more present in both Serbian and international academia, in the works of a number of disciplines, ranging from the history of art to politics. The reprints of Palavestra’s (2003) and Rigby’s (2006) works testify to a renewed interest, or, in a different way, so does a number of popular articles in Serbian periodicals. The first roundtable discussion dedicated to Dimitrije Mitrinović (in Serbian and English) entitled “Dimitrije Mitrinović and New Age” took place at the University Library in Belgrade on December 10, 2013. The title refers both to the British modernist journal in which he collaborated and to the contemporary phenomenon whose predecessor he himself was, which was intended to indicate the variety of fields in which he had been present. The roundtable participants were both from Serbia and Great Britain alongside the representative of the Mitrinović Foundation. (Another two scientific gatherings dedicated to him were organized afterwards—in Bradford in 2015 and Belgrade in 2021). As it happened, the collection of papers from that conference has never been published and some of the participants have published their papers in periodicals. This is an opportunity to publish all the papers in one place. Two additional papers from the nineties have been included (Michael Tyldesley, 1996; Andrew Rigby, 1999), which exhibit the findings of that period. After

4

the roundtable, the book entitled De zieners (The Seers) by Guido van Hengel was published in Dutch (2018) and Serbian (Vidovnjaci, 2020) which provided a new view of Mitrinović in the European context. A summary of that research is enclosed here as a separate article. Starting from the roundtable as the core, this collection of papers is both an overview of the research conducted in the last twenty-six years and a chrestomathy. The papers are organized chronologically based on their publications in periodicals, and the two unpublished contributions are at the beginning and the end of the collection. The contributions showcase the influence Mitrinović exerted in a number of fields: history of literature, politics (Serbian, Yugoslav, British, European), social activism, esotericism. The viewpoints are different too: intellectual history, and the history of intellectuals, network concept, studies of Western esotericism as a separate field, political history, exchange between different cultures, but also a common European framework. It should be emphasized that most of the papers use the rich archival material of the New Atlantis Foundation kept in the library of the University of Bradford. That is the origin of the cover painting. It is a portrait by Živorad Nastasijević from 1929, unknown until recently (it is not mentioned in the artist’s list of works; the author of this foreword presented it in a text on a web portal).1 This is yet another way how new connections between Mitrinović and other personages on the cultural scene are established. New perspectives stemming from the title of this collection entail two levels. The discovery of new data about the biography, contacts, social, and cultural context of Mitrinović’s activity, but also new interpretations, views, and methods. Margaret Shillan, whose parents were the closest collaborators of Mitrinović, gives a memoir sketch of Mitrinović, which makes her contribution a primary source, including the contributions in photos. Andrew Rigby’s paper is a contribution to Mitrinović’s political and social work in Great Britain in the 1930s given through a reconstruction of his cosmopolitan views. Mike Tyldesley’s article puts the same context under the spotlight—he deliberates Mitrinović’s views on a variant of syndicalism in the 1930s. The author of these lines regards Mitrinović in the context of Western esotericism, in the example of 1

https://stellapolarebooks.com

5

Sophianism, as a new research field. Vasilije Milnović views Mitrinović as a poetic figure of the early Serbian avant-garde. Slobodan G. Marković analyzes Mitrinović’s political activity both in Serbian and British contexts, his Gnosticism included. Guido van Hengel observes Mitrinović as part of wider European intellectual networks. Through the research of Mitrinović as a semi-hidden personage of European culture, one can discover more about the less known, alternative, and repressed aspects of the European cultural history. More often than not, dominant ideas in the history of art, literature, political, and social movements are born from the fermentation of various rivaling, opposing possibilities. In the light of alternative possibilities and a broader cultural history, the name of Dimitrije Mitrinović is a nexus which connects a number of them, just like it connected the multitude of protagonists of these projects. Nemanja Radulović Acknowledgments The editor wants to extend his most heartful gratitude to Mike Tyldesley (The Mitrinović Foundation), trustees of the Mitrinović Foundation and Julie Parry (University of Bradford Library, Special collections) for their kind help.

6

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch1 061.23(410) Mitrinović, D.

Margaret Shillan (trustee; The Mitrinović Foundation)

PERSONAL MEMORIES OF NORFOLK LODGE I would like to share some personal memories of Norfolk Lodge, Richmond, and what went on there just before and after Mitrinovic died in 1953.

Norfolk Lodge Richmond Hill

7

It was a big, imposing house on the top of Richmond Hill, with amazing views right down the River Thames far below. It had a smallish garden behind it and at the end was a cottage with living quarters upstairs and a big converted room downstairs which we called Verulam, used for concerts once a month, and many meetings and social events.

Norfolk Lodge Garden

This is a group of close members in the garden of Norfolk Lodge, including my parents, David and Anne Shillan, Harry and Gracie Rutherford, Valerie Cooper and Ralph Twentyman. At two different times I lived in the Cottage, once with my family, and later with the Rutherfords. I can remember in 1953 looking out of the kitchen window and seeing into one of the three big rooms of Norfolk

The Red Room

8

Lodge where Mitrinovic was ill and bed ridden. There were always people coming and going to see him. The three large ground floor rooms all had different moods and functions. In the front, overlooking the view, was what we called The Red Room, all painted a very special red colour (which apparently had green in it). This was an artistic and social space with works of art, already spoken about by John. The Giacometti statue, the Magritte, a Roy de Maistre, a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture, a Japanese print by Hiroshige among many others. Also many books on art.

Ivan Meštrović

While Mitrinović owned art later in his life, I think it is worth remembering that in 1915 when he first came to England he helped to organize an exhibition of Ivan Mestrovic, the Southern Slav sculptor, at the Victoria and Albert, where he was a guide and lecturer. A very vivid account of this is given by Philip Mairet, who became intimately connected with Mitrinovic for over a decade. ‘He was a little late, for which he apologised with the courtesy and charm of an accomplished diplomat. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, attired in the black frock coat of an official or business executive, who spoke with a strong foreign accent but with noticeable freedom, fluency and even eloquence..... What moved me to admiration even more perhaps than the majestic vision of art and civilization that he unfolded, which indeed carried us far out of our depth, was the eloquence of his exposition.I had never heard anything

9

like it.. Here was a man who spoke with authority. What he said seemed to be guaranteed by what he was, for I felt almost as if I was listening to some messenger from a higher realm of knowledge about the predicament of mankind.’

The Red Room

In the photo of the Red Room you can see the big Roy de Maistre over the fireplace, the Greek torso and the art books. We are standing with our back to the window.

Gathering in the Red Room

Some regulars and some visitors used to meet in the Red Room every evening at 6 for drinks. Here you can see Ellen Mayne, David

10

Shillan (my father), Ralph Twentyman and Harry Rutherford. But it was also a time to keep in touch and share news.

Irenikon

The other front room was called Irenikon, or Peace, and held representations of many different religions - a Russian icon, a Buddhist sculpture, a jewish candlestick, a fragment of a Jain image, and I can remember a large photo of Madame Blavatsky.

Irenikon

11

There were a lot of box files containing study material. We hardly used this room socially.

Academy

The third room was called Academy and was devoted to science and philosophy. There were photos and busts of philosophers like Socrates and August Comte and a library of scientific books. This was where Mitrinovic slept.

Academy

After he died we used this room for entertaining at social events, like the concerts and lectures over in Verulam .

12



Christmas Party

We even had our Christmas dinner there with charades, games and music spilling out into the Red Room. In the basement was a room where for a long time a group of people copied out notes from their personal records to make them available. These are now in the Bradford Archive. We also had a little Adana printing press for posters, and from here, together with Vincent Morley, I produced the Renaissance Bulletin for 15 issues. This was taken over by Violet and John MacDermot. Different members of the group lived at different times in the upstairs flats and I can remember a basket on a long string hanging down the back stairs to help pass food up and down! If one were to list all the people who took part in the life of Norfolk Lodge, as lecturers like Dr Ghose, Karl Konig, Dr Bake, or musicians like Eric Harrison, Ian Houston, or residents and audiences, it would go into the hundreds. So it was a very rich experience that I took part in

13

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch2 321.74(410)”1936/1940” Mitrinović, D.

Mike Tyldesley

THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY LEAGUE. GUILD SOCIALISM IN THE 1930s AND 1940s* The House of Industry League (HOIL) was a Guild Socialist body, active between 1936 and the late 1940s. It was the last organisation of significance in the classical tradition of British Guild Socialism, a point reinforced most clearly by the prominence in it of S. G. Hobson, one of the key figures in that tradition. The intention of his essay is to recover certain basic historical information about the HOIL, an intention made important by the unmerited obscurity that is fallen into. THE ORIGINS OF THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY LEAGUE The House of Industry League needs to be seen in the context of the turn to political activity of the circle surrounding the (Bosnian) Serb intellectual Dimitrije Mitrinović, who had come to London in 1914. Mitrinović’s life and opinions are chronicled in some detail in Andrew Rigby’s fine biography, Initiation and Initiative.1 Born in 1887 in Herzegovina, Mitrinović was involved as a student in the revolutionary politics of the area. However, he left the Balkans in early 1913 to continue his studies of art history in Munich. He fled The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance and hospitality of the New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling, and in particular of Violet MacDermot and Ralph Twentyman. He would also like to thank Andrew Bolton, Mike Davis and an anonymous referee for their comments on a draft of the article. 1 Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984). *

14

Germany on the very eve of the First World War, moving to London. He became part of the Serbian legation in London, and continued to be employed there until 1920 when he decided that, rather than return to Yugoslavia, he would stay in England. He undertook some journalistic work, and started to gather a circle of people around him, with whom he would work both publicly in bodies such as the HOIL, and in private discussion as described in Rigby’s book. In 1920 and 1921 Mitrinović’s first major effort in English journalism appeared. This was a series of articles on ‘World Affairs’ in The New Age. Initially, these were written jointly with A. R. Orage under the pseudonym M. M. Cosmoi. Orage’s New Age had been, as is well known, a key journal for the Guild Socialist movement.2 As noted above, Mitrinović gathered a group around him who were interested in his ideas, and the possibilities that arose from them. This group first started to engage in public activity in 1927 with the formation of the Adler Society, the British Section on the International Society for Individual Psychology. Although his body was interested in the dissemination of the psychology ideas of Alfred Adler, it had sections that were devoted to philosophy and sociology (among others), and it had connections to the Chandos Group of intellectuals. (This latter group, which was formed in 1926 with involvement of Mitrinović, was largely composed of figures connected with the Social Credit movement such as Maurice Reckitt, although others were members too.) The Society had its own premises in Gower Street, London, and undertook a very heavy programme of activity. It was removed from the International Society by Adler in late 1933. By that time the Mitrinović circle had become involved in openly political activity – a factor in the disaffiliation by Adler. The first and longest lasting of a number of organisations formed in the 1930s was the New Europe Group which, a Rigby notes, was founded in 1931 and only ended in late 1957.3 This was to argue for some of Mitrinović’s most crucial political concepts. Most notably, it was concerned with the idea of a federation of Europe, in the context of a viewpoint that saw a combination of devolution and federation has being of central The series ran between 19 August 1920 and 13 October 1921. The articles were written jointly with Orage until 9 December 1920. In Harry Rutherford’s collection of Mitrinović’s writing (Dimitrije Mitrinović, Certainly, Future, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1987) they run to nearly 200 pages. 3 Rigby, Initiation, 107. 2

15

importance politically. A veteran member of the Mitrinović circle, Dr Ralph Twentyman, active in the HOIL in the 1930s, in interview in August 1995, stressed the importance of his vision of devolution and federation in Mitrinović’s political thinking.4 The first president of the NEG was Sir Patrick Geddes. In October 1932 the first of a series of quarterly journals connected with the Mitrinović circle was started, the New Britain Quarterly. The title indicates the next direction taken by the circle in their political activities, the formation in 1933 of a New Britain Group. The New Britain Group was the most successful of the various groups connected with Mitrinović. Its weekly journal, called New Britain, was started on 24 May 1933. In January 1934 the journal advertised a lecture series on five topics which summarised the vision of the New Britain Movement (NBM), as it had become. These were Personal Alliance, Monetary Reform, Industrial Guilds, the Three Fold State, and the Federation of Western Nations. Some of these topics need a brief explanation. Personal Alliance was a central idea of Mitrinović’s, indicating the necessity for individuals to consciously enter into unity with others to achieve a new order. By Monetary Reform the group were largely arguing for the economic ideas of Professor Frederick Soddy.5 The Three Fold State – which postulated the need for separate parliamentary ‘houses’ for politics, economics and culture, each with sharply defined powers and functions, and incorporating the notions of federation and devolution – was an idea derived from both Patrick Geddes and Interview Dr Ralph Twentyman and Violet MacDermot by Mike Tyldesley, Ditchling, 15 August 1995. Henceforward cited as ‘Interview’. 5 Soddy’s economic ideas have recently some attention. An interesting example of this is to be found in Juan Martinez-Alier (with K. Schlupmann), Ecological Economics (Oxford, 1987). It has a detailed chapter on ‘Soddy’s Critique of the Theory of Economic Growth’. Martinez-Alier sees Soddy as one of the ‘precursors of contemporary Ecologism’ (ibid, 143). This is largely because of the analytical content of Soddy’s economic thought, in which wealth is considered as a flow, and in terms of energy. The practical policy implications of Soddy’s economic thinking focused on the issues of currency and banking, and particularly upon the need for the power to create money to be returned to the nation, from private bankers, who Soddy felt had effectively abrogated the right to create money. Martinez-Alier makes reference to other recent examinations of Soddy’s economic thought. More recently, a biography of Soddy has been published, which includes an assessment of his links with the New Britain Movement and the Mitrinović circle; Linda Merricks, The World Made New (Oxford, 1996). The HOIL is not mentioned in this book. 4

16

Rudolf Steiner. 6 Rigby, in his chapter on Political Initiatives, indicates the rapid growth of New Britain. By July 1933 there were 57 groups around the country, and by November 1933 groups in 47 towns and centres plus 30 separate groups in the London area. Various figures are quoted for the circulation of the New Britain weekly. The editor, C. B. Purdom, claimed that within three months of its launch it was selling 32,119 copies per week.7 Arthur Peacock, later secretary of the HOIL, claimed that it built up a 50,000 circulation.8 By August 1934 the weekly New Britain had ceased publication, and to all intents and purposes the New Britain Movement was over. Rigby examines in some detail the complicated politics surrounding this period of less than two years. A major factor in the rise wanted to turn it into a political party – Ralph Twentyman suggests an SDP of its day9 – and this was certainly not an aim shared by Mitrinović and his immediate circle. The remaining New Britain Movement held a conference between 15 and 17 December 1934. A report from this conference indicates that from itself be projected four obviously necessary movements; 1. League for the National Dividend. 2. House of Industry League. 3. British League for European Federation. 4. New Albion of The League for the Three Fold State.10 The document indicated that the public initiative for the HOIL would have to come from within the trade union movement, and the contacts had already started to be made with a view of this. It also indicated that a manifesto was to be published shortly. To summarise, then, the HOIL can be seen as a successor body to NBM, Industrial Guilds, which would, as in all Guild Socialist thinking, control and run industry. By doing this, it would also be arguing for an important element of one of the other goals of the NBM, the Three Fold State, with its suggested separate houses of parliament for politics, culture and the economy. I owe this latter point to Dr R. Twentyman, in ‘Interview’. C. B. Purdom, Life over Again, 1951, 156. 8 A. Peacock, Yours Fraternally, 1945, 84. 9 Ibid. 10 Copy in the archives of the New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. 6 7

17

THE ACTIVITIES OF THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY LEAGUE It appears that some time had to be spent by the former New Britain activities in preparing the HOIL, as it emerged publicly in August 1936. A resumé of the very early activities of the League appeared in the September 1936 edition of the Trade Unionist, and was reprinted, presumably for propaganda purposes by the League. The League never had its own journal, but the Trade Unionist gave it some access to its pages. This journal was the organ of the National Trade Union Club, a social club in the West End of London in which Ben Tillett and Arthur Peacock were important figures, and which was used by the HOIL for meetings and conferences. The article indicates that the presidency of the HOIL had been assumed by S. G. (Sam) Hobson, and the vice-presidency by both Ben Tillett and Stephen Smith. (The HOIL subsequently appointed a number of other vicepresidents.) The article also included the principles and purpose of the League which indicated the political line of the HOIL. A crucial point was the following: The House of Industry League exists to implement the logical purpose of the Trade Unions; namely the total abolition of the wage system, and the ensuing change in status (as distinct from mere amelioration of conditions) of all those engaged in industrial production.11 In a declaration at the close of the piece, seven points were noted. Among these were: (1) The House of Industry League declares that the economic function of the community must be differentiated from the civic and cultural functions, so that the harmony of national life be achieved. … (4) The League demands the constitution of a new Estate of the Realm: an Economic Chamber, to be known as the House of Industry, representatively based on national Industrial Guilds. (5) The League declares that the ‘The House of Industry League’, a document reproduced from the Trade Unionist (September 1936), presumably by the HOIL. Copy in New Atlantis Foundation archives, Ditchling. 11

18

ownership of the productive and distributive machinery shall be vested in the Crown and People through the House of Commons; but the all the functional processes shall be controlled by the House of Industry which is itself a constitutional body based on a functional electorate. … (7) The House of Industry League declares that the separation of economics from politics is an important for international as for internal affairs. The co-operation of self-governing House of Industry throughout the Empire, Europe and the World is a necessary step towards constructive international action and world federation.12 These extracts indicate that the HOIL was advocating certain classic Guild Socialist viewpoints, along with other arguments that connect with those of the New Britain and New Europe groupings. Broadly speaking, this pattern was to remain the same throughout the League’s existence. Given this viewpoint, then, what forms of activity did the League undertake to realize its aims? Firstly, it sponsored, in the years prior to the Second World War, lectures at which its views could be discussed. Syllabuses from these lecture series indicate a wide range of discussion topics, and the involvement of a variety of people from different circles.13 A number of figures from the trade union world were involved; for instance, the editor of the Union of Postal Workers’ journal, The Post, Francis Andrews, and the assistant secretary of the Railway Clerks’ Association, F. W. Dalley (whose lecture on ‘A Transport Guild’ was chaired by Rowland Kenney, editor of the Daily Herald in its ‘rebel’ days, and associate of A. R. Orage). Lord Northbourne gave a series of lectures in 1939 on ‘The Nature of the Agricultural Problem’.14 Whilst Ibid. Copies of syllabuses etc., all in the archive of New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. Note that much of this material does not give the year concerned. 14 The lectures by Lord Northbourne raise the issue of whether the HOIL had connections with that section of opinion, predominantly far right-wing, that was raising questions about agriculture in Britain in late 1930s. (A grouping examined, for instance, by Anna Bramwell in Ecology in the 20th Century (New Haven, 1989); see p. 216 for a list of the main protagonists, including Northbourne.) It appears that, with the exception of Lord Northbourne, such connections did not exist. Indeed Northbourne’s lectures seem to be the only occasion the HOIL considered agriculture. There are not other lectures listed in programmes on the subject. The 12 13

19

several of these lectures were held at the Lower Essex Hall, at least two series were held at the National Trade Union Club, and this represents an example of the close connections between the Club and the League. The HOIL also used the Club as its postal address on much of the material it published. The HOIL’s use and support of the club were specifically commented upon in the Trade Unionist.15 Aside from the London-based lecture series, the League was involved in other activities of a similar nature. In September 1936, fairly early in its existence, it organized a weekend conference at Royhill, near Buxted in Sussex. The conference covered the issues of the world crisis, industrial organisation, the Functional Principle, and the League itself, looking at its future activities. The speakers and chairs of session featured the veterans Hobson and Tillett, and also a number of the circle around Mitrinović such as Watson Thomson, David Davies, Ralph Twentyman and Winifrid Gordon Fraser.16 The following year, the League was involved in another conference, this time in conjunction with other organisations. Along with the Socialist Christian League ant the Economic Reconstruction Group of the Christian Social Council, the League was instrumental in organising a conference on ‘Exploitation – A Challenge to the Churches’. This was held on 11 and 12 June 1937, with the evening season on 11 June being chaired by George Lansbury. The League submitted a memorandum regarding its views to this conference.17 The HOIL had a supplement in the July 1937 edition of the Trade Unionist in which reports of the conference were published. (One of the reports indicates that Tom Mann spoke from the floor at the conference.)18 The League certainly intended to undertake educational work among its members. A syllabus for a weekly study group shows a syllabus of Northbourne’s lecture series indicates strong similarities with the book Look to the Land (1940), in which he mentions S. G. Hobson and his Guild proposals (p.146). Hobson refers to Northbourne as a friend in his own autobiography, Pilgrim to the Left, (1938, 251). This is in the context of a discussion of finance, and it is interesting to note that Northbourne was scheduled to lecture to the HOIL on ‘Money’ in autumn 1937. See Trade Unionist (October 1937): 2. 15 See the ‘Comments of a Clubman’ column, Trade Unionist (July 1937): 1. 16 Programme for the Weekend Conference of the House of Industry League, 19-20 September 1936, copy in archives of New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. 17 Copy of circular regarding this conference, by Reginald Wrugh, then secretary of HOIL, in archives of New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. 18 Trade Unionist (July 1937): 7-11. See p. 10 for reference to Tom Mann.

20

wide-ranging programme, looking at issues such as the significance of trade unionism in Britain (with recommended reading featuring the standards such as the Hammonds and the Webbs but also J. T. Murphy’s Preparing for Power), the principle of function, guild organisation, and the theory of credit (the reading suggested here included Lenin’s Imperialism, Frederick Soddy’s Role of Money and J. M. Keynes’s General Theory).19 Efforts were made to form branches in areas other than London. A membership list for a Scottish branch exists.20 Press cuttings indicate that efforts were made to form a branch in north Wales, in November 1936, with a meeting at which the speakers included J. T. Murphy and Walter Monslaw. Monslaw was then a councilor in Wrexham, and an ASLEF member. He became a Labour MP in the post-war period.21 Similarly, press cuttings indicate the formation of a Birmingham branch in February 1937.22 It should be noted, though, that Ralph Twentyman, in interview, expressed the view that the branches outside of London were ephemeral and small affairs.23 On a slightly different tack, the League had at least one ‘functional’ grouping. This was its group of engineers and scientists, which was active in the pre-war period. This seems to have been called the technical committee, suggesting that by ‘engineer’ was meant a qualified technician, rather than a worker in the engineering industry. Its precise purpose and activities are not clear, but it seems likely to have considered the problem of workers’ control from the viewpoint of such professionals.24 As will be seen, in some respects similar questions were considered by HOIL members in the post-war period. (A comment in the Trade Unionist for March 1937 indicates that this group – referred to as the ‘Technicians’ Group’ – was meeting on Fridays at the National Trade Union Club.)25 Copy of this syllabus in the archives of the New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. Copy in archives of New Atlantis Foundation. 21 The cuttings, in the New Atlantis Foundation archives, are from the Liverpool Daily Post (16 November 1936), and the Wrexham Leader (20 November 1936). 22 The cuttings, in the New Atlantis Foundation archives, are from the Birmingham Gazette and the Birmingham Post, both of 12 February 1937. 23 “Interview”. 24 The material in the New Atlantis Foundation archives on this committee consists of a letter from R. S. Oliver of 23 November 1938, and some further, undated, documents. 25 Trade Unionist (March 1937): 2. 19 20

21

Another body that derived from the League and which also had a ‘functional’, rather than geographical basis, was the Council for the Worker’s Control of Industry. Arthur Peacock noted in a document of August 1938 that ‘The Trade Unionists within the League have formed The Council for Workers Control of Industry, and have issued a Manifesto entitled ”Workers’ Control – What it is and Why we want it”, carrying the signature of a group of prominent men in the Trade Union movement.’26 The manifesto was a five-page pamphlet. It was indeed signed by certain prominent trade union figures; among the fifteen signatories were Tom Mann, Jack Tanner and Ben Tillett. Some of the other signatories were figures who are now less well remembered, but who were activists of some importance in the trade union movement of the day.27 Peacock further noted in his August 1938 circular that the manifesto was to be sent to trades councils and Labour Parties, and that conferences were being arranged on it in the ‘provinces’. He noted meetings either arranged or in the process of being arranged in Manchester (with Sam Hobson speaking), Reading, Coventry, Newcastle and Kettering. Also, J. T. Murphy was to speak to the Southall Trades Council. The final aspect of the League’s activity that needs attention is the work it undertook following the Second World War. Rigby suggests that ‘The activities of both organisations [i.e., the League and the Council for Workers’ Control Industry] continued until the outbreak of the European war which Mitrinović had foreseen so many years previously.’28 In fact, whilst Rigby is correct to point to the general disruption caused to the Mitrinović circle by the war, which saw the death of certain young members of the circle, there is some evidence that the League continued in operation after the war. In the postwar period the Mitrinović circle was certainly more concerned with cultural issues than the directly political concerns of the 1930s. This was shown in its main post-war organisation, the Renaissance Club House of Industry League Circular, written by Arthur Peacock, August 1938, copy in New Atlantis Foundation Archives, Ditchling. 27 Copy of document in New Atlantis Foundation Archives. Joseph White mentions this manifesto on p. 201 of his Tom Mann (Manchester 1991), without explaining the provenance of the document. The signatories were: Percy Allott, George Gibson, Maurice Hann, J. H. Harley, J. Hiscock, W. T. Hart, George Light, T. W. Mercer, Percy F. Pollard, Tom Mann, W. Arthur Peacock, Jack Tanner, Ben Tillett, W. J. R. Squance. 28 Rigby, Initiation, 139. 26

22

of London, a club for the discussion of intellectual issues. However, some political interventions were made, and the League was the focus for one of these. In the years after the Second World War the Independent Labour Party and the Common Wealth party drew together politically. By this stage both were small bodies, and shared political perspectives. Moves towards fusion were made, and were unsuccessful, but some joint work around specific issues was undertaken. An example of this was a conference on worker’s control which took place on 25 April 1948. The best account of this conference, and the Leagues for Workers’ Control that resulted from it, is that given by J. C. Banks in The Libertarian, number 27, Summer 1987. (The Libertarian was the then journal of Common Wealth.) From perspective of this article, the main point to note from Banks’s account is that among the attenders at the conference were persons from the HOIL and the New Europe Group. (Also noted as attending was J. T. Murphy.) A follow-up to the conference saw a series of meetings on aspects of workers’ control. Two of the speakers at these were members of the Mitrinović circle, Harry Rutherford (who spoke on worker’s control and management on 10 June 1948) and Niall MacDermot (who spoke on ownership on 24 June 1948). 29 MacDermot, later a Labour MP and junior minister in the 1964-70 Labour governments, had been involved in HOIL from its early days. Following these meetings, a London Committee for Workers’ Control was set up, with plans for a delegate conference in November 1948. A statement calling delegates to the conference was issued, and Banks indicates that is was signed by C. B. Purdom – who had been editor of New Britain weekly in the 1930s – on behalf of the HOIL.30 At the conference, Banks suggests there were 120 delegates and 30 visitors. Seven of these were from the HOIL. Banks quotes in his account form the confidential report on the conference given by W. J. Taylor to the CW national committee: ‘The discussion was noteworthy for the useful comments put forward by the members of the House of Industry League’.31 After this, the League does not feature in Banks’s account of the various activities for workers’ control that resulted from this particular initiative. We can therefore conclude that, in fact, Reports of both meetings appeared in the Common Wealth Review (August 1948): 4, and of the second meeting in the Socialist Leader (3 July 1948): 4. 30 The full list of signatories is given by Banks, The Libertarian, no. 27 (1987): 16. 31 Ibid. 18. 29

23

the HOIL did survive the war in some form. It participated in attempts to get a movement going on the issue of workers’ control, and, as we have seen, its interventions impressed at least one other section of that movement. The New Europe Group continued, as noted, until 1957, and thus seems to be the final body in which the Mitrinović circle attempted to pursue its political interests. THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY LEAGUE Who were the members of the HOIL? By drawing upon accounts of the League in journals such as the Trade Unionist, documentation in the remaining archives of the League, and memoirs and memories, we can arrive at a fairly clear picture of just who the main figures in the League were. An important group of activists came from the Mitrinović circle. This includes the likes of Ralph Twentyman, Winifrid Gordon Fraser, Harry Rutherford and Orion Playfair. Many of these people had been involved in the New Britain Movement that preceded the League. Many of those who survived the Second World War continued to be associated with Mitrinović right up until his death in 1953. Indeed, some carried on afterwards in the activity of the New Atlantis Foundation, which, since the passing of the New Europe Group in the late 1950s and the end of the Renaissance Club in 1965, has been the last remaining organisation working on lines suggested by the thought of Mitrinović. J. T. Murphy, who, as noted, spoke behalf of the League, might perhaps not in the totally committed way of the others mentioned. Murphy had been involved with Mitrinović prior to the HOIL. His role in New Britain is noted in Rigby’s biography of Mitrinović, and a section of Murphy’s moving oration at Mitrinović’s funeral is also reproduced by Rigby.32 The connection with Murphy, it might be noted, continued after Mitrinović’s death, with some of the New Atlantis Foundation group attending Murphy’s funeral in 1965.33 A further section of HOIL members can be seen as coming from a circle around S. G. Hobson, which itself predated the HOIL. We should first note the significance of Hobson’s participation. Hobson had been the author of the original articles in the New Age in 1912 32 33

Rigby, Initiation, 187. Noted by V. MacDermot in “Interview”. Murphy died on 17 May 1965.

24

and 1913 on National Guilds. Hobson had a long and interesting career as a socialist activist, and apart from his involvement in the Guild movement had been a socialist candidate for parliament, Keir Hardie’s secretary and a notable Fabian dissident. His autobiography, Pilgrim to the Left, appeared in 1938 and the final few chapters directly touch upon the HOIL and related issues.34 Hobson’s account suggests that there had been a prior campaign around the issue of the House of Industry, run by him and some associates. Hobson had published a book, The House of Industry, in 1931.35 According to Hobson, there were delegate conferences on the idea in London, and meetings in other parts of the country.36 Hobson mentions a number of trade unionists who supported these initiatives, which he claims bore some fruit in resolutions passed by the Trades Union Congresses of 1932 and 1933. Among these supporters were Maurice Hann, the general secretary of the Shop Assistants’ Union,37 George Gibson, general secretary of the Mental Hospital and Institutional Workers’ Union (and subsequently the Confederation of Health Service Employees), and a TUC General Council member throughout this period,38 and Stephen Smith, general secretary of the national Federation of Professional Workers. (The latter appears to have been a federation of trades unions organising non-manual workers.)39 All three became vice-presidents of the House of Industry League. Hobson, Pilgrim, chapters 23-25. The House of Industry, 1931. Note that the foreword to this book was by A. M. Wall, secretary of London Trades Council, and A. A. Purcell, secretary of Manchester and Salford Trades Council. 36 Hobson, Pilgrim, 249 ff. 37 Some material on Hann can be found in Sir William Richardson’s history of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and its precursors, A Union of Many Trades, Manchester (undated, c. 1979). Interestingly, Hann signed a roundrobin letter announcing a new book club for persons associated with the labour movement published, for example, in The Clerk of October 1937. This appears to have been a projected alternative to the Left Book Club, other signatories including Fenner Brockway, J. F. Horrabin and Reginald Reynolds. 38 Gibson was on the General Council of the TUC from 1928 to 1948. He was secretary of the MHIWU from 1912 to 1946, and of COHSE from 1946 to 1947. Some details of his career can be found in Mick Carpenter, Working for Health, 1988, a history of COHSE and it precursors. 39 See the report of a regional conference of the Federation in the north-east in The Natsopa Journal, (May 1937): 8, which gives a good insight into the concerns and nature of the organisation. 34 35

25

Hobson suggests that his first contact with the Mitrinović circle came in 1932 when Winifrid Gordon Fraser wrote to him soliciting an article for the New Britain Quarterly. This tallies very closely with the records of the New Atlantis Foundation; the first letter to Sam Hobson in the files there dates from June 1932.40 The ideas of Mitrinović clearly made a deep impact on Hobson. It can be argued that his perspective on Guild Socialism actually changed as a result of his co-operation with Mitrinović. In particular, whereas he had been an advocate of a dual system of a political House of Commons and an economic House of Industry, he found, in his own words, ‘I could not evade the issue of a House of Culture.’41 Evidence to support this comes in two forms. Firstly, in the 1931 book, The House of Industry, there is no mention of it. In the 1936 book, Functional Socialism,42 significantly dedicated to Valerie Cooper, a key member of the Mitrinović circle, the notion of a three-fold state, with Houses of Commons, Industry and Culture, is mentioned in the first chapter. Secondly, in the archives of a House of Culture League is floated and the idea of the House of Culture discussed in some detail. This dates from December 1937.43 The mutual respect between Mitrinović and Hobson can be seen in the fact noted by Rigby that, when Hobson died, it was Mitrinović who paid for his funeral.44 Thus, there was a second group in the HOIL, consisting of Hobson and his trade union allies (some of whom, like Maurice Hann, were veterans of the earlier Guild movement). We also know from Hobson’s autobiography of his connections with W. T. Colyer, a lecturer at the Central Labour College and prolific author of articles in Plebs, and J. H. Harley, who eorked at Glasgow University but who had been a chairman of the National Union of Journalists.45 Both gave lectures for the League in the pre-war period. Two other figures prominent in the HOIL were closely connected with the National Trade Union Club: W. Arthur Peacock, who became W. G. Fraser Letter File, New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. Hobson, Pilgrim, 256. 42 S. G. Hobson, Functional Socialism (London: Stanley Nott, 1936). 43 Document in files of New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. 44 Rigby, Initiation, 166. 45 Presumably this J. H. Harley is the same person as the J. H. Harley who wrote Syndicalism, a short book, fairly sympathetic to its subject. (Undated, but almost certainly published between March 1912 and August 1914.) 40 41

26

HOIL’s secretary around June 1937,46 and Ben Tillett, a vice-president of HOIL. Peacock’s autobiography provides interesting reminiscences about Tillett, the Club, Mitrinović and to some extent the HOIL.47 It is not clear quite how Tillett came into contact with the Mitrinović circle: Ralph Twentyman felt that it may have been through S. G. Hobson, but that there was a possibility that the first contact may have been made as early in 1926, at the time of the General Strike.48 Accounts of the life of Tom Mann such as Joseph White’s make it clear that Mann and Ben Tillett were very closely connected at the time the HOIL was active in the pre-Second World War period, and it seems reasonable to assume that Tillett was the connection that resulted in Tom Mann signing the Council for Workers’ Control in Industry manifesto. (The same may well have applied with Jack Tanner.) Aside from these three groups of people that the League drew upon, there were some other figures from the labour movement who had connection with the League; one such was Ben Smith MP, a vicepresident of the HOIL, sometime General Organiser of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Ralph Twentyman pointed out in interview that the dominant figure in that union, Ernest Bevin, was at the time of the HOIL hostile to propaganda for the type of industrial unionism necessary for Guild Socialist schemes.49 Interestingly, Coates and Topham note that Smith had moved a resolution favouring industrial unionism as the basis for amalgamation at a National Transport Workers’ Federation Annual General Council meeting at Bristol in June 1917. The defeat of this resolution by 155,000 to 26,000 is seen by them as the end of the debate on industrial, as opposed to general, unionism in the union. Ernest Bevin had opposed the resolution from a general unionist standpoint.50 The members of the League were, then, a varied collection involving youthful followers of Mitrinović, veteran socialist and The report of the Churches conference in the July 1937 edition of the Trade Unionist, by ‘S. G.’, notes Peacock’s taking up the position of HOIL secretary. See p. 7. 47 Peacock, Yours, chapter 6 for the National Trade Union Club, chapter 7 for Ben Tillett and chapter 10 for Mitrinović. 48 Ralph Twentyman. Letter to Mike Tyldesley, 4 October 1995, supplementary to “Interview”. 49 “Interview”. 50 Ken Coates and Tony Topham, The History of the Transport ad General Workers’ Union, vol. 1, pt II (Oxford, 1991), 634. 46

27

trades union agitators, and a smallish number of trade union activists and functionaries. It is important to remember that the League was a small organisation, and Ralph Twentyman remembers it as a network of persons trying to spread its ideas, often through personal contact and discussion.51 The involvement of a number of trades unionists in the HOIL is clearly a point of some interest, and the possibility that may be a particular explanation for their participation needs consideration. In fact, the trade unionists involved seem a rather disparate group. Some were clearly involved in non-manual trades unionism (Stephen Smith, of the National Federation of Professional Workers), whereas others were from manual unions (several from the Union of Postal Workers, for instance). Politically, it is also hard to generalise. Ben Tillett had been identified with the pro-war wing of the labour movement during the First World War, but Tom Mann, who signed the workers’ control manifesto in 1938, had long standing left connections. Two less well known participants in HOIL activities also emphasise the difficulty of generalisation. Pat O’Gorman, editor of the National Union of Country Officers’ journal, and involved in speaking on behalf of the Council for Workers’ Control of Industry,52 was clearly associated with the left of the trade union movement.53 On the other hand, George Light, signatory to the Council’s workers’ control manifesto, was connected to the Oxford Group, precursor of Moral Re-Armament.54 The only common factors appear to be either a personal interest in Guild Socialism, or involvement in a trade union with significant Guild Socialist traditions, 55 or a connection with the National Trade Union Club. The august 1938 edition of the Millgate Monthly, in an article concerning the National Trade Union Club, referred to ‘The Guild “Interview”. Documents in the files of the New Atlantis Foundation, Ditchling. 53 See Carpenter, Working, 194-5. 54 See the Trade Unionist (November 1937), ‘The Members’ Who’s Who’, where Light’s Yorkshire trade union background and his connection to the Oxford Group are mentioned. 55 A clear example of this would be the Union of Postal Workers. Alan Clinton, in Post Office Workers. A Trade Union and Social History (1984), chapter 11, shows the continuing importance of the Guild Socialist tradition in the UPW. UPW activists involved in HOIL activities included Francis Andrews, editor of The Post, the UPW journal, and W. T. Hart, organising secretary of the union’s Metropolitan branch. 51 52

28

Socialist Revival, which finds expression in the work of the House of Industry League’.56 Whether the HOIL represented a full-blown revival of Guild Socialism is perhaps questionable. However, it is worth remembering that Guild Socialist ideas of workers’ control were not at the top of the agenda of the labour movement in the late 1930s and the 1940s. The existence of a body seeking to propound them in the distinctly unfavourable political climate of the time, which saw the consolidation of versions of socialism – Stalinist communism and social democracy – which gave scant consideration of these questions, is in itself notable. Even down to the present, socialist seeking to find an alternative to the perceived inadequacies of Leninism and what passes today for social democracy, seek to draw upon the heritage of Guild Socialism.57 The HOIL deserves to be remembered for seeking to keep the flower of the idea of workers’ control alive in a difficult time.

