Re: [ejlist] DIE SCHERE #38: Text, translation, notes: Elysium?

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

"I don't think the "after" is Juengers concern. "

René, 
You are perfectly right. The idea of elysium is alien to EJ's thought, and if 
one tries to explain EJ one should do it first within his own horizon. Touché.

"In "Die Schere" Juenger
stands between the domain where the shears  are cutting, which is the
domain of time, and the domain where they don't "anymore", which is the
domain of timelessness, (and not eternity, as J. keeps on saying). Whether
there are gods in elysium is questionnable, at least there are no temples
in the promised city. The gods represent the timeless, which somehow we are
connected to. All Annaeherung is directed to the timeless, or "Das
Ungesonderte" or the absolute. Names of gods are only symbols, means of
expressing the unexpressible, which have to be left when the passage stands
before.

We are dealing here with a man, who 75 years ago lay heavily wounded on the
battlefield and watched the stones around him, which showed to him a secret
order (somewhere in the WW1-diaries) and who, since then didn't desist from
the question of life _and_ death."    

>So the drug addict incurs the wrath of the 
>gods and will be punished, by the depression afterwards, the "turkey", by 
>delirium, by premature senility. 

"Sure, but in the meantime he is able to steal something precious, like
Prometheus. In "Annaeherungen" Juenger says, that a single experience can
change permanently your view of things. But repetition would only weaken it."

In fact, the whole book is about the risky and ambiguous rewards you may get 
from drugs and intoxication. As risky and ambiguous they may be, however, EJ 
still regards them as rewards, as a curse only if you handle them foolishly. I 
find it remarkable that in the quoted passage from ANNÄHERUNGEN #302 where the 
alternative of the spiritual way is deemed superior and preferable this judgment 
is put forward in form of a cautious question, and even this question is put as 
a quotation in the mouth of a friend.

Günter