[Juenger-list] EJ, DIE SCHERE #72: Note 1: Fantasy and Utopia

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EJ, DIE SCHERE #72: Note 1

After having explored the worlds of the occult and the one beyond death EJ turns 
to another realm beyond our experience, the worlds created by fantasy literature. 
He states a basic rule for such literary enterprises : they must be credible, not 
utterly fantastic. [Would Stephen King or Mervyn Peake pass the test?]. As is his 
wont, EJ backs up the general rule with an example, Gulliver's Travels. Fantastic 
though it may seem, Jonathan Swift's book [Travels in Several Remote Nations of 
the World by Lemuel Gulliver, 1726] remains in the realm of the possible since 
the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians in their respective utopias reflect the 
vast differences of human greatness in the real world. The latter are in their 
turn tersely and graphically corroborated by famous words of Heraclitus and 
Napoleon. The remark that Gulliver's Travels illustrates Leviathan deserves a 
separate note.
 
Finally, EJ quotes the diagnosis of one of his French friends to drive home his 
point: Gulliver's Travels is in fact not merely fantastic, but also credible 
because being a satire it is closely linked with the realm of the possible.