IMPERIUM IN RETROSPECT

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THE GIST & TANGENT PUB

Transcription Filed by Paige Turner, Sub-Sub Librarian

The lamps were low in the pub when the avatar of Francis Parker Yockey shimmered into being — neither ghost nor man, but something in between, a hologram conjured by memory. The manacles still clasped his wrists, but the chain between them hung broken, as though even history’s sentence could not hold him. He stood with the stillness of a photograph come to life, yet spoke with the urgency of a prophet long denied. The Council, for their part, did not question it. After all, resurrection — whether promised by Christ, pursued by Russian Cosmists, or simulated in light and shadow — was only another form of continuity.

“They called me mad, they called me traitor. But truth is always indicted before it is received. Imperium was not about personalities but about destiny. I wrote that the West was reaching its exhausted autumn, that decadence would corrode it from within, and that spectacle would replace substance. Look about you—what is Trump but confirmation? He is symptom, not Caesar. He proves that the hunger for form survives even when fed only theater.”

He paused, then turned eastward in thought. “I edged toward Russia. For though bound in Bolshevik chains, those nations behind the Iron Curtain retained discipline, cohesion, and ethnic consciousness. The Curtain was paradox: both prison and protection. While the West consumed itself with trivialities, the Curtain preserved the organic bond between peoples. How ironic that the cultural subversion once imposed by Bolshevism is now enthroned in Washington and Brussels. My warning was not madness. It was foresight.”

Peter R. Mossback nodded heavily, moss damp against his cuffs. “You resisted the current, Frank, and drowned for it. Yet here we sit, watching your pages play out in daily newsprint. You knew collapse would come not from conquest but corrosion within. That was not madness—it was mossy wisdom. And your very name was destiny. ‘Frank’—the spear, the javelin, the founding tribe of Europe, the very word for freedom itself. You were bound to cast your spear into the heart of Western decay.”

Mrs. Begonia Contretemp laid down her knitting. “Your original cover—the sword like a cross—still strikes me. It almost declares continuity with faith itself. What could be more Faustian than eternal life promised in Christ? Forgive me, I first said feisty—but perhaps that was not error. Faustian striving is feisty, after all. The symbol whispers that your work conversed with religion rather than denied it.”

The Accidental Initiate leaned in, hands trembling. “I did not find a tattered copy. I saw a discreet flyer, sent away, and when the book arrived that cross-sword startled me. Raised in hymns and catechism, here was a political text echoing those same signs. Continuity, not rupture. And who today could be more Faustian—more feisty—than the transhumanists, Jesus promising eternal life, or the Russian Cosmists who still dream of raising the dead? Frank, even the future seems to prove you right.”

Frank inclined his head. “Precisely. Civilization requires transcendence. To wield form is to wield meaning, and even slips of the tongue may carry truth.”

John St. Evola added gravely: “It is ironic, Frank, how history turned your intuition to proof. Nations once sealed behind the Curtain—Hungary, Poland, the Balts—did not dissolve into dust. Uniformity became their school of endurance. When the Curtain lifted, they emerged sharpened. And now, in a twist you foresaw, the very cultural subversion first deployed by the Bolsheviks has been adopted by the West. East and West trade masks, while only those who endured both know how to resist.”

Frank smiled faintly. “Chains can harden the spirit. That is the paradox of history. The East may yet carry what the West has squandered.”

Justin Aldmann raised his glass. “Ninth grade. I ordered Imperium through the mail. Read it under the desk while the teacher droned. At the time I thought: fevered brilliance, impossible prophecy. I never imagined I’d live long enough to see it unfold. But here we are. Every headline reads like your sequel. Frank, you were right more than wrong.”

The Council murmured assent. They recalled his warnings: culture’s death leaving only bureaucracy; prosperity without form rotting into decadence; politics dissolving into theater; Russia remaining decisive in Europe’s fate. Each headline indeed read like his sequel.

At last Mossback chuckled. “Perhaps the Council itself is proof that Faustian feistiness survives. We shout against the current, we stitch continuity with yellow thread. Frank, you are welcome among us.”

The dartboard hummed, then lit entire. Not bullseye—everything. As though history itself conceded the point.

ALTDEF: Frank

Spear; javelin. From the Proto-Germanic frankon, weapon of the tribe that helped found the West.

Free. To be Frank was to be unconquered — hence frankness, hence franchise.

Destiny in nominative determinism. A man so named could hardly help but cast himself as weapon and witness, hurling words like spears into the decline of his civilization.

Council gloss. In the late middle age of eternity, Frank returns as both broken prisoner and freed prophet. His name proves its case: history made him what his syllables already foretold.