July 28, 2012
From "The Adventurous Heart": The Combinatorial Inference
One more appetiser from the forthcoming Jünger translation "The Adventurous Heart. Figures and Capriccios". I might be permitted to add one or two more, then it will in any case be September and you can order the book yourselves from Telos Press!
The Combinatorial Inference - Berlin
Higher insight does not live in the separate compartments but in the structure of the world. It corresponds to a mode of thinking that does not move around in isolated and parceled-off truths but rather in meaningful connections, whose power to order lies in its combinatorial faculty.
The tremendous pleasure that comes from engaging with such minds resembles a walk through a landscape distinguished as much by the span of its boundaries as by the richness of its particulars. The viewpoints alternate in a whirl of multiplicity, yet all the while the glance takes them in with an even serenity, never losing itself in abstrusity and malformations or in pettiness and eccentricity. Despite the plethora of variations that the mind is able to generate and the ease with which it can switch fields, it perseveres with effortless rigor in making its connections. Its powers appear to grow as much when it turns from the motif to the execution, as when it returns from execution to motif. Using a variation on Clausewitz’s fine image, we can compare this mode of movement with a walk through a convoluted garden in which we are able from every point to see the high obelisk erected at its center.
Higher insight does not live in the separate compartments but in the structure of the world. It corresponds to a mode of thinking that does not move around in isolated and parceled-off truths but rather in meaningful connections, whose power to order lies in its combinatorial faculty.
The tremendous pleasure that comes from engaging with such minds resembles a walk through a landscape distinguished as much by the span of its boundaries as by the richness of its particulars. The viewpoints alternate in a whirl of multiplicity, yet all the while the glance takes them in with an even serenity, never losing itself in abstrusity and malformations or in pettiness and eccentricity. Despite the plethora of variations that the mind is able to generate and the ease with which it can switch fields, it perseveres with effortless rigor in making its connections. Its powers appear to grow as much when it turns from the motif to the execution, as when it returns from execution to motif. Using a variation on Clausewitz’s fine image, we can compare this mode of movement with a walk through a convoluted garden in which we are able from every point to see the high obelisk erected at its center.
July 1, 2012
Drogen-Experimente des Ernst Jünger - radioZeitreise
Von radioZeitreisen (Bayern 2, 01.07.2012) kommt diese kurz und bündige Zusammenfassung des "Annäherung. Drogen und Rausch" (1970) von Ernst Jünger. Eine wesentliche Seite Jüngers, die fast nie erwähnt wird!
June 28, 2012
From "The Adventurous Heart": Terror
Another short appetiser from the forthcoming publication of The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios from Telos Press:
I lift you up onto the topmost sheet of this mighty pack of cards, and as the weight of your body touches it, it rips with a crack in two. You fall, and you land on the second sheet, which shatters also, with an even greater bang. Your plunge strikes the third, fourth, fifth sheet and so on, and with the acceleration of the fall the impacts chase each other closer and closer, like a drumbeat rising in rhythm and power. Ever more furious grows the plummet and its vortex, transforming into a mighty, rolling thunder that ultimately bursts the limits of consciousness.
Terror - Berlin
There is a type of thin, broad sheet metal that is often used in small theaters to simulate thunder. I imagine a great many of these metal sheets, yet still thinner and more capable of a racket, stacked up like the pages of a book, one on top of another at regular intervals, not pressed together but kept apart by some unwieldy mechanism.I lift you up onto the topmost sheet of this mighty pack of cards, and as the weight of your body touches it, it rips with a crack in two. You fall, and you land on the second sheet, which shatters also, with an even greater bang. Your plunge strikes the third, fourth, fifth sheet and so on, and with the acceleration of the fall the impacts chase each other closer and closer, like a drumbeat rising in rhythm and power. Ever more furious grows the plummet and its vortex, transforming into a mighty, rolling thunder that ultimately bursts the limits of consciousness.
June 17, 2012
New publication! "The Adventurous Heart - Figures and Capriccios"
I am at last able to share the happy news that this fall Telos Press will publish the first English translation of "Das Abenteuerliche Herz. Figuren und Capriccios" - as The Adventurous Heart. Figures and Capriccios. The volume will additionally contain the translation Sicilian Letter to the Man in the Moon.
Telos has kindly given me permission to publish a few appetisers in advance. Here's the first:
This is what I am going through with these notes that I am opening again for the first time in almost ten years. I am told that for a long while now they have found their fifteen readers or so per quarter with astonishing regularity. A reception like this brings to mind certain flowers, like the Silene noctiflora, whose calyxes, while open a single hour one single night, are orbited by a tiny company of winged visitors.
Nevertheless, precisely this reconsideration of already concluded works has special value for an author – as a rare opportunity to grasp its language as a whole, to some extent with a sculptor’s eye, and to work on it as a single corpus. In this manner, I hope to hit still a little more precisely on what may have captivated the reader. For a start, there should be no economizing on deletions; what is thereby saved can then be filled out from the reserves. A few forbidden pieces that I once put aside might also be appended – because when it comes to spicing a dish, we only gain a sure hand with the course of time.
