March 9, 2013

Ciclo Conferenze 2013 - Associazione Eumeswil Firenze

L'Associazione Eumeswil ha organizzato per il 2013 un ciclo di 24 conferenze sul tema: L'IMMAGINE DEL MONDO, che avra' inizio sabato 9 marzo alle ore 17 presso la sede delle Scuole Pie Fiorentine via Cavour, 94. Download il programma

La prima conferenza sarà di Antonio Vitolo che parlerà su: "Il mondo interno ed il mondo esterno degli adulti oggi". Seguirà sabato 23 Marzo, Guido Zanderigo su: "L'immagine del mondo e della sua fine secondo l'induismo". Nel ciclo si parlerà poi di Jünger, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Evola ed altri pensatori europe. Tra i relatori: Luca Crescenzi, che parlerà dei mondi simultanei nei romanzi di Ernst Junger; Giuseppe Lippi, il massimo studioso italiano di Lovecraft, curatore di Urania Mondadori; Amelia Valtolina, docente di letteratura tedesca e traduttrice del poeta espressionista Gottfried Benn; Paola Capriolo, scrittrice i cui romanzi, tradotti in varie lingue, rappresentano un momento significativo della letteratura italiana contemporanea.

February 4, 2013

Jünger Translation Competition!

Ernst Jünger Translation Competition Launched

The German Department at the University of Bristol is holding a translation competition and invites translations from German into English of extracts from some of Ernst Jünger’s travel writings. Prize money will be given to four entries, with one category limited to entries from current undergraduate students, and numerous book prizes will also be awarded. The deadline for submission of entries is 1 July 2013. Entries will be judged by Julian Evans (London), Christophe Fricker (Bristol), Thomas Friese (Vienna), Petra Rau (Norwich), and Robert Vilain (Bristol).

More information as well as an entry form is available at www.ernst-juenger-translation.info.

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was one of the most significant writers and thinkers of 20th-century Europe, and is one of the most controversial. He became famous with the publication in 1920 of In Stahl­gewittern [Storm of Steel], an account of his experiences in the trenches in the First World War. In the following eight decades, Jünger published more than fifty works, including diaries, novels, stories and essays. His novella Auf den Marmorklippen [On the Marble Cliffs, 1939] is a thinly veiled critique of the Nazi regime. Tributes by writers of international stature (including Jorge Luis Borges, Bruce Chatwin, and Heiner Müller), as well as visits from European heads of state and government (such as François Mitterrand, Roman Herzog, Helmut Kohl, and Felipe González) have helped secure Jünger a prominent place in intellectual debates across Europe.

In recent years, Jünger is emerging as a hidden ancestor of contemporary theoretical and societal discus­sions. Expert and popular audiences across Europe have become part of this development. This translation competition aims to promote the study of Ernst Jünger’s works in English.

December 11, 2012

Interview with translator of "The Adventurous Heart"

From the Telos Press Blog:

On Translating Ernst Jünger's The Adventurous Heart: An Interview with Thomas Friese
by Maxwell Woods

Ernst Jünger's The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios is now available for the first time in English translation from Telos Press. Maxwell Woods spoke with the book's translator, Thomas Friese, about the challenges of translating Jünger into English as well as the increasing relevance of the author's writings to our current social and political landscape. Purchase your copy of The Adventurous Heart here.
Maxwell Woods: In your preface to The Adventurous Heart, by Ernst Jünger, you write that "this book hooked me on the author for life." What is it about this particular book that you found so captivating? Do you find yourself returning to this book in your studies of Jünger? Of Jünger's work does this book hold a special place for you?
Thomas Friese: First impressions obviously have special value, and The Adventurous Heart was my first encounter with Jünger. It was an ideal start, since this book is a concise introduction to the worldview of the mature author. Ideally, all new readers would come to Jünger via this book—there are certainly worse ways, which are unfortunately also more common—i.e., through Der Arbeiteror Storms of Steel, or, worse still, through clichéd second-hand opinions.
I was also lucky enough to have encountered Jünger in an open, non-partisan context, among a group of people, the Association Eumeswil of Florence, who had already discovered the author's value and had no political agenda behind that interest. (In fact, my first reading of the book was in Quirino Principe's excellent Italian translation.) Unfortunately many encounter Jünger in a heavily ideological milieu, discolored by political stereotypes, which, whether left or right, equally detract from the true value of the author.

