My Daughter - Aletheia

by Alexander Dugin

Our friends — Dasha’s Italian friends, friends of Russia, friends of my family — have decided to honor the memory of Daria Dugina on this 20th of August, 2026, the anniversary of her tragic death, with an intellectual festival — a philosophical, musical, creative festival.

I am touched that Dasha’s memory is not fading. Her texts are being published, her ideas continue to be discussed, her figure is not withering.

Plato said that ideas either soar or they die. Dasha’s ideas are soaring. They are inspiring others to great feats. I don’t think that we’re talking about the masses, although in Russia pretty much everyone now knows about Dasha. Streets have been named after her; monuments to her have been raised; songs and poems, illustrations and festivals, museums and expositions are dedicated to her.

Nevertheless, Dasha remains an unusual symbol. She inspires, above all, those differentiated people who, although they dwell within the modern world, do not belong to it and are separate from it by virtue of the difference in their inner nature.

Dasha herself was differentiated. And she expressed this consciousness in one of her main ideas: eschatological optimism — being active in the world, and even partially open to it, with the clear awareness that this world’s end is nearer than ever before.

Furthermore, Dasha is a philosophical symbol. It is no coincidence that the sculptor Dmitry Alexandrov, a friend of Dasha’s, created a monument to her which depicts her with a book. The book has no title on it, but I think that it is Plato.

Dasha had many talents and sides to her, but it was philosophy that was foremost for her. If a person manages to find an open entrance into the closed palace of the philosophy, they will never prefer anything else. Dasha found such an entryway. And she forever settled in the closed palace of philosophy.

The festival being held in Dasha’s honor this August has been called “Dasha-Aletheia.” With this name, the organizers most likely wished to emphasize the philosophical dimension of Dasha’s figure. This time, it is not about her religion, her political worldview, her musical and poetic creativity, or her active patriotism, but namely about philosophy.

I shall try to share some thoughts in this direction.

Heidegger interpreted the Greek word aletheia as “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit). If truth is unconcealment, then it is concealment that comes first. Truth is never simply given to us. It must be sought out. Truth demands effort, discovery, disclosure, the opening up of revelation. What is primary about Isis is her veil. But Isis’ veil is not a mask, as if we were merely dealing with one subject dressed up as another. No one knows what is truly hidden behind the veil.

The Orthodox world knows the Kikkos Mother of God, an icon which is found in a monastery on Mount Kikkos in Cyprus. This icon is unique in that its face is permanently hidden from human eyes by a special shroud and frame. According to tradition, gazing upon the icon can be dangerous. There is the well-known account of Patriarch Gerasimos of Alexandria, who in 1699 dared to slightly lift the shroud and was immediately struck blind. He was healed only after sincere repentance. According to another account, it is believed that the icon possesses such powerful grace that it is simply dangerous for a person to see it in its entirety.

Likewise, truth, aletheia, is that which it is dangerous to see in full. No one knows what is behind the veil…

When a person dies, they go beyond the veil. One must not disturb the deceased too insistently. One must learn to reverently honor the veil. Therefore, the “unconcealment” of truth is to be understood not as daring to look behind the veil, but as reverently circumambulating it. It is a hermeneutic dance.

If we are to speak of Dasha’s aletheia, about Dasha’s truth, then nearing it demands that we keep some distance.

It is believed that the most poignant texts in history have been written about love. That is probably true. Yet thinkers and poets have reached the pinnacle of their ability to describe emotional pain when they lost their daughters. With respect to the absolute depth of tragedy, nothing compares to Cicero’s Consolatio. It was inspired by the treatise On Grief (Περὶ πένθους) by the Greek Platonist Crantor. Crantor wrote this text as a condolence for his friend Hippocles. Lactantius said very aptly of Cicero — and I could easily apply these words to myself —:

M. Tullius in sua Consolatione pugnasse se semper contra fortunam loquitur eamque a se esse superatam cum fortiter inimicorum impetus retudisset: ne tum quidem se ab ea fractum cum domo pulsus patria caruerit; tum autem, cum amiserit carissimam filiam, victum se a fortuna turpiter confitetur: “Cedo” – inquit – “en manum tollo.”

[Marcus Tullius Cicero] in his Consolatio speaks of how he had always fought against fate and prevailed, such as when he courageously repelled the onslaughts of his enemies; that even when he was exiled from his home and deprived of his homeland, fate did not break him. But when he lost his most beloved daughter, he shamefully admitted defeat to fate: “I give up,” he says, “I throw up my hands.”