Archives New Atlantis Foundation archives, Ditchling Bibliography Bramwell, Anna. Ecology in the 20th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Carpenter, Mick. Working for Health. The History of the Confederation of the Health Service Employees. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. Clinton, Alan. Post Office Workers. A Trade Union and Social History. London-Boston-Sydney: G.Allen and Unwin, 1984. “Comments of a Clubman’ column”. (Trade Unionist, July 1937). Coates, Ken and Topham, Tony. The History of the Transport ad General Workers’ Union, vol. 1, pt II. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. ‘Trade Unionists’ West End Club’, Millgate Monthly (August 1938): 660. It is interesting to note that this journal also featured articles on the idea of the House of Industry by Arthur Peacock in April 1938 and on workers’ control by Sam Hobson in June 1938. 57 See Peter Hain, Ayes to the Left (1995), 17-19, for a recent example. 56

29

Hain, Peter. Ayes to the Left. A Future for Socialism. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995. Hobson S. G. Pilgrim to the Left. New York : Longmans ; London : E. Arnold, 1938. Liverpool Daily Post (16 November 1936). Functional Socialism. London: Stanley Nott, 1936. Martinez-Alier, Juan (with K. Schlupmann). Ecological Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Merricks, Linda. The World Made New. Frederick Soddy, science, politics and environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Northbourne, Lord. Look to the Land London: Dent, 1940. “The House of Industry League”. Trade Unionist (September 1936) “Trade Unionists’ West End Club’. Millgate Monthly, (August 1938). The Libertarian 27 (1987). The Natsopa Journal (May 1937). Trade Unionist (March 1937). Trade Unionist (October 1937) White, Joseph. Tom Mann. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991. Wrexham Leader (20 November 1936).

30

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch3 323 Mitrinović, D.

Andrew Rigby

TRAINING FOR COSMOPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP IN THE 1930S: THE PROJECT OF DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ

  Generations of peace seekers have sought an alternative modeling of the world beyond the Westphalian system of separate sovereign states. Recent global trends have raised the possibility of new institutional frameworks and processes for promoting world peace, including that of “cosmopolitan democracy.” If the utopian vision of cosmopolitan democracy is to become real, then the development of new political structures must be accompanied by a growing consciousness of what it means to be a cosmopolitan citizen. This paper examines the methods developed by one “utopian” to prepare his coworkers and followers for cosmopolitan citizenship in London during the years prior to the Second World War.   INTRODUCTION   There is a tradition of thinking in which it is argued that world peace can never be achieved so long as the world is divided up into separate sovereign states.1 Certainly it would appear that central to the establishment of the modern state system was the growth in capacity For an overview of the history of Western political philosophers who have advocated a “cosmopolis,” a world state composed of world citizens, see Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Government: The Cosmopolitan Idea in the History of Western Political Thought (London: MacMillan, 1996). 1

31

to organize the means of violence and to use this capability within the territorial boundaries of the emergent state and in competition with other states.2 Of course, this conviction that a world without war must be a world without states is most closely associated with the anarchist tradition. Thus, two centuries ago William Godwin argued that war is “the inseparable ally of political institutions.”3 This view was echoed several generations later by the American Randolph Bourne, who was convinced by the barbarism of the First World War that “war is the health of the state,” for it is when engaged in its key function of organizing its subjects into a herd to fight another herd and extracting the resources necessary for war that a state reveals itself at its most coercive and “state-like.”4 More recently, observers and analysts far removed from the anarchist camp have voiced similar views, albeit less provocatively than Bourne. Thus, the military historian Michael Howard has suggested that “war is inherent in the very structure of the state and so long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility.”5 For generations, utopians and peace seekers have envisaged an alternative ordering of the world, beyond the divisions of nationstates, a cosmopolitan world order. Over recent years certain trends have become apparent that can be read as opening up the possibilities for the realization of such an alternative. Under the impact of global capitalism we have witnessed the undermining of state-based economic autonomy with the “free” flow of goods and capital to and fro around the world. At the cultural level we have seen the growth of global media and communication networks that encompass the world and enable us all to watch the same soap operas and be exposed to the same advertising campaigns, while also giving us a sense of belonging to a shared world. Politically we have seen the emergence of a host of international governmental organizations and agencies that cut across nation-state boundaries and impinge on state autonomy, alongside the growth of regional suprastate groupings such as the European See Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 3 Peter Marshall, ed., The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin (London: Freedom Press, 1986), 55. 4 Quoted in Brian Martin, Uprooting War (London: Freedom Press, 1984), 115. 5 Michael Howard, The Causes of War (Hemel Hempstead, U.K.: Unwin Paperbacks, 1984), 25. 2

32

Union. As a consequence of all these developments, there has been a radical erosion of state sovereignty, and state boundaries have become increasingly porous. For the skeptic all this marks the victorious march of global capitalism embracing the whole world within its corporate grip. Viewed in a more positive light, however, these trends of regional and global interconnectedness can be seen as pointing the way towards new possibilities, including emergent forms of global governance and the transcendence of the Westphalian model of separate political powers pursuing their own interests, if necessary by resort to force and violence.6 It becomes possible to imagine new institutional frameworks for promoting world peace, accompanied by global demilitarization, a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources, concern for environmental sustainability, and mechanisms for nonviolent dispute resolution.7 A more balanced view of current trends, however, would acknowledge another source of the erosion of state sovereignty: the growth of what might be termed substate nationalisms, separatist movements appealing to their shared identity as a “people” in order to justify their struggle for national liberation, a struggle which invariably involves the demand for their own separate nation-state. The reasons for such centrifugal political movements are various, but one factor at least would appear to be common: the emerging collective conviction that the interests of the “people” are not and cannot be adequately represented within the framework of the existing state. The issue that this raises for those who seek world peace through a new global order is clear: How can one deal with the challenges to democracy posed by globalization? How can one develop and expand vertical and horizontal accountability so that people can influence not just the decisions made in their own states but also those made in power centers beyond their state boundary which directly affect them? It is in response to such questions that theorists (and dreamers) have begun to adumbrate a cosmopolitan model of democracy. David Held has described the core features of such a vision: “a cosmopolitan democracy describes a world where citizens must come to enjoy 6 See David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), 90–91. 7 See, for example, R. C. Johansen, “A Policy Framework for World Security,” in World Security: Trends and Challenges at Century’s End, ed. M. Klare and E. Thomas (New York: St. Martins, 1991), 441–44.

33

multiple citizenships. They are citizens of their own communities, of the wider regions where they live, and of a cosmopolitan global community. We must develop institutions that reflect multiple issues, questions and problems that link people together regardless of their particular nation-state.”8 But what does it mean to be a cosmopolitan citizen, a citizen of the world? Citizenship involves “a collection of rights and obligations which give individuals a formal legal identity,” which are invariably anchored within a particular, bounded political community or state. 9 To be a citizen is to have concrete rights and duties vis-à-vis that state. Citizenship consequently involves a degree of “social closure”; the rules relating to citizenship indicate the criteria for inclusion in, and exclusion from, a particular political community. By contrast, the claim to world citizenship involves no formal legal status, but rather invokes some vague sense of responsibility for the well - being of the rest of humanity, an obligation that rests uneasily with the narrow commitments owed to one’s fellow citizens within a particular state. This was the sentiment expressed by Socrates when he affirmed that “I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world.” It was echoed by Virginia Woolf when she wrote, in the context of the militaristic nationalism of the 1930s, “as a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman I am a citizen of the whole world.”10 Some people have sought to go beyond moral exhortation and have tried to concretize their status as world citizens. The American socialist Eugene Debs justified his antimilitarism and opposition to the First World War by observing that “I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.”11 Debs went to prison for his beliefs, as have thousands of other conscientious objectors to war throughout history who have placed their commitment to humanity above and beyond their duties as a citizen of a particular state. After the Second World War, the American Garry Davis burned his passport, declared himself “World Citizen Number One,” and D. Held, “Globalisation and Cosmopolitan Democracy,” Peace Review, 9 (1997): 309–14, 310. 9 See B. S. Turner, “Citizenship Studies: A General Theory,” Citizenship Studies, 1 (1997): 5–18; 5. 10 Virginia Woolf, The Three Guineas (London: Hogarth Press, 1938). 11 Quoted in R. Cooney and H. Michalowski, eds., The Power of the People (Philadelphia, Pa.: New Society, 1987), 52. 8

34

began issuing world passports that he had designed and produced himself.12 Certain spies have justified their “treachery” by reference to their sense of loyalty and commitment to a political community far wider than the state of which they held formal citizenship,13 while in recent years there has been a growth in transnational social movements as networks through which individuals can translate their cosmopolitan commitments into action.14 A repeated refrain of such transnational movements, especially those concerned with environmental, peace, and social justice issues, has been that we should “act locally, think globally.” At the core of such prompting is the belief that there is a causal relationship between the micro and the macro level, between how we live our personal and collective lives in our local settings and global phenomena. But how is this relationship to be comprehended? How can one think globally? It would seem clear that the ability to grasp this relationship between the local and the global, the particular and the universal, would be a central feature of what we might call a cosmopolitan consciousness. If the vision of a cosmopolitan democracy is to become real, then the development of new institutions and centers of political power and decision- making must be accompanied, indeed preceded, by a growing awareness of ourselves as members of a common humanity, as cosmopolitan citizens. For this to happen, new paradigms are required which enable us to envisage and make sense of the dynamic relationship between our own lives and the well- being of humanity as a whole. But of equal importance is the development of new ways of concretizing such worldviews. This is the utopian project. In the remainder of this essay I propose to examine the worldview of one such utopian, and explore the methods he used to prepare his associates for cosmopolitan citizenship.   THE WORLDVIEW OF DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIC   Dimitrije Mitrinovic lived in England from 1914 until his death in August 1953. He had been born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1887 and in See Garry Davis, My Country Is the World (London: MacDonald, 1962). See Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession (London: Guild, 1986). 14 See J. Smith et al., eds., Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997). 12 13

35

his youth had become a key figure in the “Young Bosnian” movement, a nationalist grouping of south Slavs who sought a cultural and moral renaissance as part of the struggle against the yoke of the AustroHungarian empire.15 By 1914 Mitrinovic had moved to Munich, where he became associated with circles around Wassily Kandinsky intent on trying to establish a network of world figures from the arts, humanities, and sciences who, it was felt, would be able to exercise a positive influence on the course of history through their cultural and spiritual leadership. At the outbreak of the First World War Mitrinovic made his way to London, where he continued with his efforts to recruit “big names” for the proposed network, and in the process was introduced to Alfred Orage, the editor of The New Age, a leading weekly of that period with a political orientation toward guild socialism and financial reform along social credit lines. Commencing in August 1920, Mitrinovic contributed a series of articles to The New Age under the collective title of “World Affairs.” The overall theme was the portrayal of the world as a complex evolving organism, whose organs were constituted by the different races and nations, each having its own character relating to its proper function in the context of the world as a whole. The individual was likened to a single cell within the organism, each a constituent part of a common humanity sharing a single world. He affirmed that history was evolving in the direction of the conscious realization by individuals of their membership of this unified whole. In other words, the world as an organism was evolving in the direction of self-consciousness.16 Once that was achieved, then the utopian dream of a world without war would be realizable, for, as Edward Carpenter had observed in 1917:   A fuller overview of Mitrinovic’s life and ideas can be found in Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinovic (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1984). See also H. Rutherford, ed., Certainly Future: Selected Writings of Dimitrije Mitrinovic (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1987). 16 In this emphasis on the nature of cosmic evolution Mitrinovic was drawing upon a long tradition, but he was particularly influenced by the ideas of Vladimir Solovyov. See J. Sutton, The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (London: MacMillan, 1988), esp. 67–70. 15

36

A healthy body is the most perfect society conceivable. What does the hand say when a piece of work is demanded of it? Does it bargain first for what reward it is to receive... or the foot decline to take us on a journey till it knows what special gain is to accrue to it thereby? Not so; but each limb and cell does the work which is before it to do, and (such is the utopian law) the fact of its doing the work causes the circulation to flow to it, and it is nourished and fed in proportion to its service. And we have to ask whether the same may not be the law of a healthy human society?17   Like Carpenter and others of his generation, long before the emergence of the contemporary ecology movements, Mitrinovic was advocating the model of the organism as the only paradigm which could embrace the dynamic tensions of unity in and through diversity. As he wrote in The New Age:   Nothing less than such a psychological view of the world can possibly enable us to form correct judgements, since, in its absence, no other criterion of value can ever be adopted than that of self-preservation or self-extension by means of force Unless there is and can consciously be conceived a non-arbitrary common world-responsibility, resting equally according to their respective genius, situation, and history, upon every race and nation, nothing remains but to abandon every issue to mere force. That then would be right that succeeded in establishing itself; and every effort to survive and to dominate would become justified.18   Here Mitrinovic was advocating the organic analogy as a paradigm, which could encompass all the diversity of humanity, and yet locate this within an overarching conception of the unity of the whole. But throughout his life Mitrinovic talked, wrote, and acted as if humanity actually was an organism, and that the world really was one great mind in the process of becoming self-conscious. This was not Edward Carpenter, “Non-Governmental Society,” reprinted in Freedom: Anarchist Review, 42, no. 4 (February 27, 1981): 13. 18 The New Age, September 9, 1920, 279. 17

37

because he had some esoteric insight into the ground of all being, the realm of Absolute Truth/Reality underpinning the epiphenomena of everyday life, of which only the mystics of all religious traditions have direct experience. His reasons were more pragmatic. At one level, the notion of humanity as a developing organism was a “creative fiction,” a source of insight into the interrelatedness of all humanity.19 But, if the immanent potential within this conception of humanity was to be realized, then it was necessary for people to act as if it were real and realizable. Only then was there a possibility of humanity creating a world that would serve as a common household for us all. Reality, truth, was what one created and, as William James observed, “there are cases... where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming.”20 While he was developing these ideas, Mitrinovic was widening and deepening his circle of friends and associates in London.21 Although at one level his concern was with sketching out a dynamic model of the world as a single whole, much of his daily life was focused on working with individuals, helping them to develop their awareness of their potential role in this creative process. For, if humanity is an organism, and individuals are its constitutive cells, then it is only through the self-consciousness of individuals that humanity itself can become a self-conscious organic entity. Therefore, true self-consciousness entailed awareness of oneself as a unique individual within the whole of humanity, past, present and future. Hence, if the world was to change, individuals must change. “Self-change for world change” was the maxim. Like many others before and since, Mitrinovic believed that the competitive individualism and egotism of the contemporary age had reached its limit. It had to be transcended. The key transformative process was the assumption by individuals of responsibility to live Mitrinovic was influenced in his approach to “creative fictions” by Hans Vaihinger. See H. Vaihinger, The Philosophy of As If (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952). 20 William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919), 255. 21 The main sources for Mitrinovic’s worldview can be gauged by the books and authors that he classed as “ultimate” in discussions with friends and followers. The list of those sources that he considered to constitute the bedrock of his ideas included the basic texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Eastern religions, the Kaballa, Christian “dogmatics of the Greek and Roman churches,” Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Leibnitz. 19

38

their lives in association with others, in full consciousness of their commitments as fellow members of a common humanity. Just as an organism grows from a seed, so the organic growth of “Universal Humanity” had to start with individuals prepared freely to pledge themselves to one another in open and equal alliance. The important task was to plant the seed. In any organism, whatever happens in any one part affects the whole. Therefore, as humanity constitutes an organic whole, a change in consciousness anywhere, if sufficiently significant, could have a profound effect on the rest of the organism.                                     This was to become the dominant motif in Mitrinovic’s life: the preparation of groups of individuals for a new world-transforming initiative, to which he gave the name Senate. Their function would be to work in and through all levels of society, helping people and groups to relate to each other as constituent members of a common humanity. Their key resource would be the ability to view all human problems from the perspective of the world as a whole. His vision was of a world permeated by alliances of individuals who were committed to humanity and to one another, who were equipped with what we might now call a global or cosmopolitan consciousness, who had the capacity to facilitate the integration of all the different parts, interests, and groupings within the world, and so help create and sustain a human household on a global scale. It was in the 1920s that Mitrinovic began to experiment with others on the ways to promote this new consciousness. His main vehicle during this period was the British section of the International Society for Individual Psychology, commonly known as the Adler Society, which Mitrinovic founded in 1927. If one looked toward a new age when humanity would take conscious control of global evolution, then it was vital that those seeking to play a seminal role in this process should themselves develop their self-knowledge and capacity for selfdirection. As part of this quest, Mitrinovic found the ideas of Alfred Adler particularly fruitful, with his emphasis on the responsibility of individuals for their actions and feelings, and his belief in the innate potentiality of human beings for cooperation and mutual aid.22 See Lewis Way, Alfred Adler: An Introduction to His Psychology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), esp. 201–10. 22

39

The Adler Society in London became a center for lectures, seminars, and workshops exploring different dimensions of the relationship between the individual and the macro-level of global transformation. One of the initiatives to emerge was a society called the New Europe Group. Launched in 1931 with Patrick Geddes as its first president, its proclaimed aim was to promote European federation from below, as a step toward world federation. Throughout all the different schemes and blueprints for European and world federation that emerged out of the New Europe Group, the dominant theme was the pivotal role to be played by individuals in developing an awareness of their identity as members of a global human community. Moreover, this awareness was not something that could be developed purely at the level of intellectual discourse; it needed to be practiced and made manifest in daily life through the creation of new types of relationships with those with whom one lived and worked. It seems clear that whatever the proclaimed aim of Mitrinovic’s public initiatives, such as the Adler Society and the New Europe Group, one of their prime functions was to create settings within which potential recruits to his inner circle(s) might be identified, and where those belonging to such core networks might develop their understanding and their practice of cosmopolitan citizenship. Nowhere was this made more clear than during the mid-1930s when he found himself as the directing power behind what became, for a brief period, a burgeoning political movement: the New Britain Movement. The original New Britain Group had emerged out of the New Europe Group. Its main activity was the publication of a journal, the New Britain Quarterly, which first appeared in October 1932.23 Mitrinovic’s thesis was that as the 1930s unfolded, individual liberty was increasingly threatened by the “block state,” the overcentralization of power and control as manifested by communism and fascism. The need was for a “revolution of order,” an alternative “above and between” the communist and fascist revolutions. The vision was of a conscious, “voluntary revolution” guided by the twin principles of devolution and federation. Each of these principles represented one The first issue of New Europe Quarterly was published in October 1932. The fourth issue of October 1933 appeared under the title of The New Atlantis. After two issues of New Atlantis, the issue of April 1934 appeared under the title New Albion, which became in turn New Britain in the autumn of 1934. 23

40

of the two dominant forces that drove human life: that of diversity, which tended to preserve human differences and freedom, and the force of cohesion necessary to sustain solidarity and unity. Drawing on the ideas of Rudolph Steiner with regard to the “Threefold State,” the New Britain Group advocated the functional division of public life into three spheres: economic, political, and cultural. Each should be guided by different principles: equality in the economic realm, fellowship in the political domain, and liberty in the cultural sphere. In accordance with the principle of equality appropriate to the economic dimension of life, the New Britain Group advocated a guaranteed social wage for all.24 Furthermore, in the tradition of guild socialism, control of each sphere of production should be devolved to those who worked in it, with delegates from the workshop level meeting to coordinate economic affairs at district and regional levels, culminating in a national Economic Chamber where major aspects of economic policy would be determined. Political life should be organized according to the best Proudhonian principles of devolution and federation, but the basis would be geographical. Each village or ward would elect a representative to the county level, then delegates from the county level would meet at the regional level, and so on up to a national political chamber, the main concern of which would be the “state-like” functions of preserving law and order at home and deciding upon foreign policy abroad. A national Cultural Chamber would deal with problems of general human well-being, including the fulfillment of basic needs such as housing, health care, education, and matters relating to religion, the arts, and the sciences. The members of this Chamber would not be elected representatives or delegates, but rather the acknowledged experts in the relevant areas, each of whom would be kept informed of needs and conditions around the country by a network of local and regional cultural councils. From the start, the New Britain Group pursued a very active propaganda program, with a stream of leaflets, pamphlets, policy statements, and public meetings, and in 1933 a weekly newspaper, They were influenced by the ideas of Frederick Soddy, particularly in regard to the argument that social reform could only succeed if accompanied by reform of the banking and monetary system. See F. Soddy, “Monetary Reform for New Britain,” New Britain, May 24, 1933. Reprinted in V. MacDermot, ed., The New Europe Group and New Britain Movement: Collected Publications, 1932–1957 (Bradford: New Atlantis Foundation, 1997), 455–58. 24

41

the New Britain Weekly, was published. Sales rose to over 32,000, and Mitrinovic availed himself of the paper’s columns to write a second series of “World Affairs” articles under the pseudonym of M. M. Cosmoi. He reiterated his theme that the responsibility for the creation of a new age lay with alliances of individuals aware of themselves as unique individuals and as members of a global community. “The chief issue of the world-crisis is the birth of the Spirit of our Whole in our single souls. From the New Birth in singles depends the era which is in front of us: the era of world planning and planetary building, of luxurious plenty of material abundance.”25 For those who found Mitrinovic’s elliptical style difficult to follow, the editor regularly included a clear programmatic statement of what New Britain stood for: the transformation of the economic and financial system, the establishment of the threefold social state, the federation of European nations leading to the formation of a world federation, the centrality of the individual in the transformation process, and the significance of the “personal alliance” established between all who believed in this project. Tensions soon emerged between those, including the editor of the weekly, who sought to turn the new movement into a political party, and those around Mitrinovic who saw the movement as just one phase in the deeper process of sowing the seeds of a new world order. Within little more than a year of organizational life, the New Britain Movement had split. Mitrinovic was left with his inner core of friends and associates, and during the years immediately prior to the Second World War he embarked upon his most sustained educational experiment, seeking to prepare his closest coworkers for living in the new world which they were trying to create. SENATE INITIATIVE: TRAINING FOR COSMOPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP   The Role of Senators How to prepare people to play their part in the evolution of a new cosmopolitan world order? The answer for Mitrinovic was fairly clear. If world change starts with individual change, then the important task 25

New Britain Weekly, 1, no. 10 (July 26, 1933): 298.

42

was not just to help individuals become aware of their role as cells of the emerging organism but also to make a start in the here-and-now, anticipating the problems of social order and conflict management in the new world that was being created. These were the twin tasks that Mitrinovic took upon himself, and he proceeded to orchestrate the lives of those around him accordingly. At the core of his project was the deep belief that once an organic social order had come into existence, and the social state had been created based on the twin principles of devolution and federation, there would still be a need for people to fulfill an essential integrative function. That is, even when the institutional framework for the cosmopolitan order had been established, there would still remain the old anarchist dilemma of how social order might be maintained without a coercive state apparatus. It was Mitrinovic’s belief that this function of conflict resolution and transformation would be fulfilled by people (senators) who, while going about their everyday life at work and in the community, would be able to assist parties to a conflict to move “above and beyond” their immediate dispute. How would this be achieved? Firstly by helping people to realize and acknowledge their “true interests.” To quote one of Mitrinovic’s most ardent and articulate associates, Harry Rutherford:   The aim of the senate function in any group is to induce all the members of the group to discover and express their true will—what in their innermost selves they really mean and value—rather than the prejudices and false images of themselves that they have unconsciously taken as their own, and thus demonstrate that the real will of each is not incompatible with that of others but rather is complementary to them. Thus decisions would be reached by common agreement and not by force.26   In other words, as humanity at some fundamental level is characterized by an organic unity, then it follows that at that deep level there can be no contradiction between the “true” interests of members of that organism. Thus, alongside Polonius in Hamlet, one could affirm that “to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” 26

Harry Rutherford, “Senate” (unpublished paper, 1988), 4.

43

Consequently, the next task of the senator would be to help the parties to a conflict to locate their dispute within the broader organic context of humanity as a whole, from which standpoint they would be able to work out their appropriate relationship with each other. To quote Rutherford again:   The senator knows that no problem can be solved on the level at which it occurs, but the truth must always be looked for “above, between and beyond the extremes and opposites.” . . . Most arguments about ideas assume that either one or the other of two points of view is right, and that they are mutually exclusive. But senate views reality as an organic wholeness in which opposites must be included In every conflict, therefore, they are continually trying to see, and to make visible to others, what are the real valid opposites involved. They are actively working to get though the undergrowth of verbiage, false assumptions or neurosis in which most conflicts are wrapped; to find out and make clear and explicit what both sides really mean—what is the final value which constitutes the real significance of each, and how they can be functionally and humanly related.27 The vision is of a future society characterized by an organic unity that is manifested in and through diversity, within which an essential integrative function will be performed at all levels and in all walks of life by people—call them senators, peace makers, or cosmopolitan citizens— possessed of a deep understanding of the fundamental unity which underpins the flux of human affairs. It is a completely utopian vision. But it was Mitrinovic’s conviction that the only way to move toward that vision was to act as if it were realizable. Consequently the group life he orchestrated during the late 1930s was directed to training his intimate associates for this function.   The Universalization of the Individual   There were between thirty and forty people gathered around Mitrinovic in London during the four or five years prior to the Second World War. The bulk of them were young, idealistic university 27

Ibid., 9–10.

44

graduates who had become involved in the New Britain Movement and had gradually been attracted to the central group at its heart. One of these, albeit not a university graduate, was Alan Watts, who was to become well known as one of the leading Western authorities on Zen Buddhism. In his autobiography Watts recalled that “the atmosphere of Mitrinovic fascinated me—his humour, the power of his eyes and voice, his secretive and night-owl habits, his oracular way of writing (under the pseudonym of M. M. Cosmoi) and his exotic tastes in art and literature.”28 If individuals were to act as cosmopolitan citizens, able to comprehend and communicate the interests of the whole of humanity, then they needed training in what might be termed, following Otto Weininger, “the universalisation of the individual.”29 In other words, they needed to be able to identify with the rest of humanity in a very real sense, by developing within themselves an awareness of as wide a range of human qualities (and vices) as possible. Consequently, an important part of the training which Mitrinovic directed was the understanding of different cultures and worldviews. Learning to appreciate the food and wine of different lands, along with their folk tales and music, during evenings out at London restaurants was a part of this process. According to Alan Watts, Mitrinovic “used to take us to dinner in the Hungarian, Greek and Russian restaurants of Soho, order six dif-ferent dishes, and mix them all up.”30 It was also important that these potential world citizens could speak different languages. One member, fascinated by Hindu philosophy, was encouraged to learn Sanskrit. Another was advised to study under the Egyptologist Margaret Murray. Group members were expected to familiarize themselves with different religions and belief systems, with regular study sessions on philosophy and comparative religions. Most of these evening sessions were led by Mitrinovic, with his “pupils” taking notes as he talked. Indeed, one of the main features of the time the group spent together was the amount of talking that went on, as one of the more “part-time” participants recalled: “he Alan Watts, In My Own Way (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 110. For Weininger, the hallmark of a “genius” was a person who was aware within himor herself of the full range of human emotions and qualities, and as a consequence could understand and empathize with a whole range of human types. Hence “the genius is the man [sic] who contains in himself the greatest number of oth-ers in the most active way.” Otto Weininger, Sex and Character (London: Heinemann, n.d.), 107. 30 Watts, In My Own Way, 109. 28 29

45

would sit arguing hour after hour with his followers. The technique was strange, sometimes bewildering, and I think not very effective. All day, and sometimes until the early hours of the morning, Mitrinovic would sit discussing matters. Talk would go from subject to subject. Politics and economics, philosophy and the occult, psychology came into the picture too ”31 But the discussions and the other focused activities were all taking place within the context of a wider educational process that was an integral part of the group life. As one of Mitrinovic’s most committed young followers confided, over forty years later:   ... as a young person at that time I received in common with my companions a great widening of my general cultural horizons—in music, in art and in literature. We heard wonderful music from his collection of classical records Books on art, with great reproductions of great paintings were available to us, and sometimes given to us to keep as our own. We were taken to art exhibitions, also to museums, and our sense of discrimination was encouraged. 32 Another concurred: “I think that all of us would agree that our general cultural education was greatly increased and widened. We were made to form our own judgements on all we saw, heard or read.”33 Alongside this general exposure to different cultures and ways of interpreting the world, Mitrinovic also guided his followers along a path of direct experiential training.   CREATING AN ORGANIC SOCIAL ORDER   Personal Alliance   Mitrinovic created around him a community of people, who had come together to share their lives not because they were tied by Arthur Peacock, Yours Fraternally (London: Pendulum, 1945), 88. H. C. Rutherford, personal communication to author. 33 The bulk of Mitrinovic’s books are now held in a special collection of 4,500 volumes at the J. B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford, West Yorkshire, U.K. 31 32

46

bonds of blood and kinship but because of their shared commitment to the utopian venture. Given the seriousness with which they viewed this project, it was felt necessary for each member to make a deep and fundamental commitment to each and every member of the community. After all, if each and every thing is mutually interdependent, then each person was responsible for the well-being of the other. Hence, each member made an irrevocable commitment to the others, which they termed Personal Alliance, and which was marked by an appropriate ceremony and rite de passage.34 As one of their number reflected: “Genuine community is the association of human beings—not because they belong to the same tribe or church or party, but simply because they are human. Yet it must be personal, a personal concern about particulars, about the unique beings each of us are.”35   Truth-Telling   This acceptance of others, with all their personal idiosyncrasies and frailties, had as its counterpart an equally serious commitment to “truth-speaking.” Before senators could grasp the interconnectedness of the world, they had to know themselves. And for this the help of others was required, if the protective layers of pretension and egotism were to be discarded. Indeed, it was the commitment that each had made to each other that made bearable the distress caused by the barbed shafts of truth that lacerated the self-esteem of group members as they were subjected to truth-telling sessions. For one “victim” the pain was all too real:   The technique was simple. Six or seven of us would meet for a session of three or four hours, generally late at night, for one’s unconscious was supposed to be less remote in the deep night. One of the group would start, perhaps by criticising something I had done Against that criticism I would defend myself. By this time we were fairly launched, and gradually were out in deep waters. A member of the See Watts, In My Own Way, 123, for an account of his “admission” into the community. 35 Watson Thomson, Turning into Tomorrow (New York: Philosophical Library, 1966), 9. 34

47

group would then say, in language that lacked nothing of brutality and candour, exactly what he, more frequently she (which made it worse!), thought of me. I was an unprincipled liar; or a shallow, pretentious poseur; a hollow insincere tub-thumper; an impossibly vain, egotistic trumpet; a twister. And much else. . . . Frequently those group meetings ended in electric storms. After they closed, we all made our way to a cafe, generally Lyon’s Corner House, because it was open all night, for a meal, and the atmosphere cooled down. We were good friends once more.36   Group Work   The overall group project was to create in microcosm an organic social order, within which the fulfillment of each individual was a necessary condition for the flourishing of the wider community. In real life no one could fulfill themselves through the performance of a single function. So Mitrinovic took it upon himself to create a constantly changing social environment within which members would be called upon to play different roles, fulfill different functions, in relation to the grouping in which they found themselves.37 The aim was to create the contexts in which the participants might not only learn about themselves as individuals, but also begin to acquire the necessary aptitudes of senators in terms of an appreciation of all the many facets of human nature and behavior. As one of those who participated in this experience observed, it was easy to relate to people you liked, but it was far more difficult “to see every other member of the group as an individual, to see their specialities, all the ways that each one of us could work with one another. These were the different contexts he was trying to create, so that we all knew in what different ways we could meet together and integrate.”38 D. R. Davies, In Search of Myself (London: Godfrey Bles, 1961), 141–42. Mitrinovic’s understanding of the significance of group work in human development was derived from many sources, but especially the American psychologist Trigant Burrow. See T. Burrow, The Social Basis of Consciousness (London: Kegan Paul, 1927). 38 Rutherford, personal communication to author. 36

37

48

Mitrinovic was continuously orchestrating the formation of new groupings, endlessly rearranging the personnel within them and the functions for which they were allocated responsibility. Frequently the focus of the group would be upon some external activity in relation to one or other of the public initiatives that the wider group launched during those years prior to the outbreak of war. A number of members were closely involved in a network of guild socialists called the House of Industry League.39 The New Europe Group continued to organize lectures and discussions, and engage in other activities such as publishing newsletters, pamphlets, and leaflets. During the weeks following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia at Munich in September 1938 these activities were particularly intense, with thousands of posters and leaflets distributed, and telegrams dispatched to politicians and opinion leaders throughout Europe calling for an American alliance with Britain and the establishment of a federation of Europe with Prague as its capital!                                   Groupings were created for other tasks, such as dealing with newcomers, visitors, and potential patrons. Others were created for study purposes. But more than anything else this constant flux of group work was intended to provide the participants with direct experience of all the problems associated with creating and sustaining what was referred to as a “human household”: a community of people bound together by personal commitment and who, as such, were seeking to create in microcosm a living model of the emerging social order.               Looking back with proper detachment, it all seems like some continuous role-play, directed by the magus Mitrinovic. But again and again during interviews with those who shared in this life, it was emphasized that it was all “for real,” they were not playing. They were making a start, they were planting a seed that would flourish someday, somewhere. They shared Thoreau’s conviction that “it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”40 As such, they saw themselves as cells of the new organism in the process of becoming self-conscious. They constituted the embryo of the new order, “Universal Humanity,” within which the utopian dream of achieving a reconciliation between individual fulfillment and community needs would be realized. See Mike Tyldesley, “The House of Industry League: Guild Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s,” Labour History Review, 61 (Winter 1996): 309–21. 40 H. D. Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” in Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History, ed. S. Lynd (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 57–82, 69. 39

49

The Range of Human Types   In training his associates for their prophetic role, Mitrinovic paid particular attention to the mix of individuals within each group. In this he was guided by his own understanding of the origins and nature of character and personality differences. First there was the difference between male and female. Women, according to him, were a fundamental force for continuity, reconciliation, and the preservation of life. For the male, the dominant drive was the individual quest for truth. Both had become corrupted under the pressures of a materialistic civilization. The male’s search for knowledge had been distorted into the aggressive pursuit of self-interest. Men had become rudderless, without direction. It was up to women to provide the necessary guidance, and support, so that men could once more begin to act creatively to transform the world. Ultimately, of course, the aim was for both male and female to become truly individual, transcending such characterological differences. Thus, in one of his talks Mitrinovic expressed the view that The new male should be good; he should care more for failure and goodness than for success and truth. Would this not be a novelty? . . . The new woman should care for truth. Of course men must not cease to be true and women good. Both must attain a higher level of truth than ever before. The new female should have as straightforward a desire to know and speak truth as a male. Such individuated females and males could start the new civilisation.41 But in the meantime, the men in the circle were referred to as “auxiliaries”— the instruments of female initiative. This “natural” division between male and female was cross-cut by divisions along age lines. Another basis for allocation to groups, however, was according to one’s orientation to time. There were those who experienced time as a continuous stream, and thus had a strong sense of the past, which meant that they were steadier and less mercurial than others. By contrast, others lived in the immediate present. What was happening now, this instant, was what mattered, not what happened in the past or might occur in the future. Such people were always swayed by their emotions. Then there was a third type, those who were always looking to the future, planning their path towards their goal, frightening in Notes of one of Mitrinovic’s talks, New Atlantis Foundation Archives, quoted in Rigby, Innovation and Initiative, 159. 41

50

their persistence and determination. The aim behind all this analysis of fundamental personality differences was to help the group members understand each other better, and of course to help them comprehend the full variety of human types.   CONCLUSION   The people gathered around Mitrinovic during the late 1930s felt they were pioneers, exploring the way toward a new world, one without war and without artificial barriers dividing “us” from “them.” This path required profound changes in the economic and political structures—workers’ control through guild socialism, monetary reform, the radical devolution of decision-making power within new federated networks—but it also required new “”universal” individuals, what we might now call cosmopolitan citizens, people who were truly individuated and yet able to acknowledge the great differences among people, while being able to grasp in some fundamental manner the “organic” functional relationship among us all. They were training to become such people. The utopian project was to help make real what was, in Mitrinovic’s words, “the very goal and meaning of human evolution, that our race should become an individuated collective, a functionally articulated organism, of interiorised, individuated, illuminated, self-shining persons.”42             In practical terms they failed. The Second World War broke out, the group dispersed. Mitrinovic’s health deteriorated and he died on August 28, 1953. Their experience has remained on the margins of history. But perhaps there are lessons to be learned from their project by those of us who still dream about a world without war. Perhaps the main lesson lies not so much in the substantive detail of Mitrinovic’s worldview and the particulars of his pedagogic method in training for cosmopolitan citizenship, but in the spirit and the impulse that guided these efforts. In other words, we need to acknowledge that if we are ever to realize a harmonious world order, then we must act as if it is attainable. Unless we act as if the impossible is achievable, then we relinquish our responsibility as creative human agents. As Karl Mannheim observed, once we give up our belief in 42

New Britain, May 31, 1933.

