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

In Bothfeld for my discharge from military service. Since the war has now become ubiquitous, it hardly changes anything. On the way, I found a fragment of a horseshoe.

Current reading: Léon Bloy again, this time his diaries, followed by Sueur de Sang [ Sweating Blood ], containing a description of his (probably largely invented) adventures as one of the Francs-tireurs [12] Francs-tireurs , literally “free shooters,” a term for irregular military units during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871); sometimes applied generally to guerrilla fighters. during the winter of 1870–1871. This foreshadows the current situation with the partisans and maquisards . In recounting the deeds he ascribes to the Germans, hardly any atrocity is omitted. But among the actions of his own heroes, Bloy praises the bludgeoning of adversaries with machetes and bottles, burnings with petroleum, desecration of corpses, and more. This reaches the level of the horrors of Tantalus. [13] Tantalus: a son of Zeus and thus immortal who was punished for his crime of stealing the food of the gods and giving it to mortals. He was made to stand in water forever receding before he could drink, beneath a fruit tree with branches that moved beyond his grasp before he could eat. Bloy is like a tree rooted deep in a swamp yet producing sublime blossoms at its top. My own relationship to him—repellent in so many ways—makes me recognize the degree that my own work has purged me of national hatred.

Myth and science. One interprets the world, the other explains it. When Palinurus [14] Palinurus, helmsman of Aeneas, was overcome by the god of sleep and fell overboard. falls asleep at the helm, a god touches his eyelids. A chemist attributes this phenomenon to the accumulation of lactic acid in the tissues. Alchemy offers a strange intermediate notion—experimentally scientific while in theory mythological.

Friedrich Georg is right when he says that the Titanic world is closer to the technical than to the Olympian world. The Titans sought refuge and shelter from Hephaestus, the only god one could call a technician. The scene is superbly described when they pitch in eagerly in his workshop to forge the weapons of Aeneas.

Seen in mythical terms, the sinking of the Titanic after it struck an iceberg corresponds to the Tower of Babel in the Pentateuch. The ship is a Tower of Babel en pleine vitesse [at full speed]. Not only is the name symbolic, but so are almost all the details. Baal, the Golden Calf, famous gems and mummies of the pharaohs—it’s all there.

Went to Celle, where I had things to do. The spirit of the first settlers lingers on in the abandoned farms along the way. Back then royal favor was dispensed to everyone. When that disappears in human beings, we experience periods like the one we have today. Loss of sovereignty precedes an assault upon dignity.

Read further in Léon Bloy. The effect he has derives from the fact that he represents the human being per se in all his infamy but also in all his glory.

Through my bedroom window, I gaze out into the morning fog, where the leaves of the grapevine are turning pale yellow at my windowsill. Their tips are turning red, as if dipped in blood. The life of plants and their cycle ensures the reality that is threatened with dissolution by demonic powers. The adversaries of the Head Forester [15] For Head Forester, see note to First Paris Journal , Paris, 1 February 1942. are gardeners and botanists.

When the blockbuster bomb fell, the walls of the house seemed to be rendered transparent, as if only the organic shell of beams and rafters might hold up.

Went to the cemetery, where since time immemorial indigenous families have lain: the Ebelings, the Grethes, the Lahmanns, the Rehbocks, the Schüddekopfs.

The act of dying must produce a significant gesture, perhaps one of genius. Whenever I receive death announcements, I consistently notice that a kind of emotion grips me and I feel astonished disbelief. It is as though the departed had passed a difficult examination and achieved something I had not believed him capable of. At that moment, the contours of his life are instantly transformed in the most wonderful way.

Thought about Lessing and his poem dedicated to the dead baboon:

[Now here he lies, the little, sweet baboon, / Who imitated us so well! / I’ll bet that what he did, we’ll soon / Imitate ourselves, that sweet baboon.]

First day of November. The fighting continues in Holland, in Alsace, in East Prussia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Greece, the Balkans, and Italy. Tremendous escalation of the air war concentrating on Germany.

We hear that Holland seeks restitution for those parts of its land that were flooded by annexing German territory. Old mistakes seem to get repeated while the world—instead of learning from the emergence of Kniébolo—seems indebted to him as its example.

Concerning prayer. It possesses a conductive power, in the sense of a superior mechanism that dissipates and depletes fear. In ages when the practice is lost, large indigestible masses of feral dread build up in populations. In the same proportion, our freedom of will and powers of resistance diminish; the appeal of demonic powers becomes more compelling, and its imperatives more terrible.

Prayer clears the air. In this sense, the sound of bells represents collective prayer, the unmediated prayer of the church. This has been replaced by the wail of sirens, some of which are even mounted on the church towers.

Current reading: The tome by Volhard about cannibalism that Schenk brought me contains a wealth of material. The conclusions are less exhaustive; it’s also difficult to judge the ramifications of such a phenomenon. It is presented here like the “behavior of fishes”—meaning that they devour each other—and then it becomes incorporated into higher culture.

There are significant individual myths dispersed across our planet suggesting that superior sacrifices triumphed over cannibalism. In the South Seas, on the evening before a festival, the son of a king meets a slave wrapped in crimson robes and asks him where he’s going. The man answers that he is on his way to the royal palace; he has been designated as the ritual meal. In reply, the king’s son promises to save him, goes to the palace in his place, and lets himself be wrapped in palm leaves. When he is served before the king in this manner, the wrapping is opened, revealing to the king his son rather than his slave. This sight rouses and moves the father so much that he forbids the slaughter of human beings forever after. Here we perceive an echo of the highest theme of the human race.

For Indo-European peoples, a dreadful taboo must have been associated with human flesh since ancient times. This is suggested by our own folktales. The curse of Tantalus can also be traced back to a meal. The power of the prohibition can be gauged by the fact that even this war, which was instigated for the basest reasons, has hardly made a dent in it. This is surely noteworthy when we realize who the perpetrators are. Any rationalist economy, no less than any consistent racial doctrine, must essentially lead to cannibalism.

The theory of these matters is, incidentally, best worked out by the Anglo-Saxons, men like Swift. In Huxley’s Brave New World the corpses are exploited for their phosphorus content and their economic viability.