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

Then read still unpublished biographies of Planck and Laue sent to me by Keiper, the Berlin bookseller. I want to pass these along to Brother Physicus. At these highest levels of insight into the physical world, the relationship to the environment becomes streamlined, instinctual—the visual, mathematical, oscillating, crystallographic sensibility suffuses the body like a fluid. Science cannot direct us to other areas than those concealed deeply within ourselves. Whatever telescopes and microscopes may discover someday— we have known it forever in our innermost being. We arduously retrieve fragments of palaces buried within us.

Yesterday’s mail brought a letter from Gerhard Günther, and included excerpts from the diaries of his son, who was killed in action in the mountains of the Southern Carpathian range. These included, in addition to prayers, meditations, and quotations, notations to my own works, which he read with great attention.

The prefigured image. Our science strives toward this. It is a mosaic pieced together on a background with a predetermined pattern. The more of these little pieces that are “laid out,” the narrower the choices become for the remaining pieces. At the start, you can work in any field or area. By the end, each location is defined.

Free will seems to be diminished in the process, yet it must be viewed as essential to the whole. Powerful decisions determined the greater process, which seems to become more and more automatic toward the finish. We are engaged in fitting the capstones into vaults and domes—stones that hermits envisioned and planned in their theological meditations. Free will is, of course, greater in Homo magnus than in the individual, yet the individual also has a share in it. In his undivided state, in the decision about good and evil, the individual is still in command today. Just appeal to his sense of sovereign mastery and you will see miracles.

Went to the dentist in Burgdorf in the afternoon and read Eckermann in the waiting room. [24] Johan Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836; 1848). There I found a mention of the Pastoralia of the Sophist Longus and immediately felt the desire to own the work. In light of the difficulties involved in acquiring books, this won’t be the case for the time being. At the same time, I recalled the banks of the Seine between the bridges and their rich fishing grounds.

Later, while he was drilling, the dentist whispered political news in my ear.

The first snowfall of the year.

Many people in Germany today may feel as I do—people whose knowledge of infamy has produced disgust at their participation in the collective, in anticipation that future bodies of authority will just be branches from the same trunk. Even now, after such powerful portents of what is to come, the delusion of the numberless legions of the rabble surpasses all imagination and all moderation.

Nights without bombing raids, partially due to the November weather. On the other hand, the English and Americans need their strategic squadrons for their autumn offensive on the western Rhineland.

I am reading Stifter. His Bunte Steine [ Colored Stones , 1853] has been standing untouched on my bookshelf for a long time because his circle of admirers is so unappealing. Lovely chapels filled with the smell of cheap incense.

I wonder whether the propensity for establishing total states corresponds to musicality. In any case, it’s obvious that three musical nations in particular have emerged: the Germans, Russians, and Italians. Within musicality, a shift to the coarser elements probably occurs—a shift from melody to rhythm. This development culminates in monotony.

Last night there was a raid and distant heavy bombardments. A Christmas tree spread out over Hannover like a red star of misery. Powerful tremors followed.

Read further in Colored Stones : “Granite,” “Limestone,” “Tourmaline,” and “Rock Crystal.” Saving one’s first ascent of particular peaks among the literary mountain ranges for one’s later years has its merits.

Stifter is the Hesiod of the moderns, someone who still understands the nomos [25] See Notes from the Caucasus , 23 December 1942. of the earth. It is wonderful how old Austria looms large, like a great work of art that we will be able to appreciate again once the last Napoleonic structures have disappeared. An ancient mountain forest where the topsoil of happiness is formed. By contrast, anguish is produced here where we are.

I can recall talking with readers of Stifter who thought his suicide incompatible with his work and life. But we should pay attention to those pedantic and overly scrupulous traits in his nature. These can easily develop into hypochondria. This shows up both in grammatical and narrative structures and points to a delicate, fragile constitution—at least in intellectual terms:

“The children wore broad straw hats; they had clothes with sleeves from which their arms protruded.”

Intensified bombing raids and attacks as they become more clever and malicious. The oil tanks in Misburg were burned out again. The ranks and columns of aircraft appear by day like white hydras snaking their way through the ocean of air. Fighter planes cut through the space above them with the speed of bullets.

Read further in Stifter, whose prose is infused with elements of the old Austrian chancery style. You get used to catchwords like “idem,” “ditto,” “the former,” and “the latter” and other peculiarities that you even begin to appreciate.

Dreams last night. I was being shown plants, among them a tropical specimen as tall as heather bearing numerous dark cherries. “Also has the virtue that nobody knows they are edible.”

Then I was standing at the edge of a pool facing someone else and playing a sort of chess game with him. Yet we had no chess pieces but were operating with mental constructs. In this way, we produced armadas on the surface of the water for our own sea battles, yet their strength lay not in their fighting ability but in their beauty. Strange creatures surfaced to chase or grab one another; it was a contest that revealed the treasures of the deep.

“In infinity every point is the center.” I came up with this axiom this morning while I was digging in the flowerbeds. It would affirm that infinity does not possess quantitative, but rather qualitative metaphysical authority. One can imagine a circle, a sphere, extending to an extreme degree without increasing the number of midpoints even by one. That remains the one and only central point. For every point to become the center, a process would have to occur that would require something beyond the realm of our sensory perception—a mysterious folding of space, probably to its irreducible form.

Like every mathematical or physical fact, this relationship also has a moral implication. As a metaphysical being, every human is the center of the universe and, as such, cannot be dislodged from this position even by the most distant galaxies. The vertiginous expanses of space fall away at the moment of death, yielding to reality.

The impression called forth in us by immeasurable distance is close to animal fear; it is how we reflect the world of illusion.

The encounter. The aura of the great hunt and also of magical practices predominates here. There is enchantment that is like the approach of very timid animals; we also find the realization of dreams that we used to doubt. These call forth a mixture of skeptical wonder, fear, and delight, even great tenderness. Repetition disperses these in favor of a feeling of splendid security.