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

Then about Japan, which he called the real victor in this war.

Departure from the Gare de l’Est at seven o’clock this morning. Rehm drove me to the station. The sky was a crisp blue; I noticed especially the magical play of color in the water of the rivers and canals. I thought I was seeing sounds that no painter had ever observed. The blues, greens, and grays of the water gleamed like clear, cool stones. The color was more than just color: it was the symbol and essence of the mysterious deep glimpsed in the play and reflection of the surface.

Somewhere beyond Coolus, a bright russet falcon landed on a thornbush. Fields full of high glass domes for raising melons and cucumbers—retorts for the finest fermentation in the area of horticultural alchemy.

Before reaching Thiaucourt, I read a little of the Faux-Monnayeurs [ Counterfeiters ] in the sunshine. After the sun had disappeared behind a mountain, the letters began to glow with a deep phosphorescent green.

Reached Mannheim in the evening, where Speidel picked me up at the station. I stayed with him. Little Hans, an artist in the way he enjoys things. Such children attract love and presents like magnets. There is also a little daughter, very delicate. When there has been a night air raid, she will not eat the next day. Who knows the burden that weighs upon the shoulders of women?

The Speidels took me to the station in the morning. The shift in social stratification was apparent in the interaction of people on the trains, especially the staff in the dining car or in the hotels; inevitably, differences are being eradicated. This is particularly apparent when you arrive here from France.

Late arrival in Hannover. Perpetua picked me up from the station in the car.

On the moor with the children. Our little boy called a salamander a “water lizard” when he saw it for the first time, which tickled me, as though he had addressed the creature by name. In doing so, he demonstrated an ability to differentiate, which is the foundation for knowledge as surely as gold is the security for paper currency.

When I woke up at six I wrote down a fragment from an extensive dream negotiation:

I: “It’s best that I proceed with my old subject, the comparative physiology of fishes.”

Perpetua: “If the results turn out favorably, he will be in such a good mood that he will frighten his friends.”

I: “That indicates to me that the future is going to be horrible.”

Pale, moon-shaped fishes lay on the ground. I inserted my index finger into the mouth of one of them to find a gland, which I could feel as a little bump.

On the moor. I heard the first call of the cuckoo, that oracular crier, although I had plenty of money on me. [52] E. J. refers to the folk superstition that one should always have money in one’s pocket upon hearing the first cry of the cuckoo, for then one’s pockets will always have money. On the other hand, we haven’t just cut into the ham but almost finished it up. That’s a good indication of the way things stand this year.

I took a sunbath by a peat-cutting bank. The color of the old walls that had been sliced by the shovel changes from a rich black to a soft golden brown. Just above the water level, there is a long mossy band; the sun creates red embroidery upon the dew. All this shows order and necessity. Thought: This is only one of the countless aspects, just one of the gashes in the harmony of the world. We must look beyond such formations to perceive the power of its form.

It is a fine feeling to stride across the damp peat interpenetrated with a deep, ruddy glow. Here you walk upon layers of the pure stuff of life, more precious than gold. The moor is a primeval landscape and therefore the repository of health and freedom. I sense this so gloriously in these northern refuges.

I found a letter from Valentiner in the mail; he states that Gallimard had printed the second edition of Falaises de Marbre . He also reported on a visit of the Outcast of the Islands [Gerhard Nebel] to Quai Voltaire.

Reading matter: Tolstoy’s short stories, including the “Recollection of a Billiard-Marker.” It’s a good narrative technique that a basically noble but dissipated life is captured and observed in a diary of a servant, as though in a cheap mirror. Between the cracks, we can sense the tragic and authentic image.

Unfortunately, I could not find my favorite story, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” in the edition.

Drive to the barber’s. Had a conversation there about the Russian prisoners who are being sent from the camps to work here.

“They say there are some tough customers among them. They’d steal the dogs’ food.”

Noted verbatim.

Frau Lukow brought a letter from Grüninger in which he bewailed the demise of our Arthurian round table in the George V. Other than that, the usual capriccios . After capturing a Russian reconnaissance patrol, his soldiers had discovered among the dead a seventeen-year-old girl who had fought fanatically. How that was possible, no one could say, but the next morning, her naked corpse was lying in the snow. Because winter is a brilliant sculptor who preserves shapes in their firm, fresh state, the occupying troops had plenty of opportunity to admire the beautiful body. When the base was later recaptured, many a volunteer reported for duty to take pleasure in the sight of that splendid form.

My departure from Kirchhorst approaches. I quickly adjusted again to the house and study and also to the garden where I’m leaving behind the beds in good order. Perpetua thinks that I should move into the parsonage again in the autumn. Well, we shall see. How I would like to live here beside her and grow old slowly, but I yearn to get back to work.

She, incidentally, found an expression for the remarkable relationship between me and the lemures . She says that I am [swimming] in a different current.

I treated Astor, the dog, very badly for constantly running through the garden beds. He has just walked up to me wagging his tail as I sit beneath the old beech trees. He’s not looking at me reproachfully, but rather inquisitively, thoughtfully: “Why are you like this?” And like an echo I hear inside me: “Yes, why are you like this?”

My current reading: James Riley, Le Naufrage du Brigantin Américain Le Commerce [ Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig “Commerce,” 1817], published by Le Normant (Paris, 1818). Some of the shipwrecked sailors are murdered, some are stripped naked by brutal nomads and are driven through the Mauritanian deserts under horrible conditions. They come upon deserted cities bleaching in the sun reminiscent of the visions of Emir Musa. The breach in the wall is visible as well as the abandoned siege machinery in front of it, like an oyster-shucking knife lying beside a plate. A scene that Poe could have described plays itself out on a sheer cliff wall rising into the clouds from the sea. A path barely as wide as a hand has been carved into it, and before traversing that terrifying track, people call out from a precipice to make sure that nobody is approaching in the opposite direction. A small caravan of Jews once neglected to do this. They wanted to reach their camp before twilight and, as fate would have it, a group of Moors, who thought no one was on the path, came toward them from the opposite direction. They met in the middle of the path above the terrifying abyss where it was impossible to turn around. After long and useless negotiations, they set upon each other one by one, falling to their deaths in pairs.