DIE SCHERE #39: Text, translation, notes

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Ernst Jünger, DIE SCHERE #39
Text

Daß die Zurechtweisung des Schreckens den Antonius auszeichnete, geht aus seiner 
Vita im Ganzen wie im Einzelnen hervor, zum Beispiel aus seinem Zuspruch an den 
blinden Didymus, den er verehrte und dem er in Alexandria begegnete. Er hatte 
ihn gefragt, ob er den Verlust des Augenlichts betrauere, was jener nicht 
leugnete. Antonius tröstete ihn: was sei eine Sache, die der Mensch mit Mücken 
und Ameisen teile, im Vergleich zu den geistigen Augen, die erlaubten, sogar die 
Engel zu sehen. 

Sokrates hätte das anders gesagt, und auch wir, zweihundert Jahre nach Kant, 
fänden andere Worte dafür. Das tut nichts zur Sache; es gibt ein Licht für die 
Blinden -abgesehen davon, daß Musik sie stärker erleuchtet als vordem. Das 
greift in den Alltag - man hört von Blinden, die operiert wurden und den Arzt 
beschrieben, den sie zuvor weder gesehen noch gekannt hatten. Übrigens lehnte 
Antonius es ab, sich mit dem »vom Logos erleuchteten« Sokrates zu befassen, wie 
ihm empfohlen wurde - sein Buch sei die Natur.
Didymus war früh erblindet; er galt in Alexandria, wo es an großen Geistern 
nicht fehlte, als »Allberühmter« und als einer der ersten Gelehrten seiner Zeit. 
Besonders erfreulich ist, daß er die Vorexistenz der Seelen anerkannte und die 
Ewigkeit der Höllenstrafen ablehnte. Eben deshalb wurde seine Lehre von späteren 
Synoden verworfen und ihm kein Platz unter den Kirchenvätern gewährt. Auch darin 
folgte er seinem Vorbild Origines.


DIE SCHERE #39: DIE SCHERE #39: Translation by Gary Kern
 
That the correction of fear distinguished Antonius emerges from his vita
in general as well as in particular, for example from his words of
encouragement to the blind Didymus, whom he esteemed, when he met him in
Alexandria.  He asked him whether he lamented losing the light of his
eyes, which Didymus did not deny.  Antonius consoled him:  what was a
thing that man shares with gnats and ants in comparison with the eyes of
the mind that enable one to see even angels.

Socrates would have put it differently, and we, too, 200 years after
Kant, would find different words for it.  But that does not matter;
there is a light for the blind, not to mention that music enlightens
them more forcefully than before.  That applies to everyday life--one
hears of blind people who were operated upon and who described the
surgeon whom they had never seen or known before.  Incidentally, when
advised to study Socrates, who was "enlightened by the logos," Antonius
declined--his book was nature.
 
Didymus was blinded early in life.  In Alexandria, where there was no
lack of great minds, he was known as the "All Famous" and as one of the
foremost scholars of his time.  It is especially delightful that he
accepted the pre-existence of the soul and rejected the eternity of
hell's punishments.  Precisely for that reason his teachings were
condemned by later synods and he was accorded no place among the church
fathers.  Here too he followed his paragon, Origenes.


DIE SCHERE #39: Notes by Günter Rebing

EJ digresses here from the topic of second sight by explaining why Antonius 
(also called Saint Anthony in the encyclopedias but since EJ drops the "Sankt" 
translating "Antonius" seems more appropriate) having been introduced because he 
was gifted with a kind of second sight, is interesting and important for him in 
other respects, too. He withstood the onslaught of the demons that had come to 
tempt him; they must have been terrible for him in spite of the beautiful images 
they might have brought along because he was a hermit who had dedicated his life 
to God and to purity of mind. What made him resist and even triumph over his 
adversaries was his radical Platonic conviction that the corporeal eye and what 
is sees is inferior to the mind's eye which is capable of perceiving the angels, 
divine reality that really matters. 
Socrates would have granted that the eye of the mind can see the logos, but Kant 
taught that the mind can never directly perceive the Ding-an-sich, the real 
reality; so our latterday conception of what the eye of the mind is capable of 
seeing will differ from what Antonius believed. However, EJ brushes aside our 
modern agnosticism and sides with Antonius. As he does elsewhere in this book EJ 
cites an everyday occult phenomenon as proof. 
Digressing now even further afield, EJ adds a more personal note. Like his 
mentor, Origen, Didymus held certain heretic ideas which are dear to EJ: that 
the individual soul exists before the body is born, and that there is no eternal 
punishment in hell - or, as Origines believed more radically, that there will 
not even be a Last Judgment: Omnium rerum finis erit vitiorum abolitio (1)

(1) See DIE SCHERE #16. At the end of all things all sins will be disregarded 
(=Das Ende aller Dinge wird aller Schuld Vergessung sein).