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

The voice we use to attract animals or to drive them away differs depending on the species. The chicken, the dog, the cat, the sparrow, the horse, the snake—we have different calls for each one, special sounds and special melodies. Here we speak in tongues with the language of the Life Spirit that pours both over us and them.

Planted fava beans on the final recommended date. The flat seeds are large, plump, copper colored, like two- Pfennig pieces; I press them—not without pleasure—into the soft soil. When they are young, they produce an admittedly northern, but delicious, dish with chopped celery and mild bacon. Surely Hamann must have feasted on this. In Sicily, I once saw a smaller version; it was sweeter and served like sugar peas.

The early morning arrival of the donkeys and carts loaded with vegetables in southern cities is part of some of the most powerful memories of my life. For example, I recall the hour when I watched from a Neapolitan balcony as loads of onions, leeks, and fennel swayed in bright green and white bundles. They were accompanied by symphonies, as if whole populations of birds were chirping. These are images, like public offerings, that revive and strengthen us.

There was a letter from Hanna in the mail today. She writes from Leisnig that the news of Ernstel’s death was the fanfare announcing the entire calamity that has overtaken us. For weeks there has been no word from my two younger brothers, the geographer in Schneidemühl or the physicist in Crossen.

She also writes: “Of course, we can cross goodness and humanity off our agendas—but that makes the waves of hatred tremendously powerful.”

Read in the Bible, the passage on the building of the Temple and its dedication (I Kings, 6:7). The aversion to the use of iron for ritual purposes and sacred services is strange. Even the stones are dressed at distant locations, so that no sound of iron is heard during construction. Ore, on the other hand, is used copiously. This aversion is mysterious; it implies conservative as well as moral attributes. Iron is also a Cainite metal, and the foundation of superhuman power.

By contrast, it makes me ponder how little opposition was raised to the introduction of electricity into our churches. Every religious rite has the incorruptible Levite sense for the purity of sacrificial material and sacrificial instruments. Of course, this sense must not, as in Huysmans, derive from a feeling of nausea.

Concerning style. I have an aversion to the appearance of any kind of numbers in a text—the only exception being the notation of dates and textual references. This essentially stems from the fact that every concept that is predetermined and remote from perception is repugnant to me. Numbers are among these, with the exception of the dates of years, for they have substance: 1757, 1911, 1914 are quantities one can visualize. For me, it goes against the grain to write 300 horses, 256 dead, 100 Christmas trees. We don’t want to view things through the lens of statistics.

In this context, I should mention my horror of the decimal system in any nonsecular text. To me, in prose, words like centimeter, kilometer, kilogram sound like the sounds of iron during the construction of the Temple. In trying to avoid them we come back to the concepts: a foot, an ell, a span, a brace, a stone’s throw, an hour on foot—these are natural quantities.

The same applies to fashionable notions and topical expressions; these are primarily generated by politics, technology, and social interaction. They are the short-lived recombinations of linguistic material, and an intellect may be gauged by the extent to which it succumbs to them. Abbreviations belong in this category as well. Expressions formed this way should either be avoided or stated in their original words, which means writing them out.

Rivarol. I began with the translation of his Thoughts and Maxims . Perhaps today our language is finally achieving the same fluent consistency so that it, too, can be poured into such molds. That is naturally contingent upon a loss of potential energy.

I was again charmed by: “ Un livre qu’on soutient est un livre qui tombe ” [A book one defends is a book that falls]. The perfection of this utterance lies in the congruence, the absolute correspondence of its physical and intellectual quality. This balance embodies the hallmark of exquisite prose in general.

Death has now drawn so close that people take it into account in their trivial decisions—like whether or not to have another tooth filled.

Read further in the Book of Kings. The third chapter of the second book provides insights into the terrible splendor of the magic world. The king of the Moabites is besieged by a league of allied empires massed before his city. Under this duress, he gathers seven hundred swordsmen to attack the person of the King of Edom in the Asiatic way that Xenophon describes in detail. After this desperate action has failed, he slaughters his firstborn son on the city wall with his own hand for a burnt offering. No superior power is equal to this terrible incantation. It even exceeded Jehovah’s support: “Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him and returned to their own land” (II Kings 3:27).

I am sometimes overwhelmed by the unimaginable reality of these events—how much more real they are than Darwin’s theory or Bohr’s model of the atom. But then I think, perhaps it is precisely in this unreality, in this realm of the absolute fantastic, in this late Gothic spirituality of our world, that its actual merit lies.

Elijah. Elisha. The miracles of these men of God are the models, counterparts, for Christian ones. Their earlier magical aspects later become charismatic. Power also serves wickedness, lets children be torn apart by bears, or brings leprosy upon the head of the unfaithful servant.

The similarity is nonetheless evident. Among the Disciples there are thus some who see the resurrected Elijah in Christ. Peter, however, stresses the difference: “Thou art the son of God.”

There are passages in the New Testament where the charismatic miracle does not completely separate from its counterpart, the magical. Take, for example, the anecdote about the coin found in the gullet of the fish.

Perpetua’s birthday. New refugees have joined our household. We increasingly resemble a lifeboat in the vicinity of sinking ships. Perpetua shows herself equal to the throngs—her resources seem to increase as she distributes them. Something is always left over. From that I recognize the authentic relationship to abundance, to fecundity.

Piles of mail. Friedrich Georg calms me with one of his restorative letters, but nonetheless, he confirms that Überlingen has been bombed. At the very time of this peril, he was visiting Ziegler, the philosopher. I recognize in his report traits that are his alone: “People were killed and buildings destroyed. All around, the air was heavy with the scent of red cedars, cypresses, trees of life, firs, and other conifers, whose branches and foliage had been shorn off and crushed by the shrapnel.”

From Leisnig I also hear that Brother Physicus has written to me. That takes a further load off my mind.

Rosenkranz, who provides me with an ample supply of literature, sends a manuscript from the posthumous papers of Georg Trakl. I shall send this on to Friedrich Georg. I found nothing new here, for Trakl’s poetry is like a dream kaleidoscope viewed through the wrong end. In the moonlight behind the frosted glass, monotonous configurations of a few—but no less authentic—stones repeat.