Between Order and Disorder: Ernst Jünger on the Marble Cliffs - by Francisco Carmo Garcia

(From VoegelinView, 16 Feb 2021)

There are several examples that help us grasping that particular zeitgeist lived in the first half of the 20th century. A book such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain gives us a description of the moral and spiritual decomposition of the then bourgeois society. At this time, in the bashed and defeated post-war Germany, nihilism had turned to be a dominant moral disposition. Oswald Spengler announced the decline of the West amidst the hubris of the Great War; Nietzsche’s will to power was convincing posthumously a younger generation of German intellectuals; and Heidegger was caught exasperating at the end of philosophy. This aura of decadence marked the period, and to that faith in the inevitable progress of humanity so specific and characteristic of the 19^th century there followed an intellectual and existential despair. Ever since the moment when the idea of progress was contested by the destruction caused by the war, that a sense of moral disorientation had necessarily to follow.

It is this crisis of the idea of progress that we can feel all over Ernst Jünger’s oeuvre, from his famous diaries of his experience in the Great War (In Stahlgewittern), to his “prophetic” work Der Arbeiter and his late novels. But one book of his in particular allows us to penetrate in the nihilistic zeitgeist of the inter-war period: his Auf den Marmorklippen, published at the zenith of Hitler’s power, in 1939. This little book – On the Marble Cliffs, in English –, forgotten in the same way which its author is neglected by the intelligentsia, tells us more about our own times – which are also times of crisis – than several of the “scientific” works that are widespread today, and which denounce a supposedly evident return of fascism. In this jüngerian tale, the despotic figure of the tyrant appears in its most violent essence, as the result of a cosmological disorder that hits society in all of its foundations. On the Marble Cliffs is a book that needs to be remembered, the meaning of which seems today almost as intelligible – and appropriate – as when it was first published.

Eumeswil and Ernst Jünger's Anarch - with Russell Berman - excellent listen!!

Ernst Jünger's 'Forest Passage' | The American Conservative

Ernst Jünger’s ‘Forest Passage’

(Photo by: Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

|

6:23 PM

ROD DREHER

After I gave my speech last week in Rome, someone came up to me and said, “You have to read The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger.” I wish I could remember who told me that, but I do remember that they were emphatic. So I ordered it on my Kindle that night from my hotel room, and read it on the flight home.

It’s pretty great. Jünger is one of those writers I’ve heard a lot about, but never read. He died in 1998, at the age of 102. The German fought for the Kaiser in World War I, wrote a celebrated memoir about it, and was wooed by Hitler, though he kept his distance, and even wrote a novel that was widely interpreted as anti-Nazi. Yet he fought for his country in World War II. He was a conservative, but not a Nazi. He wrote a number of books, and became well-loved throughout Europe, especially in France. He came from an unbelieving family, but converted to Catholicism two years before his death.

The Forest Passage, first published in 1951, is a book about resistance to the material age, and authoritarian government. It’s kind of mystical, in a very German Romantic way, which is a bit too much Schlag on the strudel, but this is a minor criticism. This passage by Russell Berman from the introduction to the 2013 Telos Press edition gives you a good idea of where Jünger is coming from:

Religion is important for Jünger because it taps into dimensions of irrationality and myth, the deep wisdom at home in the forest. It is not that Jünger proselytizes or engages in theological speculation, but he recognizes how irrational contents nourish the capacity for independence. No wonder the regimes of power celebrate the cult of reason instead. “How is man to be prepared for paths that lead into darkness and the unknown? The fulfillment of this task belongs chiefly to the churches, and in many known, and many more unknown, cases, it has effectively been accomplished. It has been confirmed that greater force can be preserved in churches and sects than in what are today called worldviews—which usually means natural science raised to the level of philosophical conviction. It is for this reason that we see tyrannical regimes so rabidly persecuting such harmless creatures as the Jehovah’s Witnesses—the same tyrannies that reserve seats of honor for their nuclear physicists.” It is worth noting how the two twin totalitarianisms of the twentieth century each posed as the carrier of a scientific mission: the biological racism of Nazism and the economic “science of Marxism- Leninism” in Communism. From our contemporary point of view, of course, neither is a science, but Jünger’s point is that modes of scientistic thinking are fully compatible with reigns of terror, while the integrity of faith may preserve a space of freedom, a leap of faith into the forest passage.