Telos has kindly given me permission to publish a few appetisers in advance. Here's the first:
The Gravel Pit - Goslar
We so reluctantly pick up our own books again because we appear to ourselves as forgers in their regard. We were in Ali Baba’s cave and have only brought a measly handful of silver back to the light of day. There is also a sense of returning to a state that we have since shed like a yellowed snakeskin.This is what I am going through with these notes that I am opening again for the first time in almost ten years. I am told that for a long while now they have found their fifteen readers or so per quarter with astonishing regularity. A reception like this brings to mind certain flowers, like the Silene noctiflora, whose calyxes, while open a single hour one single night, are orbited by a tiny company of winged visitors.
Nevertheless, precisely this reconsideration of already concluded works has special value for an author – as a rare opportunity to grasp its language as a whole, to some extent with a sculptor’s eye, and to work on it as a single corpus. In this manner, I hope to hit still a little more precisely on what may have captivated the reader. For a start, there should be no economizing on deletions; what is thereby saved can then be filled out from the reserves. A few forbidden pieces that I once put aside might also be appended – because when it comes to spicing a dish, we only gain a sure hand with the course of time.
June 8, 2012
Hörspiel - "Das Abenteuerliche Herz"
SWR Radio Hörspiel "Das Abenteuerliche Herz" - nach Texten von Ernst Jünger. Ursendung 16.02.2012. Etwas übertheatralisch aber trotzdem unterhaltsam.
May 24, 2012
Hauptsache, es knallt! Ernst Jünger und Drogen
Aus der Wochenzeitung Freitag:
Rauschzustand | 15.05.2012 | Sebastian Dörfler
Hauptsache, es knallt!
Krieg war ihm nicht alles: Ernst Jünger experimentierte auch mit Drogen – zusammen mit dem LSD-Erfinder Albert Hofmann.
In Afrika sollte alles besser werden. Mit 18 Jahren meldete sich Ernst Jünger bei der französischen Fremdenlegion und reiste in den Kontinent, der von der ihm verhassten Zivilisation noch verschont geblieben schien. Hier musste es noch sein, das Wunderbare, das Magische – das Leben, das Wissenschaft, Technik und Maschinen zu Hause auf ein bloßes Funktionieren reduziert hatten. In Afrika erwartete Jünger das Besondere, und zwar in jeder Ritze. In Algerien angekommen setzte er sich vor den ersten Steinhaufen. Mindestens eine goldene Schlange werde sich schon zeigen, hoffte er. Er wartete, bis es dunkel wurde. Doch es passierte nichts. Der Steinhaufen in Afrika unterscheidet sich nicht von dem in der Lüneburger Heide, hält Jünger in seiner Erzählung Afrikanische Spiele enttäuscht fest – „so begann ich mich zu langweilen.“
Rauschzustand | 15.05.2012 | Sebastian Dörfler
Hauptsache, es knallt!
Krieg war ihm nicht alles: Ernst Jünger experimentierte auch mit Drogen – zusammen mit dem LSD-Erfinder Albert Hofmann.
In Afrika sollte alles besser werden. Mit 18 Jahren meldete sich Ernst Jünger bei der französischen Fremdenlegion und reiste in den Kontinent, der von der ihm verhassten Zivilisation noch verschont geblieben schien. Hier musste es noch sein, das Wunderbare, das Magische – das Leben, das Wissenschaft, Technik und Maschinen zu Hause auf ein bloßes Funktionieren reduziert hatten. In Afrika erwartete Jünger das Besondere, und zwar in jeder Ritze. In Algerien angekommen setzte er sich vor den ersten Steinhaufen. Mindestens eine goldene Schlange werde sich schon zeigen, hoffte er. Er wartete, bis es dunkel wurde. Doch es passierte nichts. Der Steinhaufen in Afrika unterscheidet sich nicht von dem in der Lüneburger Heide, hält Jünger in seiner Erzählung Afrikanische Spiele enttäuscht fest – „so begann ich mich zu langweilen.“
May 10, 2012
Anarch im Widerspruch: Über Ernst Jünger zum 100 Geburtstag. Video
Und hier noch ein Video zum 100 Geburtstag von Ernst Jünger - "Anarch im Widerspruch", BR 1995
May 6, 2012
Intellectual prejudice - quantified and visualised
"What we do here is to judge a 100 year old man based
only on what he did between his 19th and, let’s say, 29th year, and everything
that he wrote in the next 70 years is not even mentioned."
Rolf Hochhuth, Baden Badener Dichterclub, 1995
Rolf Hochhuth, Baden Badener Dichterclub, 1995
"Was wir machen hier ist einen hundert jährigen allein zu betrachten,
nachdem was er zwischen seinen 19sten und, sagen wir, 29sten Jahr geschrieben
hat, und die ganze Sachen, die er in den letzten 70 Jahren geschrieben hat, die
werden hier gar nicht genannt."
Rolf Hochhuth, Baden Badener Dichterclub, 1995.
Rolf Hochhuth, Baden Badener Dichterclub, 1995.
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