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

Walked along the right bank to the Trocadéro. We discussed the matter thoroughly while doing so. Carl Schmitt finds significance in the fact that layers are beginning to peel away from the human stock and ossify beneath the region where free will exists—similar to the way that animals are the cast-off masks of the human image. Man is evolving a new zoological order from himself. The real danger of privilege lies in whether or not one is included in it.

I added that this ossification had already been described in the Old Testament and can be seen in the symbol of the bronze serpent. In that age, law represented what technology does today.

Finally, we went to the Musée de l’Homme and viewed skulls and masks.

Visited Port-Royal with Grüninger and Carl Schmitt. There on top of Pascal’s books, I found the little bird’s nest again that had so amused me during my first visit. Even in their state of dilapidation, such places still hold more life than when they are preserved as museums. We picked a leaf from Pascal’s dying nut tree, then had breakfast in Moulin de Bicherel, and spent the night in Rambouillet and Chartres where I saw the cathedral for the very first time. The colorful stained glass had been removed, and as a result, a dimension was lacking.

The Doctoresse called on me in the Majestic [15] This luxury hotel on Avenue Kléber served as headquarters of the German military command in occupied France. to discuss matters of the safe. It concerned letters I had written from Switzerland to Joseph Breitbach in 1936 that had been confiscated along with other papers in a bank safe, but not yet read. They contained references to further correspondence, such as the one with Valeriu Marcu. I am cautiously attempting to gain control of these matters through the financial office of the Army High Command.

I am keeping my personal papers and journals under lock and key in the Majestic. Because I am under orders from Speidel to process not only the files concerning Operation Sea Lion, [16] Sea Lion (Ger. Seelöwe ), code name for the plan to invade Great Britain. but also the struggle for hegemony in France between the military commander and the Party, a special steel file cabinet has been set up in my room. Naturally, armor like this only symbolizes personal invulnerability. When this is cast in doubt, then even the strongest locks spring right open.

Went for a walk with a milliner from the South who grew up near the Spanish border; she had come to me to make inquiries about a comrade. I had the pleasure of buying her a hat in a salon not far from the Opéra—a little number the size of a hummingbird’s nest with a green feather on top. It was remarkable to see how this little person seemed to grow and change with her new adornment, the way a soldier swells with pride after receiving a medal. It wasn’t so much a head covering as a decoration.

We strolled and chatted through the twilit alleys near the Madeleine. It was Morris who first made me aware of this quarter. During such encounters, a strong feeling of curiosity makes me want to eavesdrop on people I don’t know, get into strangers’ gardens, or gain entrance to hallways of houses otherwise locked. And thus, I got a glimpse into an ancestral village— a noste , as they say here—with its groves of chestnut trees ( châtaigneries ), sheltering mushrooms and ring-necked doves.

The wolf breaks into the fold, slaughters two or three sheep confined there, but several hundred die in the stampede.

Discussion with the Doctoresse at Crémaillère [restaurant]. A doctor with deft, precise, mercurial intelligence. At first, we conversed about the matter of the secure storage cabinet, then about grammar, then acquaintances we had in common, like Hercule.

Finished reading Huysmans, A Vau l’Eau [ With the Flow , 1882] in a beautiful edition that I bought from Berès with a dedication from the author to his friend Rafaëlli, if I interpret the handwriting correctly.

The hero of the book, Fromentin, is a bourgeois Des Esseintes. [17] Des Esseintes: character in Huysmans’s Against the Grain . The tone of the book is filled with powerful disgust at the counterfeit nature of civilization—every page contains perceptions and judgments that presuppose a nervous dyspepsia. As I read this, the thought occurred to me once again that certain maladies resemble magnifying glasses. They enable us to see more clearly the conditions they correspond to. One could categorize the literature of decadence accordingly.

How much further we have sunk in the meantime, and how delectable those things have become that nauseate Fromentin—the leathery meat of the food stall, the blue wine, all that muck in general.

Huysmans describes one of those points where we begin to delve into all these defects. This is the reason he is experiencing a renaissance today

Lunch with Ina Seidel at Prunier. She was worried about her son-in-law, whom Hess employed as his astrological advisor but who has been arrested. That surprised me, since I thought that the flight to England had happened with Kniébolo’s knowledge and possibly even on his orders. [18] In May 1941, Rudolf Hess astonished the world with his flight to Scotland, where he hoped to be granted an audience with King George VI and sue for peace with Germany. He was imprisoned and later tried in Nuremberg. One could counter this by saying that, with the rediscovery of raison d’état [reasons of state], even having knowledge of certain secrets has become objectively more dangerous than before. Surely, that’s the case here. This daredevil exploit gives an idea of the spirit of the roulette game that controls us. The return of the structures of the absolute state, but without aristocracy—meaning without objectivity—makes catastrophes of unimaginable dimensions possible. Yet they are anticipated in a feeling of fear that tinges even the victories.

I heard something from Ina Seidel that I have occasionally heard from other intelligent women, namely that in certain figures of speech and images the precision of language leads us deep into forbidden regions that give the impression of imminent danger. We should always listen to such warnings, even when we must follow our own precepts. Like atoms, words contain a nucleus around which they orbit, vibrating, and they cannot be touched without unleashing nameless powers.

Where people do intellectual battle, death is part of their strategy. This gives them something impregnable, and the thought that the enemy is intent upon taking their life loses some of its power to instill terror. On the other hand, it is of the highest importance that this should happen in the correct manner, and in a situation heavy with symbolism in which such people can be reliable witnesses. At times, they might give the impression that they shrink from death. In doing so, they resemble a field marshal who hesitates at length until the time is ripe before giving the signal to attack. There are different ways to conquer.

The enemy who senses this in his obtuse way feels appalling, frenetic anger when confronted by real intellect. This explains the effort to try to overpower him in vanguard action, bribe him, or somehow distract him. These encounters produce moments that erase the incidental or historical nature of the enmity, and something evolves that has existed since the beginning of our earth. The roles are reversed in a remarkable way. It almost seems as though the fear were transferred to the side of the attacker, as if he were trying to corrupt his victim by all means possible, but postponing the death that he has prepared for him. A hideous triumph accompanies the butchery. History records situations in which men clutch death like a staff of office. So it was in the Templars’ ritual where the Grand Master and the judges suddenly reveal themselves in their true characters. Then a ship dispels the phantasm as it comes into our astonished view, flying flags and showing its cannons. In the evening, it would then be burned, but during the night, the site of the conflagration would be guarded so that people could not steal any of the holy relics. The ashes instill fear in the tyrant, who knows he must perish.