Juenger and Szymborska - cannot be mentioned on the same day

[Bertil Haggman <bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se>]

Dr Ujma wrote:
> 
> As to Nobel-Prize for Ernst Juenger, why should he get it, even the
> greatest admirers of his amongst the literary critics have never ever said
> that he produces great literature, or that any of his novels come anywhere
> near the great literature of the 20th century, or that his narrative could
> be compared with the novels of the great modernists, for example Woolf,
> Joyce, Th. Mann or even hermann Hesse or the great 20th century Italian
> authors. As a 'Literaturwissenschaftlerin' I can simply say, Juenger's
> novels are not very convincing as novels, if you judge them from a
> traditional or a modernist perspective, his narrative techniques as well as
> his characters are not very skillfully developed. His fictional work is a
> mere fictional illustration of theoretical ideas, which of course are very
> interesting. But since there is no Nobel prize for political or literary
> theory the idea of giving him the one for literature seems to be mildly
> absurd and has nothing to do with political correctness.
> Did I detect in Haggman's remarks about the 'Polish poetess' who got the
> Nobel prize an antipolish and antiwoman undertone? From what I read of her
> poetry, (only in translation unfortunately) she is certainly quite an
> interesting author and certainly rather more of a literata than Juenger,
> and she certainly was not a Stalinist and what is more important, because
> that is the only thing that matters, her work (from what i know from
> translations) is certainly not Stalinist. I wonder if you could say that
> much - if you exchange Stalinism for Totalitarianism - about 'In
> Stahlgewittern' or about 'Der Arbeiter'.
>  It is a bit absurd to moan about Political Correctness in connection with
> Juenger, because nearly all the prizes he has received, he received for
> political reasons, as for example the 'Goethe-Preis'. He is the only really
> important conservative intellectual in the country and if he dies our poor
> CDU politicians will be in real trouble, because there is nobody left who
> could serve as a standardbearer or as we say 'Gallionsfigur'.
> 
> His early works are definitly important, but not so much as literary works
> as as examples for conservative or reactionary modernist thinking, which
> are quite special because German reactionaries are usually radical
> antimodernists.
> Therefore Juenger has his place in German literary history, but one should
> not overestimate his achievements.

I am just sorry that no one shares my belief in the
Nobel prize for E.J. There are more pessimists out there than
I thought.

Concerning Szymborska's Stalinist pass I can only quote Jeannine Luczak-
Wild in Neue Zuercher Zeitung of 10 December 1996. Here is my
attempt to translate a poem Szymborska wrote on Stalin's death from a
Swedish
version in turn translated from German:

"Here is the party - the vision of humanity
Here is the party - the power and conscience of the people
Nothing will be forgotten of his life.
His party shatters the dark."

It is no wonder that Szymborska in an interview in the post-
communist review Polityka said she was no believer in
autobiographies and that she would protest any attempt
at trying to intrude into her private sphere.

Szymborska supported stalinism not only in a single
poem. She did it in two collections of poems, one
published in 1952 and one in 1954 (see recently
published _Encyklopedia Polski_. She even admitted
her stalinist past when receiving the Goethe prize (which
has been given to Juenger as well): "I fell for the
totalitarian temptation...". She thought communism was
the saviour after WWII. It was not until 1957 that she
began to question her stalinist ideology, four years after
the death of the dictator.

On your comments on Juenger's lack of greatness in his works
I have nothing to say. Everybody is intitled to his/hers view.
Personally I happen to believe he is the greatest German author
alive and that he certainly deserves the Nobel Prize.

Bertil Haggman
bertil.haggman@helsingborg.se