Die Schere #12: Notes

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

DIE SCHERE #12: Notes
Seemingly a change of topic: no longer art is being discussed but the question is 
taken up whether the way or the goal is more important. As early as in ##16 and 
17 it will become evident that EJ combines this new topic with the ideas he has 
brought up so far. DIE SCHERE is certainly not a collection of disparate sayings 
but a complex web of interrelated ideas and images. 
In the second paragraph EJ takes on one of his favourite roles, that of the augur 
prophesying a Zeitenwende, a secular change –– a role he played, as I feel, most 
stridently in DER ARBEITER. He diagnoses an epochal change from the fact that 
people are becoming less prone to subscribe to the idea of progress and that 
accordingly the concept of the environment becomes more and more important. The 
augur notes wryly that progress is obviously causing more and more problems: 
"...der Schuh zu drücken beginnt" is an expression denoting ironic distance; even 
more cautious and aloof is the next phrase, "Der Weg beginnt abschüssig zu 
werden", insinuating that the road taken so far might lead into disaster. 
It should be noted here that EJ, decried so often as a conservative and 
occasionally even sporting himself this label (1), defines progress here without 
any polemic undertones and totally without resentment, rather with dèsinvolture, 
as "the intelligent mastering of the way" ( die intelligente Meisterung des 
Weges).
Somewhat biased, on the other hand, seems his judgement on the new hopes set on 
the environment being a way out of the problems we have run into on the road of 
progress. At first, he offers arguments for his scepticism: the idea of the 
environment is too vague and thus will cause new conflicts, since it is a fatal 
gift of the gods. But then he changes his tone again, lapsing into a "Raunen" not 
quite unlike Heidegger's clumsy games with German word roots. The effect is, to 
my mind, that the penultimate sentence of the aphorism ("Die Umwelt ist kein 
Weg...") can mean anything, but nothing in particular. However, he makes good by 
by characterizing the disturbing ambiguousness of the new keyword with a haunting 
line from Baudelaire. (Julien Hervin, the French translator of DIE SCHERE, notes 
that it is taken from stanza 10 of Les Phares, "un appel de chasseurs perdus dans 
les grands bois".)

(1) "Ich bin zwar noch Protestant, aber nur insofern, als ich noch Kirchensteuer 
bezahle, denn ich bin ja auf der anderen Seite auch konversativ."
Interview with ZDF on the eve of his 100th birthday. 
(cf.www.spiegel.de/kultur/pool/juenger_aussagen.html)
 
Günter Rebing