Various/verschiedene Ernst Jünger Videos

After creating the English subtitles for the new ARTE/rbb documentary on Jünger I spent some time reuploading some of the older documentaries and discussions already on my channel, but in unified and not split form.

Nachdem ich die englischen Untertitel für die neue ARTE / rbb-Dokumentation auf Jünger erstellt hatte, habe ich einige Zeit damit verbracht, die älteren Dokumentarfilme und Gespräche, die sich bereits auf meinem Kanal befanden, erneut hochzuladen, jedoch in einheitlicher und nicht aufgeteilter Form.

ENGLISH
"Ninety flown by: the author Ernst Jünger" - NDR/ORF 1985


DEUTSCH
"Neunzig Verweht - der Schriftsteller Ernst Jünger" - NDR/ORF 1985


"Ich widerspreche mir nicht - Ernst Jünger" - ZDF/3SAT, 1977
 
"Baden Badener Dichterclub über Ernst Jünger" - mit Rolf Hochhut, Ernst Herhaus, Jürgen Lodermann, und Klaus Theweleit. (Jahr?)

"In the Trenches of History: the author Ernst Jünger" - 2019 documentary with English subtitles!

Here's a decent documentary film on the German Goethe Prize author Ernst Jünger, produced by rbb/ARTE. i went to considerable trouble to create good English subtitles - hope they'll allow more non-German speakers to learn something of this remarkable thinker.

Source: ARTE.DE (2019) https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/082773-...

One of the better documentaries on Ernst Jünger, this relatively more balanced production is unfortunately only a partial picture - and not in the sense of being skewed by the usual ignorance level and prejudices - but because it barely covers until 1960, until his move to Wilflingen.

It thus entirely leaves out the critical mature works and themes of Jünger: Eumeswil and the anarch, the Forest Flight (Der Waldgang), The Wall of Time (An der Zeitmauer), Aladdin's Problem, Approaches: Drugs and Inebriation, and much more. In this respect, we optimisticslly view it as Part One, and hope for at least a Part Two to come.

The film presents contrasting views on Jünger from Germanistic professors and other experts. The fairest and most informed contributions come - quite logically - from the two real experts, his recent biographers Heimo Schwilk and Helmuth Kiesel. Some of the other "experts" voice the usual cliched complaints but then almost visibly reluctantly admit his literary greatness. Naturally, it is a simplification of a highly complex person, but perhaps more should not be expected in one hour, given the length and eventfulness of Jünger's life and the complexity of his thought.

Tagung der Ernst und FG Jünger Gesellschaft 3 -5 April, 2020

Thema: Ernst Jünger und Frankreich - Aspekte einer gefährlichen Begegnung

UNA DOMANDA SU JÜNGER - Luca Siniscalco e Andrea Scarabelli

CONVERSAZIONI 2019 - GLI GRANDI INTERROGATIVI  dell'Associazione Eumeswil Firenze:

Ernst Jünger: Gespräche im Weltstaat - Podcast mit Jörg Magenau

Dialoge über die Substanz der Zeit

Von Jörg Magenau

 

Podcast hier hören

15 August 2019 - Zu Gast bei Ernst Jünger"Konservativer zu sein ist keine politische Idee"

Ein Jahrhundert in Gesprächen mit Ernst Jünger.

Von Jörg Magenau

Jede Ordnung wird von der Anarchie korrigiert. Denn "alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht". Der hundertjährige Ernst Jünger schrieb diese Maxime aus dem "Faust", die er oft zitierte, Schopenhauer zu. Seine Frau Liselotte korrigierte ihn, "das war Goethe". Und er: "Aber Schopenhauer hat es zitiert. Na gut." Was kümmerten ihn, der die planetarischen Ereignisse mit der Abgeklärtheit eines unbeteiligten Beobachters zu kommentieren pflegte, solche Kleinigkeiten. Längst hätte es ihm gereicht, sich auf seine Käfersammlung zu konzentrieren, um sich - erneut zitierte er Goethe - ansonsten "aus der Welt der Erscheinungen zurückzuziehen." Im hohen Alter darf man sich selbst historisch werden. "Manchmal trinkt man morgens Kaffee. Das ist eine gewisse Epoche. Dann wieder Tee oder einfach Mineralwasser. Das sind Lebensabschnitte."

