Re: [ejlist] "The horror, the horror" (Re: Juenger and Kosovo)

[Rene de Bakker <rbakker@bs18.bs.uva.nl>]

At 09:57 15-6-99 -0400, Carlos wrote:

>I agree with Eduardo's distinction of the early idealistic Juenger and the
>later decadent Juenger hugging the greens and Mitterand maybe a byproduct of
>his old age.
>As the Bible you can have many interpretations of Juenger as you want. The
>greens, the pacifists and the fascists will use Juenger for their own
>purpose.What will have been the position of Juenger in Kosovo? We can only
>speculate without being able to have a definite answer. We will be entering
>in a territory full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Nevertheless it
>is clear to me that Milosevic is fighting the titanic forces who all the
>enormous power will not be able to destroy the spirit.
>

Carlos,

The early "idealistic" Juenger is the soldier and the active nihilist of
"Der Arbeiter", and also the decadent of "Sturm" and of the Berlin of the
twenties and also the surrealist (according to Bohrer) of "Das
abenteuerliche Herz" (I). "Hugging the greens" is what he did from 0 to
102. I find it sometimes difficult to imagine that the writer of "Der
totale Mobilmachung" is the same as the one who wrote "Dalmatinischer
Aufenthalt" (1934). Maybe John would like to share his thoughts on this point.

We know from the diaries, that Juenger was surprised nothing was done in an
earlier state of this crisis. When you come at a certain point, everything
you do, or do not, is wrong. The scenario now is somewhat like a SF-film: A
weird fellow in the Kreml and plenty of sensitivities.

So the position of Juenger seems to me to be the following: In all the wars
this century there's only one winner: The worker. (The worker, by the way,
is not an empirical concept). And so it is now. Nobody wins, but the
weapons are perfectioned.  

Milosevic seems here to play the role of the anarchist, who keeps crossing
the road till he's caught. Cui bono?

greeting,

   René   

-----------------------------------
drs. René de Bakker
Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam
Afdeling Catalogisering Faculteiten
tel. 020-5252368