DIE SCHERE #33: Text, Translation, Notes

[Rebing@t-online.de (Rebing)]

Ernst Jünger - Die Schere #33
> 
> 33
>  
>  Daß das große Tor durch ein Unwetter eingestürzt war, erfuhr die Ahne
>  erst später, doch schon in der Vorschau war es geschehen, war es
>  unumstößliche Vergangenheit.
>  Das Vexierende solcher Berichte ruft eine Gleichgewichtsstörung hervor.
>  Wenn wir die Zeit als Gefährt, etwa als Schiff, betrachten, scheint sie
>  plötzlich stille zu stehen; das ist umwerfend. Jetzt heißt es umsteigen.
>  Der Wechsel von meßbarer und Schicksalszeit verwirrt den Betroffenen.
>  Beide sind schwer unter einen Hut zu bringen, wie im Großen Astronomie
>  und Astrologie, auch Naturwissenschaft und Theologie. Und doch ist das
Ø seit jeher möglich gewesen und wird immer wieder möglich sein.

 

Walter's Translation

33
That the big gate had collapsed in heavy weather, the ancestress only came to
know later on, but in the preview already it had occurred, it was irrefutably
past.

The vexatious part in reports of this kind puts one off balance. Seeing time
as a vehicle, maybe as a boat, it suddenly seems to stand still  -  this is
upsetting. Now it is on to change trains. The alteration of measurable time
and time of fate confuses the involved one. They are difficult to pair, like
in the big scale astronomy and astrology, also science and theology. But still
it has forever been possible and will always again be possible.

DIE SCHERE #33: Notes

EJ rephrases his conviction that the Vorschau is in fact a Rückschau: events 
seen in second sight are not events of the future but have already happened. And 
again he concedes that this may be hard to swallow. He describes the 
psychological effect of such stories as he has just told, and he explains it. 
The vexatious element in those stories pushes you out of your habitual 
experience of time. Since you are used to live by the idea that time is a 
vehicle like a ship you are pushed off balance when having to realize that 
suddenly it has come to a standstill.You are forced to change over to another 
vehicle, i.e. give up reckoning with measurable time and adopt the radically 
different concept of "Schicksalszeit". (This is a term difficult to translate 
because it is not a word current in the German language but is coined by EJ; it 
means I believe something like "a dimension of time in which fateful events 
happen"). The transition from measurable time to Schicksalszeit is as difficult 
to make as that between astronomy and astrology or that between science and 
theology.

In the climactic last sentence of the text EJ insists that such a transition has 
always been and will always be possible. This is one of the basic tenets of EJ's 
philosophy after his predominantly political and nationalist phase came to an 
end with Das Abenteuerliche Herz. The Weltanschauung of the later EJ encompasses 
both science and theology, the rational and material as well as the irrational 
and spiritual aspects of reality. In this later phase politics and history are 
merely subdivisions of myth ("Zeitalter der Titanen") or mere minutes in the 
calendar of the universe ("Erdzeit"). Is this why so many students and critics 
of his work, particularly in Germany, seem to be attracted, fascinated, baffled 
and vexed much more by his early political phase than by what he wrote later? 
Are we not yet ready or mature for his Spätwerk? EJ hardly ever (one exception 
might be that brief passage in his speech on the Verdun battlefield) retracted 
explicitly his radical political views of the twenties, including those of DER 
ARBEITER. But as Bertil recently pointed out, they have tacitly been replaced, 
superseded, or broadened by the later development of his ideas. Wouldn't thus 
his late writings deserve more attention than they are getting now in the 
general discussion?

Günter Rebing