Эрнст Юнгер - A German Officer in Occupied Paris - The War Journals, 1941-1945

In the afternoon Dr. Göpel arrived. He was on his way from Amsterdam to Dresden. He reported that Drieu La Rochelle had shot himself in Paris. It seems to be a law that people who support intercultural friendship out of noble motives must fall, while the crass profiteers get away with everything. They say Montherlant is being harassed. He was still caught up in the notion that chivalrous friendship is possible; now he is being disabused of that idea by louts.

Visit from Ziegler, with whom I discussed printing my Appeal . He always carries it with him in his briefcase. I heard from him that Benoist Méchin had been shot by terrorists in Paris.

Endless squadrons overhead. Misburg, their main target nearby, was hit again and huge oil reserves have been burning off beyond the moor beneath the clouds of leaden smoke. Since 1940, the sounds of the night have become significantly more ominous; the impression of impending catastrophe is growing.

I have been placed on furlough with the reserve command staff and am awaiting the final stage of the process. This, too, is extraordinarily dangerous; it is how the lemures commit a great number of murders that are identified by the postmortem conditions of the corpses. They are carrying out a kind of anticipatory revenge that has already claimed the former Communist leader, Thälmann, and the Social Democrat Breitscheit as victims. If they were more intelligent, one could quote Seneca to them, “No matter how many you may kill, your successors will not be among them.” One can only hope that they don’t have much longer to wait. Apparently, a huge number of the aristocrats in Pomerania have already been assassinated.

Out on the moor with Alexander and Ernstel, whom I found still weakened after his incarceration. He has reported to an armored unit, but I get the impression that he is not yet up to the rigors of the training. I am especially pleased that he does not harbor any resentment.

As I watched him sitting exhausted, at the edge of the woods, it became clear to me what a terrifying situation we are in. Compared to this, the acrid odor of the burnt-out cities is paltry.

My current reading includes L’Ile de Ceylan et ses Curiosités Naturelles [ The Island of Ceylon and Its Natural Curiosities ] by Octave Sachot (Paris, 1863). The work has a nice excerpt about daily activity in the tropics from the book by Sir James Emerson Tennent. I’ve been on the lookout for this volume for a while.

Visit in the afternoon from Gustav Schenk. Years ago I corresponded with him about the spotted arum [jack-in-the-pulpit]. Discussed the hallucinogenic peyote cactus, and then the three-day fast he is preparing for. Much reminded me of my years following World War I, when I was always keeping an eye out for those extra tickets to the spiritual heights. It is, of course, better to choose the portals that are open to everyone.

Discussed the situation. Our Fatherland is like a poor man whose just cause has been usurped by a crooked lawyer.

Worked a little bit on the “Path of Masirah.” I began by inventing the names and writing the introduction.

Beobachten [observe, watch] and Betrachten [look at, view, regard]—here we have a subtle difference between concrete and abstract seeing: Ich betrachte den Zeiger der Uhr [I am looking at the hand of the clock] but Ich beobachte seinen Lauf [I observe its movement].

In the morning, I looked for Banville’s Odes Funambulesque s, which was brought to my attention thanks to a remark of Verlaine’s. Although I searched carefully in the library and the study, I was unable to find the book, so I thought I had lost it. But then I found it among my signed copies, because it bears a dedication from the author to Elisabeth Autement.

It’s a nice image: after believing we have lost something, we then find it in a more distinguished form.

Current reading: the Greek myths in the version by Schwab. Despite several shortcomings, it has enjoyable qualities in its description of the ancient pagan world. Schwab captures the clear, still, crystalline depths of its domain, where the spiritual conceptions and births take place before and outside of history. The origin precedes the beginning.

Yesterday evening I read in the second volume as far as the beautiful passage where Agamemnon is compared to Odysseus. There we read that, when standing, the Shepherd of the People [8] One Homeric epithet for Agamemnon is “shepherd of the people.” was the taller of the two men, while Odysseus was taller when they were seated.

After a short sleep, I was awakened by the noise of an intense barrage. Perpetua got up and dressed our little son while I watched the spectacle standing at the window in my dressing gown. We could hear the roar of myriad engines and watched as shells soared high into the sky—no bigger than the sparks that spew from burning steel in the forge. Then beyond the moor, at Anderten, red flames erupted. A long, shrill whistle immediately followed; now all attention, all fear, seemed focused on a red arrow falling out of the sky to earth. I stepped back, and immediately felt a fiery punch that shook the house to its foundation. We hurried downstairs to reach the garden and found the door jammed shut by the shockwaves, but panes of glass from its windows lay shattered in the hallway. The exit facing the meadow was still unobstructed. We carried the children outside through it, while shrapnel hissed down through the treetops. Down in the air-raid shelter, we waited for the bombardment to end.

A blockbuster bomb had fallen onto the field halfway between Kirchhorst and Stelle. It damaged the Cohrs’s farm primarily and ripped off roofs for some distance around. In our house, a crack goes from the cellar down into the ground below; the stairwell sags, and the roof shows signs of damage.

The mail brought a letter from Ruth Speidel. She reports that the general has been arrested. With him, the last participant at the historical conference of La Roche-Guyon has been caught, and all the rest are dead.

I am removing the tomato plants in the glaring autumn sun, while the admiral butterflies flutter around. The blade glides through the succulent stalks; my hands become impregnated with the tangy aroma. When I wash them, the rinse water flows dark green.

The search for mushrooms on the cow paths. From a distance, we can make our way toward these bright gleaming clusters. The most beautiful ones are like eggs, completely closed. But the others are exquisite, too—the pink-ribbed gills that smell faintly of anise and are visible through their torn membranes. They are grasped on the stalk with the whole hand like the clapper of a bell and then pulled out gently, letting their firm, waxy skin cool the fingers.

Turned to the task of putting my hunting books in order. [9] Hunting books: E. J.’s catalogues of beetles he has collected. Today, I entered the locations where I found Dromius meridionalis [ground beetle]. It was mostly underneath chestnut husks in Parisian cemeteries, for example, not far from Verlaine’s grave at Batignolles. Others came from the bark of the large sycamores that line the banks near the bridge of Puteaux. The beautiful work of Jeannel gives me to understand that this is a variety dispersed particularly around the Atlantic. In addition to Great Britain and Ireland, he lists among their habitats São Miguel and Terceira in the Azores. In fact one of my own specimens is labeled: “Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, 26 October 1936.” There was a blue carapace sunning itself on the silvery-gray bark of a felled laurel tree. This shows that within my own extensive hunting grounds, I am not unacquainted with the territory from the North Cape to the oases of the Sahara, and from the islands of the Yellow Sea to the Hesperides. Despite the inhospitable nature of our times, I am still looking forward to further wonderful campaigns in this region.