51

utopias, then we lose our will to shape history, and consequently our ability to control it.43 Furthermore, if we are to act on such a utopian imperative, and seek to transform reality in the direction of a global commonwealth, then we need a vision of how that potential reality might be structured. It is not that we need a blueprint, but we do need a “creative fiction,” a myth, a paradigm—call it what you will—to give us direction. Mitrinovic’s depiction of humanity as a complex organism, in the process of becoming self-conscious, constitutes such a model. Moreover, since his death developments in ecological science have brought to many of us an awareness that we are part of a global system in which the well-being of the whole and of the constituent parts are mutually interdependent. Some have even gone so far as to depict our planet as a giant system that seems “to exhibit the behaviour of a single organism, even a living creature.”44 There are two features of this organic worldview that are of particular relevance to contemporary utopians seeking to bring about a new cosmopolitan order. First of all, it is literally a “worldview,” a vision of the world as a whole, which is able to embrace unity and diversity. Second, it is a vision that identifies the continuity between the micro and the macro-level, between the individual and the world as a whole, between the local and the global. Like others from the libertarian tradition of utopians, Mitrinovic saw the revolutionary project as primarily one of creating the space in which might flourish the new reality pregnant within the womb of the old order. In the words of Martin Buber, he looked to “the renewal of society from within, by a regeneration of its cell tissue.”45 A new cooperative order cannot be imposed from above, it must grow organically from the grass roots upwards.                                            There is another lesson also: the emphasis on the need for structural as well as personal change. Many visionaries of a new age who have emphasized the significant role to be played by individuals in bringing about social change from below have failed to get far beyond vague moral injunctions about personal transformation, without specifying the kinds of structural changes required to make Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1936). 44 J. Lovelock and S. Epton, “The Quest for Gaia,” New Scientist, 65 (1975):304. 45 Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 99. 43

52

the transformation possible. As the French personalist Emmanuel Mounier commented, “there is always a risk of mystification in the affirmation of spiritual values alone, unaccompanied by any precise statement of means and conditions for acting upon them.”46 Thus, while Mitrinovic emphasized “self-change for social change,” he was clear about the kinds of structural changes that were also necessary. The program of the New Britain Movement, with its emphasis on workers’ control, geographical and functional devolution, and the radical reform of the world’s financial and monetary system, addressed problems that are as pressing today as they were in the 1930s. One might not agree with the details of the program, but one has to acknowledge the significance of the attempt to embrace both the personal and the structural dimensions of social transformation. There is another lesson that those seeking to bring about a cosmopolitan world order might take on board. Mitrinovic realized that the creation of a new cooperative order embodying the values of freedom and fellowship cannot be achieved unless those values are embodied in the actual process of creation. It is not enough to talk, and write, about such values; they must be lived in the daily round of everyday life. According to his contemporaries, this is what Mitrinovic attempted to do. Thus, in a tribute to him after his death a contemporary reflected: He was one of the best-living socialists, in terms of personal life, I have ever met. Socialism to him did not just mean a theory of state organisation. It meant personal co-operation with his fellowmen, and even when we were differing most profoundly with regard to theoretical ideas on this, that and the other, that bond was getting tighter and tighter between us.47 So we come back to the theme of acting locally while thinking globally. The true foundation of a cosmopolitan consciousness, and hence of active cosmopolitan citizenship, lies in the manner in which we relate to those around us—combining truth-speaking with active care for the real-life individuals with whom we share our common home, our human household.   E. Mounier, Personalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 102. Jack Murphy, commemoration meeting, January 29, 1954, quoted in Rigby, Innovation and Initiative, 187. 46 47

53

Bibliography Buber, Martin. Paths in Utopia. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958. Burrow, Trigant. The Social Basis of Consciousness. London: Kegan Paul, 1927. Carpenter, Edward. “Non-Governmental Society”. Freedom: Anarchist Review 42. 4, (February 27, 1981) Cooney, R. and Michalowski, H. (eds). The Power of the People. Philadelphia, Pa.: New Society, 1987. Davies, D. R. In Search of Myself. London: Godfrey Bles, 1961. Davis, Garry. My Country Is the World. London: MacDonald, 1962. Heater, Derek. World Citizenship and Government: The Cosmopolitan Idea in the History of Western Political Thought. London: MacMillan, 1996. Held, D. “Globalisation and Cosmopolitan Democracy”. Peace Review 9, (1997): 309–14. Held, David. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Howard, Michael. The Causes of War. Hemel Hempstead, U.K.: Unwin Paperbacks, 1984. James, William. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919. Johansen, R. C. “A Policy Framework for World Security”. World Security: Trends and Challenges at Century’s End, ed. M. Klare and E. Thomas, 441-444. New York: St. Martins, 1991. Knightley, Phillip. The Second Oldest Profession. London: Guild, 1986. Lovelock J. and S. Epton. “The Quest for Gaia.” New Scientist 65 (1975): 304-309. MacDermot, V. (ed.) The New Europe Group and New Britain Movement: Collected Publications, 1932–1957. Bradford: New Atlantis Foundation, 1997. Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1936. Marshall, Peter (ed.) The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin. London: Freedom Press, 1986. Martin, Brian. Uprooting War. London: Freedom Press, 1984.

54

Mounier, Emmanuel. Personalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. New Britain Weekly 1. 10 (July 26, 1933). New Britain (May 31, 1933). Peacock, Arthur. Yours Fraternally. London: Pendulum, 1945. Rigby, Andrew. Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinovic. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1984. Rutherford H. (ed). Certainly Future: Selected Writings of Dimitrije Mitrinovic. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1987. Rutherford, Harry. “Senate”. Unpublished paper, 1988. Smith, J. et al. (eds). Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Soddy, Frederick. “Monetary Reform for New Britain”. New Britain (May 24, 1933). Sutton, J. The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. London: MacMillan, 1988. The New Age (September 9, 1920). Thomson, Watson. Turning into Tomorrow. New York: Philosophical Library, 1966. Thoreau, H. D. “Civil Disobedience.” In Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History, ed. S. Lynd, 57-82. New York: BobbsMerrill, 1966. Turner, B. S. “Citizenship Studies: A General Theory”. Citizenship Studies 1 (1997): 5–18. Tyldesley, Mike. “The House of Industry League: Guild Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s”. Labour History Review 61, (Winter 1996): 309–21. Vaihinger, Hans. The Philosophy of As If. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. Watts, Alan. In My Own Way. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972. Way, Lewis. Alfred Adler: An Introduction to His Psychology. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956. Weininger, Otto Sex and Character. London: Heinemann, n.d. Woolf, Virginia. The Three Guineas. London: Hogarth Press, 1938.

55

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch4 821.163.41.09 Mitrinović D.:176.7

Nemanja Radulović

THE SEXUAL-MYSTICAL SOPHIANISM OF DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ Dimitrije Mitrinović is one of the minor and still insufficiently studied figures of Western esotericism. That is why we shall begin by providing a brief biographical overview. This Bosnian Serb was born in 1887, in a teacher’s family, at a time when Bosnia was under Austrian rule. He studied in Austria and Germany (Zagreb, Vienna, Munich, Tübingen), apart from travelling widely (he spent two years in Rome, for example). In the Serbian and South Slavic cultures of the early 20th century, he was a prominent literary and fine arts critic, a promoter of avant-garde trends such as Expressionism and Futurism. At the same time, he was also a political champion of South Slavic unity, which was to be realised through the disintegration of Austria, with Serbia as its Piedmont: apart from propaganda work, this also involved conspiratorial activities, of which we still do not know enough. During this period, he was undoubtedly the aesthetic and political guru of a generation. Before World War One, he established contacts in Europe, wishing to establish an artistic and political alliance. What should be particularly emphasised in this context is his contact with Kandinsky, with whom he kept company in Munich. In July 1914, as a citizen of a warring state, with the help of Erich Gutkind, he left Germany and travelled to England. Upon arrival, he was involved in the culturalpropagandistic work of Serbian intellectuals that was supposed to win the English public opinion over for the Serbian cause and the South Slavic union. However, this is where a break in Mitrinović’s biography occurs. After World War One, he remained in England, where he spent

56

the rest of his life, until his death in 1953, and although he maintained his connections with the native country,1 he now wrote in English, participated in the political and intellectual life of Britain, and most importantly of all, he increasingly directed his interests towards esotericism. His first follower was A. Orage, who opened the pages of his periodical The New Age to him in the 1920-1921 period. Even though his column was called “World Affairs”, Mitrinović’s texts (signed M. M. Cosmoi) did not constitute merely comments of current events but a macrohistorical mythology. The less than clear style and some of his comments provoked readers’ reactions. Orage subsequently distanced himself from Mitrinović, leaning towards Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, while Mitrinović acquired a new circle of disciples. In the 1930’s, he was active in the movements The New Britannia and The New Atlantis. Among his contacts (or disciples) were Alfred Adler, Frederick Soddy, Roy de Maistre (who did a portrait of Mitrinović), a young Alan Watts (who left in his autobiography an interesting description of Mitrinović, whom he referred to as a “rascal guru”).2 His library is preserved at the University of Bradford, together with archive materials, and partly at the University Library in Belgrade, while the preservation of his ideational heritage has been entrusted to the care of the Mitrinović Foundation (since 2010; previously: The New Atlantis) in the UK.3 His ideas, which never formed a coherent system, are scattered across a multitude of articles and lectures, collected after his death. They are derived from several sources, mainly from theosophic macrohistory (he considered Madame Blavatsky to be “the incarnation of the Aryan genius in female form“), but he was more inclined towards the anthroposophic-Christian version. His inclination towards a Christianised version is evident from the fact of his inclusion of Solov’ëv Let us add here that a group of intellectuals in Yugoslavia in the period between the great wars was under the influence of Mitrinović’s ideas about panhumanism and the future role of the Slavs. 2 Biography and overview of ideas in English: Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Intiative. An Exploration of the Life and the Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinovic (New York: Boulder, 1984);Andrew Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović: A Biography (York: William Sessions Ltd, 2006.); cf. also James Webb, The Occult Establishment (La Sale, Illinois: Open Court, 1976), 191-195. In Serbian: Predrag Palavestra, Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića, [The dogma and utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović] (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2003). 3 Accessible at: http://www.mitrinovic-foundation.org.uk/. 1

57

and Russian religious thought in his eclectic system. His great interest in the Orient (he knew Sanskrit and Tibetan) influenced the reception of Advaita Vedanta. Finally, he was interested in psychoanalysis, and subsequently his sympathies switched to Adler (he was one of the founders of the Adler Society in the UK). He believed in a theosophic alternation of races (that today’s Aryan race would be replaced by a future one, where the Slavs had a special place), but that was merely a part of the synthetic process of mankind’s development that led towards panhumanism, which was his key word. He saw the ideal society (The United States of Europe) as tricameral (the economic, political and cultural chamber), which he took over from Steiner.4 Mitrinović has also been studied as a political thinker, a champion of pan-Europeanism, a precursor of the European federation, a socialist, a protofascist, an antifascist, his ideas about the relations between peoples, races, epochs have been analysed – all of the above quite justifiably, of course, for Mitrinović’s interests were primarily macrohistortical.5 In Serbian culture, he is remembered primarily as an art critic. In the period between the great wars, he was already attacked as a mystifier and a charlatan, and after the Second World War he sank into oblivion as someone who had “fallen prey to mysticism” and turned away from the domestic culture. From the 1970’s onwards, he has gradually been rehabilitated, not just as a critic but also as an esotericist, so that today he is the focus of both academic papers and popular articles. This kind of a double reception in two cultures, the Serbian and the English one, as well as a two-phase reception in Serbian criticism, provide a good illustration of the break in his biography. While Mitrinović’s artistic or political views have been analysed up to a point, some others still remain insufficiently known. One of those is the role of Eros, and in this paper we shall strive to present it and to show how it fits in with the tradition of Western esotericism and sexual mysticism. The later term is used by Arthur Versluis in Steiner may have taken this over from Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, through Schuré. Mitrinović had Saint-Yves’ The Mission of India in his library (today in University Library in Belgrade), and he was also in contact with Schuré, so that perhaps a direct influence of the French author is possible. 5 Apart from Rigby, an overview of Mitrinović in the context of a theosophical reading of Slavic messianism can be found in: Nemanja Radulović, “Slavia esoterica Between East and West”, Ricerche slavistiche 13(59) (2015): 74-78. 4

58

order to separate sexual magic from mysticism (more on this further on).6 We find Mitrinović’s ideas connected with sexuality primarily in the 1920’s, when he contributed to Orage’s periodical The New Age.7 They can partly be encountered in his later writings from the 1930’s, although the political aspect was already the dominant one by then; at the same time, we rely on the memories of some of his contemporaries that contain parts of their conversations (it is owing to this, for example, that the ideas of Gurdjieff were popularised even before the publication of the texts themselves). The coincidences between some testimonies and the published texts point in favour of the reliability of those memories. Mitrinović’s ideas about sexuality can be presented in the following manner. Three levels or three kingdoms can be distinguished in the world: the plant, animal and human ones. While the plant kingdom is an expression of the very life and creation, the inductor of life on earth, the animal is the conductor and enjoyer of that life. This difference is even more important when it comes to the manifestation of sexuality. A plant stalk (thyrsus) is a tool of its immortality, for it serves the purpose of reproduction; the plant is thus a basis of the entire sex in the world. While a plant rests upon the vegetative system, an animal rests precisely upon sexuality, it is nothing but a genital itself, its vegetative basis is outside of it, it individualises the vegetative function of a plant. The plant maintains the cosmic essence of sex, while the animal is its condensation and individualisation.8 What is already noticeable here is the notion of the ambivalence of sex. The idea of sexuality as a foundation, basis (“sex is the ground of humanity”)9 assumes an even broader concept elsewhere: sex is proclaimed to be holy and God is sex. Sex is the essence of both man and God, of the absolute and the very existence. “Sex and God are the Holy Trinity, and this Trinity is its eternal unity. Sex is the communion between God and man, the communion of Eternity with Arthur Versluis, A Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism (Rocherster, Vermont: Destiny Books, 2008). 7 The texts from the periodical have been published in: Dimitrije Mitrinović, Certainly, Future (New York: Boulder, 1987). The periodical is accessible within the framework of The Modernist Journals Project, http://www.modjourn.оrg 8 Mitrinović, Certainly, Future, 204-205. 9 Ibid., 235. 6

59

Time.” And not only that: sex is the kingdom of prototypes, Platonic ideas, the world of concepts. The kingdom of ideas – of eternity – is revealed through the sexual (a rather peculiar form of Platonism!).10 This is probably the most radical statement pertaining to Eros that can be found in Mitrinović. This foundation of the world is equated with Sophia, who has a very important role in Mitrinović’s thought. Sophian creation is motherly, through conception and birth she creates Life itself, the blessed kingdom of vegetation.11 To Mitrinović, Sophia is not immaterial, quite the contrary. She is the body of the Logos, mankind in its physical aspect. Sophia will be incarnated in the human race (whereas the Logos is mankind in reason and conscience). As opposed to the Gnostic Sophia, Mitrinović’s Sophia is not imprisoned in matter as if in a prison. The pleroma of the future kingdom will be precisely the incarnation of Sophia; and its incarnation is equated with panhumanity, the unique organism of the renewed Adam Cadmon. Today’s nations and races are the body of Adam Cadmon, and they participate in the great evolutionary process (wherein the Aryan race and the Slavs currently have an important role) in which they will eventually be synthesised, which will be crowned by the descent of Sophia. The eternal Female is the whole of existence. Matter is the eternal female, the spirit is the eternal male, and life is their child. She is the incorporeal ultimate nature; the cosmic Sophia is the world, and the human Sophia is mankind. The sun is the body of Sophia, SophiaLogos, in the solar system.12 Sophia is also equated with the Holy Spirit. Mitrinović does not introduce Sophia as the fourth hypostasis, but equates her with the Holy Spirit, but in a certain way he feminises and sexualises the Holy Spirit (which is the feminine gender in Hebrew and Aramaic). Mitrinović continues the Joachimian tradition of the third revelation, but the Holy Spirit is equated with a markedly sexualised Sophia. If we systematise his thoughts, it becomes evident that there is an equation mark between Sophia = the Holy Spirit = Mankind (in its corporeal aspect) = Matter = Sex. That is the basis of existence. This cosmic division is reflected on the anthropological level as well. It divides the human body into the solar plexus (the Ibid., 234-235. Ibid., 180. 12 Ibid., 178-179. 10 11

60

subconsciousness of the body), thorax, that is, the heart and lungs (emotions), the brain and the sexual system, which has its own consciousness.13 This arrangement (the brain, chest, stomach, sexual system) is somewhat reminiscent of the arrangement of chakras. It is interesting to note that, although Mitrinović was familiar with tantric works, through the books of Arthur Avalon (John Woodroffe),14 there is no noticeable influence of tantrism on his notions of sexuality. He still remains to a greater extent in the Western tradition. At the same time, this division resembles the systems of the human organism given by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky:15 the upper floor (the intellectual centre), the middle (emotional) and the lower floor (motoric, sexual and instinctual). His disciple – before he left him for Gurdjieff – A. Orage also distinguishes the cerebral, nervous and instinctive system.16 It seems that Orage wrote essay on that topic in 1923. at the Prieuré.17 Perhaps Mitrinović was also influenced by Gurdjieff but he uses psychological concepts.18 But sex, as we have said, has an ambiguous place in Mitrinović. With a kind of prophetic ominousness, he spoke of a “female uprising” (by which he evidently meant the emancipation of women). It was a part of the rebellion of the humiliated and the offended in Dimitrije Mitrinović, Treća Sila [Third force] (Čačak: Gradac, 2004), 94-96; first time published as: “The Realm of Dreams” Purpose, 3 (1931): 52-58. According to Rigby’s systematisation (Rigby, Initiation and Initiative, 178): the a) metabolic, b) nervous, c) respiratory and circulatory system. 14 He had them in his library (today in University Library in Belgrade). 15 Mitrinović’s attitude towards them is beyond the scope of this topic. In a way, they were his competitors, for they “snatched” Orage away from him. Still, he was interested in their teaching, as evidenced by his writings preserved at Bradford. According to the testimony of C. S. Nott, a disciple of Gurdjieff’s, Mitrinović attended the demonstrations of Ouspensky’s English group, as did Algernon Blackwood (C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff. A Pupil’s Journal, London, Arkana Penguin Books, 1990, 48). Stephen Graham, a friend of Mitrinović’s, who later married his sister, testifies that Mitrinović did not like Ouspensky, whom he met at Lady Rothermere’s (Stephen Graham, in “Stranci o Mitrinoviću” [Foreigners on Mitrinović] in Dimitrije Mitrinović, Sabrana dela 3 [Collected Works] (Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1991), 225. 16 Alfred Orage, On Love&Psyhological Exercises (Boston, York Beach: Weiser Books, 1998), 14. 17 P.B.Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage. Brothers in Elysium (York Beach ME: Weiser Books, 2001), 96. 18 Mitrinović states, unlike Freudians, (“The Realm of Dreams”) that sexuality is not the master of the subconsciousness, but only one among its parts. This moderates his pan-sexualism. 13

61

the contemporary West, of slaves and women (that is, the workers’ movement and feminism). Essentially, it was the man who was to blame for this state of affairs. The consequence of this uprising is that a woman becomes a man. The glory of the sexes pales, and it is impossible to renew it. To him, the contemporary emancipation movements were an expression of a loss the nature of sex (thought of in essentialist terms), feminism led to the masculinisation of women. It is not difficult to recognise the influence of Weininger, popular during the era of La Belle Époque, the time of Mitrinović’s youth. Still, his vision – an essentially optimistic and synthetic one – also sees in this loss the possibility of transition to a higher, suprahuman state, which would then be suprasexual as well19 (it is not possible at this point not to remember the traditions on the androgyny of Adam Cadmon, where androgyny actually denotes perfection). Man becomes transsexual (not in the contemporary sense of the term) and suprahuman.20 Mitrinović oscillates between Weininger and the Christian-esoteric tradition of androgyny as suprasexuality. In this system, Mitrinović opposes the North/masculinity/Logos to the South, which is equated with the unconscious, warm, dark. “For passive and negative is the South... and the great glory of the South is not that it should transfigure the North by disfiguring it and debasing it, but that it should be the superb, the worthy, the strong and the true resistance to the actively transfiguring North, to the North of Reason, to the Great Cold of Awareness. Let the Cold and the Lighted be the redemption and fulfilment of the South, of that which is unconscious, hot, dark; let not reason and consciousness be extinguished in Power and Being. For Africa, tropics, the Black man, the Islamic faith, the Sex woman, the Unconscious of our Soul is Being and Power; but Form and System they are not. Logic and Cognizance the South is not.”21 Africa, Asia, the tropics, “coloured races”, Islam, sex, the female, the unconscious, the body are isomorphic to him, to use a term introduced by Gilbert Durand from the sphere of studying the imaginary.22 The isomorphism of that aspect and the “Southern” and The influences of his friend Erich Gutkind can be traced, too. In his book Siderische Geburt (1910) Gutkind proclaimed that Eros leads towards “Seraphic State“. 20 Mitrinović, Certainly, Future, 245-246; 255; 261-262. 21 Mitrinović, Certainly, Future, 405. 22 Ibid.: “Woman is violently awakening today, violently, like Asia and the Negro world, as violently as Judaism and Islam” (236). “The femininity of the Sophian body, 19

62

the racial provides a guideline for studying his imaginarium. Those images are not devoid of stereotypicalness – generally speaking, Mitrinović appears liberal on the one hand, while on the other, in the above excerpts, for example, he advocates views that are far from the contemporary liberal discourse (such as his support to the British rule in India).23 This ambivalence is noticeable in his opposition of vegetative and animal sexuality; while the former is an expression of existence itself, the basis of being, the latter is limiting, closed. Psychoanalysis is ambivalent as well. Over time, however, he would come to emphasise its negative side, as a “perversion of the Jewish genius”, as opposed to Adler (for whom sexuality is merely a symbol of power).24 The negative aspect of sexuality is symbolised by the zodiacal scorpion,25 as a symbol of death. His opposition to psychoanalysis comes, it would appear, from his view that psychoanalysis stressed that “scorpion” aspect instead of the Sophian one. We come across even more interesting statements in the memoirs of Mitrinović’s friend and disciple Charles Benjamin Purdome (18831965), an architect, subsequently a follower of Meher Baba. It is clear from them that Mitrinović ascribed to sex an even greater role than in his articles and lectures. “In whatever form sex is considered it is wrong: marriage is wrong, not to marry is wrong, to have a mistress is wrong, self-abuse is wrong, homosexuality is wrong. Sex is right only in its totality, and by mastering all its aspects, not denying any one of them.” “All action is either homosexual, self-love, or heterosexual, love of others.” Once again, Mitrinović’s striving for totality and synthesis is quite recognisable. Hence: “The lower has to be passed through before the higher is reached.” “All conflict is due to wrong sex.” Transposed to the level of history: “The quarrels in the Church however on the racial plane of the world and in its racial modality is the immense ocean of the coloured races” (245). “The evolution of the body... is the divine insanity and the anti-Logoic madness of the woman in Albion. The British Man, the hero, becomes the imperialist and the coward when he transforms himself and loses himself in the insanity of the Body” (244). (My italics.) 23 “Mr. Gandhi is... wrong... Thus Western values must be imposed upon the East” (ibid., p. 162). It would be superficial to see an opponent of colonialism in Mitrinović despite his Indophilia. 24 Mitrinović, Certainly, Future, 337; cf. “Freud versus Adler”, Certainly, Future, 319329. 25 Ibid., 319.

63

to-day started with St. Paul’s neurosis, which was concerned with sex, and caused him to quarrel with St. Peter.”26 Behind the psychologising phrases such as the one about St. Paul, it is revealed yet again that sex is the ultimate basis of existence. This is no mere psychoanalytical pansexualism, but metaphysics and sexual mysticism. Finally, although this paper deals with Mitrinović’s texts from his English period, it is interesting to note that his poetry written in Serbian from the preceding period contains a very highly charged erotic tone. Exceptionally sensual, written in a Whitmanesque manner, it gave of the impression of being really new at a time when regular Parnassian forms dominated Serbian poetry. We present a part of it here, which not only illustrates the spirit of his poetry but also hints at his subsequent views: “I want the brutal force of your flesh, woman; I want wild rawness compacted in your muscles... Woman, Female, Feminine, let me disappear in an animal spasm; let us sink; I want us never to come back from the essence of being / So that we never see the day again, and so that I cannot distinguish myself from thyself or both of us from being, / from the big, eternal, incomprehensible...” (“The Fire of the Flesh”). In a nutshell, this would be a brief overview of Mitrinović’s views, compiled from his writings. Where is mysticism to be found there? Some of these treatises could pass as psychological, essayistic analyses, as a metaphor of sorts. Some parts are written in a style which is somewhere between a Zen koan and a hymnal tone, some are almost like mantras. (For example: “Art is Magic / Magic is Life / Life is Divinity / Divinity is Humanity / Humanity is myself”).27 But there are elements there that point to the fact that he relied on one of the traditions of Western esoteric thought: Sophianism. From the multiple reception of this old Jewish and gnostic idea, we here direct attention to that stream of Sophianism that appeared within the framework of Boehmeism from the 17th-18th century. From German Boehmeism, it was received in the Russian Rosicrucianism of the 18th century. From Boehmeism and Rosicrucianism, it reached Vladimir Solov’ëv (who directly turned to Boehmeism, Gnosticism and the Kabbalah). Solov’ëv influenced the coming into being of Sophianism 26 27

C.B.Purdome, Life over Again (London: J.M.Dent&Sons Ltd, 1951), 275-276. “Stanzas” in Certainly, Future, 45 (first published in The New Age, 1921).

64

in the Russian culture of the “Silver Age”, in philosophers and theologians (Florenski, Bulgakov), as well as in poets (Blok). Although it is sometimes considered to be a characteristic of Orthodox theologicalphilosophical thought, on account of its influence in that period of Russian culture, it actually belongs to the reception of this stream of Western esotericism.28 Mitrinović was familiar with Solov’ëv’s work and undoubtedly influenced by him. It is precisely the role of Sophia that points to the mystical aspect of Mitrinović’s understanding of Eros. In Boehme’s followers, Sophia often had a markedly erotic aspect (in Gottfried Arnold, for example). Still, whereas in Gichtel, Jane Leade and Solov’ëv there exists personal experience of an encounter with Sophia, Mitrinović, speaking of the macrolevel of mankind, remains a prophet of gnosis but not a mystic of personal experience. The authors of this stream also speak of the incarnation of Sophia. In Boehme, Sophia is already incarnated as the Mother of God;29 she is the substantiality and corporeality of the Spirit. The entire creation is Sophia’s body.30 In terms of influence upon Mitrinović, of greatest importance here is Solov’ëv, who also identifies Sophia with the Holy Spirit and mankind at some points of his complex doctrine. He sees manifestations of Sophia through the Holy Virgin, Christ, but also as the Church of the future. As in Mitrinović, mankind united with God is the incarnation of Sophia.31

P. A. Buryškin, Rozenkreicerovskie istoki sofijanstva [The rosicrucian sources of sophianism] in N.A Bogomolov, Russkaja literatura načala XX veka i okkul ‘tizm [Russian literature of the beginning of the 20th century and occultism ](Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002), 445-462;Solov’ëv’s sources are a complex issue; see, for example, Aleksej Losev, Vladimir Solov’ëv i ego vremya [Vladimir Solov’ëv and his era], Moscow, Molodaja gvardija, 2009; Konstantin Burmistrov, “Vladimir Solov’ëv i Kabbala: k postanovke problemy”[Vladimir Solov’ëv and the Kabbalah. Towards Positing the Problem], Issledovanija po istorii russkoj mysli (1998):7-104. 29 Thomas Schipflinger, Sophia-Maria (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, INC, 1998), 197. 30 Ibid. 200-201. 31 Vladimir Soloviev, La Russie et l’Église universelle (Paris, Stock, 1922), 254-260. “Mankind united with God in the Holy Virgin, in Christ, in the Church, is the realisation of the essential Wisdom or the absolute substance of God, its created form, its incarnation”(238). In Solov’ëv, there is also the idea of mankind as an organism whose limbs are nations. 28

65

Steiner (who was familiar with the writings of Solov’ëv)32 speaks of the establishment of anthroposophy as the beginning of the incarnation of Sophia.33 Sophia is manifested as the “living being Anthroposophy”, the movement is the incarnation of Sophia herself, or more precisely, the beginning of the anthropomorphisation and incarnation of Sophia in mankind.34 The idea of Sophia’s future incarnation plays a great role in the work of the contemporary anthroposophic author Sergey O. Prokofieff,35 and it is also encountered in the opus of the Russian esotericist and poet Daniil Andreev (“The Rose of the World”). Reliance on the tradition of Sophianism leads us to speak of mysticism, not of sexual magic. The latter also has its tradition, strives to directly influence reality through acts and gestures (ritual relationship, breath control, meditation, etc.).36 Mysticism possesses gnosis, will not to power or some specific goals, but to a spiritual union. As this distinction was determined by A. Versluis: “But here we distinguish fairly rigorously between sexual mysticism and sexual magic, because whereas sexual magical practices are focused on particular worldly gains or, to put it another way, the acquisition of power to achieve particular ends, sexual mysticism is strictly gnostic in the sense that its adherents aim not for power but for inner or spiritual union and realization. While there may be magical dimensions to a mystical practice, or mystical dimensions to a magical one, by and large one can distinguish one from the other without too much trouble.”37 Mitrinović is closer to the mystical stream. Also, the sexual magic of the 19th and 20th centuries is for the most part anti-Christian, whereas he was a follower of Christian mystical tradition. Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher than Truth. History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia 1875-1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 95; Renata von Maydell, “Anthroposophy in Russia”, in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (New York, Cornell University, 1997), 155-157. 33 Repeated, for in the preceding phases of the planet she was also incarnated. 34 Richard Leviton, The Imagination of Pentecost (Hudson, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1994), 200-202. 35 Sergej O. Prokofjev, Nebesnaja Sofija i Antroposofija [The heavenly sophia and anthroposophy ] (Moscow: Antroposofija, 1997). 36 According to Hugh Urban’s definition: “the explicit use of orgasm (whether heterosexual, homosexual, or autoerotic) as a means to create magical effects in external world” (Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2006, 3). 37 Versluis, The Secret History, 8 32

66

If he did take Sophianism over from Solov’ëv, what constitutes Mitrinović’s peculiarity is his emphatic linking of Sophia with sexuality. In Solov’ëv’s Sophian, visionary and poetic works, or in the poetry of Blok, there is an emotional, sensual tone, but She reveals herself in the manner of a troubadour’s Lady. Mitrinović goes a step further: if Sophia is material, if she is the basis of matter, then she is connected to sex. The branch of Sophianism that took the “Eastern” stream received a radically sexualised turn in Mitrinović. Also, very soon in Mitrinović’s thought this sexually charged Sophianism would be psychologised under the influence of psychoanalysis. There is, however, a place in Mitrinović, or more precisely a note in Purdome, which is indicative of his knowledge of another tradition, closer to sexual magic. That is the idea that the Holy Spirit is sperm and that a sin against sex is a sin against the Holy Spirit.38 Even this fragment, mentioned as a mere aside, which seems merely bizarre, has its tradition in the history of Western esotericism. Naturally, it has to do with the Borborites or Phibionites within the framework of Gnosticism, also referred to as sperm Gnostics (“Sperma-Gnosis”, as formulated by K. R. H. Frick, and after him also P. R. Koenig)39 or “pneumatics” (Eliade, Drury)40, who equated sperm with pneuma and psyche, as the divine part in man. As is well known, some scholars were prone to the thesis about the continuity of this concept and practice through the centuries,41 and to universalism in the broadest comparative-anthropological sense (Eliade), whereas more recent investigations (Urban) were more prone to seeing a heresiological topos, which served as a role model to new age sexual-magic groups.42 A bibliophile and erudite as he was, Mitrinović could get his information in any history of early Christian heresies. At the same Purdome, ibid. K.R.H. Frick, Licht und Finsterniss, Okkulte geheimgesellschaften bis zur Wende des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: MarixVerlag, 2005), 113-129; “Ordo Templi Orientis Spermo Gnosis” http://www.parareligion.ch/spermo.htm (last accessed 15.08.2016) 40 Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago press, 1978), 109-112; Nevill Drury, Stealing Fire from Heaven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 105-106. 41 Frick is even of the opinion that “sperm-gnosis” is the starting point of all mediaeval and new age secret societies (Frick, Licht und Finsterniss, 113). 42 Urban, Magia Sexualis, 22-40. Urban therefore, as opposed to Frick and Eliade, considers sexual magic to be an essentially modern phenomenon, ibid., 5-7. 38 39

