Prophecy Of A Theban Princess: A Review of FOR A RADICAL LIFE by Daria Dugina

Last fall, I had the privilege of reviewing Eschatological Optimism by the late Daria Dugina (1992-2022), a book I learned of thanks to a very good friend. Earlier this year, I was reminded by another great and lovely friend that a second posthumous Dugina book was forthcoming in English from PRAV. One simply cannot have enough literarily in-tune friends in this life. Nor can one get enough of Russia’s brilliant and ever-rising star of intellect and steely determination.

Dugina, Daria, For A Radical Life: Meditations By Daria Platonova Dugina, Tucson: PRAV, 2024.

©2024 PRAV.

It’s a shorter work, only 70 pages. Yet each and every sentence in it, every word lifts the spirit, touches the heart, and engages the mind. It is a compact gem, expertly translated, compiled, and edited by Jafe Arnold and John Stachelski. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in life, death, philosophy, and the eternal battle between Divine good and lowly evil. I also suggest the book would make a fine gift for, say, a college student or a young adult. Or for anyone.

In Arnold’s excellent Foreword, I learned of yet another Dugina book, now only available in Russian, Топи и выси моего сердца (Depths and Heights of My Heart), ACT, 2023. I recommend that one even without having read it—a feat I mean to accomplish once I achieve perhaps A2/B1 Russian proficiency. 

As for For A Radical Life, it is a radical and informative mental excursion presented in short, referenced paragraph form. The collected material draws from sources in Eschatological Optimism with which the reader may already be familiar, along with assorted media quotes and personal diary entries. As for the latter, the reader certainly has not previously considered the meanings of those elements. One such entry from 2019, on page 46, appears as the back cover quote: “Wherever there is death, there is truth.” These words, or any similar sentiment, from this particular author, while deeply meaningful, necessarily leave the reader pained and sorrowed. Arnold pointedly gets to the exact truth behind one horrible death in a sea of carnage: “Her life was cut short by a car bombing carried out as part of Ukrainian special operations initiated, armed, trained, and funded by the CIA.” For A Radical Life, at 4. He notes the wicked powers of the postmodern West have, by their murder, “opened a Pandora’s box.” We will briefly look inside it, ere the end of this review.

Dugina self-identifies as a warrior, an intellectual, steel, a proclaimer of “No!”, and the “Minister of Defense.” The reader will learn the context of these labels upon a full perusal. I was very happy to see this new book repeat a declaration I’ve praised before and what may be my favorite quote by anyone this century: “In the conditions of the modern world, any stubborn and desperate resistance to this world, any uncompromising struggle against liberalism, globalism, and Satanism, is heroism.” Id, at 22. 

Dugina was and is a hero, physically (and only physically) struck down by the liberalism, globalism, and satanism of the West. However, something else she wrote may poetically place their heinous deeds in proper perspective. In her diary, on September 2, 2021, she wrote, “I once said that I’m becoming and will become Antigone. Prophecy and recognition are coming to be. I am becoming Antigone.” Id, at 51 (emphasis mine). And in a way, she may have well become like that precise character of Sophocles. 

Antigone’s death in her eponymous tragic play is brought about by her reluctant if unrelenting uncle Creon, King of Thebes, a harsh punishment for her defiance of his order not to mourn or tend her deceased brother, Polynices. Though Creon does eventually relent and abate his judgment, it is already too late. The heroine is dead. Her death prompts the death of Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé. Haemon’s death begets the death of his mother, Queen Eurydice. By tormenting Antigone to her death, the king inadvertently brings down his own ruling house. 

Creon is a somewhat inconsistent character in general, within and without Antigone, and his placement into my analogy is maybe an equal contrariety. Being a tragic figure himself, he is far more sympathetic than the rulers of the postmodern West. However, if we transpose Dugina’s diary entry upon the play, then, as she becomes Antigone, the West becomes and represents Creon. Extending the imagined interchange, it is conceivable that, in conjunction with so many other crimes, the West may have sealed its fate by murdering Daria Dugina. When NATO and the USA are catastrophically defeated in Ukraine and elsewhere, their losses may be traceable, at least symbolically, back to her car bomb murder. 

The final lines of Antigone belong to the choregos herald*: “Wise conduct hath command of happiness before all else, and piety to Heaven must be preserved. High boastings of the proud bring sorrow to the height to punish pride. A lesson men shall learn when they are old.” Creon was a victim of allegiance to his own “rules-based” order. Nearly driven mad with remorse, nonetheless, he did learn his sad lesson. Yet his understanding came at the exorbitant cost of his posterity, his lineage destroyed with unyielding irony. Unlike Creon, the rulers of the faux West are evil rather than tragic. We may hold little hope that they learn anything from the consequences of their misdeeds and their inevitable defeat. But they will be defeated. 

Any one of you may participate in the pending triumph over this current iteration of the devil’s transient empire of lies and death. One simple way is to join with the wit, charm, wisdom, sorrow, joy, and iron defiance of Daria Dugina. Read her Meditations and live your own radical life.

*The symbolism keeps flowing. On February 26, 2024, in Moscow, Princess Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca noted of Daria Dugina: “It was only when, confronting the Empire of Chaos, Daria raised her name Platonova like a flag to affirm that being a woman today means choosing between two opposite archetypes, that finally the enemy noticed her.” Again, may their attention to her detail destroy them! Of course, the raised name of “Platonova,” of the “new Plato,” is essentially self-explanatory with even a little understanding of the philosophy of Daria Dugina. In the foregoing context concerning Antigone, it is most interesting to also know that the old Plato was upon a time himself counted among the Athenian choregoi. There comes a time when too many coincidences begin to look like prescient ordination. Regardless of the allegorical, raise your flag, sound your chorus, and be a radical!

Deo vindice!