Renzo Novatore - The Individualist Anarchism of Novatore

The Individualist Anarchism of Novatore

Novatore talked of the "heroic beauty of the anti-collectivist and creative I" which is beyond both bourgoise and proletarian manners and morality. He spoke of his individual situation as living "In the Reign of the Phantoms" recalling Stirner. He summarizes his view of his situation as existing among social conformism saying "The world is one pestulant church covetous and slimy where all have an idol to fetishistically adore and an altar on which to sacrifice themself."

In this way he speaks of religion saying "if you will patiently await the desolate calvary to then nail yourself on the cross, becoming the image of ME that is the ManGod, you will be the perfect human creature worthy of sitting at the right of my father who is in the kingdom of heaven.". As far as democracy and the legacy of the Enlightenment he says "the French Revolution says to you: I have proclaimed the rights of man. If you will enter devoutly in the symbolic cloister of human social justice to sublimate and humanize through the moral canon of social life, you will be a citizen and I will give you the rights I proclaimed to man." "Progress (?) and Civilization (?), Religion (?) and the Ideal (?), have closed life in a mortal circle where the phantoms most grim have erected their viscid reign. Time to end it! We must break the circle violently and exit".

As en exit of this situation he proclaims "revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy. To create new ethical values. To create new aesthetic values. To communalize material wealth. To individualize spiritual wealth. Because we-violent celebralists and passional sentimentalists at the same time-understand and know that revolution is a necessity of the silent sorrow that suffers at the bottom and a need of the free spirits who suffer in the heights." He summarizes the three options in life as "The stream of slavery, the stream of tyranny, the stream of freedom! With revolution, the last of these streams needs to burst upon the other two and overwhelm them. It needs to create spiritual beauty, teach the poor the shame of their poverty, and the rich the shame of their wealth."

Nevertheless he has an individualist permanent conception of revolution which he thinks could at some point come into conflict with the masses. He says "You are waiting for the revolution! Very well! My own began along time ago! When you are ready — God, what an endless wait! — it won’t nauseate me to go along the road awhile with you! But when you stop, I will continue on my mad and triumphant march toward the great and sublime conquest of Nothing!". Alongside this, he manifests an insurrectionary point of view such as when he manifests that "Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!".

He says he views "Only ethical and spiritual wealth" as "invulnerable. This is the true property of individuals. The rest no! The rest is vulnerable! And all that is vulnerable will be violated!" Novatore sees thoses similar to him as "anarchists. And individualists, and nihilists, and aristocrats." and as "the lovers of every miracle, the promoters of every prodigy, the creators of every wonder!"; "the enemies of all material domination and all spiritual leveling."

He adheres to nihilism but denies "christian nihilism" as he sees it denies life. He says instead "Since the only serious people are those who know how to be actively engaged laughing." and so the individualists must go "Forward, for the destruction of the lie and of the phantoms! Forward, for the complete conquest of individuality and of Life!".

Novatore is critical of the individualism of Herbert Spencer which he thinks "it is true that he fights against the state, but he fights against it only because the state as it is doesn’t function as he would like". He also sees that Spencer "does not penetrate or understand the mysterious, aristocratic, vagabond, rebel individual!".

And so he is critical of thinkers such as "Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Marx" which he sees as sociologists who will tend to not being "able to understand the varied, the particular,... sacrifices the one or the other on the altar of the universal." Instead he takes sides with authors who are for him "the giants of Art and Thought like Nietzsche, Stirner, Ibsen, Wilde, Zola, Huysmans, Verlaine, Mallarmé...".