67

time, however, this concept, that is, the reception of the Gnostic concept or one ascribed to Gnostics, was a part of what, to Mitrinović, was a contemporary, living esoteric milieu, in Crowley and O. T. O.43 Mitrinović’s fragment, transposed indirectly, is still different in conceptual terms: he speaks of the pneumatic, not Eucharistic character of semen. No far-reaching conclusions should be drawn on the basis of a single fragment, but it quite simply shows that even this quote can be contextualised and that through it Mitrinović stands firmly within the framework of the esoteric scene of his time. But it is interesting to note that, biographically as well, it is possible to establish connections between Mitrinović and O. T. O., to which greater attention has been paid only recently, owing to the investigations of Marco Pasi. For example, Crowley mentions in his diary entry of 16th August 1930 that he met Mitrinović in Berlin; on the same day he mentions meeting Adler as well. The connection between Mitrinović and Crowley’s circle was not restricted to this. General Fuller, a Thelemite, was a member of Mitrinović’s The New Britannia for a while.44 The connection between The New Britannia and Mitrinović and Crowley and O. T. O. attracted the attention of conspiracy theorists of that time, mostly those of Catholic orientation.45 Although Fuller, being dissatisfied due to the fact that the group was insufficiently organised, switched to Mosley’s Crowley received the concept of holy sperm from Theodor Reuss, and it also appears in the work of the Belgian spiritist Clément de Saint-Marc (Marco Pasi, “The Knight of Spermatophagy”, in Hidden Intercourse. Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008), 360-400; Urban, Magia Sexualis, 109-139; Hugh Urban, “The Yoga of Sex”, in Hidden Intercourse. Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008), 401444). Introvigne is of the opinion that the use of semen for the purpose of creating an immortal “other” body existed in the 18th century, in the magical practice of Cagliostro (Massimo Introvigne, Il cappello del mago, Milano: SugarCo Edizioni, 2003), 148. Cf. Hakl, “The Theory and Practice of Sexual Magic, Exemplified by Four Magical Groups in the Early Twentieth Century“, Hidden Intercourse. Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008), 452-453. For a polemic with Introvigne, see: Pasi, “The Knight of Spermatophagy”, 395, footnote 73 (which brings us back to the issue of the continuity of a particular tradition, that is, the (non-)existence of transmission). A similar use of semen (alchemically interpreted) also occurs in Giuliano Kremmerz (Hakl, “The Theory and Practice”, 456-457). 44 Marco Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 69-72. 45 Ibid., 125-126; 157-158. 43

68

fascist movement, he did not sever connections with Mitrinović.46 As late as 1950, we find Fuller among the participants of a meeting of the New Europe group.47 Material from Mitrinović archive confirms that in 1951. Fuller wrote a letter to Mitrinović, about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky among other topics.48 We may mention that David Eder, an early propagator of psychoanalysis, Mitrinović’s close collaborator, also took an interest in Crowley.49 Mitrinović’s friend (who later married his sister) the writer Stephen Graham met with Crowley ‘s biographer John Symonds.50 This connection should not be overemphasised either: Mitrinović took from a multitude of sources. Also, his thought remains Christian (in a rather specific way), while Thelemism is anti-Christian. Still, this tells us something else: what Mitrinović’s place on the esoteric scene was, and that his connections with various people still offer a fruitful area of research in biographical-historical terms. In the general sense of the significance of a network, for example in Australia, the pioneer of abstract painting Roy de Maistre in his ideas on colour relations reflects Kandinsky in a way – it would be interesting to determine to what extent Mitrinović contributed to that. Is it perhaps precisely this view of sexuality that influenced Alan Watts, who, according to Versluis, was the first populariser of sexual mysticism?51 Perhaps that came from none other than Mitrinović? Mitrinović had in his library Fuller’s book on the Kabbalah (The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah. A Study in Jewish Mystical Thought, London: Rider&Co, 1937), today in University of Bradford Library. 47 For example, together with Soddy he attended the lecture “The New Europe Group and Atlantic Initiative for the Order of Man”, which Mitrinović delivered on 17th February 1950 (Palavestra, Dogma i Utopija, 354). 48 1.8.1951 (NAF 6/1/4/8) 49 One should, of course, pay attention to the time frame. Eder’s article on Crowley’s book Knox Om Pax was published as early as February 1908, before Mitrinović’s arrival to Britain. But it was published in Orage’s periodical The New Age (James Webb, Harmonious Circle, London: Thames&Hudson, 1980, 211), which constitutes another connection. In the “psychosynthesis” group, which was made up of Havelock Ellis, Maurice Nicoll and Eder, and which Mitrinović occasionally visited, psychoanalysis was connected with an interest in esotericism (James Webb, ibid., 216-217). 50 Michael Hughes, Beyond Holy Russia. The Life and Times of Stephen Graham (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2014), 312. 51 Versluis, The Secret History, 128-129. Versluis considers his book Nature, Man and Woman from 1958 to be the first popularisation of what is referred to as a trend of Anglo-American pragmatic mysticism. 46

69

Let us conclude: Mitrinović took over the stream of Sophianism through Solov’ëv, but he gave it a specific form. He combined the thesis about the future incarnation of Sophia and panhumanism with the theosophic alternation of races, and to Sophia herself, as the bearer of matter and the created world, he added a strong sexual tone. We can see in this, as a specific characteristic of Mitrinović’s version, a pronounced modernisation of Sophianism. It is evident in two aspects. One is psychologisation. On the evidence of this, we can even view Mitrinović as a precursor of the New Age, if we consider “the psychologisation of religion and the sacralisation of psychology” 52 to be the defining characteristic of this phenomenon. The other aspect is the interpretation of sexuality as a universal key, which began in the 19th century already.53 Archives NAF. University of Bradford - New Atlantis Foundation. Bibliography Buryškin, P.A. “Rozenkrejcerovskie istoki sofijanstva.“ [Rosicrucian sources of sophianism] In Bogomolov, N.A. Russkaja literatura načala XX veka i okkul ‘tizm [Russian literature of the beginning of the 20th century and occultism ], 445-462. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002. Burmistrov Konstantin. “Vladimir Solov’ëv i Kabbala: k postanovke problemy” [Vladimir Solov’ëv and the Kabbalah. Towards Positing the Problem]. Issledovanija po istorii russkoj mysli (1998): 7-104 Carlson, Maria. No Religion Higher than Truth. History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia1875-1922. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Drury, Nevill. Stealing Fire from Heaven. The Rise of Modern Western Magic. Oxford University Press, 2011. Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion, and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden- Boston: Brill, 1996), 224–255. 53 Cf. “...like the new forms of scientia sexualis that emerged in the nineteenth century, the literature on sexual magic also identifies sex as the innermost secret or ‘hidden truth’ of the self, the most powerful force in human nature, and the key to understanding the mysteries of human existence” (Urban, Magia Sexualis, 6). 52

70

Eliade, Mircea. Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. Frick, K.R.H. Licht und Finsterniss. Okkulte geheimgesellschaften bis zur Wende des 20. Jahrhunderts I-II. Wiesbaden: MarixVerlag, 2005. Hakl Hans Thomas. “The Theory and Practice of Sexual Magic, Exemplified by Four Magical Groups in the Early Twentieth Century.“ In Hidden Intercourse. Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 445-478. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008. Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1996. Hughes, Michael. Beyond Holy Russia. The Life and Times of Stephen Graham. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2014. Introvigne, Massimo. Il cappello del mago. I nuovi movimenti magici, dallo spiritismo al satanismo. Milano: SugarCo edizioni, 2003. Leviton Richard. The Imagination of Pentecost: Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Spirituality. Hudson, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1994. Losev, Aleksej. Vladimir Solov’ëv i ego vremya [Vladimir Solov’ëv and his era]. Moscow: Molodaja gvardija, 2009. Mitrinović, Dimitrije. Certainly, Future. Selected Writings by Dimitrije Mitrinović, edited with introductions by H.C.Rutherford. New York: Boulder. Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1987. Treća sila [Third force]. Čačak: Gradac, 2004. Sabrana djela [Collected works] 1-3. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1991. Nott C. S. Teachings of Gurdjieff. A Pupil’s Journal. London: Arkana Penguin Books, 1990. Orage, Alfred. On Love&Psyhological Exercises. Boston, York Beach: Weiser Books, 1998. Palavestra, Predrag. Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića. [The dogma and utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović] Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2003. Pasi, Marco. Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. “The Knight of Spermatophagy: Penetrating the Mysteries of Georges Le Clément de Saint-Marcq.“ In Hidden Intercourse. Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 360-400. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008.

71

Prokofjev Sergej O. Nebesnaja Sofija i Antroposofija [The heavenly sophia and anthroposophy ]. Moscow: Antroposofija, 1997. Purdome, C.B. Life Over Again. London: J.M.Dent&Sons Ltd, 1951. Radulović, Nemanja. “Slavia esoterica Between East and West.” Ricerche slavistiche 13(59) (2015): 73-102. Rigby, Andrew. Initiation and Initiative. An Exploration of the Life and the Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinovic. Boulder: New York. Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1984. Dimitrije Mitrinović: A Biography. York: William Sessions Ltd, 2006. Schipflinger, Thomas. Sophia-Maria. A Holistic Vision of Creation. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, INC, 1998. Soloviev, Vladimir. La Russie et l’Église universelle. Paris:Stock, 1922. Taylor, Paul Beekman. Gurdjieff and Orage. Brothers in Elysium. York Beach ME: Weiser Books, 2001. Urban Hugh B. Magia sexualis. Sex, magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2006. “The Yoga of Sex: Tantra, Orientalism, and Sex Magic in the Ordo Templi Orientis, Hidden Intercourse“. In Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 401-444. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008. Versluis Arthur. The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism. Sacred Practices and Spiritual Marriage. Rocherster, Vermont: Destiny Books, 2008. Von Maydell, Renata. “Anthroposophy in Russia.” In The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, 153-167. New York, Cornell University, 1997. Webb, James. The Occult Establishment. La Sale, Illinois: Open Court , 1976. The Harmonious Circle. An exploration of the lives and work of G.I.Gurdjieff, P.D.Ouspensky and others. London: Thames&Hudson, 1980.

72

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch5 821.163.41.09 Mitrinović D.

Vasilije Milnović

AESTHETIC CONTEMPLATIONS BY DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ OR: ABOUT AN ALTERNATIVE GLOBALIZATION The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others. C. G. Jung It seems that the occasional manifestation of Genius can be defined within the existence of people in time and space, that is - within the world in which we act as individuals. In a strange way, however, a specific dose of regularity in the manifestation of an individual genius can be noticed: somewhere this Change is manifested clearly and unambiguously, as a result of which its bearer is immediately and almost naturally recognized by his environment, while sometimes the Change occurs on the principle of “absence“, so her spirit does not necessarily have to be immediately recognized and accepted. Werner Heisenberg, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics (1932), said that in reality there are phenomena for which the objective laws of time and space do not apply, and modern physics sovereignly claims that there is matter that is not real and that for some obviously physical phenomena (e.g. electron behavior) can determine neither place, nor energy, nor measure. When, in 1999, on the edge of the 20th century, on the Spanish-French border, in Pampolina, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary

73

of the founding of the European Community and the European Union, a conference of the Center for European Studies was held in Navarre, talking about Dimitrije Mitrinović as a prophet and to the initiator of the current European unification - it was a confirmation of the principle of “absent presence” which testifies to the manifestation of Genius. In the words of the great connoisseur of Mitrinović’s total legacy, Serbian academician Predrag Palavestra: “So I was convinced again that Dimitrije Mitrinović really has a strange ability to be present even when he is not there, to renew and return when everyone seems forgotten”.1 What has been relatively rarely pointed out in the theoretical and literary-historical literature so far is an essentially avant-garde theoretical postulate, which is at the very foundation of the thought of Dimitrije Mitrinović, thinker, poet, mystic, visionary and modern preacher, one of the few Serbian cultural representatives, which left an enviable spiritual mark in other cultures as well. That is why, before we call this thought utopian, today we could talk about it as “optimally projected”. Namely, in the very history of the avant-garde, two phenomena are understood and interchanged: individual demolition and collective construction. As Peter Birger stated in his liberal sociological setting, the crucial characteristic of the avant-garde is its demand for the destruction of the entire traditional “cultural institution”.2 But this does not mean that the avant-garde does not have a kind of positive gender. In his research on the avant-garde, the Zagreb theorist Aleksandar Flaker marked what he called the “optimal projection” as the very core of this phenomenon. Utopia is a symbolic sign for a place or country that does not exist, while the avant-garde declaratively advocates a complete metamorphosis of the entire society, culture and art, in the direction of a kind of comprehensive aesthetic revolution, and in that sense has a certain projective-futurological overtone. Unlike utopia, “optimal projection” is characterized, therefore, by a concrete choice of possibilities in historical time. In his book The Poetics of Challenge: The Avant-Garde and the Literary Left, Flacker gives a history of the term, as well as its definition: “Optimal projection does not denote an ideally Predrag Palavestra, Nekropolje. Biografski eseji (Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike, 2011), 42. 2 Peter Birger, Teorija avangarde (Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1998). 1

74

structured space of the future, it does not seek to define it, but signifies changing reality”.3 Confirmation of this phenomenon can be found in numerous program-manifest statements of avant-garde artists, realizations and appearance of numerous avant-garde magazines and publications, as well as in explicit avant-garde works. We can present this process, as the basic developmental thread of the avant-garde, through the relationship: the culture of “total rupture” - avant-garde “optimal projection”. Both of these phenomena form the avant-garde line of development of the new world. In each of these manifestations of the avant-garde spirit, a clear process of movement from complete rejection to new construction is visible, from destructive, anti-structural creative practice to exaggeration and attempts to form a new structure. The named process is expressed in all avant-garde movements: from early futurism, through Cubism, Zenitism, Dadaism, Ultraism, or Constructivism, all the way to later more or less successful attempts at great avant-garde syntheses. Also, the optimal projection is visible in the explicit works of the avantgarde themselves, whenever they start to futurologically project in their work: Apollinaire, Tzara, Zamyatin, Micić, Aleksić, early Krleža, early Rastko Petrović. The optimal projection, therefore, is not related to ideology, as in the case of surrealism, on the wave of political optimism, because it is based on a kind of prophetic-aesthetic optimism, which is manifested through the avant-garde demand for permeation of life and existence by art. It is not tied to any kind of hope in the metaphysical sense, but is a concrete search for the possibilities of the future. More than in any of Mitrinović’s writings, this avant-garde theoretical weft is expressed in the work “Aesthetic Contemplation: About the criticism that does not exist, or the Defense of Degradation”. Relying on the book Synchronicity as a Principle of Acausal Relationships by the German psychologist Wolfgang Pauli and the famous Swiss guru C. G, Jung, as well as on Jung’s famous book Memories, Dreams, Thoughts, Arthur Kestler wrote the book The Roots of Coincidence, in which he deals with the phenomenon of synchronicity, a preferred phenomenon in the avant-garde. Dimitrije Mitrinović’s extremely diverse activities and diverse direction of his spiritual and intellectual Aleksandar Flaker, Poetika osporavanja: avangarda i književna ljevica (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1982), 68. 3

75

occupations, especially considering his great interest in the supernatural, the otherworldly, the extrasensory and the occult, provides plenty of opportunities for noticing the phenomena of synchronicity. In line with that, there is the fact that “Aesthetic Contemplations” were published in 1913 and written in Rome, at a time when the Italian cultural and social context is shaking well with violent futuristic revolt, when Russian futurists live in the same space (Burlyuk , Kruchonikh, Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov published the famous “Slap to Public Opinion” in Russia a year before Mitrinović’s text, while in the same year as “Aesthetic Contemplation” Apollinaire’s manifesto “Futuristic Antitradition” and Papini’s “My Futurism” appeared. On the other hand, 1913 is the year in which the most important works of modern European culture appear, and it is probably only 1922 that is comparable to this sifting of the European spirit. In 1913, as Predrag Palavestra4 informed us in his unavoidable book about Mitrinović in the context of Serbian literary science, among other things, Sigmund Freud published Totem and Taboo, George Lukacz Theory of novel, Oswald Spengler’s first volume The Fall of the West, Nikolai Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Freedom, Maurice Maeterlinck’s Essay On Death, and Miguel de Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life. In the same year, Igor Stravinsky created “The Dedication of Spring”, Edward Munk completed a fresco in the hall of the University of Oslo, Thomas Mann wrote Death in Venice, George Trakl and Gottfried Ben published their poetry collections, Franz Kafka wrote the first chapter of the future novel America, and James Joyce finishes Dubliners. It was a crucial moment in modern European history, when before the Great War, European artistic sensibilities began to meet a common culture - what Peter Birger calls a culture of total break with the traditional paradigm. One technical fact speaks volumes about the need to scientifically revalue this text: this text by Mitrinović represents, in musical terms, a caesura - both in the biographical and in the context of the Serbian cultural reality back then. Namely, after “Aesthetic Contemplations”, Mitrinović will no longer publish any poem or art criticism (with the exception of two smaller texts in the same spirit, published just before leaving for England). Also, this text represents a kind of personal testamentary pledge, when it comes to national cultural heritage and Predrag Palavestra, Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića (Beograd: Slovo ljubve, 1977), 165-167. 4

76

social struggle. On the eve of the Great War, the former uncrowned leader of pro-Yugoslav subversive intellectual activities and the charismatic inspirer of concrete actions of the Yugoslav-oriented youth left his cultural territory and language forever and approaches the great European motherland of the then spiritual, intellectual and esoteric currents, in which it also leaves a specific trace. Although, when mentioning this biographical detail, his apostolic pathos is most often mentioned (visible, for example, from his answer to his brother about the “burning torch” and “sower of the future harvest”) or justified fear of potential persecution given the fact of the early leadership in the organization „Young Bosnia“, we are more inclined to view this act in the context of Mitrinović’s overall avant-garde work, which, if it wants to remain avant-garde, must go in the direction of radical and concrete identification with the work itself, in a Rimbaudean sense - as replacing theory with practice and confirming creativity with concrete authentic life. “Like a beacon from a romantic legend filled with the pathos of tomorrow, he creates a mythological aura around himself and thus achieves an absolute avant-garde situation, in which action is more important than deeds, resistance than tradition and action than results”.5 This, of course, is also contributed by the personal charisma that Mitrinović possessed. In the book Orage and the New Age Circle, Paul Selver wrote: “I barely shook hands with Mitrinović, when I felt such excitement with his very presence that I almost fainted. That never happened to me before or after. After that, I was left with a strong impression that there was something not so much dark as mysterious in Mitrinović”.6 Theoretically based, penetrating style and extremely versatile, with rich experience of youthful cultural and social activities, Mitrinović’s poetic-manifest expression, in which he advocates the destruction of traditional forms and clichés, represents the first theoretically valid anticipation of the avant-garde and affirmation of a new spiritual order in philosophy, poetry and general cultural practice. It is precisely the avant-garde - Mitrinović’s expression in “Aesthetic Contemplations” - that represents the total demand. It is a futuristic platform on the basis of which, through the culture of avant-garde total rupture, a new order of things will be “optimally projected”. 5 6

Ibid., 195. Palavestra, Nekropolje, 31-32.

77

This work of Mitrinović, however, deviates somewhat from the poetic radicalism of the original, Marinetian futurism (after all, Russian futurism also deviates from Marinetti’s poetic school) can still be interpreted in accordance with the attempt of a certain modernist re-interpretation of tradition. This is certainly related to Mitrinović’s national cultural motives back then, visible in the attempt to modernize national cultural practice and its connection to the most current intellectual and spiritual currents in Europe, but also to a kind of summary of previous personal reflections on aesthetic phenomena and their connection with other human activities and spiritual culture. In other words, the avant-garde storm that began to rage in Europe at that time was quite naturally adopted by a young thinker, already exalted in character, who came from a traditional environment, which he was trying to modernize. Mitrinović’s courage to link this traditional culture to avantgarde European thought is already attested by the fact that “Aesthetic Contemplations” was published in Bosanska vila, the messenger of the patriarchal civic environment, which was not very enthusiastic about new incomprehensible cries against the traditional system. On the other hand, soon after his acquaintance with the latest European spiritual tendencies, Mitrinović formulated his position on the future of Western civilization itself: although he believed in its imminent disintegration and thus hinted at the horrors of the coming war, Mitrinović had no need, such as members of the great European avantgarde, to completely reject the entire European traditional paradigm, but as a descendant of the cultural periphery of Europe, confidently proclaimed the position on the necessity of forming young cultures on proven European values ​​and their accession to the European cultural arena, enriched with new quality through undiscovered values ​​of its own periphery, renewed. The future esoteric vision of a united Europe, one of the first in the European spiritual experience of the 20th century, will have its beginning there. This vision has its basis in the spiritual order, so it sets it apart from all organizations that perceive themselves as a kind of alternative to the United Nations, such as, for example the World Federalist Movement or the organization “Citizens of the World”. In Serbian literary historiography, the fact of stratification of the Serbian avant-garde into two developmental flows is almost

78

completely ignored: a radical avant-garde creative practice, which completely rejects any kind of cooperation with traditional forms (Ljubomir Micic, Dragan Aleksić, early Rastko Petrović, etc.) and an attempt modernist re-interpretations of tradition (Miloš Crnjanski - after poem Stražilovo, Milan Dedinac, Dušan Vasiljev, late Rastko Petrović, etc.). By the way, when the avant-garde speaks of a tradition that needs to be destroyed, it is almost always the historical period called the modern age, definitely established in the 18th century and irreparably connected with the hierarchical system of bourgeois society. In that sense, the avant-garde very often refers to antiquity, folklore heritage, folk, cyclical conception of time, romantic deviation from the Enlightenment line of development, but also to other distant traditions of Africa and the Far East. With Dimitrije Mitrinović, as the anticipator of the Serbian avantgarde, one can easily see a syncretic ambition, one of the rare attempts, both in the Serbian and in the European cultural area, of a great avantgarde synthesis. In the context of Serbian literature and culture, this tendency is, in various ways, clearly visible only in Rastko Petrović and Stanislav Vinaver, rather than in Miloš Crnjanski opus. Although Mitrinović’s work is most often divided into the period before and after his departure for Britain, a unified view of his opus provides an immediate insight into the syncretic character of his thought. Although this syncretism is most often interpreted as an echo of Masonic mystical syncretism, our premise is that it is initially and essentially of the avant-garde order. This is all the more so because in the book of British Freemasonry by researchers Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas The Book of Hiram, we find unequivocal information, based on the list of all members of this Brotherhood in Britain, that Mitrinović was not a member of this organization, although he was a great connoisseur of Masonic teachings and the owner of a fascinating collection of books about them, on which these British authors based their research. Admiring the conclusions stated in Mitrinović’s discussion entitled Freemasonry and Catholicism, these authors point out the way in which they came to this material: Mitrinović moved to London around the time of World War I, where he became a leading figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a group of intellectuals named after an area near the

79

British Museum in central London, where most members lived. (...) Mitrinović was not a freemason, and since it took us seven years of extensive research, with the application of professional Freemasonry knowledge, in order to reach that conclusion, we wondered how he succeeded in that. We found that he did so based on an extensive study of numerous works from his library, so we decided to find those books. When we found that collection, we found that after Mitrinović’s death, it was packed in boxes for forty years and placed in his cousin’s garage. When we finally managed to collect those books and find a good place for Mitrinović’s library, his cousin decided to donate them to the University. Fortunately, the University that offered to preserve them is located in Bradford, where Robert teaches.7 This information, therefore, confirms the speculative nature of Mitrinović’s interest in certain teachings, which does not necessarily mean that he belongs to them. With this, the thesis about the essentially avant-garde nature of his interests and a kind of overflow of the avantgarde weft from the literary-artistic to the social and esoteric plan gained additional significance. From early poetry, simultaneously overwhelmed by traditional national and social and, on the other hand, the latest expressionist tendencies; through early articles and essays in which the combination of tradition and avant-garde is clearly seen (“National Soil and Modernity”, 1908, “From the Lyric of Germany”, 1912), to more complex critical reviews and all the way to later syncretic occult-literary-social texts written in German and English - this wide range of activities and reflections is essentially unique, because it is part of the same avant-garde flow. The best evidence of the syncretic, avant-garde orientation in the early phase of Mitrinović’s literary-critical work is one of the first apologies of Vladislav Petković Dis’s poetry and the emphasis on the rights and importance of incorporating decadence by Serbian culture, in the context of great attacks by Serbian critics on Dis’s collection of poems Drowned Souls, already in the year of appearance of this collection - 1911. Dis’s collection will be marked by most of the Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, Hiramova knjiga. Slobodno zidarstvo, Venera i tajni ključ Hristovog života (Beograd: Hiram, 2006), 32-33. 7

80

Serbian cultural representatives back then as a work that undermines the traditional and then ruling values ​​of larpurlartism, embodied by Bogdan Popović’s book Anthology of Newer Serbian Lyrics, published the same years. Precisely because of and around the mentioned Dis collection, two unshakable fronts of the Serbian cultural scene will be formed, which are most often marked as a conflict of “old” and “new”. Of course, conservative critics will evaluate Popovis’s Anthology as the greatest event in recent Serbian literature, while they will label Dis’s collection as a product of a sick mind. However, a different type of critical inscriptions, as well as a different evaluation of Popović’s Anthology and Dis’s collection, embodied in the texts of Dimitrije Mitrinović, Stanislav Vinaver and Svetislav Stefanović, in contrast to the general celebration of the first and complete rejection of the second, will blur the established image of Serbian poetic reality, anticipate the avant-garde. Gojko Tešić also emphasizes that. The schism of the critical understanding of poetic practice can be considered as an early announcement of the Serbian avant-garde, primarily because at that time the hotbeds of critical radicalism with a positive and negative sign began. The two confronted conceptions simultaneously act as an opposite poetic couple within Serbian literature, testifying to different poetic tendencies that are mutually exclusive, denied, rejected.8 In the same year, Mitrinović wrote about the traditional paradigm extremely negatively, seeking rejection, from the perspective of the demands of modern times, of the empty and artificial decorativeness of traditional lyrics in the review “Croatian poet Dragutin Domjanic”, also from 1911. In the text “The Case of Svetislav Stefanović”, from 1913, in an almost completely futuristic way, he tries to create a platform on the basis of which he will break the traditional paradigm and establish a new order of things. This continues in one of the last texts before leaving for Britain, “Crochet’s Coup or the Aesthetics of Intuition” (1914), which was written as an apology for a new creative dynamic, which was deepened and expanded by the French philosopher Henri Gojko Tešić, Srpska književna avangarda: književnoistorijski kontekst (1902-1934), (Beograd: Institut za književnost i umetnost, Službeni glasnik, 2009), 45. 8

81

Bergson after this Italian esthetician In that text Mitrinović hints at the predominance of intuitionism in the avant-garde poetics of the 1920s. The later synthesis, related to the unique esoteric school, also manifests a certain avant-garde heritage. In that sense, we should not forget that trust in the brotherhood of all people is an avant-garde (specifically expressionist) motive par excellence, as well as insisting on a new social structure, as an echo of change on an individual level, which sharply separates Mitrinović from other spiritual teachers. At the same time, he is distinguished by a kind of metaphysical optimism, the origin of which could be sought in the idealistic foundation of avantgarde “optimal projections”, which is why the avant-garde was sharply criticized later by postmodernism. “While Guenon is a pessimist of the cosmic level (kali-yuga), and Gurdjieff of the anthropological (human conditioning), Mitrinović has a bright prophetic vision on both levels, close to expressionist poets”.9 However, this avant-garde alternative potential today seems to be a very interesting possibility to respond to the trend of the current process of globalization. After all, it has already been noticed that Mitrinović’s specificity, as a spiritual teacher, is, among other things, the connection of individual change with the social one - a motive without a doubt of the avant-garde order.10 Therefore, it can happen, as evidenced by the case mentioned at the beginning of this paper, that the current global tendencies will, in a way, naturally revalue the avant-garde thought of Dimitrije Mitrinović, which could soon become privileged in the contemporary cultural context. Not only that. According to the nomenclature of Boris Groys,11 the Serbian avant-garde, as well as all other Central European avantgarde, are classified in the so-called non-paradigmatic avant-garde. Until now, the paradigmatic avant-garde has been mostly called the French, Italian, German and Russian historical avant-garde, as large, typical or hegemonic avant-garde that determine a certain horizon of historicization of the international concept of avant-garde. A Nemanja Radulović, Podzemni tok. Ezoterično i okultno u srpskoj književnosti (Beograd: Službeni glasnik, 2009), 236. 10 Luisa Passerini, Europe in Love, Love in Europe. Imagination and Politics in Britain between the Wars (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 125. 11 Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, Avant-garde, Aesthetic, Dictatorship and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 9

82

hypothetical modern avant-garde, with a strong spiritual influence of Mitrinović’s provenance, so today - in the modern social context and digital-technological environment - could not only serve as a kind of aesthetic filter, but also rise to the heights of a paradigmatic avantgarde that would indicate on the way to a concrete change of the reality paradigm. Mitrinović’s integrative thought, which merges avant-garde and tradition-sanctified ideas and motives (all with the initial goal of modernizing the domestic cultural paradigm and brotherhood of South Slavic peoples, which will very quickly expand into a global vision of pan-European and universal human evolutionary leap, through a broad cultural synthesis humanistic and psychological project) can be interpreted today in accordance with Habermas’s call for the renewal of “essential, integral reason”, which ruled Europe until the Enlightenment, which initiated the future dominance of specialist thought. The Enlightenment turn would later lead to modern particular identities and contemporary micro-interests. However, this syncretic discourse is most noticeable in “Aesthetic Contemplations” and it is not, in connection with this text, Mitrinović’s unreasonable abandonment of the particular national culture or literature itself. In a theoretical sense, this turn was certainly decisively influenced by the book The Side Birth by Erich Gutkind, a German philosopher and poet of Jewish origin. This book turned Mitrinović’s national and Yugoslav idea forever towards wide European and planetary spaces. Gutkind, together with Vasily Kandinsky, helped Mitrinović in 1914 to publish the never-realized almanac Aryan Europe, and later Mitrinović retaliated by helping him to publish the hermetic Kabbalistic book The Highest Community, which Gutkind wrote after leaving for America before the Nazi rise in Germany. However, at the same time, it is another confirmation of the avantgarde “total” demand for a change in the real paradigm itself. In other words, this text, like other truly avant-garde manifest discourses, is not written as literature, in the traditional sense, but as a publication of a new philosophy of total global life and the culture of the future in which the free citizen of the world (candleman) will live an authentic life. So, once again, the avant-garde origin of Mitrinović’s views comes to the fore, just as Palavestra concludes:

83

Mitrinović almost certainly did not take over the first and perhaps the most expressive principle of the avant-garde, its life-giving activism, only from futurists. Activism was a general psychological property of the progressive and radical spirits of the epoch, and Mitrinović felt it as a part of his being, as a natural state of awakened consciousness which, in social action, communicated with the ethical criteria of the general age.12 That is why in the text, philosophical, social, theological, cultural-historical, political and eschatological topics promote side by side. Precisely, therefore, because Mitrinović’s ideological orientation belongs to avant-garde discourse, which tries to replace the outdated cultural paradigm with a new reality, his aesthetics actually becomes the ethics of the modern age and the pledge of the future idea of​​ humanity. Revival is the ideal of what the people need and what they want, and the only way is to overthrow violence and establish humanity, to enlighten the people and strengthen the thought. We must move forward because the immeasurable will of life is in us that persecutes us.13 At the same time, by linking to the early currents of German expressionism and Italian futurism, this text by Mitrinović marks the establishment of a connection between modern Serbian culture and the most lively and largely exclusive efforts of the current European intellectual elite, a connection that has been broken for a long time. At the same time, that binding was not based on a mechanical takeover, but on a simultaneous projection of one’s own, very special mythology. In the context of the general avant-garde tendencies of the time, it was a common, pan-European attempt to situate creativity in reality itself, instead of some transcendent Kant-type reality. It was the beginning of building a “new myth”, a “modern mythology” of modern culture, based on avant-garde “optimal projection”. The fact Palavestra, Dogma, 175. Dimitrije Mitrinović, Estetičke kontemplacije (1913), last modified 01.10.2018, http:// afrodita.rcub.bg.ac.rs/~pajin/dm/tekstovi/kontemplacije.html. 12 13

84

that there are revelations in reality for man in general, from a human point of view, means that the numenon is utterable, because intuitive reason, the reason that “knows” that numenon, for this, as for other European avant-garde, is a creative instinct, rather than just concrete creative realization. Precisely because of that, for Mitrinović’s opus (just like Marinetti himself or some other avant-garde artists), today we cannot say that it is rounded off by some system, nor that literary activity has the exclusive right to that opus. The lack of a system is another distinguishing factor when it comes to Mitrinović as a spiritual teacher. The syncretic character of these avant-garde “optimal projections” does not allow any molding, and their fragmentation today can represent a metaphorical spelling of a new, emerging, real paradigm, which will place new cultural and even more - spiritual values ​​at the core of the global process, a free man, as, in Bakunin’s words, a “free seeker of truth.” This anarchist potential of Mitrinović’s thought, as well as any other truly avant-garde conception of culture, entails a kind of judgment of the establishment. Therefore, forgetting this “cultural hero” does not necessarily represent a spontaneous act of one forgetful culture. We remember after all, in the context of Serbian literature, the fate of another syncretic mind - Rastko Petrović. Or the decision of Dragan Aleksić to to manifestly shut up himself, together with the rest of the European Dada, in 1922, projecting the possibility of establishing Dadaism as an academic style for the then distant 1999. If you stubbornly stick to the radically avant-garde demands, you can only starve, which was almost the fate of Ljubomir Micić, the founder of Zenitism (and aside from all the stories about his “awkward” nature). It was similar, after all, elsewhere. Already at the time when Goebbels closed the Bauhaus, that school almost completely rejected the request of its founder Gropius, accepting the functional (Corbusier’s and Niemeyer’s) architectural style, and it already used its applied art for market and industrial purposes. Artists such as Clay or Mitrinović’s associate and acquaintance Kandinsky were already at that time in the institutional hierarchical chain “lowered” exclusively to the level of lecturers. Mitrinović’s “escape” into the occult thus can be interpreted as his specific and practically avant-garde response to the establishment practice.

85

The aesthetic function of this avant-garde cultural practice, today can be interpreted as a filter of social grooming. In other words, the modern hypothesis of social grooming by the Russian-American theorist Mikhail Epstein,14 based on the natural self-purification of culture, which in its gradual development has the potential to create “new life” in the Bacon sense, is most obvious can prove by the example of the avant-garde. Namely, culture is often defined as a very gradual system of language, by which humanity speaks only to itself. As Michael Epstein informs us, in Robin Dunbar’s book Cleansing, Intrigue and the Evolution of Language, based on extensive material from the field study of primates, the hypothesis is that language originates from lustration rituals, which have the function of connecting social groups. In that way, Epstein concludes, physical self-purification would be an analog and a phenomenon of all cultural processes, where, in accordance with man’s mental evolution, the external is replaced by the internal. During this process, man passes the entire surrounding world through a set of different filters, so the culture can be interpreted as one man’s giant shelter from garbage. When the “death of God” was completed with the “death of man”, there was talk of the “death of the avant-garde” and we are living observers of the disintegration of two ideas that were the basis of alternative global potential: the disintegration of the vision of the future and the disintegration of the “aesthetics of change” per se. This latter term was a regenerative mode of European spirit, culture and literature, beginning with the Renaissance. Art and culture today are only part of a global media product. Fictional art – which is definitely enthroned as dominant by co-opting modernist re-interpretation into the system (even in the case of so-called dissidents) - is not dangerous to the establishment and even confirms the exclusivity of class identity, whether we are talking about citizen identity in traditional bourgeois society, the identity of the consumer in a modern consumer society, or the identity of a manager in the current corporate environment. It is no longer a “crisis of the avant-garde.” That is the end of aesthetics. If we look at the current global process in the light of Heidegger’s long-standing statement that technique takes over all the prerogatives of humanity - today theoretically accompanied by theoretical texts such as Sloterdijk’s Rules for the Human Garden or Foucault’s Birth of 14

Mihail Epštejn, Filozofija tela (Beograd: Geopoetika, 2009), 259-281.