Es sind solche kleinen Irritationen, Belustigungen, manchmal auch Verärgerungen, die die gesammelten Gespräche mit Ernst Jünger so lebendig machen. Da bricht das Gravitätische, Erhabene, das er kultivierte, momentweise auf. So rief ihn 1982 Horst Tomayer im Auftrag der Zeitschrift Konkret an, indem er sich für Luis Trenker ausgab. Im Gespräch mit dem "Alpenfreund" entwickelt Jünger eine tiefenhumoristische Grandezza. Das Ansinnen des falschen Trenkers, endlich einmal zusammen etwas im Fernsehen zu machen, lässt Jünger in formvollendeter Höflichkeit ins Leere laufen. Seine Gesprächspartner pflegte er selber auszusuchen.

Review of Jünger's WWII diaries in English translation - by Michael Lewis

A Dandy Goes to War

Review of 'A German Officer in Occupied Paris' By Ernst Jünger

• SEP, 2019 
 
• BY MICHAEL LEWIS

Nazi Germany produced two wartime diaries of equal literary and historical significance but written from the most different perspectives conceivable. Victor Klemperer wrote furtively, in daily dread of transport to an extermination camp, a fate he was spared by the firebombing of Dresden. Ernst Jünger, by contrast, had what was once called a “good war.” As a bestselling German author, he drew cushy occupation duty in Paris, where he could hobnob with famous artists and writers, prowl antiquarian bookstores, and forage for the rare beetles he collected. Yet Klemperer and Jünger both found themselves anxiously sifting propaganda and hearsay to learn the truth about distant events on which their lives hung.

One might ask why it has taken 70 years for Jünger’s diary to appear in English translation, for there is no more detailed account of the occupation from the German point of view. But Jünger was always controversial, up to his death in 1998 at the age of 102. In Germany, polite opinion has never forgiven him for Storm of Steel, his memoir of World War I that saw in the experience of combat an ultimate test of manhood. “The finest, most visceral account of battle since the Iliad,” according to the New Statesman, his book made him a hero among German nationalists and ensured his privileged status in Nazi Germany. As it happens, Jünger was anything but a Nazi.

Review of EUMESWIL - with comparisons to FOREST PASSAGE

From The Worthy House on January 21, 2019

Eumeswil (by Ernst Jünger)

written by Charles

Ernst Jünger’s Eumeswil, one of the famous German’s last works, published when he was eighty-two years old, is often regarded as an exposition of libertarian thought. This is understandable, but completely wrong. Such a reading attempts to shoehorn concepts in which Jünger had little interest, or toward which he was actively hostile, into an exploration of unrelated themes. Moreover, it ignores that in this book, though somewhat masked, Jünger has more contempt for so-called liberal democracy than dislike for what some call tyranny. Thus, this book is not a call to rework society, or individual thought, along libertarian lines. It is instead a call for human excellence, and a criticism of the modern West for failure to achieve it, or to even try.

One cannot really understand Eumeswil without reading, preferably first reading, Jünger’s earlier The Forest Passage, which was published in 1951, twenty-six years before Eumeswil. On the surface, they are very different—this book is cast as dystopian science fiction, and The Forest Passage is a work of philosophical exposition. But Jünger himself explicitly ties the two books together, linking the earlier book’s concept of the “forest rebel” with this book’s concept of the “anarch.” In both books, the author’s focus on freedom, specific to each individual, is easily misinterpreted, because what freedom means to most people today is not what Jünger means by the term. Jünger means an internal, spiritual freedom, an elitist freedom, not the freedom of license and consequent ennui. This confusion drives all the misunderstandings of Eumeswil.

Review of THE FOREST PASSAGE by Ernst Juenger

From The Worthy House on October 13, 2018

The Forest Passage (by Ernst Jünger)

written by Charles

Ernst Jünger was one of the more fascinating men of the twentieth century. Remembered in the English-speaking world primarily for his World War I memoir, The Storm of Steel, he was famous in Europe for a range of right-leaning thought spanning nearly eighty years (he lived from 1896 to 1998). His output was prodigious, more than fifty books along with voluminous correspondence, and not meant or useful as a seamless ideology, although certain themes apparently recur. This book, The Forest Passage, was published in 1951, and is a compelling examination of how life should be conducted under modern ideological tyranny.

Jünger’s answer is jarring, both in its originality, and in its flat rejection of any relevancy of those modern (though failing) totems, liberal democracy and egalitarianism. Jünger was no Nazi; he contemptuously rejected their efforts to profit off his reputation, and was tangentially involved in the Stauffenberg plot. But he had just as little use for modern democracy or liberalism; much of his thought seems to have revolved around a type of social and political elitism with a spiritual core. It appears that The Forest Passage was his first exploration of the specific topic of resistance to tyranny; he developed the thought in this book further with a novel published in 1977, Eumeswil, which I have not read.

