Ernst Jünger - On Literature

A snippet from a conversation with Julien Hervier.

Found myself with extra time this week and have been more productive than normal; here is a nice little snippet of a longer conversation with Julien Hervier. This section is titled: “Literature.” If you enjoy this content, please subscribe/share/etc. It encourages me to keep doing this. The first 1/2 or so is free - send me money for a flat white to read the rest. Thank you as always for your support!

Pictured: Ernst Jünger with Julien Hervier

JH: You don’t yourself write political books, but you're not apolitical either. Your work does not turn its back from the world.

An author always has a political influence. Even if he operates in regions mellowed by the gentleness of friendship, like Rousseau, his influence can be enormous: it reaches all the way to the perpetrators of the September massacres. However, I prefer the attitude and behavior of St. Anthony. I think it was in Cairo: he constantly saw Christians passing by, led to martyrdom. He did not protest, but played his cards close to his chest. When an author unveils himself as he essentially is, without trying to exert influence through willpower, it can have a more significant effect than when he plunges into a political argument: he does not give an impulse towards action, but an example. And the intellectual currents are often very different, very conflicting. I like to say that I prefer to draw a map than to play the role of guidepost.

JH: Yet you didn't hesitate to question Nazism in "On the Marble Cliffs," albeit in a veiled way.

I did indeed do that, but at the same time a muse had spoken to me, if I may put it that way: the political situation had reached its poetic point of concentration, and as a result the work took on a political scope. But the political significance is not enough: We must speak of the snakes, of the dogs, of the powerful, of the martyrs like Prince Sunmyra who represents a kind of premonition of Count Stauffenberg. All political realities are transient, but what is hidden behind them, Demonic, Titanic, mythical, remains constant and retains an immutable value: the "marble cliffs" retain their meaning today, in regions other than where we live. But at that time, people immediately said, "The Chief Ranger, that's Göring." But it could just as well be Stalin, and so, in this way, I was able to defend myself. If I describe a type, this type can be represented just as well in the East as in the West, more or less strongly. For me, Stalin resembles the “Chief ranger” much more than Göring. In a dream, one first encounters the type. Then in reality one encounters the personification of this type in a diminished form. The opposite is also possible: that one knows people, personalities, and by dreaming about them, one attains their real truth. Léon Bloy has shown this very well. People talk about devilry and black masses, while all they need to do is go to the corner grocer.

JH: One finds the same general meaning in "Heliopolis", although the work also evokes, in a certain way, the atmosphere of the German headquarters in Paris, in the Raphael and in the Majestic.

It is a work that must be considered rather as a look at the past. It is a transposition into an imaginary world that offers certain fairly tale elemnts.

JH: However, in this regard, one can't help but mention the problem of anti-Semitism; the young Budur Péri is in a very similar situation to a Jewess in the Third Reich, as we said earlier.

Certainly, but in this, Eros also plays its role . In everything that concerns anti-Semitism or anti-anti-Semitism, one must rely entirely on the reality of behaviors and not be satisfied with political alignments or tendencies. The aversion to violence and cruelty is certainly innate in some people: they like it or they don't like it. And I must say that during the two wars, and especially during the second one, I was extremely careful that nothing of this kind happened or could happen in the area where I was working. It was really hard to do more: I could not take the whole weight of the world's suffering on my shoulders. For that, one must be equipped with an extremely religious nature.

For the writer, the important thing is to portray what is fundamentally evil, whether it is anti-Semitism or a consistently anti-German spirit. It is possible to make general judgments, but only on the basis of a dense and concrete description of people and events that do not have anything to do directly with political reality. As Novalis says, "What has not happened at any time or place, that alone is true." I can thus imagine a situation that refers to and presents a picture of a large number of real situations, because it reaches shared levels of a variety of historical conflicts.

JH: The picture that "Eumeswil" paints of democracy is not flattering.

What is democracy, really? Everywhere people strive for democracy, even in countries where it is virtually out of the question. It's a bit like the truth. Truth is highly sought after everywhere, but where does one really encounter it?

Moreover, in "Eumeswil" Venator's point of view is that of an observer, which differs from strictly political waters. The historian does not have the right to take sides; he thus approaches the tragedian. For the latter, moral judgment has only an immanent value. A villain - and this is generally true - can be described in a more convincing way than a decent man. The description of paradise is never as successful as that of hell, in Dante, for example, but also in Milton or Klopstock. In these authors, hell is a place that intrigues more than the bliss of paradise.

JH: How did you come to write your first novel?