86

Biopolitics and artistic texts such as Michel Houellebeckq’s Atomised - the alternative aesthetic-ethical and social potential of Mitrinović’s thought becomes more than obvious, so the need for revaluation of his work, not without some redaction, is urgent and necessary. Bibliography Birger, Peter. Teorija avangarde [Theory of avant-garde]. Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1998. Epštejn, Mihail. Filozofija tela [Philosophy of the body]. Beograd: Geopoetika, 2009. Flaker, Aleksandar. Poetika osporavanja: avangarda i književna ljevica [The poetics of contestation: avant-garde and literary left]. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1982. Groys, Boris. The Total Art of Stalinism, Avant-garde, Aesthetic, Dictatorship and Beyond. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Knight, Christopher and Lomas, Robert. Hiramova knjiga: slobodno zidarstvo, Venera i tajni ključ Hristovog života [tr. of: The Book of Hiram: Freemasonry, Venus and the Secret Key to the Life of Jesus]. Beograd: Hiram, 2006. Mitrinović, Dimitrije. Estetičke kontemplacije (1913). Accessed October 1, 2018. http://afrodita.rcub.bg.ac.rs/~pajin/dm/tekstovi/kontemplacije.html. Palavestra, Predrag. Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića: počeci srpske književne avangarde [The dogma and utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović: the beginnings of Serbian literary avant-garde]. Beograd: Slovo ljubve, 1977. Nekropolje: biografski eseji [Necropolis: biographical essays]. Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike, 2011. Passerini, Luisa. Europe in Love, Love in Europe. Imagination and Politics in Britain between the Wars. London: I. B. Tauris, 1993. Radulović, Nemanja. Podzemni tok: ezoterično i okultno u srpskoj književnosti [An underground current: esoteric and occult in Serbian literature]. Beograd: Službeni glasnik, 2009. Tešić, Gojko. Srpska književna avangarda: književnoistorijski kontekst (1902-1934) [Serbian literary avant-garde: the context of literary history 1902-1934]. Beograd: Institut za književnost i umetnost, Službeni glasnik, 2009.

87

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch6 82:929 Mitrinović D.

Slobodan G. Markovich

DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ IN THE QUEST FOR GNOSIS. FROM NATIONAL TO COSMOPOLITAN IDENTITY1 Dimitrije Mitrinović has been described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by his most diligent student in the West as a “philosopher and social critic”.2 The leading Serbian biographical publication defines him in the following way: “writer, national revolutionary and publicist”.3 Henry LeRoy Finch, thanks to whom Mitrinović’s articles from The New Age and New Britain were republished in English, calls him “a Christian theosophist”.4 The editor of his collected papers in Serbian, Predrag Palavestra, entitled two chapters of his book on him, dealing with the two periods of his life (Bosnian and British), in the following way: “a conspirator or a preacher”, and “an unrecognised prophet”.5 Most recently, Dušan Pajin called him Some parts of this paper were presented at the round table on Dimitrije Mitrinović organised by Dr. Nemanja Radulović and Dr. Aleksandar Jerkov. The round table was held on December 10, 2013, at the University Library in Belgrade. 2 Andrew Rigby, S. v. “Dimitrije Mitrinović“, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2008). [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/97877, accessed 23 June 2016] 3 Bojana Popović, „Mitrinović, Dimitrije“, Srpski biografski rečnik [Serbian Biographical Dictionary], vol. 6 (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 2014), 787. 4 Henry LeRoy Finch, “Introduction”, in: Eric Gutkind, The Body of God. First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), 12. 5 Predrag Palavestra, Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića [Dogma and Utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović] (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2nd enl. ed., 2003 [1st ed. 1977]), 1

88

“one of the visionaries of the 20th century”.6 Could one man be all of this: a philosopher, a social critic, a writer, a national revolutionary, a theosophist, a preacher and a prophet? It is obviously difficult to capture this peculiar personality in just two or three words. Mitrinović spent the last 39 years of his life in London and its vicinity (1914–1953), and after his death a foundation, the New Atlantis, was established and was dedicated to the dissemination of his ideas, as well as studying thinkers who Mitrinović held in high esteem. In 1987, Mitrinović’s ideas became available in English when one of his followers collected his newspaper articles, published papers, and edited notes from his lectures.7 What becomes clear from various comments on Mitrinović is that there are at least two distinctive groups of his commentators. His followers from the late 1930s and the 1940s described him in rather practical terms, insisting on his plans for social reform and the creation of European and world federations. However, his early British disciples from the period of the Great War and the 1920s had depicted him in a different manner. For them he was a theosophist, a guru, even a black magician. This paper re-examines particularly the first group of his British followers in an effort to at least partially decode the neglected layers of Mitrinović’s thought. It also endeavours to find continuity in Mitrinović’s ideas. Dimitrije Mitrinović as a Yugoslav Nationalist and Ideologue of the Young Bosnia Dimitrije Mitrinović was born in 1887 in a village in Herzegovina to a family of ethnic Serbs. Nine years earlier Austria-Hungary had been given a mandate by the Treaty of Berlin to occupy and administer the former Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This act caused substantial dissatisfaction in the provinces among their two biggest ethnic and religious groups: the Christian Orthodox Serbs and , 279. Dušan Pajin, Za svečovečansku zajednicu. Dimitrije Mitrinović (1887–1953) [For a Panhuman Community. Dimitrije Mitrinović 1887-1953] (Belgrade: Pešić i sinovi, 2016), 7. 7 H. C. Rutherford, (ed.), Dimitrije Mitrinović, Certainly, Future. Selected writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović, (New York: Boulder, 1987). 5 6

89

the Bosnian Slav Muslims. By the end of the century the situation was further complicated by the penetration of two national movements into Bosnia: the Serbian and the Croatian. Under such conditions the unilateral annexation of the provinces by Austria-Hungary in 1908 was bound to cause further dissatisfaction, strengthened by emerging local nationalisms. It was precisely in this period that, in addition to the Serbian and Croatian national movements, a third movement also emerged: the Serbo-Croat or Yugoslav movement. At the beginning of the 20th century, many Bosnian high school pupils and students studying in Vienna, Zagreb, Belgrade and Prague, turned into devoted advocates of Yugoslav, Serbian or Croatian national ideologies. In the period between the Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary and the outbreak of the Great War (1908–1914), every year Bosnian high school youths tended to get progressively more radical and increasingly pro-Yugoslav. Mitrinović was already influenced by the emerging Serbian nationalism while attending the gymnasium in Mostar (from 1899 to 1907). At the very beginning of the 20th century only 30 natives of Bosnia and Herzegovina held university degrees.8 Therefore, the local gymnasia (grammar schools) played a much bigger intellectual role than in other areas of Europe. Under local circumstances gymnasia pupils became leading intellectuals not infrequently while still in their teens. Literary circles in gymnasia easily turned into political cultural clubs, often imbued with radical political ideas. Austro-Hungarians were eager to modernise Bosnia and Herzegovina, and this included the implementation of a modern education system. Ironically, this effort only encouraged the anti-Austrian feelings among the local high school pupils influenced by the emerging nationalisms. One such educational institution established by the AustroHungarian authorities was the Mostar Gymnasium, founded in 1893. Student associations were not officially permitted in the gymnasia of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consequently, various informal and covert associations consisting of high school pupils emerged and flourished. Thus, in 1904, Mitrinović formed the “Secret Library”, which was soon transformed into a secret literary society called “Matica”. Already in this period he was a staunch Yugoslav.9 The work in the “Secret 8 9

Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), 176. Ibid, 177.

90

Library” made him inclined to secret societies and he soon joined another one, “Sloboda” (Liberty), which acted under the leadership of a kindred spirit, Bogdan Žerajić. Although some members of this society advocated primarily Serbian views, Mitrinović insisted on Yugoslav unity and on finding ways for Serbs and Croats to come closer through culture and literature.10 In his Yugoslav orientation Mitrinović was several years ahead of other Young Bosnians. The Mostar Gymnasium became one of the centres of the so-called Young Bosnians, a loosely connected group of secret youth literary societies with the political aim of liberating Bosnia and Herzegovina from Austro-Hungarian rule.11 At least three different streams may be identified among them: 1) Serbian and Yugoslav (Serbo-Croat) nationalism; 2) revolutionary zeal to create socially more just societies, and 3) ideas on the ethical improvement of man. In 1907, upon graduating from the Mostar Gymnasium, Mitrinović became a student in Zagreb, where he studied philosophy, psychology and logic. He occasionally attended some lectures in Belgrade, and from 1909 he studied in Zagreb and Vienna. He remained committed to literary efforts in Bosnia and contributed to the literary journal Bosanska Vila. His contributions to this journal in 1908–1913 made him famous among the South Slavs and he gradually became one of the spiritual leaders of the literary movement of Young Bosnia. From the end of 1909, he put in a lot of effort into launching a new journal called Zora. In the first issue of this Vienna-based journal (with the editorial board in Zagreb), he defined its programme consisting of two principles: socio-political and democratic-Yugoslav. He advocated co-operation not only between Serbs and Croats, but also with other Slavs, particularly with “our great Russia”, “with our Czech brethren who are the closest to us in terms of cultural influence”, but also with the Poles, “who are so close to us by their national misfortune.” He ended his programme by proclaiming the new motto of “personal, modern Serbian culture”.12 On June 15, 1910, his close friend Žerajić attempted to kill the Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Marijan Varešanin, and Predrag Palavestra, „Sudbina i delo Dimitrija Mitrinovića” [The Fate and Work of Dimitirje Mitrinović], in Idem (ed.), Dimitrije Mitrinović, Sabrana djela [Idem (ed.), Collected Works of Dimitrije Mitrinović] (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1991), 24. 11 Dedijer, The Road, 175. 12 SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 165–167. 10

91

having failed to do so, committed suicide. Prior to this Žerajić had even contemplated assassinating Emperor Francis Joseph during his visit to Bosnia, two weeks earlier. Mitrinović was compromised by Žerajić’s action, and an anonymous letter was sent to the Sarajevo police by someone in Zagreb, but since the police found no compromising material in his apartment in Zagreb, Mitrinović was only briefly detained. Starting in the spring of 1910 Mitrinović became a great advocate of the art of the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović. He viewed him as a symbol of the emerging Serbo-Croat or Yugoslav nation. He had contacts with and the support of some semi-official circles in Belgrade, but no one has ever been able to clarify the exact nature of these contacts, although some links suggest that he may have co-operated with the nationalist Belgrade organisation “Narodna Odbrana” (National Defence). In Belgrade, Mitrinović was seen as a good promoter of the Yugoslav idea and for this purpose he did receive some funding. However, throughout his student years he proved capable of finding support through personal contacts. Scarce sources, however, preclude the identification of those Maecenas. Judging by his London years, one is tempted to conclude that he was very popular among women. He was encouraged by his contacts in Belgrade to go to Rome and to report from there to the Serbian press. At the beginning of 1911 he moved to Rome, and stayed there till the beginning of 1913, when he moved to Munich. In the same period, he also made visits to Sarajevo and Belgrade and was instrumental in connecting various pro-Yugoslav cultural groups.13 From Futurism to Utopian Universalism What happened to Mitrinović’s inner world in Rome is not something that his friends from Sarajevo or Belgrade expected or hoped for. They wanted to have a pro-Yugoslav and a pro-Serbian propagandist and activist. He, however, came into contact with the futurist movement, witnessed the development of avant-garde art and was immediately absorbed by it. The best specialist on Mitrinović and the editor of his collected works in Serbian (SerboCroat), Predrag Palavestra, described this Rome transformation 13

SDDM (1991), vol. 1: 42–42, 47–53

92

in the following way: “Mitrinović’s critical and aesthetic thought, imbued with moral principles and theological justifications, abruptly turned, in contact with the futurist programme, to the future and to utopia. The secular character of that utopia came closer to the esoteric philosophy of new man and to his messianic role in coming times as pure revival of poetic forebodings”.14 A literary testimony of these futurist and utopian strivings appeared in the Bosanska Vila in 1913, in 10 instalments published from February to October under the title “Estetičke kontemplacije” (Aesthetic Contemplations).15 The editor of Mitrinović’s works and lecture notes in English, Henry Christian Rutherford, assesses these essays as “the guiding principles which marked the rest of his own life and work”.16 He came to Munich to study art under the supervision of Heinrich Wölfflin. His interest in cosmopolitan rather than Yugoslav affairs became even more prominent in the Bavarian capital, where he “turned his previous revolutionary dogma into a chiliastic vision”.17 A clear shift is seen in his essay on Benedetto Croce’s philosophy completed at the end of 1913, and this essay “had almost no connection to the national idea”.18 Palavestra considers Mitrinović’s article “For Yugoslavia”, written in Munich in the spring of 1914, as his “final farewell to his life up to that moment, and his farewell to the ideas of Yugoslav unity”.19 In this article, published in the Zagreb journal Vihor in May 1914, he made an appeal: “Serbo-Croats with Slovenes, unite your hearts into an uncreated nation, and do not lose your spirit!”.20 His decision to leave his native land and to dedicate his efforts to universal rather than national ideas certainly disappointed many of his former associates. His brother Čedomilj still remembered in 1954 that Dimitrije: “simply disappeared and vanished from the public life of his country. He went away from Serbia and stayed in Rome, Munich, Тübingen. To his fellow country-men at home it seemed that he had become dead and feelingless towards his own country”.21 SDDM (1991), vol. 1: 45 SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 91–138. An abridged version of “Aesthetic Contemplations” in English was published in H. C. Rutherford, Certainly Future, 17–43. 16 Rutherford, Certainly Future, 1. 17 Palavestra, “Sudbina i delo”, 53–54. 18 Ibid, 54. 19 Ibid, 57. 20 SDDM (1991), vol 2: 205. 21 Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative. An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović (New York: Boulder, 1984), 20, 22.

14 15

93

In his novel St. Vitus Day, the British author Stephen Graham offers an imaginary conversation between Mitrinović and Bogdan Žerajić in the presence of a schoolboy named Miloš. He presents them as two personalities characteristic of the youth movement who “made the neighbouring town of Mostar into a cultural centre radiating beyond Bosnia”.22 Since he was Mitrinović’s friend and even a disciple for a time, he is very likely to have been provided with some elements of the conversation by Mitrinović himself. The dialogue is supposed to have happened in Sarajevo in 1910, some time before Žerajić made his (in)famous assassination attempt on Varešanin. In the novel Žerajić says that since 1908, in other words since the annexation of Bosnia, “we have all become nationalists.” The musician “Mitya Mitrinovitch”23 replies to this remark in the following way: Nationalists for the sake of Socialism. Nationalism is only wrong when it forgets the larger ideal, the brotherhood of Man. The consciousness of unity progresses by stages. The Austrians are pleased to call us Bosniaks, but we know we are Serbs. The King of the Serbs freed us from the Turks. And Serbs, with Bulgars and Croats, are all Jugoslavs. In Jugoslavia we might have a nucleus for a new civilisation. We shared death in the fourteenth century, and reconstruction in the nineteenth. Our priest is the sculptor Mestrovitch who, through art, unites us consciously with our great past. But Serbia does not rise for Serbia’s sake, but for the sake of man as a whole. Our unity, if we achieve it, must be a cell in a greater unity .24 A few paragraphs down, Mitrinović insists that he is against violence and that his only violence was “the violence of our printing press at Mostar”, adding that war is not his métier.25 There is no doubt that Mitrinović had espoused precisely these ideas in the period between 1910 and 1914, and the lines attributed to him aptly reflect the gradual transformation of his Yugoslav nationalism into a universalist cosmopolitanism, a process that was fully completed during the Great War. Stephen Graham, St. Vitus Day, (London: D. Appleton and Company), 1931, 21. Mita is a common nickname in Serbo-Croat for Dimitrije. 24 Ibid, 32–33. 25 Ibid, 24, 26. 22 23

94

Mitrinović, Gutkind and Kandinsky On the eve of the Great War, in the late spring and early summer of 1914, Dimitrije Mitrinović put all his efforts into publishing an ambitiously envisaged annual, 500 pages in length, entitled The Aryan Europe or Foundations of the Future (Die arische Europa oder Grundlage der Zukunft). The annual was to lead to the establishment of an international movement “Towards the Mankind of the Future through Aryan Europe” (Zur Mencshheit der Zukunft durch das Arysche Europa).26 He wrote from Munich to Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter and theorist, that political action was necessary. Kandinsky seems to have believed that mankind was approaching the Third Age, an epoch that Joachim of Flora announced, at the beginning of the 13th century, as the new age of the Spirit. For Kandinsky his abstract painting “was the gospel of this new age”.27 In these ideas he also was under the influence of Dmitrii Merezhkovsky.28 In preparing the Yearbook Mitrinović exploited the concept of an élite group that would spiritually lead the world, and he mentioned in a letter to Eric Gutkind, in June 1914, an “organization for a pan-human little brotherhood of the most worldworthy bearers of present-day culture”29. The original idea for the Yearbook came to Mitrinović through the mediation of Kandinsky and Giovanni Papini, who was an Italian futurist at that time. Previously, Eric Gutkind and Frederik van Eeden had already discussed attracting “chosen spirits”. They called their fraternity “Blut-bund” (the Blood Brotherhood) and Mitrinović obviously adopted their idea.30 He had already been inspired by Russian spirituality and therefore easily found a common ground with Kandinsky, who had similar preferences. It was Kandinsky who connected Mitrinović with “Draft of a letter of Mitrinović to Erich Gutkind”, June 27, 1914. UB – SC, NAF, 1.4.1. The letter was translated into English by the members of the New Atlantis Foundation (NAF), and was also published in Serbian translation in: SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 235–242. 27 Frank Kermode, “Apocalypse and the Modern”, Visions of Apocalypse: End or Rebirth? ed. Saul Friedländer, Gerald Holton, Leo Marx and Eugene Skolnikoff (New York, London: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 96. 28 Shulamith Behr, “Wassily Kandinsky and Dimitrije Mitrinovic: Pan-Christian Universalism and the Yearbook ‘Towards the Mankind of the Future through Aryan Europe’”, Oxford Art Journal 15. 1 (1992): 83. 29 Ibid, 85. 30 H. C. Rutherford, “General Introduction”, in Idem (ed.), Certainly, Future. Selected writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović (New York: Boulder, 1987), 7–8. 26

95

another person sympathetic to mysticism, Eric (Erich) Gutkind (1877– 1965). In 1910 the latter published a book entitled Die Siderische Geburt (Sidereal Birth). Upon reading this book Mitrinović became fascinated with it. In June 1914 he wrote to Kandinsky: “it seems to me that Die Siderische Geburt is worthy to be the true religion of a pan-Europe”.31 Two days later he admits to Gutkind that Sidereal Birth has become “a book which supports and uplifts me, next to the most important things through which I support and defend myself”.32 From June 1914 he considered it as “the main fundamental book for developing our cultural philosophy of pan-Aryandom”. In his letter to Gutkind he states: “We should like to entrust to you the guidance of the religion of pan-Europe”.33 In the first chapter of his book entitled “Thou, Thou End of the World” Gutkind explained his basic concepts. The current civilisation could not progress forever, “the world must come to an end, but this can no longer frighten us”. In accordance with Gnostic and certain other esoteric teachings, Gutkind saw a huge divine potential in humans: “In holy poverty we shall renounce the limitations of our little personality, this merely mechanical, as yet lifeless ego in order to gain our higher seraphic self, which is not subject to death, but partakes of all that is divine and will redeem the silent depths”.34 As Henry LeRoy Finch has noted, Sidereal Birth was under the influence of German Romanticism and of authors like Novalis, Schelling, Boehme and Nietzsche. LeRoy Finch has clearly noticed: “Its apocalyptic theme is expressed in terms more Gnostic and Christian than Jewish”.35 However, he neglected another possibility: that of Jewish Gnosticism, which might have influenced Gutkind.36 Mitrinović to Kanindsky, Munich, June 25, 1914. UB – SC, NAF, 1.3.3 (the file includes the original letters in German and English translations typed by someone from NAF. The quote is from the NAF translation). 32 “Draft of a letter of Mitrinović to Erich Gutkind”, June 27, 1914. UB - SC, NAF, 1.4.1; SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 236. 33 Ibid, UB – SC, NAF, 1.4.1; SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 238–239. 34 Eric Gutkind, The Body of God. First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), 180. 35 Henry LeRoy Finch, “Introduction”, Eric Gutkind, The Body of God. First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), 13–14. 36 Gershom G. Sholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1946). 31

96

The Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic text found in 1945, teaches that one who achieves gnosis is “no longer a Christian, but a Christ”.37 In other words, there is potential in humans to reach the consciousness of God. Gutkind’s sidereal birth is equivalent to the Gnostic discovery of gnosis within oneself. Or as he put it: “The transcendence we speak of is Sidereal Birth… And the realm to which we seek to rise, which is the consummation of ‘word’ we will call, making free use of a gnostic term – Pleroma”. Or as he stated even more openly: “Now everything must be imbued with this: that from now on we rise to sidereal birth in which we ourselves become God”.38 From 1914 Mitrinović’s quest for gnosis had two aims. One was his own spiritual perfection, and the other was to find other people in search of gnosis and organise them into a group. The fusion of the earlier revolutionary zeal and futurist activism with Gutkind’s teaching led Mitrinović to postulate a need for the unity of Aryan peoples: Germanic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Slavic. They would create a nucleus that would later unite with India and the Ancient East. In that unity the revelations of Judeo-Christian traditions would be connected with the revelation of India. This was a big and resolute turn for Mitrinović, both in terms of ideas and geography. He shifted his geographic interests from the Balkans to Indo-Europe and the world, and in terms of ideas he directed his attention to the concept of Pan-Humanity. The turn in 1914 had a religious basis: a new syncretic religion of humanity with a (Judeo-) Christian Gnostic basis. This shift to religious inspiration stood in sharp contrast with his previous association with the Young Bosnia literary circles, which were deeply secular and viewed religion as an obstacle for the unity of Yugoslavs, who were desperately separated into three, often antagonistic, religious groups. As noted above, Mitrinović became an ideologue of the movement of Young Bosnia in the 1910–1914 period. The movement was, in some aspects, even anti-religious, and in ideological terms very close to certain aspects of anarchism and socialism. And yet, it was precisely in that same period in which he fascinated so many pro-Yugoslav secularists (1912–1914) that he defined the basics of his chiliastic and Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (London: Penguin, 1986), 140. H. C Rutherford, “Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age” (The New Atlantis Foundation, 1975), 15–16. 37 38

97

utopian teachings in which Yugoslavism was only a small step in his search for the global unity of mankind. These teachings were in sharp contrast with the secular ideology of Yugoslavism, which found its clearest expression in the works of the most influential literary critic in Belgrade, Jovan Skerlić. He had a very high opinion of Mitrinović’s pro-Yugoslav and modernist contributions, but died too early (in May 1914) to recognise Mitrinović’s transformation. Towards European and Universal Identity Mitrinović was lucky enough to escape from Germany on the very eve of the Great War, just a few days before the German police attempted to interrogate him in connection with the fact that the Sarajevo conspirators led by Gavrilo Princip were ideologically connected to the literary circles in which Mitrinović was held in the highest esteem. Discussing the destiny of the Sarajevo plotters, primarily of Gavrilo Princip and Nedeljko Čabrinović, Rebecca West was prompted to remark: What these youths did was abominable, precisely as abominable as the tyranny they destroyed. Yet it need not be denied that they might have grown to be good men, and perhaps great men, if the Austrian Empire had not crashed down on them in its collapse. But the monstrous frailty of empire involves such losses.39 Indeed, many a great man emerged from the ranks of Serbo-Croat (Yugoslav) secret youth associations and literary clubs that existed in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the eve of the Great War and that were later commonly known under the name of Young Bosnia. One of them, Ivo Andrić, became a diplomat of the Royalist Yugoslavia and a writer. He was the first president of the Serbo-Croat Progressive Youth (also known as Yugoslav Progressive Youth), a Serbo-Croat union of grammar school pupils in Sarajevo, founded at the end of 191140 (a Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. A Journey through Yugoslavia (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1993), 379. 40 Dušan Glišović, Ivo Andrić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija i Treći Rajh 1939–1941 [Ivo Andrić, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Third Reich 1939-1941] (Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2012), 19–23. 39

98

club that admitted Gavrilo Princip into its ranks). In the final year of at the gymnasium Andrić was strongly influenced by Mitrinović and his broad culture. Čabrinović and Princip died in Austro-Hungarian prisons. Andrić survived the war, became a diplomat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the best-known Serbian writer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. Mitrinović escaped from continental Europe just before the outbreak of the war and became the initiator of many social movements in Britain. The two Young Bosnians who survived made a broad intellectual impact and their contemplations reached far beyond their early focus on Serbian, Serbo-Croat and South-Slav nationalisms. Coming to Britain in August 1914 Mitrinović had to make his efforts all over again and in the beginning he had few followers. He was associated with the Serbian Legation in London throughout the war, and survived the war by receiving some money from it. Since he was admitted to work for the Legation thanks to his connections with pro-Yugoslav and pro-Serbian circles in Bosnia and Croatia, he had to demonstrate his commitment to Yugoslav propaganda during the Great War, although this may not have been his highest priority by that time. His thoughts and strivings seemed to have been redirected to more global affairs. His inner spiritual circle in London consisted of the Serbian theologian and priest Nikolai Velimirovich41 (at that point also very much imbued with the ideas of Christian unity and under some influence of the traditions of the Far East), the British writer Stephen Graham, who had in British terms unusual sympathies for Russia, and himself. Stephen Graham came into contact with Velimirovich and Mitrinović in the winter of 1915. Both left a deep impression on him. Graham described Velimirovich in the following way: “In the spiritual anxiety of the war, with Christians arrayed against Christians, there was a singularly attractive quality of Fr Nikolai. He was gentle, persuasive and original, like a page of the Gospel read for the first time. The Spirit of Truth was pilgrimaging among us”. Although he had the highest appreciation for Nikolai Velimirovich, Graham came under the spell of Mitrinović. The Rector of St. Margaret’s Church, The form of spelling “Nikolai Velimirovich” is the one that he himself used when he signed his affidavit following the Second World War. Previously he used several different transcriptions of his name into English. 41

99

Westminster, Canon Carnegie, organized a reception at his home. It was there that Graham met Mitrinović. As he himself confesses: “Dating from that evening I came strongly under his influence and while I was in London we were much together”.42 Graham described what was in Mitrinović’s heart at the time. “For him the young Christendom which he planned had to be a secret society. We must operate from the invisible towards the visible, from an initiated few to the many who were as yet unaware of the movement”. Graham also quoted what Mitrinović said to him and Fr. Nikolai in the early stages of their friendship: “We are secretly committed to giving our lives to the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth and all we do will be directed to that purpose. We will cautiously seek allies and persuade them to join us and form a Christianly conscious nucleus. All in secret, all below ground. The more secret we are, the greater spiritual strength we draw, till we are ready to break surface and grow to be a mighty tree”.43 That tree never grew high. Among others, Mitrinović tried to draw in the Rev. H. J. Fynes-Clinton, an Anglo-Catholic, and the leading spirit of the Church of England committed to co-operation with Christian Orthodox Churches. FynesClinton had very high opinion of Velimirovich but did not subscribe to Mitrinović’s ideas. Graham was so impressed by Mitrinović that he described him in his book The Quest of the Face. In the introduction Graham expresses his hope that for his future readers the book “may be an invitation to become builders of the City in which Dushan and I have been active spiritual masons”.44 Dushan, as Graham explained later, was actually Mitrinović, a man whom he did not choose to be the protagonist of his book. Rather, it was Dushan who chose Stephen Graham. Mitrinović’s identity formation was explained in the novel. This new identity was framed in Rome, Munich and Berlin (1911–1914), and was completed in London during the course of the Great War. Dushan was described in the following way: “He is a Southern Slav, a representative of one of the ruined peoples of the Balkans. His country, Serbia, is lost. He tells me he has ceased to be a Serb, because Serbia is not any more Stephen Graham, Part of the Wonderful Scene. An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1964), 102. 43 Ibid, 121. 44 Stephen Graham, The Quest of the Face (London: The Macmillan Co., 1918). See prefatory note to the book. 42

100

and cannot be again what it was, even if it should rise from death. He calls himself a European, and pleads that all should obtain, in addition of consciousness of nationality, the higher consciousness of being Europeans”. Dushan also offered to Graham a scheme of individual progress: Infant – Individual – National – Group-National – Universal.45 Indeed, Mitrinović impressed his British friend so much that he was led to write the following: “There is something of this nature about Dushan, that is why I have called him a mystical fraction, a phrase that I thought rightly applied to Christ”.46 To Graham, Mitrinović became, during the war, precisely what a Gnostic would find the highest purpose of life: he became Godlike. It is interesting that already in his letter to Gutkind, composed on the very eve of the Great War, Mitrinović expressed his desire to deliver four lectures in Berlin. The second lecture was to be dedicated, among other things, to “antipatriotic movements”, and in connection with the future of mankind47. His full shift from Yugoslav nationalism to universalism obviously took place between 1913 and 1915. Mitrinović found in England a fertile ground for his universalist ideas packed into a pan-Christian framework. His universalism clearly stemmed from Christianity, but in his version, Christianity was blended with esoteric phenomena and was seen as a personal revelation. This made him closer to Gnostic rather than literalist interpretations of Christianity. During the war he was expected to demonstrate his commitment to the Yugoslav idea. He found a way to combine Yugoslavism and his newly developed universalist ideas by proclaiming the pro-Serbian and pro-Yugoslav Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović an expression of a universal spirit. A Slovene émigré in London during the Great War, Dr. Bogumil Vošnjak, described a meeting, held probably in February 1917, in a London Indian restaurant. It was attended by father Nikolai Velimirovich, Josip Kosor, George Bell, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mitrinović, and himself. At the meeting Mitrinović said “that every Yugoslav statesman should know that Yugoslavs are a mixture of big Eastern and Western peoples. He claimed that Meštrović was a complete Assyrian”.48 At another meeting, held in Ibid, 75. Ibid, 78. 47 Mitrinović to Gutkind, June 27, 1914. The Letter was published in Serbian translation in SDDM (1991), vol. 2: 237. 48 Bogumil Vošnjak, U borbi za ujedinjenu narodnu državu. Utisci i opažanja iz doba 45 46

101

1916, Mitrinović, “a well-known Christian aesthete”, was to speak about Yugoslav ethics. “But they began teasing him that he spoke at some lecture on Assyrians and Egyptians while Meštrović, a Dalmatian peasant, sat next to him, and that he did not understand a single word that was said about his own art”. It is characteristic that by 1917 Mitrinović, who had belonged to the very secular cultural movement of Young Bosnia, had already earned a reputation among Yugoslav émigrés of “a well-known Christian aesthete”. Since his teens he had believed he possessed a certain knowledge into which he should initiate those who were selected. It was already in his student years in Zagreb that he invented a password to be used for the mutual recognition of devotees. His secret was gradually transformed and from 1914 it was related not only to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs, Croats and Yugoslav peoples, but became connected with the future of mankind. In its essence, it was an expression of the optimistic stream within the avant-garde movement, the stream which believed in the vast possibilities of improving the world. To understand the fusion of science and religious teachings that Mitrinović attempted to make, one needs to look at the atmosphere that existed in London in the circles that were of interest to Mitrinović. Efforts to make a Universalist Society During the 19th century Christianity faced a great crisis in Britain, especially in intellectual circles. There was a general belief that the Victorian age was the age of profound belief in God. However, the Victorian age ushered in new lines of thought in Britain: those of atheism and unconventional faith. Mitrinović subscribed to the latter. It wasn’t just philosophers, writers and priests, but politicians as well, who began to feel that the Victorian Age was the age of deep doubts about established church canons. This means that, in intellectual circles, the 19th century undermined the significance that Christianity had enjoyed in the Western world in everyday life. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to state that it was the era “of religious seriousness svetskog rata i stvaranja naše države [In the Struggle for a United National State. Impressions and Observations from the period of the World War and the Creation of our State] (Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, 1928), 182.

