[Juenger-list] EJ as 'Marathon Man' (new article in 'Linguafranca')

[03643518060-0001@t-online.de (03643518060-0001@t-online.de)]

Greetings Jüngerianer.

I thought we'd ought to take a look at this article, because if there is one
thing that it demonstrates, it is that EJ continues to be  misunderstood and
a target of derision among the academic establishment. 
(Now that is not to say that I have a corner on that market. :-) )

First quote: "This might have seemed unusual praise to bestow on an 
author whose early writings on technology, war, and death had earned him
the admiration of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels and who had commanded a
firing squad during the German occupation of France.

If I remember correctly and it has been sometime now since I read
"Strahlungen", J¸nger did observe an execution, that he writes about in
his diary, although he was not in charge of a firing squad during WWII.
It is well know that he worked in the Pariser Nachrichten Abteilung
charged with censoring the letters of the soldiers on the western front.
Isn't this correct? 

The problem is that this writer makes it sound as if EJ spent his whole time
in Paris executing people. Did I miss something or is this wrong?

Next quote: "...is an example of this approach, an allegorical novel
that can be
read—depending on one's perspective—either as a remorseful meditation on
J¸nger's role in developing Nazi culture or as a surreptitious plea to resist
technological barbarism by returning to the goals and methods of the old German
right."

Once again completely wrong: to believe that Jünger wanted to return to
the goals and methods of the old German right is utterly false, even if
he had the tendency to romanticize the Germany of his father and his
youth, he new better than anyone that we could not return. He himself
said in one interview,  "The old values are no longer valid and the new
ones have yet to arrive..." Nobody who has read the latter years could
come to the same conclusion as the critic and I believe this along with
antifa misinterpretations lead to the greatest misunderstanding of the
man (EJ) and his work.

Third and final Quote: "What do we make of this story? Nevin contends
that the way Captain Richard is "brought in and co-opted by power is
interesting for anyone going through the Third Reich," and so The Glass
Bees becomes a cautionary tale in which Zapparoni stands for
totalitarianism and Captain Richard stands for the dupe. Neaman, on the
other hand, sees Jünger's later novels as "the most popular version of
messages to the faithful," bagatelles for reactionaries—perhaps even
signals to hibernate and wait for the technological and emotional
self-destruction of the modern world. In this interpretation, Zapparoni
represents not fascism but decadent corporatist democracy, and Captain
Richard, as one of the faithful, does whatever is necessary to survive,
even if it means he might become corrupted in the meantime."

This third and final quote leaves me cold. So I am a hidden fascist
waiting for the
return of the old german values, simply because I agree with Jünger? And
EJ's novels and later essays are fascistic messages to the faithful, who
will over throw all of these terrible democrats and liberals. And I
didn't even know I was hibernating or at least should hibernate. True
that Zapparoni represent the worst elements of capitalism and the
magicians apprentices of this age, but most certainly this is the only
thing that our loving critic has correctly placed. Is captain Richard
the proto-hibernating-faschist? I doubt it. Rather he is like Jünger
himself a man of a fleeting age with values and good skills of
observation that watched one age diminish and disappear and was waiting
like us for the new one to appear.

One can only hope that the academics of the age will come to a better
understanding of Jünger and his critique of modernism. I reckon this can
not happen
though for two reasons, one because academia is the "establishment"
itself it will
not come to a point were it could observe EJ's work in an unbiased
fashion simply because it itself feels attacked by Jünger's values and
two the world view of the liberal democrat is ultimately opposed to a
world view that has value and meaning at it's root.

With the best of greetings
Abdalbarr