Re: Caucasian sketches - ASP version

[rcalvom@ctv.es]

Due to this interesting dialogue about Caucasian sketches ,I have
been taking a look on EJ diaries. Here is a comentary of the
translator, Andrés Sanchez Pascual, that might be of interest to
jungerites. Forgive me for my poor translation.

In !942, in october the !5th Junger is sending to the Staff of the A
Armys Group in the russian front. The same day he ended
  the First Parisian Diary and began Caucasian Sketches. The
initiative of such a trip was came forth in August the 16th.
Carl-Heinrich von Stupnagel invited J to pass the weekend in his
summer residence in Vaux-les-Cernay, near from Rambouillet.
J write in his diary: "General was talking about russian cities
and he sais it would be  important for me to know them, overcoat
in view of certain corrections in " Der Arbeiter Gestalt". I  answered
thatit had been a long time I had ordain myself, as penance, a
visit to New York, but  I would agree as well that I was sending
to the oriental from for a season".
    J didn´t go to Russia to fight, but to perform two misions, one
spiritual, the other political. By one side, he desired to known
the Caucasus, where Prometeus had been in chains, and study
the effects, on the russian people - and its substance, maded by
the forces he descride in Der Arbeiter. By the other side, though
not mentioned in the diaries, his "inspection trip" tried to known
the spirit condition of the german officials corps in the east front.
Junger was searching a Sila that could antagonize Hitler, a simply,
energic and brutal General of the "common people" capable of
make resistance the terrible "simplificator" Hitler was.  With .
tristia and resignation he writes in December the 19th: " as
Chichikov - in Death Souls, was peregrinating   from a rural
propietary to other, I am peregrinating from a general to other and
I contemplate their transformation in workers. Its necessary to
abandon the hope of encounter here a general with silanic or
napoleonic features[...]. Concerning his study of the effects on
russian people of the sovietic politic terror system, Junger
considers this one have affected only the surface. His coments
on the russias substance are fillng with simpathy. Junger thinked
then that it would be favourable for Germany to get support on
the east side, russian one over all, as it corresponded tp the best
prussian tradition. Instead of that, he encounter the country
desenchanted. Only  soldiers camaraderie, some childs plays
and Caucasian mountains allowed him to see some light rays in
that Inferno Tenebrae. Is also in that moments when the black prose
of Caucasian skecthes adquires some colour.

                                           Andrés Sanchez Pascual


Best regards
roberto

PS: I will quote EJ coments on Huxley as soon as I can.