Die Schere 19 & 20 (again)

[Gary Kern <gkern@alumni.Princeton.EDU>]

Dear Jüngerites:

With gratitude to Walter for his fine translations, which spare me much
work looking up words in the German-English dictionary, and with
apologies to him for tampering with them, since I do not mean to suggest
that I could do a better job from the start, I would like to make a few
changes, just for the sake of the English.

#19

One would underrate the great feats of physics if he relegated them to
mechanics or even to economics.  Here it is more than a matter of facts.
This pertains especially to the Promethean scale of the New World, with
its advances in conquering space and time.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the accommodations,
precisely where they bring well-being, do not satisfy, but rather
increasingly [zunehmend] cause Angst.  They cannot offer what the gods
have granted.  They do not reach beyond the perishable, and indeed do
not ever aim beyond it.

In this respect, the wonders of physics are no more than
metaphors--though highly meaningful if recognized as such.  The plunder
of the universe becomes a gift, a loan.  New prayers, new mysteries.

******************
Notes:

I think the word Gleichnis, in this section, cannot be translated as
"parable," though it was properly translated as such in #17 (when
followed by Vorbilder and Sprichwörtern).  Here, in the context of das
Vergängliche, it cannot fail to summon up the last lines of Goethe's
Faust:  "Alles Vergängliche/ Is nur ein Gleichnis..."  So the words
"metaphor, symbol, likeness, approximation" seem more appropriate than
"parable," which tells a story.  It means the English reader will lose
something in translation, not seeing the word Gleichnis behind the
different words that will be required to translate it.  Günter Rebing
points out that the word Erdenrest, used in #16, relates to Faust, so it
appears that Jünger is consciously developing a parallel.
*********************************************************

#20

Should a trip be closed off, it reaches its destination, though not
always at the intended spot.  It can also be broken off; there are times
in which unforeseen circumstances are quite the rule.  The destination
is always and everywhere possible; the traveller carries it with him
like his watch.  If the way is taken as a passion, the cross is there
from the start.

No one dies before completing his task.  Mostly it is not recognized. 
Cecil Rhodes, according to Spengler "a giant in patent leather shoes,"
on his deathbed:  "And so much to do!"  That raises the question:  "And
where is Rhodesia today?"

"Where is the salute of drums and trumpets? (Omar the tent-maker).

Spengler places Cecil Rhodes among the figures of the 21st century. 
That was more a backward look than a look forward on a Zeitgeist not
content with imperialism.

**************************
Notes:

Here it is impossible to retain the associations in the German. 
"Wanderung" just doesn't translate well, if I understand it correctly to
embody both the sense of travelling and wandering.  "Trip" does not
convey the romance of the word, while "wandering" would be too random.
Likewise J. writes that the wonders of physics can be grasped as
symbols--erkannt, but that a person's life task may not be
recognized--verkannt.  To retain the parallel in English, you would have
to translate "recognized"--"misrecognized."  "Ziel" in the first
instance translates best as "destination," in the second as "goal."  The
first sentence of paragraph two can also be translated:  "No one dies
before fulfilling his assignment."

The reference to Omar the tent maker seems clearly to summon up the
Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, but I was unable to find the citation in Edward
Fitzgerald's translation.  

Comment:

Here I must take exception to the master.  Yes, when Mozart died young
he attained his goal, that of the immortal talent who died young.  And
so with all those who die young--they are always remembered as such. 
But to say that their task is completed, their destiny fulfilled, is to
impose a fatalism on human life so heavy as to proclaim that whatever
happens is right.

It is one thing to accept the folly of the world and accommodate oneself
to it with a bemused desinvolture, but another thing to put a stamp of
approval on all the tragic fates, the ordinary hopes cut off, the heroic
efforts blocked off.  From the most abstract point of view, everything
that happens can be comprehended.  If you are imprisoned, you can turn
inward, find your goal in meditation, and perhaps come out a better
person.  Solzhenitsyn blessed his prison experience, but he cursed
prison forever after.  If you are tortured and killed, you have reached
your goal, and perhaps others regard you as a martyr.  But that was not
your task, rather it was the wrong task.  And if no one saw you die in
the wastes of Siberia, and nobody cared?  Where then is the destination
reached, the goal fulfilled, the greeting of drums and trumpets?

Jünger changes the argument unfairly when he brings in Cecil Rhodes and
Spengler's assessment of him.  A man can accomplish much, and yet the
course of the times--the Zeitgeist--plow over his accomplishment.  He
can also accomplish much and foolishly on his deathbed bemoan that he
cannot accomplish more.  But neither is the same thing as being cut off,
blocked off in one's life path, and so Rhodes has nothing to do with the
chief assertion here, that no one dies before completing his task.

Perhaps in this meditation and at points in those immediately preceding,
Jünger is trying still to deal with the loss of his son in WWII.  He is
trying to reflect that, though cut down young, he reached a goal and
remained beloved by his father forever after.  But the ramifications of
J's meditation, its application to other fates, erase all human striving
and preach a fatalistic quietism.  We might as well give up right now,
because we shall have accomplished as much whenever we stop.  I can
shoot myself, and I have reached my goal.  I can keep on working like a
maniac on my research and writing projects, and when I die (whenever I
die) I have reached my goal.  I can jerk off, and I have reached my
goal.  A drunk driver can kill me tomorrow, and I've done it--my writing
projects, they're finished!  It's preposterous.

I prefer the story by Borges in which a novelist faces a firing squad. 
As the bullet approaches him, it freezes, and so does everything else. 
The writer understands that he is being given time to complete his work
in his mind.  When he conceives the last word, time begins again and the
bullet hits home.  The story signifies a great number of things, but
chiefly that the proper conclusion to a work of art is not its
interruption, but its proper conclusion.

GK