Re: What about the marble cliffs?

["Umberto Rossi" <urossi@programatic.it>]

It took me some time to answer--sorry.

The book seems to me an allegory of what was happening not just in 
Germany but in Europe at the end of the Thirties.  What you have is 
an ancient and sophisticated civilization (the city on the marble 
cliffs) menaced by the Oberwalder--and I have noticed that in Juenger 
the forests, be they tropical or nordic, have always the meaning of a 
place of prehistorical elemental forces, a space of irrationality 
and inhuman energies.  The place where we humans probably come from, 
and the opposite of our civilisation--though it seems that some of 
those Urkrafte can be precious for life.  The Oberwalder (surely I am 
forgetting some umalut here and there) is a symbol of the 
totalitarian barbarism which was spreading on the whole continent, a 
form of barbarism.  But, like in other Juengerian texts, this may be 
a very superficial appreciation of the novel;  because much of what 
is meaningful in Juenger's style is his use of single, meaningful, 
symbolic words, or metaphors, or even colors.  I wish I had time to 
re-read the book!

I remember there's a hermitage of sorts where the main characters 
spend their time before the battle with the Oberwalder.  It is a sort 
of self-imposed retirement (or better, seclusion).  I'd like to hear 
what other listpeople think of that.

Umberto Rossi

"L'unica vera rivoluzione che si 
deve fare in Italia e' che chi e' pagato 
per fare un lavoro lo faccia."