John Donne also dedicated one of the greatest works in English and world poetry to the death of his friend Robert Drury’s daughter, Elizabeth. He called it “An Anatomy of the World” and wrote of the “decay of the world.” After the death of a beloved daughter, the world falls apart at the seams. It is no longer whole; it is fragmented and dispersed in all directions. For a man, nothing can replace the aletheia of his daughter. The world is no more. We are no more. We are no longer what we were.

Her death hath taught us dearly that thou [the world] art

Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part.

The death of one’s daughter lies at the heart of the whole genre of Consolatio. In Russian, the word is uteshenie. In the Russian language, the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, is called the Uteshitel’, the “Consoler” or “Comforter.” Only the Comforter is capable of helping a man endure the most terrible loss.

The Cathars had a ritual called the Consolamentum: kissing the forehead of Sophia, Wisdom, who is the Consolatrix, the Comforter. She is the one in mind in Nerval’s tragic verses:

mon front est rouge encore du baiser de la reine.

my brow is still red with the queen’s kiss.

For Dante, the Comforter was Beatrice.

The remarkable and soulful Princess Vittoria Alliata, who was friends with Daria, has said that Daria belongs to the archetype of Beatrice, to the Maiden-Tradition.

When that which is foremost in importance and beloved has been concealed or has vanished, consolation must be sought in the concealment itself. This is the mystery of the veil. Tradition is beautiful when it exists, but it is a thousand times more beautiful when it does not — yet, against all the odds, we remain faithful to it. Everyone has forgotten; we remember. Everyone has come to terms with Sophia’s departure, but for us this causes unimaginable suffering. We have no need for a world without her light. Only wild pain can comfort us. This is eschatological optimism.

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Now for some more about the meaning of the term aletheia. For the Greeks, Lethe is the river of oblivion, of forgetfulness, and “a-” is a negative prefix. Thus, a-letheia is remembrance. On this point, we can turn to Plato. In Plato’s teachings, knowledge is anamnesis, that is remembrance or recollection. The soul has a heavenly nature. It finds itself in the body when it falls, descends. It yearns to return to its homeland. If its recollection is strong, then so too is its draw towards the heavens, its longing for light, for eternity, for ideas. According to Plato, this is what defines the philosopher: longing for the heavens, for return. The world of bodies, earthly life, is oblivion. To be living here, one must have forgotten about the true life. But remembrance causes pain. It is nostalgia, which in Greek means the painful memory of a place, of one’s natural place. Pain and remembrance are intertwined. Truth (aletheia) is that which we recall with pain. Thus, once again, the themes converge: we remember Dasha with pain on the day she soared into the sky like a firebird. We recollect the truth. We remember ourselves.

The origins of theater lie in the cult of the hero. The ancient Greeks would gather at a hero’s tomb to honor his memory at a specific time. They would form a circle, sing sacred hymns, don masks, and make offerings. It was believed that the hero’s immortal spirit would, for a brief time, breathe through their lungs, hear through their ears, and soar on the wings of their voices. Dasha is, without a doubt, a true hero. And memory of her is gradually becoming a ritual.

Plato himself founded his school in a grove dedicated to the sacred hero Academus. There, the people of the polis would gather to honor his memory, to provide the opportunity for the hero to look upon this world and breathe its air. It was in the name of the hero Academus that the pious Athenian men held their philosophical discussions. This later became the origin of all the academies of the world. The hero’s name is not forgotten — a-letheia.

So much is connected to Dasha, so much is being linked to her. She was a philosopher; she staged wonderful theater performances; she wrote music and composed poetry. She was a very kind and sincere person. And along with this, she was a person who suffered deeply. Perhaps this was due to her memory of the higher world and her unwillingness to compromise with the heavy determinisms of the lower world.

Dasha’s memory is not dissipating. Our war has yielded many heroes. But Dasha remains special — differentiated — among them. Her feat and her sacrifice are sanctified by the near presence of truth itself.

When you think of Dasha, read her books, listen to her voice and her music, and look at her photographs, you realize that the truth is near — within arm’s reach…

There, beyond the thin veil of death…

“I give up, I throw up my hands.”

Up to the heavens.

Cedo, en manus tollo.

Аd caelum tollo.

— Alexander Dugin,

20 August 2026

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