It is a great honor in France to have a book included in
La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. The elegant, leather-bound books of the greatest works of literature find their way to the bookshelves of every self-respecting member of the Parisian intelligentsia:
“La Bibliothèque de la Pléiad presents reference editions of the great works of Fren and foreign literature and philosophy, printed on Bible paper and bound, with a full leather and gold cover.< Each year between 10 and 12 new titles are added to this elegant, practical and easy to read imprint.
The texts are based on original manuscripts, editions
and documents. The translations are new or revised."
New editions to this glorious library of the classics are always a cause for celebration. So now we will get to read a Pléiade edition of Ernst Jünger along side works of Victor Hugo, Balzac and Goethe. And not just any work by Jünger, but his wartime diaries (Tagebücher I bis III "Journaux de guerre") that deal with his experience as an officer of the Wehrmacht during the Nazi occupation of France. To be sure, this was a high-point in Jünger’s military career, for the aristocratic officer could indulge in the aesthetic delights of Paris, the wonderful wines and paintings. But unfortunately the writer just did not have the time, between his bottles of Veuve Cliquot and Pommard, to describe the terror of the Nazi occupation, the execution of resistance fighters, the rounding up of Jews, etc. Why would the French celebrate this monument to aesthetic ego? That is a question that the writer George-Arthur Goldschmidt asks in a polemic in the Frankfurter Rundschau:
Durch eine solche Publikation wird fast absichtlich die deutsche
Emigration, der deutsche Widerstand gegen die Hitlerbarbarei, in den
Hintergrund verschoben. Das wahre Deutschland sind daher weder Döblin
noch Thomas Mann und Walter Benjamin, alles Emigranten, wenn nicht
Nestbeschmutzer. So haben sie nicht die leiseste Chance, in die
"Pléiade" aufgenommen zu werden, stehen sie doch auf der falschen
Seite, auf der des Widerstands, auf der auch de Gaulle stand. ("A publication of this sort seems almost to intentionally push German
emigre writers, the German resistance to Hitler’s barbarism, into the
background. The true Germany is therefore not Alfred Döblin, Thomas Mann
or Walter Benjamin – all emigrants, if not whistle blowers. As such
they haven’t the remotest chance of being received into the ‘Pleiade’,
after all they are on the wrong side, that of the resistance, the same
side as de Gaulle. Incredible but true, this is a form of justification for the collaboration and a Europe without Jews or communists.")
I’ve never understood the attempts to rehabilitate Ernst Jünger as some sort of secret anti-Nazi resistance author. Jünger’s disdain for the Nazi was driven by aesthetics, not ideology. In fact his 1932 book Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt is the most perfect expression of the fascist worldview in German. His 1939 novella Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs) was read at the time as some kind of anti-Nazi allegory (according to Heinrich Böll, whose opinion I respect greatly). But it is hard to see it as such, reading it today. The prose of Marmorklippen, like most of Jünger, seems bombastic and overrated – of historical interest, perhaps, but certainly not literary.
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The gall of some people never ceases to amaze me, and the way they continue to get away with it.
How many of Juenger’s critiques, particularly the ones who voice themselves in comments like mine, have actually read anything of Juenger’s after WWII? I have read every book he ever wrote, and to be sure, I understand where the critics are coming from, up to and including Der Arbeiter. But one needs to be familiar with the whole opus in order to understand the necessity of the philosophy of his early years. He would not have come to the brilliant insights into nihilism, technology, the power of the individual, and on and on and on, had he not at first been fascinating by what he later rejected.
Enough of uninformed knee-jerk approval or disapproval, from right or left or wherever. Juenger explicitly relegated political conviction and allegiance to fools in his 1976 novel Eumeswil. It took him until WWII to come around to that mature understanding, but he did, which is more than most of his critics ever will. By going through it, he overcame the vanity of politics decisively and with understanding.
Probably nothing more than envy on the part of Goldschmidt….
This publishing house does not make rash decisions. But it also does not make them based purely on political prejudices, for it includes writers from all sides of the political spectrum. And those who are beyond the political like Junger, as Karl Fraser points out above.
How many of Juenger’s critiques, particularly the ones who voice themselves in comments like mine, have actually read anything of Juenger’s after WWII? I have read every book he ever wrote, and to be sure, I understand where the critics are coming from, up to and including Der Arbeiter. But one needs to be familiar with the whole opus in order to understand the necessity of the philosophy of his early years. He would not have come to the brilliant insights into nihilism, technology, the power of the individual, and on and on and on, had he not at first been fascinating by what he later rejected.
Enough of uninformed knee-jerk approval or disapproval, from right or left or wherever. Juenger explicitly relegated political conviction and allegiance to fools in his 1976 novel Eumeswil. It took him until WWII to come around to that mature understanding, but he did, which is more than most of his critics ever will. By going through it, he overcame the vanity of politics decisively and with understanding.
How many of Juenger’s critiques, particularly the ones who voice themselves in comments like mine, have actually read anything of Juenger’s after WWII? I have read every book he ever wrote, and to be sure, I understand where the critics are coming from, up to and including Der Arbeiter. But one needs to be familiar with the whole opus in order to understand the necessity of the philosophy of his early years. He would not have come to the brilliant insights into nihilism, technology, the power of the individual, and on and on and on, had he not at first been fascinating by what he later rejected.
Enough of uninformed knee-jerk approval or disapproval, from right or left or wherever. Juenger explicitly relegated political conviction and allegiance to fools in his 1976 novel Eumeswil. It took him until WWII to come around to that mature understanding, but he did, which is more than most of his critics ever will. By going through it, he overcame the vanity of politics decisively and with understanding.
Karl – you make a good point, I have not read Eumeswil and will put it on my list. On the other hand, I have read some of his postwar correspondence with Gottfried Benn, and if he did “reject” his earlier positions it must have been much later.
And surely writers like Thomas Mann are more worthy of recognition than Juenger?