102

than of faith”.49 The crisis of institutional religion among intellectual élites opened up new avenues of thinking. On the margins of this crisis emerged the need to connect faith with science, a fusion that had various outcomes. One was to identify a secret science, teachings that were left to modern men by older civilisations. Another effort was to reconcile science and religion, which appeared in the very popular form of spiritism. Finally, in an effort to connect faith with secret teachings, occultism also emerged. All these phenomena were very much alive and present in the British society at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky was founded in 1875 in New York. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831 ̶ 1891) moved to London in 1887, and lived there until the end of her life four years later. During the course of her last four years she succeeded in spreading Theosophy around Britain to a surprising degree. She believed that evolution was headed by “a chosen elect”, by “a brotherhood of hidden masters”. This brotherhood revealed its hidden truth from its seat in Himalayas, and Blavatsky was supposed to be one of their instruments. The British Theosophical Society had existed since 1878, and therefore it was able to distribute Madame Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine (1888). It was as early as 1887 that a person as prominent as W. B. Yeats joined Blavatsky’s lodge. Theosophy later attracted such celebrities such as Oscar Wilde, Thomas Edison and artists Mondrian and Kandinsky.50 The journalist A. R. Orage, who would become Mitrinović’s chief propagator after the Great War, was also a member of the Theosophical Society, and an admirer of Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine.51 The Theosophical Society had a competitor in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn founded in 1888 when the Order established its first temple of Isis-Urania in London. Among the prominent persons who soon joined the Order there was W. B. Yeats again. In the 1890s, some of the leading personalities of Victorian London’s cultural life joined the Order.52 Alec R. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution. 1789 to the present day, The Pelican History of the Church (London: Penguin Books, 1974), 112. 50 Merlin Coverley, Occult London (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2008), 77–82. 51 Philip Mairet, “Reintroduction”, Idem, A. R. Orage. A Memoir (New Hyde Park N.Y: University Books, 1966), 16–17. 52 Coverley, Occult London, 82–87. 49

103

Besides Stephen Graham and Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich, Mitrinović attracted several more disciples during the Great War. One of them was the writer and journalist Philip Mairet (1886–1975). He mentions that he became “Mitrinović’s most intimate disciple by 1917”.53 Another was Alfred Richard Orage (1873–1934) who earned a substantial reputation as the editor of The New Age (1907–1922), a British literary and modernist journal. The New Age was open for radical political thought and it advocated schemes of Guild Socialism and Social Credit. Orage was a student of Plato, Plotinus and Eastern teachings, as well as a committed theosophist, and Mairet provides an explanation of what his encounter with Mitrinović meant to him. The latter appeared “out of the center of what one feared was now the flaming wreck of European civilization, proclaiming a gospel of world salvation inspired by the perennial philosophy and the Christian revelation. He spoke like a prophet with a mission to convict the nations of sin and call them to righteousness, preaching in the language of transcendental idealism to which Orage’s mind was well attuned”.54 Orage was so impressed by Mitrinović that he offered him a chance to address the wider public in Britain through his journal. His contributions to The New Age: A Socialist Review of Religion, Science, and Art were written under the pseudonym M. M. Cosmoi, and they include 54 pieces for the section World Affairs in the period from August 1920 to October 1921. In 1920, these pieces were actually coauthored by him and Orage. “M. M.” refers to “Mitya Mitrinović”, while Cosmoi could be a plural of the Hellenic noun cosmos, and is partially explained in the essay from April 1921 where he states: “for the Cosmos of Man is the galaxy of free worlds; each person within the race being an indefinite living universe”.55 Cosmoi would then be humans with their indefinite possibilities, multiple persons with endless potentials who M. M. already contained in himself. At the same time Cosmoi were the persons whom he wanted to address through these articles and who might progress in their possibilities by reading them. There is again something Gnostic in it, since he himself is obviously a person with “indefinite possibilities” addressing others with the same potential. Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xi, 16. Ibid, x–xi. 55 M. M. Cosmoi, [Dimitrije Mitrinović]. “World Affairs”, The New Age. A Socialist Review of Religion, Science and Ars, April 21, 1921, 293. 53 54

104

The language of the contributions is very peculiar, often mystical, strangely combining the terminology of social sciences and theology with overtones of the esoteric and mystical. For instance, on March 24, 1921, in an essay published in The New Age, Mitrinović writes of the gnosis of Christ and Sophia as: “the central and anthropocentric, human, panhuman gnosis of the world. Vedanta Advaita, the sacred apophasis of India, is the end, the periphery of panhuman cognisance. Except the miracle and the apophasis of the embodiment of Sophia itself, except the absolute apophasis of pan-human organisation itself, of the Pleroma of the future Kingdom, a greater and more infinite revelation has never been given to Universal Man, to the Geon”.56 At least some of his ideas obviously stem from ancient Gnosticism. When Mitrinović assembled his first circle of followers, Graham tried to recruit persons who were interested in similar matters. One of them was Georg Robert Stowe Mead (1863–1933), a member of the Theosophical Society and a very diligent researcher of Gnostic and Hermetic texts57. He was probably the best-informed person on Gnostic texts and traditions in Britain. Yet, Mead did not join Mitrinović’s circle, but certainly inspired him to read his texts. That he was acquainted with Gnosticism may be clearly seen from an account provided by Mairet, who once happened to visit the British Museum with Mitrinović and Orage. The visit took place soon after their first meeting in 1914, but Mairet did not state when exactly. Mitrinović explained the Archaic Greek and Egyptian sculptures to them. Mairet then states: “and I do not know whether it was the Gnostic perspective of world history to which he related all this, or his power of communicating aesthetic understanding that first began to attach me to him as the man who knew all I wanted to know”.58 Mitrinović had another Gnostic encounter through the works of the Russian theologian and philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, who was himself under the influence of Valentin, one of the founders of Gnosticism. He specifically quoted other sources of his ideas, including Friedrich Nietzsche, “a prophet of the Seraphimic or Seraphic dispensation of the world”; Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who Ibid, March 24, 1921, 242. His books are numerous and include: Simon Magus, 1892; Pistis Sophia, 1896; Thrice Greatest Hermes, in 3 volumes, 1906, and a series in 11 volumes entitled Echoes from the Gnosis (1906–07). 58 Mairet, “Reintroduction”, x. 56 57

105

glorified “Humanity Universal and the eternal Christness of Man”; and Vladimir Solovyov, “the last of the fathers of Christendom and the prophet of the Sofian Christianity”. After this, Mitrinović gives us the interpretative key to what he has said: “The universal socialism of humanity is Sophia herself, and the birth of the Superman is the meaning of evolution”. In the same article he ends this list with the author who influenced him more than anyone else. “Eric Gutkind is the name of the Superman of our own hour, of the Aryan by spirit and fire, of the Socialist of the ascension and of the earthquake who proclaimed Pleroma in his seraphic scripture. This Semitic call to Prometheus and to the Grail at the same time is proclaimed in the first Christian deed, in the first superhuman act of a Jew after the deeds of Paul the Apostle. The name of this Deed is Cosmic Rebirth”.59 In this essay Mitrinović clearly demonstrated a fusion of the ideals of the Young Bosnians: social justice and ethical improvement of man. His socialism became religious with an aim that the religion of humanity could become socialist. Mitrinović’s associates later interpreted his ideas expressed in The New Age primarily in pacifist terms: “In these articles he maintained that real peace could never be achieved so long as the races, nations, religions and all other separate groupings of mankind each fought in an isolated way for domination in what they considered to be their own particular interest. He saw as the only solution to this problem the conception of the world as an organic whole with every race, nation, religion or other grouping recognised as a function within this world-whole”.60 There is no doubt that in these texts Mitrinović indeed expressed such ideas, as well as ideas on the transformation of Europe and its unification. What, however, always needs to be taken into consideration is that his basis for all these initiatives was the (Judeo-) Christian revelation as defined in the works of Soloyov and Gutkind. Edwin Muir (1887–1959), the British poet and translator, was a friend of Orage’s and met Mitrinović through him. Writing for The New Age at the time when Mitrinović was also one of its contributors, Muir made some observations about him. “He was the man for whom only the vast processes of time existed. He did not look a few centuries M. M. Cosmoi [Dimitrije Mitrinović]. “World Affairs”, June 23, 1921, 87–88. Principles and Aims. New Atlantis Foundation, The New Atlantis Foundation, 1981, 10. 59 60

106

ahead like Shaw and Wells, but to distant millenniums, which to his apocalyptic mind were as near and vivid as tomorrow. He flung out the widest and deepest thoughts pell-mell, seeing whole tracts of history in a flash, the flash of the axe with which he hewed a way for himself through them, sending dynasties and civilizations flying”. He also described the content of his discussions with Mitrinović, or rather the latter’s monologues on the universe, “the creation of animals, Adam Kadmon, the influence of the stars…”61 Muir missed some of the more secular points in Mitrinović’s contributions, but his description gives a very good testimony of the impression that Mitrinović’s ideas and style of his texts left even on benevolent readers and collocutors. There was a sense of something chaotic and disconnected in his contributions, of something too distant and too apocalyptic to be given proper consideration. Yet, at the same time, it was something exotic and attractive. Unsurprisingly, Orage faced serious opposition about Cosmoi’s articles and their publication inconveniently corresponded with a serious drop in the circulation of The New Age. Some were quick to accuse the unconventional style of Cosmoi’s articles for this. From Mysticism to Adler and Jung Orage was very interested in the psychological teachings of Freud, Adler and Jung. In 1921, he made a study group that included Mitrinović. The task of the group was to analyse these teachings and to assess the possibility of their interaction with religion and morality. Yet, in the spring of 1922, Orage abandoned all of his activities in Britain and went to France to join a new guru called George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1870–1949), a Greek-Armenian from Armenia, a spiritual leader who impressed many Brits of that age. The loss of Orage was a great shock to Mitrinović, but by 1922 he had already established his reputation of a person very knowledgeable regarding mystical and occult matters. Many artists and writers of that time in London were inclined to these very concerns. It seems that in the early 1920s Mitrinović began to sketch his own synthesis, strongly influenced by Indian religious concepts, but 61

Edwin Muir, An Autobiography (London: Methuen, 1968) [1st ed. 1940], 174–175.

107

other activities prevented him from finishing his plan.62 After losing Orage’s protection he developed a new circle around Valerie Cooper. The circle met at her studio and became a place where Mitrinović could exert his influence on her friends, discussing matters of philosophy, occultism, religion, psychology and philosophy. In 1926, Alfred Adler visited London, and Mitrinović met him at Valerie Cooper’s studio. The practical result was that Mitrinović formed the British branch of the International Society for Individual Psychology, which became operational in March 1927, and he invested a lot of energy into developing the Society. He turned its London branch into a movement and, in the period 1927–1932, personally delivered over 50 lectures at the premises of the Society, in Gower Street. The premises included his basement study. The Society in London attracted doctors specializing in psychiatry, but also a vast circle of intellectuals interested in new psychological schools. Adler and Freud faced similar problems. They both established international associations of their followers and wished to include among their followers not only doctors but also a wide range of intellectuals. Yet, in both cases doctors preferred to medicalise the movement. Within the Adler London Society Mitrinović co-opted the Chandos group within Society’s sociological group. The Chandos group, whose many members had previously been associated with The New Age, was interested in economic and social reforms in Britain, and it shared some socialist ideas, but blended them with the concept of Christian compassion. The Medical group of the Society did not look favourably on the social orientation of some of their colleagues. The Society soon became bitterly divided, but ultimately survived the rift. The chairman of the Society, Philip Mairet, had to announce a reorganisation of the Society in June 1931. It was to restrict its activities to psychology. This obviously did not work, and Adler, who was determined to keep his individual psychology outside of the realm of politics, personally asked his London Society to become independent at the end of 1933. Yet, by that time the Society was very much reduced in its activities.63

Palavestra, Dogma, 337. Palavestra, Dogma, 337–339; Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xxvi; Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović. A Biography, (London: William Sessions Ltd., 2006), 91–106. 62 63

108

As an eclectic, Mitrinović could not really restrict his attention to the teachings of any single school. By the end of the 1920s he had adopted some Jungian concepts as well. It was in the 1926–1929 period that he gradually reached the concept according to which Freud was a thesis, Adler an antithesis and Jung a synthesis, to put it in Hegelian terms, which he was fond of using. Almost all historians of Gnosticism who have followed the development of this line of thought in modernity consider people like Jakob Boehme (1575–1624) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) to be followers of Gnostic traditions.64 It is to be remembered that the first hermetic author who Mitrinović admired, Eric Gutkind, was also under the influence of Jakob Boehme. In this way a revolutionary from a peripheral Austro-Hungarian province became a modern chiliastic utopian and a Gnostic, connecting old-age Gnosticism and European millennial traditions with the teachings of E. Gutkind and C. G. Jung. For the nexus of modern psychology and esoteric teachings two key texts by Mitrinović are “The Significance of Jung”, published in Purpose magazine in 1929, and a text entitled “Three Revelations”, based on notes taken by his followers. In the text on Jung, Mitrinović defined culture as the “individual experience of objective values”.65 Considering teachings of S. Freud, C. G. Jung and A. Adler, Mitrinović is led to conclude that culture is essentially Gnosis. That this is not only an accidental reference to Gnosticism is ascertained from the paragraph that follows: “The great Anthropos drives, inspires, breathes into all these various racial spirits, giving the impulse but not guidance”.66 The text on Jung together with the piece “Three Revelations” can be taken to represent the essence of Mitrinović’s teaching. Among the three revelations, he first discusses the pre-Christian revelation of ancient traditions and he takes the theosophist Rudolf Steiner as its modern exponent. Obviously under the influence of Jung, Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (London: Quest Book, 1982), 44-58; Gilles Quispel, “Gnosticism from the Middle Ages to the Present”, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed. in chief) (London: Simon and Shuster Macmillan, 1993), vol. 5: 574. In 1916, C. G. Jung published in limited circulation his Gnostic visions entitled Septem sermones ad mortuos (“The Seven Sermons to the Dead”). For a detailed study of Jung’s Gnosticism see: Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung. The English translation of Septem sermones is included in Hoeller’s book: “VII Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead).” 65 SWDM (1987), 332. 66 SWDM (1987), 334. 64

109

he states that the first revelation is about the archetypal man. The second revelation is the Christian one as the Russian thinker Vladimir Solovyov understood it; this is about the archetypal man in history. Finally, the third revelation is the post-Christian revelation; its prophet is Eric Gutkind and this revelation is about “Genius” and about “the cosmic rebirth of individuals”; it deals with the archetypal man “realized in individual consciousness”; it is about “Christ in you”67 . In order to reach this third revelation, one should use what Mitrinović called the “creative critique” as “the only means of self-knowledge in the future”. Yet, at this point he abandons the usual element of various mystical movements, namely that gnosis is reserved for the electi. Self-knowledge “is not a luxury for the few” but “the duty of all”. Revelations will not come through great geniuses any more, and instead every man is a small genius.68 In other words, all humans are cosmoi. On the surface, one would hardly find a connection between Mitrinović’s revolutionary national activity in Bosnia, his idea of PanHumanity, his commitment to Adlerian and Jungian psychology, his dedication to reforming global affairs, his research of the occult and his close affiliation with Gnosticism and Hermetic thought. A careful analysis would, however, identify one key denominator common to all of Mitrinović’s broad interests. That is a quest for synthesis, so typical of many thinkers of the first decades of the 20th century. He seemed to have believed that secret teachings might help him reach that synthesis. Moreover, Gnosticism had something very common to Mitrinović’s own synthesis. Elaine Pagels noticed an important feature of many ancient Gnostics: “How – or where – is one to seek self-knowledge? Many Gnostics share with psychotherapy a second major premise: both agree – against Orthodox Christianity – that the psyche bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction”.69 Gnosticism demands finding the divine within an individual’s most hidden layers of being. In other words, it requests introspection, a method that it shares with dynamic psychiatry. In addition to Gnosticism, Mitrinović was deeply interested in Indian religious philosophy. Certainly, some Mitrinović never published this essay. One of his British disciples, Winifred Gordon Fraser, took notes from his lectures and compiled them from various talks by Mitrinović. 68 SWDM (1987), 445. 69 Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 135. Original italics. 67

110

of his concepts were inspired by Indian religious tradition, but that part of his teachings is beyond the scope of this study. His activities with the Adlerian society left a deep mark. He gained new experience that allowed him to inspire new groups and movements, and he acquired a command of certain psychological techniques. Philip Mairet was, for some time, the chairman of the Adlerian Society, whose real commander-in-chief was Mitrinović. Moreover, Mairet wrote ABC of Adler’s psychology,70 and was therefore more than qualified to assess Mitrinović’s methods in dealing with his disciples, both as his own former follower and as an authority in Adlerian psychology. He says that Mitrinović encouraged his followers to read Gnostic, Hermetic, theosophic, anthroposophic texts and Indian literature, as well as pieces by Gurdjieff. Thereafter, he would lead them to synthesis himself, through his own “inexhaustible flow of interpretative discourse, which was basically in the tradition of Eastern Christianity”. In essence his characteristic method was: “to allow and even help the pupil to go on feeding his own favorite egoideal (despite warnings he would not heed) to the point at which it burst, and left him in a void with nothing but the ultimate resources of his own being. This was sometimes effective”. Mairet adds that Mitrinović never refused anyone who was seeking help. “His compassion, his Dostoievskian panhumanity, inclined him to accept everybody who came to him, even to the serious waste of his own time and energy”.71 What has been neglected very often in analyses of Mitrinović’s various endeavours is that in his Adlerian period he apparently acted for some time “as unpaid psychotherapist and counsellor to various individuals who sought his assistance”.72 His psychotherapeutic experience helped him to develop his own method. He seems to have continued using this method until the end of his life. However, he reframed it as a sort of group therapy, as will be seen later. Experience of effectively heading a psychological society enabled him to connect psychotherapy with occult teachings. It also led him to work with people who were sceptical of religion, and put him in touch with fully secular individuals. This was not a very difficult task Mairet, Philip. A B C of Adler’s Psychology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1930). 71 Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xxv. 72 Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović, 99. 70

111

for someone who had been an ideologue of a very secular literary movement in his home region before 1914. Therefore, one could say that the late 1920s represented another turn in his life. He began his public engagement as a Yugoslav nationalist and remained loyal to this idea until around 1913. Then he became a pan-Christian universalist, deeply rooted in Gnostic and Hermetic ancient and modern traditions (from 1914 until the late 1920s). Finally, he made another step forward. He developed at least two parallel narratives. One, more secular and socially oriented, was intended for those of his followers who were not very inclined to mysticism. Another, the mystical line, followed his ideas developed since 1914. This duality seems to have been prompted by his experience with the Adlerian society, where one had to keep together physicians who wanted psychology only, and others who were interested in wider social reforms. By having to deal with both groups Mitrinović developed his ability to keep different groups of his followers. The departure of Orage certainly made Mitrinović painfully aware that in the realm of mysticism his magnetism could easily evaporate with the arrival of other gurus. Doing some psychotherapy helped him to get better acquainted with the two parallel intellectual streams in Britain. This indeed seems to have given rise to some confusion, and therefore in the recollections of Philip Mairet or Alan Watts one sees only a mystical Mitrinović, while his later followers left recollections of a very rational Mitrinović and were more than ready to underestimate his mysticism. Mitrinović’s Projects in the 1930s Mitrinović’s name was kept in high esteem after his death by the members of the New Atlantis Foundation, which survived him. Its members mostly left recollections and impressions of Mitrinović focused on his actions aimed at social reforms, on his Christian socialism, on his Eurofederalist ideas, and particularly on his Senate initiative. The first of these initiatives was launched in 1931 in the form of the Eleventh Hour Flying Clubs. It focused on a future European federation that would gradually evolve into a world federation. More influential than this was The New Europe Group, initiated also in

112

1931. This group survived until 1957. Mitrinović was successful in convincing Sir Patrick Geddes, a well-known scientist, to become the group’s president. He said of the group: “I have been particularly stirred up by your society, the most helpful and exemplary I’ve come across in London”.73 Among well-known persons who attended meetings of the group were: Henry Wickham Steed, former editor of The Times, Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl, and the historian George Peabody Gooch.74 Soon a series of lectures was organised and among the group’s lecturers were Frederick Soddy, Arthur Kitson, Raymond Postgate and J. V. Delahaye; the secretary of the group became Winifred Gordon Fraser, a lady who remained Mitrinović’s associate until the end of his life.75 The aim of the group was the promotion of a European federation. As H. C. Rutherford remarked “it also had the aim of bringing the continent of Europe more actively into the consciousness of the insular British”.76 Relative success with lectures led Mitrinović to launch a journal that frequently changed its name and survived for two years. Its first title was The New Britain Quarterly (1932–33), then The New Britain Weekly (New Series June 1933 – Autumn 1934). Several short-lived journals also appeared under the titles The New Atlantis: For Western Renaissance & World Socialism and New Albion (1934). Mitrinović’s plans seem to have been anything but unambitious. D. R. Davies claims that he planned to initiate “seven daily papers circulating throughout Europe in different languages”.77 In The New Britain Mitrinović began again to write “World Affairs”78 and continued to advocate universal values, to echo his previous mysticism, and to warn against patriotism as the key value. He was in favour of “the relatively very many and yet also relatively very few” persons who would guide the Western Civilisation to a new path which “arrogance and ignorance of the world leaders of David Shillan, Biotechnics: the practice of synthesis in the work of Patrick Geddes, sixteenth foundation lecture, The New Atlantis Foundation, 1972. 74 Nenad V. Petrović, “Dimitrije Mitrinović”, in Idem, Ogledi o smislu i zabludama [Idem, “Dimitrije Mitrinović“, in Essays on Sense and Misconceptions] (Belgrade: Udruženje književnika Srbije, 2001), 89. 75 Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović, 114–116; 197. 76 Rutherford, “General Introduction”, 9. 77 D. R. Davies, In Search of Myself (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1961), 124. 78 He again signed “World Affairs” as “M. M. Cosmoi”, and his contributions were published in 10 issues from May 24 to July 26, 1933. 73

113

today” could not provide. He warned that humanity faced a potential cataclysm. Although many of his statements were rather secular, he preserved some elements of the Gnostic vocabulary as well: “Christ and his Gnosis are the proof and the voucher that Adam, the Species, will not ultimately and truly fail. Anthropos, our kingdom, cannot finally and fatally collapse and lose the thread of its divine and planetary mission and function”79. His references to esoteric teachings and his unorthodox formulations caused new problems, and some correspondents openly voiced their dissatisfaction with the style of Cosmoi. The editor C. B. Purdom advised his readers to read Cosmoi’s texts four times. The subsequent editor D. R. Davies compared Cosmoi with the English poet Robert Browning, who had to wait to be properly understood. “Mitrinović, too, has to wait. A profounder thinker than Browning, he will probably have to wait longer. No wonder that those earnest readers of New Britain could not understand him, though they read his article forty times”.80 Yet, the sales of New Britain reached 32,000 per week, and by September 1933, 65 groups of New Britain focused on the social state and the “national renaissance” were organised nationwide.81 This was the most serious social movement that Mitrinović ever encouraged, although it seems likely that he did not want the movement to grow at such a pace. What happened was that the founders of the movement, including Mitrinović, had no clear vision on how the movement should be structured, and the London group headed by Mitrinović collided with others. As a result, the movement soon disintegrated and, by the end of 1934, essentially disappeared. This poses certain questions regarding Mitrinović’s motives. Was his hesitation to spread the movement only due to his inimical attitude towards political parties, or was there something more at stake? Could a large movement be supervised or at least directed by its intellectual leadership? This may have tormented Mitrinović, and he must have become painfully aware that political movements had to make certain concessions that he was unwilling to make. Its leaders had to simplify their ideas and to accommodate their social aims to suit the needs and conceptions of their average adherents, and apparently not only Mitrinović but also his London colleagues, were unwilling to do this. “World Affairs”, New Britain ( July 5, 1933). SWDM (1987), 291–292. Davies, In Search, 132. 81 Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović, 126–130. 79 80

114

His last initiative was the Senate initiative. Since the time of his association with Kandinsky, he was in search of individuals who could lead the world spiritually. Andrew Rigby is of the opinion that Mitrinović took advantage of the London Adler Society and the New Europe Group to find potential recruits for his inner circle and to train such persons for “their practice of cosmopolitan citizenship”.82 What is peculiar is that Mitrinović used an anthroposophist as the basis for his project of social change. He exploited Rudolf Steiner’s works to formulate the idea of a threefold state that would have economic, political and cultural spheres, based on equality (economy), fellowship (politics) and liberty (culture). This was one of the main ideas developed within the New Britain Movement and “during the years immediately prior to the Second World War he embarked upon his most sustained educational experiment, seeking to prepare his closest coworkers for living in the new world which they were trying to create”.83 Yet, there were only 30-40 such coworkers who obviously enjoyed being members of a group headed by Mitrinović, and were proud of the role that the Senate would have if Mitrinović’s utopia ever materialised. Most of them remained loyal to his ideas till the end of their lives. They all had to study the Athanasian Creed, and he himself sometimes used the pseudonym Filioque, a segment from the Athanasian Creed considered heretical in his original Greek Orthodox tradition. “In short, he was trying to create a Kingdom of Heaven. That is, he was attempting the utterly impossible”.84 It is clear that Mitrinović further developed his psychological method, originally individually employed in the years of the Adler Society. Again it had to deal with the ego-ideal and in the simplest terms this notion means “the self’s conception of how he wishes to be”.85 It also refers to the way in which the self wishes to be seen by others. David Davies, the former co-editor of the New Britain Quarterly, a former Congregationalist minister, and a committed socialist in the years of his association with Mitrinović (the 1930s), described the technique that his then spiritual leader used. It is important to note that Davies was a passionate reader and subsequent critic of Andrew Rigby, “Training for Cosmopolitan Citizenship in the 1930s: The Project of Dimitrije Mitrinovic”, Peace and Change 24. 3 (1999): 386. 83 Ibid, 387. 84 Davies, In Search, 140. 85 Charles Rycroft, Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 40. 82

115

psychoanalysis and that he himself underwent several psychoanalytic treatments. He testifies that “the circle round Mitrinović contained many psychoanalysts, amateur and professional”, and also that Mitrinović himself “was deeply read in Freud and Jung and all the schools”.86 In dealing with individuals he implemented the same psychological procedures that Mairet described. Yet, he also had to deal with his followers organised in several smaller groups. These groups consisted of six to seven persons and had three- or four-hour sessions “generally late at night, for one’s unconscious was supposed to be less remote in the deep night”. A person from the group would then criticise another person from the same group and that person would defend her/himself: By this time we were fairly launched, and gradually were out in deep waters. A member of the group would then say, in language that lacked nothing of brutality and candour, exactly what he, more frequently she (which made it worse!), thought of me… Frequently those group meetings ended in electric storms. After they closed, we all made our way to a café… We were good friends once more.87 Davies confirmed that, with one exception, they “never got anywhere with these meetings”.88 There were also larger meetings with twenty to thirty persons present. These “special group meetings” were attended by Mitrinović. In them a person would be singled out for grouping, and then Mitrinović would dictate the line of procedure. He had a way of penetrating one’s last defences, of peeling off, not only one’s clothes, but one’s skin, and flaying one alive… What Mitrinović said was infrangible truth. The whole twenty or thirty (whatever their number) would take up the theme of Mitrinović’s attack, and play variations upon it. The victim was helpless. He was battered (psychically) into stupidity.89 Davies, In Search, 130, 139. Ibid, 141–142. 88 Ibid, 142. 89 Ibid, 142–143. 86 87

116

The idea behind this exercise was to expose future senators to the most difficult circumstances and prepare them to be individuals in that way, or at least that is what the group members believed. D. R. Davies doubted the effectiveness of this method and considered that Mitrinović “was no nearer creating a community of independent persons after thirty-six years in England, when he died, than he was when he started in 1914”.90 It was already in his Young Bosnian period that Mitrinović began to contemplate how mankind could improve. The technique that he finally employed made his followers face their weaknesses. But did it really make them more prepared to lead a cultural or a social movement? In retrospect one may seriously wonder about that. There was also a group of prominent British intellectuals gathered around the New Europe Group who were never a part of Mitrinović’s group’s psychological exercises but participated in social activities designed by him. In 1948, a delegation of this group attended the Congress of the European Union of Federalists in Rome. The delegation was headed by the radiochemist Frederick Soddy, the nominal president of the New Europe Group, a Nobel Prize winner in 1921.91 It is clear that Mitrinović supported Eurofederalist projects. There are, however, some misconceptions about this. For him “Europa” was a cultural and religious concept. Its spirituality was its greatest potential asset, but also a potential for endless clashes between national cultures. He was in search of a pan-European model, and that model, in his worldview, was inseparable from Christian spirituality, although this spirituality was a sort of non-denominational Christianity.

Ibid, 143. David Richard Davies (1889–1958) was a congregational minister in Wales from 1917 to 1928, when he resigned due to his new preoccupation with the new socialist social order. He became associated with Mitrinović in London in 1930 and remained his follower until September 1938, when he left him. He became a congregational minister once again at the end of 1940, but found that things had quite changed and joined the Church of England. With the support of the Archbishop of York, William Temple, he was ordained a deacon in Lent, 1941. In his last years he wrote several influential pieces focused on the original sin and was under a strong influence of the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and of Martin Luther (Davies, In Search). 91 Palavestra, Dogma, 299. 90

117

The Reconnection with Gutkind in 1927-1932. Two esoteric poles who failed to create “a union of men round the globe” Before he was forced to leave Germany in 1933 as a Jewish intellectual, Eric Gutkind had a liberal circle of eclectic intellectuals who met in Berlin and Potsdam. The circle included Frederick van Eeden, Walter Rathenau, theologian Martin Buber, and occasionally Walter Benjamin and Upton Sinclair.92 Mitrinović briefly belonged to Gutkind’s circle just before the Great War and he left a strong impression on him. At a commemorative session held one year after Mitrinović’s death Gutkind said of him: “He was so incomparably present; and often all the others seemed to be less real, to be less present”.93 In his writings Mitrinović identified four “bearers of revelation.” Of them H. Blavatsky and V. Solovyov died in 1891 and 1900 respectively, when Mitrinović was a child. Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) was Mitrinović’s contemporary but there are no letters preserved in the archives of NAF that would indicate that there was a written communication between them. Therefore, the only friend of his among the “bearers of revelation” was Gutkind. Although Mitrinović wholeheartedly promoted Gutkind through the pages of The New Age in 1921, they were strangely enough in no communication for many years following the World War. In 1928, Gutkind wrote to him: “If only we had kept up our correspondence just after the war we might have saved years”.94 Mitrinović visited the Gutkinds at Berlin-Gruenan in July 1927. After that visit Eric Gutkind was, in the summer of 1928, very eager to organise a foundation meeting of another association in Germany. He desperately wanted Mitrinović to come to the meeting that was supposed to happen in Hagen near Cologne. In his opinion, without Mitrinović the whole thing would be “spoilt”.95 After the meeting Gutkind was very enthusiastic. He wrote to Mitrinović on mutual attraction: “We exist. And this is in itself tremendous source of power. Of course neither you nor I LeRoy Finch, “Introduction”, 13. Ibid, 12. 94 E. G. to “My dear and very special Dmitri”, 07.11.1928. UB – SC; NAF, 1.7.1. Members of the New Atlantis Foundation have translated the Gutkind-Mitrinović correspondence from German into English and have typed it in 19 pages. All the quotes from their correspondence in this text are from that translation. 95 Erich Gutkind to “Dear Mensch”, Paris, 02.08.1928. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. 92 93

118

must be only one pole, but poles and I am concentrating on reaching the opposite pole of myself here”.96 Gutkind was in communication with the Dutch mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer, W. Kandinsky and Alfred Kubin. He envisaged that a group of kindred spirits would gradually enlarge itself. First there would be the two of them (himself and Mitrinović), then “a Three-some”, then a group of seven, followed by a group of ten: “Round this kernel of several layers there must be a body of two dozen persons. Then ‘The Hundred’”97. In November 1928, Gutkind admitted to Mitrinović: “I consider your presence most important, as our esoteric discussions form the kernel of the whole idea, which must otherwise remain dead unless we continue our talks”.98 He also pointed out that the idea of the meeting he organised was “to achieve a complete metamorphosis – which is also what you yourself demand”.99 In organisational terms it seems that Gutkind had no success since Kandinsky did not reply, and others mostly replied negatively, some even campaigned against the idea.100 He expressed hopes that he and Mitrinović could “achieve an act of concentration – maybe I will achieve one pole (the other pole)”101. In the next letter Gutkind insisted that it was essential for them “to have a talk about esoteric matters”, and mentioned that he could summon a conference in Berlin “of so called prominent people” with Brouwer and possibly Henry Borel, and that Mitrinović could bring two or three persons who understood German.102 In April 1930, Gutkind wrote about his plans to prepare two books: one that “will go right back into Jewish origins”, and “the universal part will be re-written in our spirit.” He was very disappointed for not having personal encounters with Mitrinović and he desperately wrote to him: “Our talks were not an isolated once-and-for-all phenomenon – they were of eternity… These talks must live as an eternal source”. He warned him that he had unfavourable experience with learned Erich Gutkind] to “My Dear Mensch”, 18.09.1928. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. Gutkind has underlined the words himself in this and in all the subsequent letters that have been quoted in this section. 97 Ibid. 98 E. G. to “my dear and very special Dmitri”, 07.11.1928. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. He later informed Mitrinović that “Scheiermann – Adelchen group” also parted from him. Erich Gutkind to “dear Dimitri”, Berlin, 11.04.1930. 101 E. G. to “my dear and very special Dmitri”, 07.11.1928. 102 E. G. to “dear Dmitri”, Berlin, 05.12 [1928]. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. 96

119

people, psychoanalysts and authors. “These fools and traitors have no intention of helping us”, he warned. He insisted that their approach had to be changed: “By an amalgamation of authors we shall not be able to achieve what we saw in our vision”.103 It seems that at some point in late 1930 Mitrinović concluded that Gutkind suffered from the Adlerian inferiority complex and that he tried to avoid responsibility. Gutkind took this very personally and conveyed a message to Mitrinović via Richard Mayer to whom he gave a letter written in February 1931. In that letter he complained that he had no communication with Mitrinović for eight years after the Great War. He put a question in the letter: “How can we create a union of men round the globe, how to build up a new world if impatience motivates our acts?”. He begged Mayer to convince Mitrinović to resume collaboration with him, and Mayer passed this letter to Mitrinović 104 . The split that happened between the two friends was particularly painful to Gutkind. Finally, in a special letter to Mitrinović, sent in February 1931, he insists that the letter contains “the most important thing I have ever been able to communicate to you”. He observed that “the inner development” of their “common cause” almost reached the point they had “long been hoping for”. The vision of Sidereal Birth had to be “free of anything that was either neurotic or escapist in it”. He further insists that in his last book Das absolute Kollektiv he separated in himself “the purely Hebraic elements in it wholly and entirely from those that are universalist”. He complains that “our dialogue, this magnificent esoteric dialogue, has ceased, has stopped”.105 During the course of the Great War Mitrinović definitely abandoned his previous complete identification with the Serbian and Yugoslav cause, and became a universalist instead. He obviously expected something similar from Gutkind and there must have been a point of disagreement between them in terms of local-universalist relation. Their split also came at a moment when Mitrinović began gaining new influence in Britain through various more secular schemes. Erich Gutkind to “my dear Dimitri”, Berlin, 11.04.1930. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. E. G. to Richard Mayer [before 06.02.1931]. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1. Richard Mayer sent his letter to Mitrinović on February 06, 1931, and in that envelope is enclosed Gutkind’s undated letter to Mayer which was therefore written before February 06. 105 Erich Gutkind to “dear Dmitri”, Berlin, 14.02.1931. 103 104

120

More than one year later Gutkind touched upon the character of their mutual link: “the first vision which brought us together… and we do not need to touch on our esoteric unity… was imperfect, a patchwork. It was only part. One part of our truth is buried deep in the past, in the great traditions. But the other part is far beyond us in the future. We are bridge-people…that is our historical relativity in this aeonic moment in which the aeons are separating; at the same time it is our mission and our depth. One bridge-head lies deep in the abyss of time – the other far in the future.106 It is clear that they met again 1932 and they remained in contact until Gutkind emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1933, and later as well. Their collaboration and problems in 1927–1932 only indicated how difficult it was to establish even a small group of three or five like-minded people who could co-operate to create “a union of men round the globe”. Obviously, Mitrinović and Gutkind had similar ideas on gathering a global intellectual élite. However, Mitrinović was much more successful with this idea in London than Gutkind had been in Berlin. Their mysticism was mutual and Gutkind repeatedly insisted on their deeply esoteric link. This was something that was close to Mitrinović’s mystical side, but also something that Mitrinović the organiser identified as a potential problem. Mitrinović wanted to have around him not only intellectuals but also social reformers and generally men of good repute, and to gather all of them he had to offer something more than esoteric teachings. He was able to develop something that Gutkind could not. He simultaneously designed different actions, some of which were seemingly purely secular. Gutkind was confined in any plans he had in Berlin by his book Sidereal Birth. It came to personify him, making him look too esoteric and hence it became very difficult for some of his acquaintances to join him in any organisational form. A Secret Society, a Sect, a Movement or a Social Club? Mitrinović’s interest in Christianity and in various mystical and esoteric teachings was his life-long commitment. There is no doubt that for many years he was in search of gnosis – the “true knowledge”. This 106

Erich Gutkind to “dear Dmitri”, Berlin, 12.04.1932. UB – SC, NAF, 1.7.1.

121

was a quest typical of many of his contemporaries. Coming from a very secular background of Bosnian revolutionaries, his quest signified a radical shift from nationalism to universalism and from local issues to divine depths. Around 1913, once he discovered religious and mystical inclinations within himself, it became his obsession. His interest in psychology fitted quite well with his quest for gnosis. In this he was similar to C. G. Jung. Both of them experienced religious transformation precisely during the Great War, and both were attracted to Gnostic and Hermetic authors. There was something that ancient Gnostics shared with their followers from the 20th century. As Elaine Pagels notes: “For Gnostics, exploring the psyche became implicitly what is for many people today implicitly – a religious quest”.107 Another inspiration came from A. R. Orage, his first conduit to the higher circles of the British public life. Orage considered psychoanalysis as the new form of “the gnosis of man”.108 It is difficult to say how much Mitrinović agreed with the Gnostic concept of the whole visible reality being a product of a false god. In Gnostic teachings the imperfection of reality is a natural consequence of its creator – the false god. Anthropos, unlike the false god, is for the Gnostics the real and good creator, the true father. Mitrinović often referred to Anthropos, but what he meant by this is not easily defined. Since Gnosticism had many incarnations, it is additionally difficult to follow Mitrinović’s reception of this teaching, although he must have been particularly attracted to Valentin’s ideas, through Solovyov’s influence. One may be also certain that he did not discuss all mystical teachings with all of his adherents and associates. In one aspect Mitrinović strikingly revised Gnostic ideas. Gnostics generally rejected the visible cosmos, but Mitrinović wished to understand it and to improve it. Since the establishment of the Adler Society in 1927, he advocated certain practical policies that were supposed to make the world better, and this line of action would be fully irrelevant from the Gnostic point of view. Yet, Mitrinović was above all an eclecticist and Gnosticism was only his ideological basis. As it turned out later, it was a good way to fuse mysticism with psychology. His other sources of inspiration were Indian and Chinese religious traditions and philosophy, but that part is beyond the scope 107 108

Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 132. Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xiii.