Ernst Jünger's "ON PAIN" and progressive hysteria in liberal democracies

Some excellent insights in this video on certain dangerously seductive illusions of liberal democracies - presented as and clearly stimulated by reflections on Ernst Jünger's long essay "ON PAIN".

The Path to a Higher Freedom: The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger

The Path to a Higher Freedom

Tobias J. Lanz

This review appears in the Summer 2014 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

Download PDF version here.

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The Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger, trans. Thomas Friese
(Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2013)

This is a book about freedom. It was first published in 1951 as a response to the Nazi experience and the perceived threat of Soviet expansion. Its explicit focus was resistance to the totalitarian state. Yet its implicit focus is resistance to all forms of social control, including the soft totalitarianism of present-day mass democracy. And this why Ernst Jünger’s classic remains relevant today, and that is why Telos Press has reissued it.

Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) was twentieth-century Germany’s most prolific author. He was also the most controversial. He was a highly decorated soldier in World War 1 who first gained literary fame writing about his war experiences. Jünger aligned himself with the political Right during the 1920s and 1930s and wrote scathing attacks against the Weimar regime and the decadence of liberal democracy and communism. He championed a German nationalism based on aristocratic and martial values.

His early writings gained him a reputation as a fascist and militarist, an image that haunted him for the rest of his long literary career. But Jünger distanced himself from Hitler and the Nazis early on, realizing that the political Right and Left differed little; both led to totalitarianism. The war and Germany’s defeat changed Jünger’s perspective even more. His militarist leanings changed to an existential quest—a way to find freedom in the modern world, in which the mechanisms of total social control continued to multiply.

Video review of "ON PAIN" (Über den Schmerz) by Ernst Jünger

A light and amusing but insightful and accurate review of On Pain, the English translation by Telos Press of Ernst Jünger's Über den Schmerz.

Conversazioni 2019 - Programma dell'Associazione Eumeswil

Invito da ASSOCIAZIONE EUMESWIL al programma delle conversazioni e corsi 2019 a Firenze:

I GRANDI INTERROGATIVI

Cosa sono: 12 conversazioni. Ciascun incontro è tenuto almeno da due interlocutori.

• 6 domande a carattere esistenziale-metafisico
• 6 domande a carattere sociale

Da chi sono tenute: docenti universitari, studiosi, scrittori, giornalisti
Dove: in un salotto informale, un salotto letterario come in epoche passate. Centro studi Eumeswil, Via S. Ammirato, 43
Quando: da marzo a dicembre 2019 
Orario: 18.00
Ingresso: ad offerta libera cartacea

Per saperne di più:
www.eumeswil.cc

Cordialmente,
Segreteria, Associazione Eumeswil

MARZO

Mercoledì 20
Abbiamo avuto una vita precedente?
Relatori: Giuliano Boccali e Premakumar Das (Pierpaolo Marras)

Giovedì 28
Che cos’è l’Io?
Relatori: Massimo Bacigalupo e Fausto Malcovati

APRILE

Sabato 6
Che cos’è l’autorealizzazione?
Relatori: Giovanni Sessa e Massimo Jevolella

Review: A German Officer in Occupied France. Ernst Jünger's War Journals 1941-1945

I enjoyed this review by Michael Dirda in the Washingon Post of the recent publication of Jünger's War Journals 1941-1945 (Strahlungen) into English. One more not-insignificant work to chip away at the mountain that has not yet been translated! A collection of further reviews here.

As a teenager hungering for adventure, Ernst Jünger ran away from school in 1913 and joined the French Foreign Legion. His father eventually retrieved his delinquent child from North Africa, just in time for the 19-year-old to enlist in World War I. Over the next four years, Jünger would be wounded in action 14 times and, in 1918, be awarded the Pour le Mérite, Germany’s equivalent to our Medal of Honor. He remains the youngest man ever so honored.

