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

Called on Nostitz in the evening on Place du Palais-Bourbon. Among the guests, I noticed the young Count Keyserling, [38] Manfred, Graf [Count] von Keyserling. although he spoke not a word the whole evening. He reclined in an easy chair half languishing and luxuriating dreamily like a cat. The old families still have a sense of security, even intrinsic elegance, in the most intellectual circles.

Took a walk down Avenue des Ternes in the middle of the day. After these past weeks of bleakness, the first glimmer of spring filled the air with life. Underfoot the black, hard-packed snow still lay on the streets. I was feeling nervous, excited, and whimsical, which often happens when spring approaches.

On the catastrophe of human life: the heavy wheel that grinds us to a pulp, the shot of the murderer or fanatic that cuts us down. The tinder had accumulated inside us long enough, and now the spark has just been ignited. The explosion comes from inside us.

This caused so many of the wounds in World War I. They corresponded to the fiery spirit that exhilarated me and found escape valves because it was too powerful for the body. The same is true of the wild escapades and affairs that result in wounds and often, suicide. Life leaps into the barrel of a revolver.

Went to the Raphael. Met Major von Voss, in whom a bit of the fifteenth century is visible, like a vein of silver in a rock. His bloodstream carries something of the troubadour, something of the old free and easy sorcery. There is always good company there. From encounters like this, you can learn history right from its source.

I dropped in to see the Doctoresse, who was laid up with sciatica. Conversation about the human body, then about its specific anatomy. She told me that in the early days on her way home from the dissection lab after staring at the deep red color of human flesh, she often felt ravenous.

Andromeda. In the case of such regal daughters, it’s the same as with the Germanic tribes: They had to be broken before they embraced Christianity. They can love only when they are prey to the dragon in the abyss.

The love of a particular woman is twofold, because on the one hand, she shares what she has in common with millions of other women, and at the same time, she alone possesses what differentiates her from all others. How strange it is that both aspects meet so perfectly in the individual—the chalice and the wine.

Visited Calvet in the evening at a party that included Cocteau, Wiemer, and Poupet, who gave me an autograph of Proust for my collection. That prompted Cocteau to tell about his association with Proust. He would never let anybody dust his rooms; the layer of dust on the furniture was as “thick as chinchilla.” Upon arrival, you would be asked by the housekeeper whether or not you had brought flowers, whether you were wearing scent, or had been in the company of a woman wearing perfume. He was usually to be found in bed, but dressed and wearing yellow gloves to prevent him biting his nails. He spent a lot of money making workers in the building stop because their noise disturbed him. It was never permitted to open a window. The night table was covered with medicines, inhalers, and sprays. His refined taste did not lack macabre aspects: he would go to the slaughterhouse and ask to be shown how a calf was killed.

Concerning poor style: This becomes most apparent in moral contexts, such as when a bad writer tries to justify the shooting of hostages. That is far worse—far more flagrant—than any mere aesthetic offense.

Style is essentially based on justice. Only the just man can know how he must weigh each word, each sentence. For this reason, we never see the best writers serving a bad cause.

Visit from Baron von Schramm, back from the eastern front. The colossal loss of life in the gruesome cauldrons [39] Cauldron: refers to the German Kesselschlacht or cauldron-battle, a military maneuver involving encirclement, in which an enemy is surrounded, as if in a soup kettle. awakens a longing for the old death—death that was other than being trampled. Schramm expressed the opinion that not everyone was dragged into these lethal rings, just as fate did not send everyone to the Manchester bone mills. [40] Conditions in the bone mills of the Industrial Revolution were particularly noxious. Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) describes the plight of workers in Manchester, England. The crucial distinction is ultimately whether you die a humane death in either of these. Then you draw on personal strength to make your own bed and altar. In those depths, many of our grimmest dreams come true; things become historical reality that we have seen coming for a long time—for more than seventy years.

Called on Klaus Valentiner on the Quai Voltaire in the afternoon. There I met Nebel, the “Outcast of the Islands,” [41] E. J. refers to Joseph Conrad’s An Outcast of the Islands (1896) in English. who is being sent to one of the islands tomorrow, just as in the days of the Roman Emperors. Then visited Wiemer, who is leaving. While I was there, Madeleine Boudot, Gallimard’s secretary, handed me the page proofs of the translation of Marble Cliffs by Henri Thomas.

In the Raphael I woke up to a new attack of melancholy. This just comes, like rain or snow. The enormous distance that separates us human beings became clear to me, a distance that we can gauge in our relationships with our nearest and dearest. We are separated from each other by endless distances like the stars. But that will all change after death. The most beautiful part of death is that it erases this distance while extinguishing the physical light. We shall be in heaven.

An idea that makes me feel better: maybe Perpetua is thinking of me at this moment.

The struggle of life, the burden of individuality. On the other hand, all that is universal, with its ever-rising high-water mark. In moments of embrace, we submerge ourselves in it, sink down into strata penetrated by the roots of the tree of life. Of course, there is also superficial, transitory lust—combustible as kindling. Above and beyond this lies marriage—“you shall be one flesh.” Your sacrament: one bears only half the burden. Finally death, which tears down the walls of individuation. That will be the moment of greatest genius (Matthew 22:30). All of our true bonds have laid aside the mystical knot tied in eternity. We are granted sight when the light is extinguished.

Books. It is wonderful to find thoughts, words, and sentences in them that make the reader suspect that the narrative is leading him down a man-made trail through uncharted forests, deep and unfamiliar. Thus, he is led through regions with unknown borders, and only occasionally do tidings of plenty reach him like a breath of fresh air. The author must seem to be distributing unlimited treasure, and by paying in hard currency, he introduces foreign coins—doubloons, with the coats of arms of unexplored lands. Kipling’s phrase, “but that is another story” must be weighed carefully in the text.

This afternoon went to the Palais Talleyrand for a tea in honor of the departing commander-in-chief, General Otto von Stülpnagel.

He shows a remarkable combination of delicacy, grace, resilience, reminiscent of a court dancer, with traits that are also wooden and melancholy. He uses phrases of elaborate courtliness, wears high patent leather boots and gold buttons on his uniform.