122

of this analysis. It is, however, clear that his main inspiration comes from Judeo-Christian traditions since all of his “prophets” (Steiner, Blavatsky, Nietzsche, Gutkind, Solovyov, Adler and Jung) come precisely from that tradition. He only partly revealed his religious ideas in his M. M. Cosmoi articles. Therefore, most of his religious points are known from the notes collected by his associates and later published by the New Atlantis Foundation. This creates a problem since he seems to have shared his innermost ideas only with a select few. Therefore, one cannot be certain if his religious philosophy can be fully gauged from pamphlets and articles compiled from these notes. It is, however, also clear that starting from his involvement with the Adler Society Mitrinović became fully aware that he was able to recruit secular followers as well. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he had two types of adherents: 1) those interested in mysteries like Graham, Orage or Watts, and 2) those interested in his social activism. Naturally there were those who combined both streams. It seems that his last group of 30–40 followers was a combination of the two groups, although overall it was closer to the second one. He also had a group of prominent intellectuals who were associated with him but did not belong to his followers. That group was definitely focused on social activism. Mitrinović was able to gradually get some of his followers interested in mystical religion and philosophy as well. Some of them were interviewed by Andrew Rigby and they all gave statements about the group around Mitrinović in terms primarily based on plans for social reform, the Senate initiative and practical policies. As is plainly evident from Watts’s description, Mitrinović demanded complete loyalty of those whom he initiated in mysteries and even if there were any such persons among the last 40 of his associates, they were unlikely to discuss it publicly. In the 1920s and 1930s, he demonstrated an interest in learning Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese and he seems to have learned these languages sufficiently to be able to read sources. That is completely in line with the ideas advocated by Blavatsky and Palmer Hall and was obviously connected with his efforts to understand religious and mystical teachings written in these languages. He also encouraged some of his followers to learn Sanskrit. One of his closest associates was Violet MacDermot. She

123

translated several of Gnostic texts, including Pistis Sofia, a text known to Mitrinović in the interpretation of George Robert Stowe Mead. MacDermot’s work attracted many years later the attention of likeminded persons committed to the dissemination of Gnosticism.109 She seems to have been in charge of collecting Mitrinović’s notes on theosophy and Gnosticism, since her notes with such contents have been preserved in the archives of the New Atlantis Foundation.110 It is not known if Mitrinović belonged to any secret or discreet society in London. He discussed the question of Freemasonry and considered it as one of four major internationals, together with Catholicism, Communism, Science and Technology. He considered “the world fraternity of builders” as “the chief factor in the worldguidance as far as this present world is concerned”.111 Many details, however, indicate that he himself might have established some sort of a secret club with universalist aspirations. To his first two followers, Stephen Graham and Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich, he spoke of a secret society composed of the three of them. In the 1930s, Alan Watts (1915–1973) became Mitrinović’s follower. Later he became an Episcopal minister and then one of the main propagators of Zen and other Eastern philosophies in the United States. He mentions in his autobiography that in 1936 he came to Mitrinović’s apartment at 33, Bloomsbury St. On this occasion Mitrinović invited him “to join an eternal and secret fellowship which will watch you, guard you, and keep track of you wherever you may go in the world”. The sign of recognition was carrying a packet of the cheapest brand of cigarettes in England. Mitrinović also said to Watts: “Now if you are inclined to enter into this masonry you must confer Carl Schmidt, Pistis Sophia, tr. and notes by Violet Macdermot, Nag Hammadi Studies, Vol. 9 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1978);  Carl Schmidt (ed.), The books of the Jeu and the untitled text in the Bruce codex, tr. and notes by Violet Macdemot, Nag Hammadi Studies, Vol. 13; The Coptic Gnostic library (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1978); Violet Macdermot,  The fall of Sophia: A Gnostic text on the redemption of universal consciousness (Lindisfarne Books, 2001). The book by V. MacDermot has a foreword by Stephan A. Hoeller (1931- ), a Gnostic scholar, and a bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica since 1967. I would like to thank Dr. Andrew Rigby for drawing my attention to MacDermot’s interest in Gnosticism. 110 Emma Burgham, The New Atlantis Foundation Dimitrije Mitrinović Archive: Catalogue (University of Bradford, 2015), 73-74. I was unable to locate these files in UB – SC, NAF. 111 SWDM (1987), 266. 109

124

ith the Jehovah which is in your heart of hearts, and answer me yes or no”.112 Alan Watts further mentions that Mitrinović told him about the secret fellowship: “I am going to tell you a mystery which you must never, never reveal to others. It will unlock for you the meaning of all kinds of ancient symbolisms”. Although Watts refers to this in his autobiography as a kind of joke, in another section of his book he mentions that he is not allowed to recount certain conversations since “I promised him not to reveal them”.113 Taken together, the two paragraphs written by Watts indicate that Mitrinović conferred upon him secrets that he, even many years later, was not ready to reveal. Instead he offered modified statements that could appear in their full meaning only to those who had already been initiated in them. Watts termed the circle of Mitrinović’s followers “devoted disciples and adoring women”, and he described the apartment where Mitrinović lived as “sanctum sanctorum”. He also mentions that he both loved and feared Mitrinović “for my Buddhist and Theosophical friends were of the opinion that he was a black magician”.114 Blavatsky acted through Lodge Blavatsky; both theosophists and members of the Golden Dawn had their temples, and everything suggests that Mitrinović’s apartment on Great Russell Street was in fact not merely a meeting point of people who wanted to organise a new and more just social order but also a temple of his teachings. Yet, this does not mean that he established a defined secret society of any kind. He had already experienced utter disappointment when his most loyal adherent Orage left him. So, the Adler Society was a continuation of his previous efforts to organize a group of persons fully attached to him and his ideas. The Adler Society was a new turning point that transformed his religious ideas into a blend that included both mystical ideas and practical policies. Even his articles written for Orage included more than just Theosophy and Gnosticism. They discussed “the changed problem of Britain in Europe”.115 Since the late 1920s his appreciation of practical policies was obvious. But even his practical policies were still strongly based on teachings of Alan Watts, In My Own Way. An autobiography 1915–1965 (Pantheon Books, 1972), 123. 113 Ibid, 109. 114 Ibid. 115 Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xvii. 112

125

authors who he identified as bearers of revelations: on Eric Gutkind, Rudolf Steiner, Helena Blavatsky and Vladimir Solovyov. Mairet described Mitrinović’s associates rather differently than they described themselves. He insists that Mitrinović exposed them “to acute emotional experiences, largely analogous to what has been recorded of the conduct of the Gurdjieff school: they were also collectively employed in a succession of public activities”.116 He also discussed the question of successive public activities that Mitrinović launched, which were all brief and usually had chaotic ends. For him “this is the way with most, if not all esoteric schools”.117 To understand the spirit of the age one needs to be reminded of the list of intellectuals who, for some time, joined the Gurdjieff school, in spite of his strict methods of dealing with his disciples. The list includes: the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, A. R. Orage, the French actor Louis Jouvet, and writers Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler and Katherine Mansfield.118 To more secular European readers of the late 20th or early 21st century, mystical clubs and schools may seem very alien. For the spirit of the 1920s, however, it was something novel and promising, and the way that Mitrinović dealt with it places him among very lenient gurus, and among the very rare who appreciated the opinions of his followers and even liked to encourage discussions among them. His group with esoteric pretensions was fully in line with traditions already present in London. It was a fashionable thing in the Bloomsbury area of London, where Mitrinović lived. Its culture was connected to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn is based on Kabbalah. Adam Kadmon, so often mentioned in Mitrinović’s texts, is the first heavenly man or the idea of the Universe in the Kabbalistic tradition.119 His Gnostic equivalent is Anthropos. Mitrinović’s philosophy is based on the philosophy of Eric Gutkind, as defined in 1910 in his book Sidereal Birth. He came in contact with Gutkind through Kandinsky, who was himself influenced by Theosophy. It may well be that Mitrinović, in addition to many other groups, also had a group of devotees who viewed him as a religious guru in the 1920s and early 1930s. After 1936 any such action Ibid, xxvi. Ibid. 118 Palavestra, Dogma, 337. 119 Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. An Encyclopaedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (San Francisco, 1928). 116 117

126

was impossible. He suffered a stroke and was very restricted in his activities. An indication that even the last group of Mitrinović’s followers engaged in certain rituals is provided through a testimony that Predrag Palavestra left describing his meeting with members of the New Atlantis Foundation. Four members of the Foundation met with him on an exact day at an exact time, at 4 pm (instead at 5 pm, which would have been the usual tea ritual by the social rules of that period) in the archives of the Foundation based in a cellar, in the last house in which Mitrinović lived, in Richmond-upon-Thames. They were seated so as to form a symbolic circle around the table, and in this way they closed the space from all sides of the world. Then they informed Palavestra of the conditions that he was to follow in order to gain access to the materials of the Foundation and they exposed him to “a hermetic test”. When Palavestra declined to accept the conditions, his refusal was interpreted as a sign that the hermetic circle did not recognise him as a chosen person to use and make the Foundation’s scripts known. This put an end to any co-operation between Predrag Palavestra and the Foundation. He described this experience in his last book, Necropolis. When he later described his experience to Mitrinović’s brotherin-law, Stephen Graham,120 the latter explained to him: “Well, my dear, you had no chance at all. They closed all exits to you, and you could not have passed anywhere neither to the left nor to the right, nor up nor down. They know such magical tricks and they deal with all kinds of crazy sorceries in order to make themselves look significant. It is for this reason that you had to wait for the four of them to meet on an exact day at an exact place. Had they really wished so you could have peacefully made an agreement with them at any time with an obligatory glass of disgusting cherry”.121 The very name of New Atlantis was originally used by Francis Bacon for his unfinished utopian novel of the same name (1627). It could imply the building of a perfect society, but it may also be connected to esoteric inspiration, suggesting a transfer of secret teachings from the primal to the new Atlantis. In line with my suggestion that Mitrinović developed two In 1956, three years after Mitrinović’s death, Stephen Graham married his sister Vera (Graham, Part, 295–6). 121 Predrag Palavestra, Nekropolje [Necropolis] 1 (Belgrade: Dosije and Zavod za udžbenike, 2012), 34. 120

127

parallel narratives, one must assume that he did not bother some of his more secular followers with the same kind of secret teachings into which he wanted to initiate Watts, and that he obviously did discuss them with Stephen Graham, Father Nikolai Velimirovich, Philip Mairet and most likely some of his later followers as well. There was something extraordinary about Mitrinović, and both streams of his associates acknowledged that. Mairet was of the opinion that both Mitrinović and Gurdjieff “lived, at least much of their time, at the level of consciousness above our usual human condition; that they were awake to a degree of intensity of which we ordinary people have but rare and brief glimpses, if any”.122 Rigby summarized the experiences of many of those who had met him: “Time and again people remarked that they sensed that he could see right into, and through, the deepest recesses of their being”.123 Although his Christianity was focused on personal revelation, nonetheless it was a sort of Christianity. In this sense Z. Milutinović is correct to conclude that “Mitrinović’s Christianity is not a religion in the accepted sense of the term”. It is his own doctrine of the Trinity that Milutinović sees as his theological topography. In it the Father represents the unconscious, the Son the individual and the conscious and the third person, Sophia, represents Wisdom and Universal Humanity.124 That Mitrinović’s teachings were intimately related to Christianity can be seen from the striking fact that many of his associates and followers were or at some point had been priests/ministers of various Christian churches: Father and later Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church Nikolai Velimirovich, Alan Watts, David Davies, Rev. A. D. Belden, Rev. Clifford Harley. They all must have seen a certain Christian essence in his ideas. Mairet, who was well acquainted with Blavatsky’s doctrines, described articles by M. M. Cosmoi as “Christian theosophy”.125 Valerie Cooper, in whose studio Mitrinović met Adler, left the recollections of one of her talks with “D.M.” about Christ: “Once I said ‘But does it really matter whether he really lived Mairet, “Reintroduction”, xxii. Rigby, Dimitrije Mitrinović, 172. 124 Zoran Milutinović, Getting over Europe. The Construction of Europe in Serbian Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 175. 125 Philip Mairet, A. R. Orage. A Memoir (New Hyde Park N.Y: University Books, 1966 [1st ed. 1936]), 81. 122 123

128

on earth or not?’ and he replied, ‘it matters more than anything else in the whole universe’”.126 This seems to be the statement of a profound Christian believer. Some of his decisions from the final months of his life indicate what he cared about most deeply at that time. He had lived in a house in Richmond since 1948, and in the last months of his life he was confined to his bed. He asked that several symbolic objects should be placed in his room. They included a copy of Lao Tse, a book of Serbian folk tales and a Christian cross. His gravestone at Highgate cemetery in London includes a special symbol, a spherical cross. “The society ‘New Atlantis’ used it as a symbol of general unification of mankind and of all world churches and faiths”.127 Undoubtedly, that is exactly what Mitrinović stood for. Yet, there is no doubt that for him the basis of such a unification of mankind was a kind of Christianity. His Christianity was Gnostic, it contained theosophical components and was strongly under the influence of the Sofian Christianity of Solovyov. His ideas stemmed from various sources. In N. Radulović’s opinion, they derived “mainly from theosophic macrohistory… but he was more inclined towards the anthroposophic-Christian version”.128 At the same time, it was primarily a mystical and Gnostic Christianity focused on introspection and open to various other faiths, and particularly to Indian and Chinese teachings. Mitrinović’s Gnosticism is a modern version of this teaching, and it fits within the definition of what Gilles Quispel regards as “modern gnosis”. Quispel lists within this stream of thought the following persons: Jakob Boehme, William Blake, J. W. Goethe, German historian Gottfried Arnold, and a prominent Hegelian, Ferdinand Christian Baur. Under the same section he mentions Henri-Charles Puech, Károly Kerényi, Carl Gustav Jung and himself as persons who understood Gnostic symbols as “a mythical expression (i.e. projection) of selfexperience”. One should add also Solovyov and Stephan Hoeller, and in some respects Elaine Pagels, to this list.129 Mitrinović also belongs to this group of the proponents of “modern gnosis”. Two main features of his teachings bring him to this group: his focus on an introspective approach to revelation, and his Sophian Christianity. Rigby, Initiation, 62; “From the note book of V. V. C.”, UB - SC, NAF, 1.1.6. Palavestra, Nekropolje, 40. 128 Nemanja Radulović, “The Sexual-Mystical Sophianism of Dimitrije Mitrinović“, La Rosa di Paracelso 1. 1 (2017): 88. 129 Quispel, “Gnosticism”, 573–574. 126 127

129

Based on all of this I believe that Mitrinović’s efforts could be summarised as a project of a Gnostic Christian social club that, at times, developed into a movement, but was soon reduced, by Mitrinović’s own initiatives, back to the format of a club. The aim of the club had been to educate spiritual élites in Britain that could help a utopian transformation of the world. The project had been much more utopian than his associates were later ready to acknowledge. With the magnetic personality of DM around them, even fully utopian endeavours seemed as something worthy of engaging in. Without him they remained merely unfulfilled prophecies. Dilemmas of Interpretation Some of the leading experts on Mitrinović have been under the strong influence of their talks with the members of the New Atlantis Foundation, NAF. The members systematised some of his ideas that had been substantially more chaotic, but they all contained much more mysticism in the original form pronounced by Mitrinović. Andrew Rigby specifically thanked five associates of the Foundation for their help in drafting the first comprehensive analysis of his work and life in English.130 Members of the Foundation remained fully committed to Mitrinović’s ideas as they understood them. They made a kind of commune, bought Mitrinović’s house in Richmond and placed the archives of the Foundation there. When Predrag Palavestra visited them in 1966, seven or eight of them lived in the house. He was allowed to sleep in Mitrinović’s room and to consult his archives and his library. Palavestra described the members of the New Atlantis Foundation in sympathetic terms, yet he left a testimony that they claimed to be the sole interpreters of the legacy of their founder. When he asked to take some documents to Belgrade and to copy some other documents for the preparation of Mitrinović’s collected works, he was asked to accept certain conditions. “I could not publish a single of Mitrinović’s manuscripts without their previous permission. All copyrights for texts written in English belong to them. I am obliged to show the final version of my study before printing it and to accept all their remarks if Rigby, Initiation. See “Acknowledgements” in Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative. 130

130

they refer to my interpretations of some of Mitrinović’s views – since they are the only ones who are called and authorised to advocate them, explain them and pass them to others”.131 In 1977, Palavestra published the first edition of his book on Mitrinović, entitled Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića [The Dogma and Utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović], which is still the best study on Mitrinović. The second, expanded edition of this book was published in 2003. The NAF reacted with its own criticism of the last chapter of Palavestra’s book on 72 typed pages. To do this they had to translate parts of Palavestra’s book for internal use and that task was performed by David Shillan, one of the Trustees of the NAF.132 His translation was revised by Dr. E. D. Goy of SSEES. This text was written for NAF followers. The text was typed in 1977, and in June 1980 David Shillan personally brought a copy of this text to the University Library in Belgrade. In his last will Mitrinović bequeathed a substantial part of his personal collection of books to this Library (some 2,000 books) and the NAF obviously wanted to make their criticism available to any subsequent researcher of Mitrinović’s ideas. In the foreword, the Trustees insist that Palavestra never met Mitrinović “and the Trustees knew him well and worked with him during the last twenty years of his life”.133 It is characteristic that the Trustees disagreed with the last chapter since it dealt with the period of their founder’s life, when he lived with them. However, they also objected to the chapter entitled “Utopian Messianism”. The Trustees made no acknowledgment of the great efforts Palavestra made. They rather focused on the points of interpretation in which their views differed from Palavestra’s. The fact that in the communist Yugoslavia Mitrinović was half-proscribed, and that prior to Palavestra’s book no serious study on him had ever been published in Yugoslavia, while occasional references to him had very negative connotations, was not duly mentioned. They also neglected the fact that Palavestra risked his academic career by discussing the religious aspects of Mitrinović’s thought. Palavestra, Nekropolje, 33. Burgham, The New Atlantis, 259. 133 “Critique of the last chapter of Dr. Predrag Palavestra’s book Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića by the Trustees of the New Antlantis Foundation” [typed text], The New Atlantis Foundation, 1980, 1. A copy of Critique is kept in the Rare Books Department of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade. UL SM – RBD, folder Mitrinović. 131 132

131

This hypercritical assessment of a very substantial effort that Predrag Palavestra made is quoted here only to illustrate that the Trustees believed themselves to be the only legitimate interpreters of Mitrinović’s ideas and teachings. And they indeed partly succeeded through their publications and personal communications in presenting Mitrinović in the way they understood him. Since some of Mitrinović’s teachings are known only from the NAF pamphlets and from the notes collected by NAF members, one may wonder if they fully represent his ideas? The commitment of the members of the Foundation to their founder even after his death is moving. On the other hand, it seems that they were not always able to process all of Mitrinović’s ideas, and Stephen Graham is only one of several persons who has pointed this out.134 In a pamphlet entitled Principles and Aims: New Atlantis Foundation, a kind of official interpretation of Mitrinović’s ideas has been provided. It essentially insists on two aspects of his theory. The first is that he rejected “either-or” reasoning and with it he dismissed three traditional laws of thought postulated by Plato and Aristotle. Instead he offered the “third force”, based on “above, between and beyond the extremes and opposites”. The other is that the pattern of trinity has an organic equivalent in the human body, and the succession of three revelations corresponds to three major world views. The first is the cosmic, the second is the individualistic and the third is the universal, based on the “inter-relationship between many individuals”. The pamphlet adds that there is also a fourth approach: “to accept the equi-validity of all three revelations simultaneously”.135 In this last statement the New Atlantis Foundation probably described what it viewed as Mitrinović’s ultimate legacy. Palavestra states that Mitrinović lived in England “like some guru, in a small brotherhood of associates and friends”.136 What was the aim of that small brotherhood? Did they ever learn what their founder had in mind when he gathered them? Mitrinović follows Gnostics and certain other mystics in their idea that there is a hidden knowledge within us that we can reach, and he obviously considered himself as a man who should pass on gnosis to others, more specifically Palavestra, Dogma, 323. Principles 12, 20–24. 136 Palavestra, Dogma, 30. 134 135

132

to his followers. Moreover, in Mitrinović’s and Gutkind’s ideas the revelation of their age was the final aim of mankind. What was left was to find and educate a group of humans who would be able to decipher it to mankind. He realised by the late 1920s that there was not a single code of decipherment, but that it needed to be realised through parallel narratives. As early as the age of 49, due to his illness, he became unable to fuse the two narratives both in terms of theoretical synthesis and in terms of transforming his followers into something more than a social club. More than half a century after his death his ideas may be only partly identified. His entire teaching was, in my opinion, based on Gnostic and Hermetic foundations filtered by Gutkind and Solovyov. This is, however, only half of the answer to his puzzle. His Young Bosnian nationalism was extinguished in 1913–1914. However, his Young Bosnian revolutionary zeal remained. His reading of mystical texts was always a kind of reading undertaken by a person who never abandoned the enthusiasm of a young revolutionary. His chiliasm and utopianism is, therefore, a blend of mysticism and revolution, a blend that existed among early Christians and many subsequent Christian revivalist movements, but also among some of his contemporaries like A. R. Orage. The Great War made many in Britain lose faith in the prospects of humanity. In this atmosphere of resignation, many a man became open to any new possibility of reconstructing humanity. In Britain of the 1920s one could be a Platonist, a theosophist, a Gnostic and a Socialist, all at once. What was true for Britain was even more so for London. Mitrinović probably chose the most receptive geographic location in the world of that time for spreading his all-human Christian syncretism and for his pan-human socialism. Only in Britain of that time, with so many Christian denominations in crisis, could he have found so many devoted lifelong followers. Archives UB – SC, NAF, University of Bradford, Special Collections, New Atlantis Foundation UL SM - RBD (University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade, Rare Books Department), folder Mitrinović

133

Bibliography Behr, Shulamith. “Wassily Kandinsky and Dimitrije Mitrinovic: PanChristian Universalism and the Yearbook ‘Towards the Mankind of the Future through Aryan Europe’”. Oxford Art Journal 15. 1 (1992): 81–88. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. The Secret Doctrine. The synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy, in two vols. Theosophical Publishing Co., 1888. Burgham, Emma. The New Atlantis Foundation Dimitrije Mitrinović Archive: Catalogue. University of Bradford, 2015. Cosmoi, M. M. [Dimitrije Mitrinovic]. “World Affairs”. The New Age. A Socialist Review of Religion, Science and Ars, no. 1489, March 24, 1921, p. 242 b; no. 1493, April 21, 1921, p. 293 a; no. 1502, June 23, 1921, pp. 87 b, 88 a. Coverley, Merlin. Occult London. London: Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2008. Critique of the last chapter of Dr. Predrag Palavestra’s book Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića by the Trustees of the New Antlantis Foundation [typed text], The New Atlantis Foundation, 1980. Davies, D. R. In Search of Myself. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1961. Dedijer, Vladimir. The Road to Sarajevo. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967. Glišović, Dušan. Ivo Andrić, Kraljevina Jugoslavija i Treći Rajh [Ivo Andrić, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Third Reich 19391941]. Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 2012. Graham, Stephen. The Quest of the Face. London: The Macmillan Co., 1918. St. Vitus Day. London: D. Appleton and Company, 1931. Part of the Wonderful Scene. An Autobiography. London: Collins, 1964. Gutkind, Eric. The Body of God. First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind. New York: Horizon Press, 1969. Hoeller, Stephan A. The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead. London: Quest Book, 1982. Kermode, Frank. “Apocalypse and the Modern”. In Visions of Apocalypse: End or Rebirth?, edited by Saul Friedländer, Gerald Holton, Leo Marx and Eugene Skolnikoff, 84-108. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985.

134

LeRoy Finch, Henry. “Introduction”. In Eric Gutkind, The Body of God. First Steps Toward an Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind, 7–20. New York: Horizon Press, 1969. Macdermot, Violet. The fall of Sophia: A Gnostic text on the redemption of universal consciousness. Lindisfarne Books, 2001. Mairet, Philip. A B C of Adler’s Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1930. A. R. Orage. A Memoir. New Hyde Park N.Y: University Books, 1966 [1st ed. 1936]. “Reintroduction”. In Idem, A. R. Orage. A Memoir, v-xxx. New Hyde Park N.Y: University Books, 1966. Milutinović, Zoran. Getting over Europe. The Construction of Europe in Serbian Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. Mitrinović, Dimitrije. Certainly Future, Selected writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović [SWDM], H. C. Rutherford (ed.). New York: Boulder, 1987. Sabrana djela 1-3 [Collected Works of Dimitrije Mitrinović – SDDM, P. Palavestra (ed.)]. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1991. Muir, Edwin. An Autobiography. London: Methuen, 1968 [1st ed. 1940]. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. London: Penguin, 1986. Pajin, Dušan. Za svečovečansku zajednicu. Dimitrije Mitrinović (18871953) [For a Panhuman Community. Dimitrije Mitrinović 18871953]. Belgrade: Pešić i sinovi, 2016. Palavestra, Predrag. „Sudbina i delo Dimitrija Mitrinovića“ [The Fate and Work of Dimitirje Mitrinović]. In Dimitrije Mitrinović, Sabrana dela, ed. Predrag Palavestra, 9-153. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1991. Dogma i utopija Dimitrija Mitrinovića [Dogma and Utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović]. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2nd enl. ed., 2003 [1st ed. 1977]. Nekropolje [Necropolis], book 1, Dosije and Zavod za udžbenike, 2012. Palmer Hall, Manly. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. An Encyclopaedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy. San Francisco, 1928. Petrović, Nenad V.”Dimitrije Mitrinović”. In Ogledi o smislu i zabludama [Essays on Sense and Misconceptions]. Belgrade: Udruženje književnika Srbije, 2001.

135

Popović, Bojana. „Mitrinović Dimitrije”. Srpski biografski rečnik 6 [Serbian Biographical Dictionary, vol.6], 787–788. Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 2014. Principles and Aims. New Atlantis Foundation. The New Atlantis Foundation, 1981. Quispel, Gilles. “Gnosticism from the Middle Ages to the Present”. In The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol.5, ed. in chief Mircea Eliade, 566–574. London: Simon and Shuster Macmillan, 1993. Radulović, Nemanja. “The Sexual-Mystical Sophianism of Dimitrije Mitrinović“, La Rosa di Paracelso 1.1 (2017): 87–99. Rigby, Andrew. Initiation and Initiative. An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović. New York: Boulder, 1984. “Training for Cosmopolitan Citizenship in the 1930s: The Project of Dimitrije Mitrinovic”. Peace and Change 24. 3 (1999): 379–399. Dimitrije Mitrinović. A Biography. London: William Sessions Ltd., 2006. “Dimitrije Mitrinović“. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2008. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/97877, accessed 23 June 2016] Rutherford, H. C. Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age. The New Atlantis Foundation, 1975. “General Introduction”. In Certainly, Future. Selected writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović, edited by H.C.Rutherford, 1–16. New York: Boulder, 1987. Rycroft, Charles. Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books, 1972. Schmidt, Carl. Pistis Sophia. Tr. and notes by Violet Macdermot. Nag Hammadi Studies, Vol. 9. Leiden: Boston, Brill, 1978. Schmidt Carl (ed.). The books of the Jeu and the untitled text in the Bruce codex. Tr. and notes by Violet Macdemot. Nag Hammadi Studies, Vol. 13; The Coptic Gnostic library. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1978.  Shillan, David. Biotechnics: the practice of synthesis in the work of Patrick Geddes. Sixteenth foundation lecture. The New Atlantis Foundation, 1972. Sholem, Gershom G. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books, 1946. Vidler, Alec R. The Church in an Age of Revolution. 1789 to the present day. The Pelican History of the Church. London: Penguin Books, 1974.

136

Vošnjak, Bogumil. U borbi za ujedinjenu narodnu državu. Utisci i opažanja iz doba svetskog rata i stvaranja naše države [In the Struggle for a United National State. Impressions and Observations from the period of the World War and the Creation of our State]. Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, 1928. Watts, Alan. In My Own Way. An autobiography 1915–1965. Pantheon Books, 1972. West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. A Journey through Yugoslavia. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1993. ABREVIATIONS: SWDM - Mitrinović, Dimitirje. Certainly Future, Selected writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović, H. C. Rutherford (ed.), Boulder, 1987. SDDM - Mitrinović Dimitrije/Митриновић, Димитрије, Сабрана дјела [Collected Works of Dimitrije Mitrinović, P. Palavestra (ed.)], Svjetlost, 1991, in three volumes.

137

https://doi.org/10.18485/mitrinovic_np.2022.ch7 929.6 Mitrinović D.

Guido van Hengel

WORLD CONQUEST THROUGH HEROIC LOVE. HOW THE FORTE KREIS INSPIRED DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIĆ

Wir alle, die an das gottvolle Europa von Morgen glauben, und die es vorbereiten und begründen, mitbegründen wollen […] Wir alle also, von ganzem Kontinent, aus England, aus Russland, auch aus Amerika und aus ganzer Welt müssen gleich den Weltbrande allzerstörend und allschöppferisch zusammen lodern. Das Neue Europe, das Gesamteuropa eigener synthetischen Vollkultur und einer anarchischen Föderation wird sich auf Grundlagen einer des gesamteuropäischen Selbstmordes und Selbstneuschaffen der Religion der Kultur, der Gottmenschheit bauen können.“ Dimitrije Mitrinovic to Frederik van Eeden, 15 August 1914.1 Introduction The archives of the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam contain a number of letters that Dimitrije Mitrinovic wrote to the Dutch writer, psychologist and social reformer Frederik van Eeden in the summer of 1914.2 The letters provide an interesting picture of the “All of us who believe in the godly Europe of tomorrow, and who want to shape it and justify, and want to build it [...]all of us, from the whole continent, from England, from Russia, also from America and from all over the world, we all must let this all-destroying and all-creating fire blaze. The New Europe, the whole of Europe, as a synthesis of the whole culture and an anarchic federation will be built on the foundations of a pan-European suicide and self-creation of a religion of culture, of a divine humanity.” Frederik van Eeden Archief - Allard Pierson Depot (APD) OTM: hs. XXIV C 58. 2 Ibid. 1

138

tense atmosphere surrounding the outbreak of the First World War, and how the young Serbian thinker and activist responded to all of this. The letters also form an important historical source for research into the years in which Mitrinovic went through a metamorphosis from a South Slav activist and propagandist to a cosmopolitan oriented cultural philosopher, who, both in thoughts and deeds, balanced between the Right and the Left, Avant-garde and Conservatism, the profane and the enchanted and between the East and the West. The letters also provide insight into Dimitrije Mitrinovic’s international networks. After a trip through Germany, which took him to the British racist writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain in Bayreuth and to the Russian avantgarde painter Wassily Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter in Munich, he fled to England – on the eve of the Great War.3 Why did he write these letters to the Dutchman Van Eeden? The intellectual interests were definitely mutual. The Dutch utopist saw something special in Mitrinovic. He considered this wild, young Slavic thinker a kind of ‘messenger’ he could mobilize for his new, grandiose plans to found a union of geniuses that would save the world from degeneration by using ideas, visions and a ‘kingly spirit’. Mitrinovic was eager to get involved in that project. He wrote to Van Eeden, in a strange, outlandish German: “I expect your intervention in my loneliness and despair as a release from my chaos and my longing to make myself meaningful and productive during this earthquake of history, and amidst the distress and hell of suffering and ugliness, from all sides.”4 The contacts between Frederik van Eeden and Dimitrije Mitrinovic developed during a historical period in which the so-called Forte Kreis (Forte Circle) was formed, a group of likeminded European intellectuals who aimed to form a spiritual elite that would bring humanity closer together, and eventually, accelerate the realization of a New Man.5 Guido van Hengel, De zieners (Amsterdam: Ambo|Anthos, 2018), 27-42; Idem, Vidovnjaci (Belgrade: Clio, 2020) 30-32; Andrew Rigby, Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), chapter 2 and 3; Predrag Palavestra, Dogma i Utopija Dimitrije Mitrinovića (Belgrade: Zavod za Udžbenike, 2003), 248-249. 4 Frederik van Eeden Archief - Allard Pierson Depot (APD) OTM: hs. XXIV C 58. 5 Richard Faber and Christine Holste eds, Der Potsdamer Forte-Kreis: Eine utopische Intellektuellenassoziation zur europäischen Friedenssicherung (Würzburg: Königshausen 3

139

How can we understand the Forte Kreis, and what has been the significance of this circle for the life and work of Dimitrije Mitrinovic? In this article I present a picture of the interactions between Frederik van Eeden, the chairman of the Forte Kreis, and Mitrinovic. Additionally, I will contextualize these interactions both in the Zeitgeist of the 1910s and 1920s, and, additionally, in the biography of Mitrinovic. Frederik van Eeden: Evolution into Angels In 1914, the novelist, poet and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden was not that young anymore. Already in the eighties of the nineteenth century, when Mitrinovic was yet to be born, van Eeden had been the voice of a new generation of literati. Together with poets such as Willem Kloos and Albert Verwey, he formed the so-called ‘Tachtigers’ (‘Men of the 1880s’), who – as is often the case with rebel movements in literature – stood up against the older artistic generation. The poets and writers of the Tachtigers wanted to make art for art’s sake, and to develop a lifestyle that was more in line with the complexities of modern life. They were very much inspired by the European Symbolists – a fashionable movement in the literature of the time.6 It must be said that, in this group of stargazing bohemians, Frederik van Eeden always remained an outsider, as a man of science. He had studied medicine and acted as a father-figure among the rather maladjusted and often drunken and confused poets. His natural charisma made him a natural born leader, respected by many. Moreover, he rose above the literary world, as a homo universalis with a wide range of interests beyond the genre of literature. Besides in poetry, he also made a career in science. Van Eeden was an admirer of Charles Darwin, and he devoted much time and energy to reflect on the evolution of humans and animals. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, Van Eeden linked his knowledge and understanding of evolution to socio-political ideas and even pseudo-religious ideas.7 und Neumann, 2001); Marcel Poorthuis, ‘The Forte-Kreis: An Utopian Attempt to Spiritual Leadership over Europe“, Religion and Theology, 24.1-2 (2017): 32-53; Jan Fontijn, Trots verbrijzeld: Het leven van Frederik van Eeden vanaf 1901 (Amsterdam: Querido, 1996), chapter 13 and 18; Anna Wołkowicz, Mystiker der Revolution: Der utopische Diskurs um die Jahrhundertwende (Warszawa: WUW, 2007). 6 Bart Slijper, Hemelbestormers: De revolutie van de Tachtigers (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2017). 7 Leonieke Vermeer, Geestelijke lenigheid: de relatie tussen literatuur en natuurwetenschap

140

Thus, he was convinced that evolution could also mean that man would step-by-step become an increasingly better being, and eventually evolve into a heavenly, good-natured angel. In resonance with the themes of his time, he associated Darwinist evolution with spiritual progress. It should therefore come as no surprise that Van Eeden was one of the early advocates of theosophy in the Netherlands.8 In 1900 he wrote a widely discussed article in which he stated that theosophy would walk an important third way between, on the one hand, the irrational, traditional and dogmatic religion, and, on the other hand, the rational, cold and technological sciences. He wrote: “The most important thing the Theosophists are trying to popularize is this: that the spiritual stands above the material. That the spiritual is to the material, as what a maker is to his creation, as what a composer is to his composition.”9 Around 1900 Frederik van Eeden was an intellectual of European and global stature. His books were translated and widely read in the British Empire and the United States, as well as in European intellectual circles of Vienna and Berlin. He toured and traveled these countries and places, and everywhere his public lectures were attended by many. This also meant that he formed an important link with European networks, leading to friendships with doctors such as Sigmund Freud in Vienna or social reformers as the anarchist Prince Kropotkin, in London. Van Eeden’s ideas could be described as a mix of very optimistic, utopian plans, with gloomy reflections on modernity and the modern man. In that respect, Van Eeden was a figure who embodied the European Fin-de-Siècle. It was a time of spiritual fading and lighting, a period of shifting values ​​and ideas, of vitalism and doom-mongering, and of radicalized rationality as well as irrational outbursts. Van Eeden’s ideas can therefore not easily be pigeonholed. As a social reformer, he detested the Marxists. As a womanizer he struggled with his sexuality, his atheist image of God was ambiguous and multilayered; and he was a militant pacifist; he denounced most seers, but in het werk van Frederik van Eeden en Felix Ortt, 1880-1930 (Antwerpen: Garant, 2011), 59-81. 8 Frederik van Eeden, ‘Het ontstaan der theosophische beweging’ (1900), cited in: Jan Fontijn, Leven in extase: Opstellen over mystiek en muziek, literatuur en decadentie rond 1900 (Amsterdam: Querido, 1983), 132-33. 9 Ibid.

