A wonderful passage from Ernst Jünger‘s magnum opus Eumeswil:
My genitor strikes me—to maintain Vigo’s image—as someone who delights in dried bouquets, in flowers from Rousseau’s herbarium. I can even sympathize with this as an academic. On the tribune, my old man’s self-deception becomes a deception of the populace.
On the other hand, my interest in the Domo’s squabbles with the tribunes is metahistorical; I am absorbed in the model, not the urgent issue. At the luminar, I studied the particulars of Rousseau’s visit with Hume, plus the misunderstandings that led to Hume’s invitation. Jean-Jacques’s life leads from disappointment to disappointment to solitude. This is reflected in his successors, down to the present day. It hints that something human was touched at the core. The great ideas spring up in the heart, says an old Frenchman. One could add: and are thwarted by the world.
I consider it poor historical form to make fun of ancestral mistakes without respecting the eros that was linked to them. We are no less in bondage to the Zeitgeist; folly is handed down, we merely don a new cap.
I therefore would not resent my genitor for merely believing in a fallacy; no one can help that. What disturbs me is not error but triteness, the rehashing of bromides that once moved the world as grand utterances.
Errors can shake the political world to its very core; yet they are like diseases: in a crisis, they can accomplish a great deal, and even effect a cure—as hearts are tested in a fever. An acute illness: that is the waterfall with new energies. A chronic illness: sickliness, morass. Such is Eumeswil: we are wasting away—of course, only for lack of ideas; otherwise, infamy has been worthwhile.
The lack of ideas or—put more simply—of gods causes an inexplicable moroseness, almost like a fog that the sun fails to penetrate. The world turns colorless; words lose substance, especially when they are to transcend sheer communication.
__________
Source:
Ernst Jünger, Joachim Neugroschel (translator), Eumeswil, Marsilio Publishers, New York, 1993.
Tags: Bromides, David Hume, Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil, Historiography, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Triteness, Zeitgeist
July 28, 2012 at 10:44 |
Thanks for this! Don’t know many others that know this marvellously wise book of Juenger’s – it is the bible of Juenger’s wisdom for me.
Unfortunately Eumeswil is ridiculously expensive on Amazon – over $300!
But I found a great download of it on 4shared.com.
August 3, 2012 at 13:47 |
You don’t need to thank me. After all, I did not post this here to please you ;-)
I have read a number of posts on your blog, mainly those on the distinction between the anarch and the anarchist. I do not know if you accept requests, but would you consider writing a post on the ending of Eumeswil, i.e., on Venator’s death? Also, I found Knut Dalin a fascinating character, and it would also be interesting to write a post on his destructive nature.
August 6, 2012 at 09:35 |
For sure, Rod, in particular your view on Venator’s death would interest me – the Great Hunt, certainly a mysterious element in the book. Of course I have to reserve the right not to publish on my blog – but then you always have your blog anyway.
Something on Dalin would also be interesting – in contrast to the anarch?
August 6, 2012 at 12:31 |
Herr Friedrich,
I did not make myself clear in my first comment. To clarify: I was not requesting that you allow me to write a guest post on your blog, I was merely asking you to consider writing a blog post yourself on the topics I suggested. I have read Eumeswil only once, not enough times to attain a deep understanding of it.
Venator’s death and the Great Hunt are indeed cryptic. Jünger writes in metaphors, but I do not understand what he wanted to convey with that ending, which I found anticlimactic. I was expecting the book to end with a coup d’état, Condor being murdered, and Venator fleeing to his bunker in the forest for a year or so. The Condor was killed, indeed, but Venator’s forest flight never happened.
In Eumeswil, each character represents a kind of person. The book seems to be a taxonomy of human personalities, with all their quirks, weaknesses, and flaws. Venator’s father and brother represent the democracy-loving Liberal. Nebek, the aggressive Lebanese, represents the warrior, I suppose. Kung represents the petit bourgeois, I presume. Dalin represents the anarchist, and it seems to have been created only to contrast with Venator, the anarch.
If you could write some more on your blog on Eumeswil, I would certainly be most grateful.
PS: I removed the part of your comment in which you wrote your email, to protect you from spambots.
August 8, 2012 at 07:03 |
Dear Rod,
I was in fact uncertain when I wrote you – I suspected that you wanted me to write something, but I was hoping you meant yourself! It is certainly more interesting to me to hear someone else’s views.
Curiously enough, I once discussed the Great Hunt with someone else – wouldn’t be you under a pseudonym, would it?
In any case, your idea is a good one and duly noted, and when I myself have a good theory on the Great Hunt and the ending of Eumeswil, I will certainly put something to paper!
By the way, the ending of two other Juenger favorites are cryptic in a similar manner: the appearance of Phares, as space ship commander and “messenger” at the end of Heliopolis and Aladdin’s Problem respectively. Do you have any insights there? Please feel free to write privately if prefered.
I also appreciate your comments on the various character types, which I have never analysed in that perspective.
Cheers,
Simon
August 9, 2012 at 08:35 |
No. I read Eumeswil very recently, in the last 1/3 of July 2012 and I have not discussed it with anyone other than you.
Maybe there is nothing deep about the ending of Eumeswil.
Neither is Jünger a moralist, nor is Eumeswil one of Aesop’s fables. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the ending was arbitrary because there was no lesson to be learned from it. The lesson is the whole book itself, since it provides a detailed taxonomy of human personalities and how to interact with them in order to maximize one’s chances of survival. I suspect that when Jünger ran out of things to say, he merely terminated the book. Maybe we are trying to attribute meaning to that which was supposed to have no meaning. Or maybe not!
Haven’t yet read those. Of all Jünger’s books, the only ones I have read so far are Storm of Steel and Eumeswil. What is interesting is that these two books seem to be the antithesis of one another: Storm of Steel is a nationalistic tour de force that glorifies self-denial, whereas Eumeswil celebrates extreme individualism. In Storm of Steel, Jünger was clearly under the spell of Nietzsche and Prussian Militarism, whereas in Eumeswil, Jünger calls Nietzsche the “Old Gunpowderhead”. One book was published in 1920, the other in 1977. It is quite interesting (albeit neither surprising nor unprecedented) to witness how dramatically one man’s worldview can change in 57 years!
August 16, 2012 at 07:22 |
Regarding the ending of Eumeswil and the Great Hunt: I seriously doubt that anything as significant as the ending of a major opus could have been insignificant for Juenger. He never wasted his words. I believe it has something to do with a metaphysical hunt for the symbols or images of a new world. It is certainly not primarily a flesh and blood hunt, although this could be secondary reflection on the physical plane of the metaphysical hunt.
Regarding the differences between Storm of Steel and Eumeswil: your point is excellent and one so often conveniently overlooked by his critics. Juenger was nothing if not an author in ascending evolution, and so to judge the lifetime’s work from a couple of youthful works is absolutely ridiculous. If you speak German, see in this regard also my videos on Youtube, in particular these two:
http://youtu.be/Ai4cBI_Mdp0