In 1920, Jünger published “Storm of Steel,” an extraordinary memoir of his battle experiences. (I recommend Michael Hofmann’s translation for Penguin.) Like T.E. Lawrence’s near-contemporary “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” the book views war from an almost Homeric perspective, celebrating the martial virtues of courage, comradeship and steadfastness; it is dedicated, apolitically, “For the fallen.” In the years following its publication, Jünger completed an astonishing self-transformation into an exceptionally well-read and cosmopolitan intellectual, one particularly passionate about French culture, entomology, mysticism and philosophy. While his political bent was distinctly right-wing, he resisted the era’s virulent anti-Semitism and never joined the Nazi Party. His allegorical 1939 novel, “On the Marble Cliffs,” is frequently read as a critique of Hitler.

Conversazione su Ernst Jünger e la Fedeltà a Firenze

Vi invitamo al dialogo tra Luca Crescenzi e Alessio Mulas su:

"Ernst Jünger e la fedeltà come traduzione, tradizione, tradimento."

Come è concepita e praticata la fedeltà nell’opera e nella vita di Ernst Jünger? È una prassi di cieca servitù a un’idea oppure un’esperienza che discende alle fonti dell’esistenza? Attraverso la figurazione letteraria e la riflessione filosofica, Jünger insegna all’uomo del nostro tempo la difficile via per coniugare lealtà, rettitudine e autonomia, attraverso la pratica di una fedeltà che è interpretazione, conservazione, rinnovamento.

Giovedì 22 novembre
Ore 18
Via Scipione Ammirato, 43
Firenze

Informazioni:
www.eumeswil.cc

L'Associazione Eumeswil: Studi in onore di Jünger

A Firenze incontri, viaggi e rappresentazione in onore dello scrittore

Nell’universo delle associazioni italiane si cela, di fatto, un pluriverso di progetti meritori, talora, purtroppo, poco noti al grande pubblico. Encomiabile, a tal proposito, è l’ormai più cheventennale attività dell’Associazione Eumeswil, sorta a Firenze con lo scopo di studiare e diffondere l’opera, il pensiero e lo stile del poliedrico scrittore tedesco Ernst Jünger. Già, lo stile. Perché, se l’esistenza si svolge su diversi piani del reale, una fondazione estetica della vita rimane indispensabile anche all’uomo postmoderno, per quanto costui tenda a dimenticarlo. Lo stile di Eumeswil – che, come ricorda l’Associazione, è fatto di Cultura, Tradizione e Rettitudine – si è sempre dipanato in una molteplicità d’iniziative: cicli di conferenze, incontri culturali, pubblicazione degli omonimi Annali, viaggi anticonformisti. Celebri personaggi della cultura italiana hanno preso parte a queste iniziative: fra gli altri, Domenico Conte, Giampiero Moretti, Marcello Veneziani, Gianfranco de Turris, Giuliano Boccali, Giuseppe Lippi. Il ciclo di incontri di quest’anno è dedicato al tema della fedeltà e alle sue diverse possibili declinazioni: fedeltà nei rapporti interpersonali, fedeltà alla propria storia, fedeltà alla bellezza.

Ad aprire l’evento, giovedì 11 ottobre alle ore 18, presso la sede dell’Associazione (Via Scipione Ammirato 43, Firenze), un intervento dello scrivente, in dialogo con Andrea Scarabelli (direttore della collana editoriale«L’Archeometro», per Bietti).

Conferenze 2018 Associazione Eumeswil - LA FEDELTA'

Ottobre

GIOVEDÌ 11 ORE 18
Variazioni Sulla Fedeltà: Terra E Tradizione, Daimon E Destino
Relatori: Luca Siniscalco e Andrea Scarabelli

GIOVEDÌ 25 ORE 18
La Fedeltà Nei Rapporti Interpersonali, Nella Psicologia Junghiana E Nel Popolo Del Guatemala
Relatori: Maria Elettra Cugini, Manuele Casale e Alessandro Cocchi

Novembre

GIOVEDÌ 15 ORE 18
La Conservazione Dei Centri Storici: I Diritti Della Cittadinanza Alla Prova Dei Flussi Turistici
Relatori: Gianfranco Cartei e Massimo Morisi

GIOVEDÌ 22 ORE 18 
La Fedeltà Nel Pensiero E Nell’opera Di Ernst Jünger
Relatori: Luca Crescenzi e Alessio Mulas

Dicembre

GIOVEDÌ 6 ORE 18
Fides Et Fidelitas. Immagini Pittoriche E Poetiche
Relatori: Isabella Foschini e Alessandro Giovanardi

Per informazioni e iscrizioni:

Tel. +39 333 477 1866
info@eumeswil.cc
www.eumeswil.cc