141

he also had a great interest in the occult. For Van Eeden, Utopia and the Apocalypse went hand in hand. An important, if not essential period in Van Eeden’s life formed the years when he was involved in ecological and agricultural communes. From 1898 onwards he led a colony in Bussum, called “Walden” (named after the famous book by David Henry Thoreau), where artists and nature lovers tried to live autonomously, while regaining contact with both their inner spirit and with Mother Earth. The project garnered much praise and criticism. According to his critics, the intellectual Van Eeden ridiculed himself by giving meaning to his elitist wish to get in contact with the peasant’s world. The colony, in the end, was not a success. Walden went bankrupt in 1907. It is precisely at this time between the end of Walden and the beginning of the First World War that Van Eeden went through a dramatic change, both in his personal and professional life. He transformed from an optimistic idealist with a keen eye for social problems, to a more elitist, aristocratic intellectual – much less practical, and much more spiritual. He no longer pinned his hopes on the masses, but on a New Type of Man, that would elevate the masses to a higher consciousness. Hence, it was during the heyday of the early 20th century Nietzsche craze that Van Eeden started thinking about a utopian commune of so-called ‘spiritual aristocracy’. He found a kindred spirit in the young philosopher Erich Gutkind. This Berlin-based writer was the man behind the pseudonym ‘Volker’, who in 1910 had written a mystical tractatus promoting a coming era of the ‘Deed’ (Die Tat). The book was titled: Sidereal Birth: A Seraphic Wandering from the Death of the World to the Baptism of the Deed (Siderische Geburt Seraphische Wanderung vom Tode der Welt zur Taufe der Tat).10 Siderische Geburt can best be described as an eclectic mix of theosophy, esotericism and Christian symbolism, all covered under layers of modern Nietzschean thinking about the Übermensch and the ‘Tat’ (Deed). One of the principles of Gutkind’s philosophy was Erich Gutkind (Volker), Siderische Geburt: Seraphische Wanderung vom Tode der Welt zur Taufe der Tat (Berlin: Karl Schnabel, 1910); Marcel Poorthuis, “Erich Gutkind, ‘Magical Jew‘ and his apocalyptic Visions before the First World War“, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte, 110.110 (2016): 177-191; Rutherford, Henry C., Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age. 18th Foundation lecture of the New Atlantis Foundation, 1975. Available at: http://www.pkgodzik.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Gutkind/Rutherford__ Erich_Gutkind.pdf. 10

142

language criticism. Gutkind thought that one should ‘experience’ (Erfahren) the words of Siderische Geburt. After all, he believed that language could not capture the (underlying) reality, hence paranormal perception was necessary to get there. Only initiates, or seers, could capture and understand the language. This way of thinking would later return in the New Age-columns written by Dimitrije Mitrinovic, in his London years throughout the 1920s and 1930s. On Wednesday, July 13, 1910, Van Eeden wrote in his diary: “In Volker’s Siderische Geburt I keep on finding new, invigorating beauties. He continues the line of German Thinkers – from Eckhart to Nietzsche. Like all his predecessors, he writes with a lot of Wortschall and makes too much noise in order to be better understood, which is not the way as it should be. However, he fully understands that truth is not in words, and he knows what he is doing and how his words are flawed.”11 The Siderische Geburt would later become one of the most important sources of inspiration for Mitrinovic’s work and life, well into the twenties and thirties of the 20th century. In that respect, this book – and its author – formed the link between the world of Frederik van Eeden and that of Dimitrije Mitrinovic. Erich Gutkind: Heroic Love Gutkind, the man behind the mysterious ‘Volker’, was born into a wealthy and culturally distinguished Jewish family in Berlin. His father had an empire of textile factories, among other things. in this upper bourgeois environment, much attention was paid to Kultur in the broadest sense. Young Erich had studied many disciplines with a private tutor and had attended classes in anthropology at the University of Berlin. The famous Kaballa-researcher Gershom Scholem would later describe Gutkind as “a mystical soul who had delved into all disciplines with the aim of finding their secret core”.12 In 1910, the Siderische Geburt was read in many cultural and intellectual avant-garde circles in Germany. Besides Scholem and Van Eeden, the members of the Blaue Reiter in Munich also read the Wednesday 13 July 1910. Frederik van Eeden’s diaries (Dagboeken DB 1878-1923)can be accessed online via: https://www.dbnl.nl/tekst/eede003hwva04_01/eede003hwva04_01_0010.php. 12 Gershom Scholem, Van Berlijn naar Jeruzalem. Translated by Yge Foppema (Amstelveen: Amphora, 1982), 79. 11

143

book. Gabrielle Münter, Kandinsky’s Muse, wrote about it to the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg: “[…] I must definitely draw your attention to a book that I think will also give you pleasure and satisfaction. And to the author, who is certainly a remarkable, special person. […] I plow through it slowly, unfortunately with interruptions. I take as much as I can take. I can’t quite go along with it, and at the end it gets too vague for me. But it goes through my hands like the links of a heavy gold chain, piece by piece, sentence by sentence…”13 This reading took place in the time when Mitrinovic regularly visited Kandinsky and Münter, and was in close and regular contact with the Avantgarde of the Blaue Reiter and the bohemia of Schwabing, Munich’s legendary artistic quarter. Van Eeden and Gutkind started a correspondence and wrote each other warm-hearted and complicated letters about the future time and the future man. After a few letters, the two met in Berlin. Many years later, Gutkind described the encounter as a kind of cosmic fusion. He wrote: “Very rarely had I met a human being with such an enormously powerful presence and reality. Van Eeden was full of “Orenda”, an ancient word of the magical cultures, which means a mixture of overwhelming power, leadership and an enchanting power. […] A beautifully strong body, like that of a panther. The hand – the pressure of this hand I will feel forever – was like the Earth glowing with the Sun. Most overwhelming, however, were the eyes, which incessantly sprayed sparks and flashes.”14 Van Eeden was also delighted about meeting Gutkind. He wrote to a friend in a letter: “I am here [in Berlin] in daily conversation with Gutkind, the author of Siderische Geburt. There is your man, our man, the man this world seeks, or rather waits for, without knowing whom they’re looking for.”15 Van Eeden and Gutkind found common ground in the plan to found a new community, this time not for people with interest in Letter Gabriele Münter to Arnold Schönberg, 20 augustus 1912, in Arnold Schoenberg – Wassily Kandinsky – Letters, Pictures and Documents, ed. Jelena Hahl-Koch (London/ Boston: 1984), 55. 14 Erich Gutkind, “Von Freundschaft”, in Liber Amicorum Dr. Frederik Van Eeden: Aangeboden Ter Gelegenheid van Zijn Zeventigsten Verjaardag, 3 April 1930, ed. J. Terpstra (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1930), 68. 15 Letter Frederik van Eeden to lady Welby, 7 October 1910, in: Frederik van Eeden, “Briefwisseling met Lady Welby”, Mededelingen Van Eeden Genootschap 14 (1954), 88. 13

144

ecological or agricultural communes, but for the kind of people like themselves, which they baptized the ‘Kingly of Spirit’. In 1912 they wrote the book World Conquest through Heroic Love, that was supposed to become the blueprint of the commune to be founded, for the Kingly of Spirit.16 Who were these people, the Kingly of Spirit? “We know them from history as prophets, poets, wise men,” wrote Gutkind and Van Eeden. Humanity, and certainly that of the then early twentieth century, is like a herd. The exceptions quickly stand out; these are the people who are not formed by the herd, but vice versa: they form the herd. The energy that spring from “their inexhaustible spirit” form rivers from which all mankind is ‘spiritually and materially nourished’.17 They describe the dynamics between those wholly unique individuals and humanity in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘growing up’, but also as parts of one organism, which matures in its entirety. This could be understood as a metaphor: the individual great minds are a kind of brain that controls the rest of humanity as limbs of one body. At the same time, humanity is again an organ of the world, of the earth, which we cannot perceive in its entirety. The tone of World Conquest through Heroic Love is strongly reminiscent of what Mitrinovic himself would later write, and the eclectic, sometimes bizarre mix of theosophy, socialism, Christian mysticism, Nietzschean thought, psychology and cultural criticism was an important source of inspiration. This is illustrated in the letters Mitrinovic wrote to Van Eeden as early as 1914: “Through World Conquest through Heroic Love I realized that there is a willpower to internalize, and a belief in the future, an urge to rebuild our culture, and the idea of ​​a collaboration of the highest culture-bearers (Kulturträger) of Europe and the world…”18 Kingly of Spirit It was not a dream after all. The gathering of Europe’s chosen Kulturträger did take place in Potsdam, outside of Berlin. In June 1914 Van Eeden and Gutkind welcomed the Kingly of Spirit to talk about forming a circle. Indeed, the list of attendees included a few notable Frederik van Eeden and Volker, Welt-Eroberung durch Helden-Liebe (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1911). 17 Ibid, 101. 18 Letter 15 August 1914. Frederik van Eeden Archief - (APD) OTM: hs. XXIV C 58. 16

145

names, also for those times, such as the anarchist Gustav Landauer and the Jewish writer Martin Buber. Not so well-known names were the Dutch sinologist Henri Borel and the German writer Florens Christian Rang. A total of eight persons were present, all men, and mostly from Germany and the Netherlands. The program of the meeting included long discussions about the future of Europe, the role of women or the metaphysical encounter between the Germanic and Jewish races, but also practical matters, such as how the circle would develop further and who would pay for it. The group later went down in history as the Forte Kreis, because of the planned follow-up meeting in Capri, at the Forte dei Marmi (which never took place). It must have been a special encounter, there in Potsdam. Afterwards, van Eeden wrote in his diary that the mind hovered over these ‘Knights of the Round Table’. It was “the spirit, the spirit of God, the spirit of liberty in community, of humility in pride, of riches in poverty.”19 That same month, Gutkind set out in search of new members of this group. Hence, he visited Jena to meet Mitrinovic there. It is not known exactly what they discussed in Jena, but afterwards Gutkind wrote to Van Eeden that Mitrinovic might be the key to the Slavic world for the predominantly German-Dutch circle. He wrote: “Dear friend, we had very nice days in Jena. We had a very curious and at the same time very useful appointment with a Serb: [Dimitrije] Mitrinović. A young, real Slavic hothead, a deep mind, who has very strange plans and wants to publish a yearbook for the most important people to contribute to. […] After two days of pleasant debates in Jena, I was able to commit […] it is about proposing a united Europe, a Unified Europe…’20 In that same month, however, the Great War broke out, and the plans for a ‘Unified Europe’, of course, came to nothing. As an AustroHungarian citizen, Mitrinovic had to flee his military service, and with the help of Gutkind he disappeared to Ostend to take the boat to England from there. Gutkind promised Mitrinovic that his friend Van Eeden, who was well acquainted with all kinds of intellectual and artistic circles in London, could help him find something to do in England, at least for the upcoming months. DB 1878-1923, 13 juni 1914. Letter Erich Gutkind to Frederik van Eeden, 26 August 1914. In: Frederik van Eeden Archief - Allard Pierson Depot (APD) OTM: hs. XXIV C33. 19 20

146

The different Kingly of Spirits continued to correspond with each other during the war months, first enthusiastically, but increasingly in bitter wordings. Because the correspondence was intended to feed further discussions at the next meeting at the Forte dei Marmi in Capri, they forwarded everything to each other. For that reason, it is actually possible to get a good picture of the correspondence in which many famous names took part: Landauer, who later became minister in the Bavarian republic of Munich, and Buber, but also Romain Rolland, the French writer. The entrepreneur Walter Rathenau, who later would become the Interwar minister of the Weimar Republic, was involved in these correspondence as well. Studying the Forte-Kreis correspondence – which reads as a chaotic interaction like a 21st century Whatsapp group, though written in a more elaborate, well-educated vocabulary – it shows that three major themes are central: first, what would be the outcome of the Great War for the future of Europe. Would Europe’s culture be purified or destroyed? Regeneration or degeneration? Second, would violence be the solution or the problem of the coming European culture? And three: how do individual developments and characters relate to collectives, both nationally and ideologically? To what extent does the individual contain or represent the seeds for the wholesome, new-tobe realized culture? God-Human Van Eeden was the chairman of the group. He coordinated and distributed all the letters that went back and forth between the Netherlands, Germany, England, France and Sweden. As chairman, he was unambiguously outspoken against the violence of war, while some of the other intellectuals rather took on an ambivalent or even enthusiastic attitude. Martin Buber, for example, the calm teller of Chassidic tales, mused on the violence as a ‘purification of the mind’. He wrote to Van Eeden that he should see the war as a kind of ‘plough’ that would plow the earth of Europe. “After the war, the big task begins, but now the plough is doing its job. The plowed earth will catch the seeds that will fall into it.”21 In the same time, a similar remark was also made by Mitrinovic in his letter to Van Eeden in December 1914: Letter cited in Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Early Year 18781923 (New York: Dutton, 1981), 194. 21

147

“The war has done half of what the very best of all mankind and of all peoples in long centuries would not get done: the war has destroyed what was god-less in Europe. Now a new race will come, that will build, and live.”22 Gutkind was even more enthusiastic about the war. The way to the ‘God-Human’ was now open, and the ‘wild, chaotic destruction is a necessary and creative organ for that’. Rang, the Prussian philosopher, saw in the outbreak of the war a Stunde der Welt (World-Hour) and decided for himself to go to the front, even though he was already in his fifties. He wrote the following to his fellows in the Forte Kreis: ‘I am wearing the uniform of a German officer ... I cannot shut down my soul for a few days; I now live in the foreground of my being, I am all blood and nerves, I am trembling, a slaughterhorse […]’23 The more pacifist, neutral approach came from Frederik van Eeden, and the German anarchist Landauer. They were shocked by what they called the ‘nationalitis’ of their fellow circle members. Van Eeden counterattacked, and Landauer largely stood aside – in disgust. The first friendships were broken during the first months of the war. This also immediately brought up an important theme: how do individual characters relate to collective communities, be it national, ethnic, as well as ideological, or social? In a heated exchange between Romain Rolland and Erich Gutkind they addressed each other as respectively a Frenchman and a German. It appears that all circle-members transformed into symbols and representatives of different European cultures, not just in terms of belonging, but also as spiritual entities. Gutkind wrote to Van Eeden about how the ‘French Soul’ had once contributed to the deepening of the European soul, but that it had ceased to be relevant in modern times. For him, the ‘German understanding of life’ would be decisive for the future of European man, and the acclaimed Sidereal birth, which made it possible to arrive at deeper insights and higher truths. Rolland responded in a letter to Gutkind: “It’s nice to be an Übermensch. But Letter 15 August 1914. APD-OTM: hs. XXIV C 58. Letter Florenz Christian Rang, december 1914. Cited in: Fenneken van Doesum, Koninklijken van Geest: De vriendschap tussen Frederik van Eeden en Erich Gutkind (Groningen: uitgave eigen beheer, 2006),104. The correspondence of the Forte Circle is kept in the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam, in the Gustav Landauer Papers (GLP), 24-26. All the following citations in the next paragraphs are taken from the Gustav Landauer Papers, unless otherwise indicated. 22 23

148

it is more beautiful and much more difficult to be human. Germany, since Nietzsche, has been living in a kind of perpetual delirium. His apoplectic mysticism has troubled their view.” Van Eeden and Gutkind, the founders of the circle, got into a fierce debate. The Dutch writer wrote bitter letters to his former friend: ‘O you unfortunate man! Your letter of the 14th touched me like on a battlefield. I look into an abyss… your soul is sick, and because I love you I must tell you, sincerely. After all, I know your weaknesses. I know how easily you can be impressed. When I got to know you it was Franciscus of Assisi, now it’s the Prussian General Staff.[…][The idea of] calling the English Empire “money” and the German Empire “spirit” shows an enormous ignorance and narrow-mindedness, just like the view that Jews are just obsessed with money. […] your hatred and anger are idiotic and criminal, […] and I call it blasphemy to associate Johann Sebastian Bach and Meister Eckhart to this slaughter and fire.” These interactions show how the national culture was, one-way or the other, impersonated in the individual members of the circle. The meaning of that national culture, was, as is shown in the cited letter, disputed. Van Eeden decided to turn his back to Gutkind – the misguided German. He wrote: ‘If you speak of “growing karma”, I will tell you where I found it. Rather with the Serb Mitrinović […] than with a German.” World-Synthesis The discussions in the correspondence of the Forte Kreis crisscrossing Europe provide an excellent illustration of the complex ideas that still belonged together around 1914-1915, but that would crystallize further in the following years, and certainly in the 1920s and 1930s. As such, the Forte Kreis combined conservative ideas about the aristocracy of the mind with progressive ideas about the unity of peoples. The desire to bridge national differences by creating a ‘New Man’, collided at the same time with the question whether a particular nationality (the German, the Dutch, or the ‘Slavic’) would be leading towards the realization of that ‘New Man’. Frederik van Eeden, however, did not want to see the contradictions in the context of national identities. He believed, above all, that there was a contrast between elevated and less exalted spirits.

149

Similar though not the same thoughts can be found in Mitrinovic’ letters. Mitrinovic wrote about the ‘Synthesis of the Whole Culture (Vollkultur)’ and the struggle against the lower-spirited people. The discourse he used for this appears rather awkward to a reader in the twenty-first century. He spoke of the “Untermenschen” who had drawn the world into the most short-sighted racial hatred, that of “Aryans against Aryans”. Yet it is a matter of debate how Van Eeden’s idea of​​ ‘spiritual royalty’ and ‘Kingly of Spirit’ resonated with Mitrinovic’s ideas about the ‘God-Mankind’. However, what did overlap was their mutual focus on the supranational and cosmopolitan perspective, and their vision of a Europe that goes beyond national identities, and the curse of the nationalitis. This global, cosmopolitan view that went beyond the very national struggle of Europe brought Van Eeden and Mitrinovic closer together. Unlike a synthesis of Germans and French, they sought a synthesis in which Asian and American cultures would also play a role. Mitrinovic wrote of the “synthesis of the culture of Europe, a whole culture re-established or even first-established by India and the Slavic World, building on an Americanized Europe.”24 In light of this, there was in 1915 still talk of Mitrinovic joining the Forte Kreis. Van Eeden thought it was a good idea, but Gutkind was skeptical. He wondered if Mitrinovic was mature enough as a thinker for the Forte Kreis. It did not work out anyway. The group broke up in the same year, and would never get back together. After the First World War, Right-wing paramilitaries (Die Freikörper) in Germany would end the lives of both Gustav Landauer and Walter Rathenau. The members of the Forte Kreis went their own separate ways. After the First World War, Van Eeden would continue his career in other fields: first in the peace movement, then in journalism, and subsequently in spiritualism, trying to make contact to the spiritual world looking for wisdom. Eventually, in the 1920s he converted to Catholicism. Only Gutkind would try many more times to revitalize and regroup the Forte Kreis, each time without success. The Jewish thinker would lead a rather miserable and troubled life in the Weimar Republic, partly in the company of his friends Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem.25 When the Nazis came to power, he fled to the APD-OTM: hs. XXIV C 58. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life (Cumberland: Harvard University Press, 2014), 173. 24 25

150

United States, where he would teach at the New School in New York.26 He died in 1965. Dimitrije Mitrinovic and the Forte Kreis Retrospectively, the tale of the Forte-Kreis seems like a tragicomic footnote in the history of the First World War: it started with great ideals, and it ended in a silly failure. It all happened indoors, in expensive salons or summer residences. The men of letters attacked each other with words, while at the same time hundreds of thousands of men died in the trenches of the European front lines. In short, the Forte Kreis produced very little. Yet in those years of rapprochement between these European intellectuals, there were a few thoughtprovoking and relevant ideas that shaped personal worldviews of the persons involved, including Mitrinovic. The archives of the New Atlantis Foundation in Bradford clearly show how Mitrinovic took up his task as ‘messenger’ of the Forte Kreis and the Kingly of Spirits. He approached countless intellectuals across Europe to contribute to that spiritual aristocracy who would be at the forefront of shaping a new man, a new Europe, and a synthesis of the Whole Culture. It appears from the letters to Van Eeden that he had made contact with various people, from H.G. Wells to George Bernhard Shaw, and from Paul Selver to Stanisław Przybyszewski, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Rudolf Eucken, Emile Verhaeren and Ivan Mestrovic. He showed great zeal to gather the Kingly of Spirits, in the same way as Van Eeden and Gutkind had aimed to do so.27 After the First World War, Mitrinovic would find a new life destination in England. He did not find that destination in the ForteKreis, but indeed he would forever work on in building circles, initiate groups, communities, clubs, associations and societies. In that respect, he had learned something from the especially German need to come together in Bunden and Kreisen, a fashion that had inspired Gutkind and Van Eeden too. Letter Erich Gutkind to Winnifred Gordon Fraser, 1933. Bradford University Library – New Atlantis Foundation, 3/3/2; The New School for Social Research 1934 -1935.  New School course catalogues; New School Archives and Special Collections Digital Archive. 27 It must be mentioned that the endeavors to collect intellectuals were supposed to contribute to both the Forte Circle (also known as Blutbund) and the Aryan Yearbook Mitrinovic had envisioned. 26

151

One crucial aspect of the Forte Kreis recurred later in much of Mitrinovic’s work. That was the dialogue. Martin Buber later admitted that his concept of the highly influential book Ich und Du (I and Thou) had its origins in his experiences in the Forte Kreis.28 The sharp and hot-tempered dialogues he conducted in Potsdam with the German-Prussian Rang about the Jewish-German relations had made him realize how the dialogue between man and man can also be a dialogue between culture and culture, or one humanity against another. In other words, if one really opens up himself to engage in a dialogue with the other, he can touch and get to know the meaning of the wholeness of humanity. Buber elaborated these ideas in I and Thou. There are no particular references in the Bradford archive that show whether Mitrinovic appreciated or merely read Buber’s work, but it is known that he received these ideas in a watered-down version through Gutkind, who continued to correspond with Buber well into the Interwar period.29 Another crucial aspect of the Forte Kreis is the concept of a minor utopia. The Kreis saw itself as a seed of a new humanity. No force would be needed to make it grow. Van Eeden referred to the longdistance perspective of his Spiritual Aristocracy in World Conquest through Heroic Love: “A patient little booklet that will tolerate the cold gaze of thousands of skeptical eyes. That is entirely fine. Ridicule, disbelief, irony and skepticism only confirm its calm message. […] Booklets do not seldom outlive their author - and there is also a coming generation.”30 The idea that humanity could develop in a small room, in a small company, yes even in one individual, was the basic idea of the Forte Kreis. It was about the smallest possible utopia, that of the beginning, which can sprout up in the mind. In line with this, Mitrinovic, throughout the 1920s and 1930s would seldom aspire to founding a major popular movement. He preferred to penetrate the deeper meaning of cultures, eras, and spheres in the contact – yes, the dialogue – between man and man. Martin Buber, Ich und Du (Ditzingen: Reklam, [1923] 2010); Hartensveld, Frans, De mystiek van de ontmoeting: Over Martin Buber (Utrecht, Kok: 2014). 29 Bubers influence is definitely recognizable in: Erich Gutkind, The Absolute Collective: A philosophical Attempt to Overcome our Broken State (London: C.W. Daniel Company Ltd., 1937). 30 Frederik van Eeden, Geestelijke verovering der wereld (Amsterdam: Arcanum, [1912] 1977), trans. by Henri Borel (1933), 78. 28

152

Van Eeden died in 1932, but Mitrinovic lived through times when Great Ideas or seemingly absurd concepts about the Sidereal Birth or the coming of New Ages became disturbingly realistic. The Fascists, Communists and National-Socialists got the Zeitgeist by the throat and demanded and requested entirely new worlds, inhabited by a new type of people, having new territorial empires or territorial ambitions, and sharing or aiming at new forms of consciousness, togetherness and hierarchies. For that reason, it is as fascinating as it is terrifying to read an English translation of World Conquest through Heroic Love in one of Mitrinovic’s colorful cultural journals called New Atlantis, in 1934. The piece is ominously titled “A Testament to the Kingly of Spirit”.31 This ‘testament’ could be explained in two ways. First, Frederik van Eeden had died two years earlier. Hence, it can be read as an ode to the Dutch utopian and writer. But one could also read it differently, as a farewell to an era when grandiose thoughts were not yet realistic, but mainly the fruits of dreamy, stargazing intellectuals in rooms, behind closed doors. The same magazine also contains translations of Erich Gutkind’s contributions to the blueprint of the Forte Kreis. It is titled “Our Religion of Steel”. It states, in English: “Poverty merely hinders the coming of the new Necessity, that holy necessity which leads us to the End and Aim of our spirit and of our world: which will make us steep and electric, which produces by force a new race of mariners on new and dangerous seas.” In 1912, when World Conquest through Heroic Love was published, this fragment sounded vague and unclear, in a typical dreamy Finde-Siècle style. In 1934, the quote conjures up a very different, more realistic picture. After all, the same edition of the magazine New Atlantis included an open letter to the new Chancellor of Germany, whose name was Adolf Hitler. Conclusions How did the Forte-Kreis, this footnote in the intellectual history of early twentieth-century Europe, inspired Mitrinovic to his life’s purposes in England? It is important to answer this question by Bradford University Library – New Atlantis Foundation, New Atlantis, January 1934, 7475. 31

153

looking beyond the networks of Van Eeden, Gutkind and Mitrinovic, and put it in the context of the spirit of their time. First, the Forte Kreis gives insight in the intellectual networks of Mitrinovic and how these networks were imbued with meanings. Members of the Forte Kreis and their likeminded companions across Europe all adopted and internalized the complicated and contradicting ideas of modernity around 1914. These ideas were paradoxical and contradicting because they combined progressive, avant-garde visions with very conservative ideas about human races and hierarchical societies. In the decades after 1914, that fatal mix would erupt, on the one hand in the modern arts, and, on the other hand, in the worst nightmares of the KZ-Lager and the Gulag. Mitrinović stood at that crossroads and had to make a choice. Second, the Forte Kreis had been an example how the philosophy of the ‘deed’ could be experienced to ‘experience’. Gutkind had, in his Siderische Geburt, combined ideas on time and epochs by adding the aspect of the ‘deed’. A new era could be entered by taking action, by reaching the future as it went ‘through’ the experience. From all kinds of articles and columns by Mitrinović well into the 1940s it appears that he had taken this interpretation of the new age, in line with Siderische Geburt, as a guideline. Utopia, basically, began by making a first step towards it. But even more than the idealistic and substantive inspiration, he had learned from the Forte-Kreis how to give meaning to life - the personal, individual life. He had initially put himself at the service of Gutkind and Van Eeden. But after that seemed to have failed, he realized that perhaps he could launch himself as a Kingly of Spirit. The circumstances for engaging in that endeavor were rather favorable: England offered him a clean slate, a new beginning. He was freed from his role in the Young Bosnian movement in Sarajevo, and he was no longer a Slavic student in the intoxicating bohemia of Munich. He could take his own position and choose his followers in London, the capital of a global empire. From the Forte-Kreis debacle, he understood that he shouldn’t look for the companion of H.G. Wells, George B. Shaw or Peter Kropotkin, who weren’t waiting for him, to say the least. Instead, he would improve humanity by gathering likeminded people who had not yet established a name in any artistic or intellectual discipline.

154

The Forte-Kreis, in all its inadequacy and unworldliness, thus formed the inspiration. He had learned to gather people around him, as followers, in order to discover and rediscover himself, over and over again throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. It was London, not Berlin or Potsdam, that became the setting for this personal and spiritual quest.

Archives Frederik van Eeden Archief - Allard Pierson Depot (APD) OTM. Frederik van Eeden’s diaries (Dagboeken DB 1878-1923). https://www. dbnl.nl/tekst/eede003hwva04_01/eede003hwva04_01_0010.php. Bradford University Library – New Atlantis Foundation (NAF) Bibliography Buber, Martin. Ich und Du. Ditzingen: Reklam, 2010 [1923]. Doesum, Fenneken van. Koninklijken van Geest: De vriendschap tussen Frederik van Eeden en Erich Gutkind [Kingly of Spirit: The Friendship between Frederik van Eeden and Erich Gutkind] Groningen: uitgave eigen beheer, 2006. Eeden, Frederik van. Geestelijke verovering der wereld [Spiritual Conquest of the World. Translated by Henri Borel. Amsterdam: Arcanum, 1977 [1912]. World conquest. New Atlantis, January 1934. “Briefwisseling met Lady Welby”. Mededelingen Van Eeden Genootschap No. 14 (1954): 88. Eeden, Frederik van and Volker.  Welt-Eroberung durch Helden-Liebe. Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1911. Eiland, Howard and Jennings, Michael W. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life. Cumberland: Harvard University Press, 2014. Faber, Richard and Holste, Christine, eds. Der Potsdamer ForteKreis: Eine utopische Intellektuellenassoziation zur europäischen Friedenssicherung. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2001.

155

Fontijn, Jan. Opstellen over mystiek en muziek, literatuur en decadentie rond 1900 [Essays about mysticism, music, literature and decadence around 1900]Amsterdam: Querido, 1983. Trots verbrijzeld: Het leven van Frederik van Eeden vanaf 1901. [Pride Crushed: The Life of Frederik van Eeden after 1901] Amsterdam: Querido, 1996. Friedman, Maurice. Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Early Year 18781923. New York: Dutton, 1981. Gutkind, Erich. The Absolute Collective: A philosophical Attempt to Overcome our Broken State. London: C.W. Daniel Company Ltd, 1937. Hahl-Koch, Jelena, ed. Arnold Schoenberg – Wassily Kandinsky – Letters, Pictures and Documents. London/Boston, 1984. Hartensveld, Frans. De mystiek van de ontmoeting: Over Martin Buber [Mysticism of the Encounter: About Martin Buber], Utrecht: Kok, 2014. Hengel, Guido van. De zieners [Seers] Amsterdam: Ambo|Anthos, 2018. Vidovnjaci. Belgrade: Clio, 2020. Palavestra, Predrag. Dogma i utopija Dimitrije Mitrinovića [The dogma and utopia of Dimitrije Mitrinović]. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2003. Poorthuis, Marcel. “Erich Gutkind, ‘Magical Jew‘ and his apocalyptic Visions before the First World War”. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte. 110: 110 (2016): 177-191. “The Forte-Kreis: An Utopian Attempt to Spiritual Leadership over Europe“. Religion and Theology, 24. 1-2 (2017): 32-53. Rigby, Andrew. Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984. Rutherford, Henry C. Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age. 18th Foundation lecture of the New Atlantis Foundation, 1975. http://www.pkgodzik.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Gutkind/ Rutherford__Erich_Gutkind.pdf. Scholem, Gershom. Van Berlijn naar Jeruzalem [From Berlin to Jerusalem] Translated by Yge Foppema. Amstelveen: Amphora, 1982. Slijper, Bart. Hemelbestormers: De revolutie van de Tachtigers [Idealists: The Revolution of the Tachtigers]Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2017.

156

Terpstra J., ed. Liber Amicorum Dr. Frederik Van Eeden Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1930. Vermeer, Leonieke Geestelijke lenigheid: de relatie tussen literatuur en natuurwetenschap in het werk van Frederik van Eeden en Felix Ortt, 1880-1930 [Spiritual Flexibility: The Relation between Literature and Science in the Works of Frederik van Eeden and Felix Ortt, 1880-1930]Antwerpen: Garant, 2011. Wołkowicz, Anna. Mystiker der Revolution: Der utopische Diskurs um die Jahrhundertwende. Warszawa: WUW, 2007

157

AUTHORS Guido van Hengel is an historian and writer. He received his PhD from the University of Groningen for a dissertation about the networks of Young Bosnians before the outbreak of the First World War. In 2018 he published a book on visionary and utopian thinkers during the First World War and the interwar period in Europe. This book, The Seers, was translated into Serbian and Croatian in 2020, and published by Clio (Belgrade). His recent works revolve around topics in anthrozoology and history, mythology and literature. Slobodan G. Markovich is Full Professor of Cultural and Political Anthropology and Political History of Southeast Europe at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Belgrade and the Institute for European Studies. His books include  British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans 1903–1906 (Paris, 2000), Grof Čedomilj Mijatović. Viktorijanac medju Srbima [Count Chedomille Miyatovich. A Victorian among Serbs, Belgrade, 2006] and two edited volumes in English entitled  BritishSerbian Relations from the 18th to the 21st Centuries  (Belgrade, 2018) and  Freemasonry in Southeast Europe from the 19th  to the 21st  Century. He has published works on Sigmund Freud and on psychoanalytic anthropology. He has been the head of the Centre for British Studies/ FPS since its inception in 2017, and Research Associate at LSEE of the London School of Economics since 2012, and at LSE IDEAS since 2019. Vasilije Milnović is Head of the Scientific Center at the University Library in Belgrade and coordinator of numerous projects in the field of humanities. He earned his doctoral degree at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad defending the thesis entitled “The problem of tradition in the context of the Serbian literary avantgarde.” He was appointed Research Associate at the University of Kragujevac. He published the book “ The kingdom of the frontier” on the poetry of Rastko Petrović and numerous articles and essays and is about to publish a monograph on the Serbian historical avant-garde. He was Serbian sport fencing national team head coach, and founder and editor of the humanities portal “Cultural Hero.” His areas of interest in literature are avant-garde, postmodernism, fiction, literary theory, and cultural studies. 158

Nemanja Radulović is Full Professor of folk literature at the Department of Serbian Literature and South Slavic Literatures at the Faculty of Philology, Belgrade. He is a member of the Board for Folk Literature of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Board of European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, the Board of Belief Narrative Network and a member of the Committee for Folkloristics of the International Committee of Slavists. Books published: Slika sveta u srpskim narodnim bajkama [The World Image of Serbian Fairy Tales] (2009), Podzemni tok. Ezoterično i okultno u srpskoj književnosti [An Underground Current. Esoteric and Occult in Serbian Literature] (2009); Podzemni tok 2. Srpska književnost i ezoterizam 19572000 [An Underground Current II Serbian Literature and Esotericism 1957–2000] (2020). Edited volumes (in English): Esotericism, Literature and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe (2018); Studies on Western Esotericism in Central and Eastern Europe, together with Karolina Maria Hess (2019); Disenchantment, Re-enchantment and Folklore Genres, together with Smiljana Đorđević-Belić (2021); in Serbian: Indija i srpska književnost [India and Serbian Literature] (2021). Andrew Rigby is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK. His latest book is entitled Sowing seeds for the future: Exploring the power of constructive nonviolent action  (Sparsnas, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2021) Margaret Shillan’s parents were part of the   Mitrinovic circle so she grew up in that environment.  She trained at art college and worked most of her life in Steiner education, first as a class teacher with children and then as  an adult educator at   Emerson College, an international Steiner College.  She has also worked as a freelance painter for most of her life. She is now retired Mike Tyldesley is a retired lecturer in Politics. He worked at Manchester Metropolitan University from 1990 to 2017. Since 2007 he has been secretary of the Mitrinovic Foundation, having become a trustee of the foundation in 1997.

159

NOTE ON THE SOURCES The contributions have been previously published in the following publications. Mike Tyldesley. The House of Industry League: Guild Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s. Labour History Review 61.3 (1996): 309–321. Andrew Rigby. Training for Cosmopolitan Citizenship. 1930s: The Project of Dimitrije Mitrinovic. Peace&Change 24.3 (1999): 379-399. Published by Wiley-Blackwell and the Peace History Society. © Wiley-Blackwell and the Peace History Society Nemanja Radulović. The Sexual-Mystical Sophianism of Dimitrije Mitrinović. La Rosa di Paracelso. Rivista di studi sull’ Esoterismo occidentale 1.1 (2017): 91-103. Vasilije Milnović. „Estetičke kontemplacije“ Dimitrija Mitrinovića. O jednoj alternativnoj globalizaciji. Nasleđe 16.42 (2019): 185-197. Slobodan G. Markovich. Dimitrije Mitrinovic in the Quest for Gnosis, From National to Cosmopolitan Identity. Književna istorija 52.17 (2020): 101-122. Cosmopolitan Projects of Dimitrije Mitirnovic from the 1930s and the dilemmas of interpretation. Književna istorija 52.17 (2020): 241-260.

160

CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији Народна библиотека Србије, Београд 821.163.41.09 Митринивић Д.(082)(0.034.2) DIMITRIJE Mitrinović new perspectives / edited by Nemanja Radulović. - Belgrade : University Faculty of Philology, 2022 (Belgrade). - 1 еlektronski optički disk (CD-ROM) : tekst ; 12 cm Sistemski zahtevi: Nisu navedeni. - Nasl. sa naslovnog ekrana. Tiraž 20. - Foreward. - Napomene i bibliografske reference uz tekst. - Bibliografija uz svaki rad ISBN 978-86-6153-696-0 а) Митринивић, Димитрије (1887-1953) -- Поетика -- Зборници COBISS.SR-ID 69823241

ISBN 978-86-6153-696-0