November 27, 2012

SPIEGEL-Rezension zur Biographie der Brüder Jünger

Ausschnitt:

Symbolfiguren der Rechten. Erst Stahlgewitter, dann saurer Regen

Von Sebastian Hammelehle
Friedrich Georg Jünger: "Im Lauf der Jahrzehnte an Aktualität noch gewinnen"                                  Rudolf Baucken/ Klett-Cotta


Wenige deutschsprachige Schriftsteller sind so umstritten wie Ernst Jünger. Nun hat der frühere "taz"-Redakteur Jörg Magenau eine bemerkenswerte Biografie über den Lieblingsautor der deutschen Rechten verfasst - und entdeckt dessen Bruder Friedrich Georg als Vorläufer der Öko-Bewegung.

Zum originalen Artikel >>>

November 18, 2012

FG Jünger's "The Failure of Technology: as ebook!

A fantastic recent find, which I trust readers will appreciate and help spread the word - an ebook of this classic and essential critique of modern "scientism" and technology, which has been out-of-print and virtually unfindable in English since the 1960's! It was translated in 1950 from the German original: "Die Perfektion der Technik" - which, btw, in German does not have the positive connotation of perfection in English, but simply implies the bringing to completion, to full development.


If you don't know the book, I cannot recommend it too highly! It as insightful as anything his brother Ernst wrote. It contains one of the original environmentalist visions, and its insights into the fundamental shortcomings and illusions of our science and technology have never been surpassed. FGJ gets down to the very heart of the matter, as more recent critiques have not been able to - the superior insight of the author also have been due to his position at a less developed stage of technology, which allowed a more detached, objective perspective.

A must read - spread the word and disseminate the book!

November 13, 2012

Gespräche (x 2):Jörg Magenau über die Brüder Friedrich Georg und Ernst Jünger

Gespräch an der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2012:



Die beiden Brüder Friedrich Georg und Ernst Jünger bildeten eine wahrhaft produktive Lebensgemeinschaft. Bei aller Unterschiedlichkeit ihrer Persönlichkeiten und ihrer intellektuellen Arbeit haben sie unendlich vieles miteinander geteilt – sie waren kampfesmutige Frontsoldaten, nationalistische Sozialrevolutionäre, Nazi-Verächter, Naturforscher, Schriftsteller und Dichter, Weltreisende und vertraute Freunde. Das alles blieb nicht ohne Spannungen, Konflikte und Meinungsdissonanzen, aber am Ende waren sie lebenslang vereint unterm Sternenzelt.

Jörg Magenau hat die Doppelbiographie der Brüder Jünger aus ihren Briefen und Tagebüchern heraus neu ins Licht gerückt. Harro Zimmermann hat mit ihm gesprochen.

Gespräch Deutschlandradiokultur:


Jörg Magenau im Gespräch mit Joachim Scholl

Ernst Jünger, Autor des Kriegsromans "In Stahlgewittern", ist bis heute umstritten. Weniger bekannt ist sein Bruder Friedrich Georg. Dieser sei der "genuinere Schriftsteller" von beiden gewesen, sagt Jörg Magenau, Autor einer neu erschienenen Doppel-Biografie.

Friedrich Georg und Ernst Jünger seien stets eng miteinander verbunden gewesen, sagt Magenau. Ernst, der Zeit seines Lebens einen Ruf als nationalistischer Krieger hatte, habe viel von seinem Bruder profitiert. Dieser sei sehr gebildet gewesen, habe neben philosophischen Werken auch zahlreiche Lyrikbände geschrieben. Die Verbundenheit zeige sich in den zahlreichen Briefen, die die Zeit beider Weltkriege überspannen.

In den 1920er-Jahren seien beide "Pamphletschreiber" gewesen, noch rechtslastiger als die Nationalsozialisten. Als die Nazis allerdings die Macht übernommen hätten, hätten sich beide sofort von ihnen distanziert.

October 22, 2012

Jünger Lesung: "Am Sarazenenturm"

Eine sechsteilige Lesung des "Am Sarazenenturm" von Ernst Jünger.











September 1, 2012

EUMESWIL in English - reprint!

I have always maintained that Eumeswil is Ernst Jünger's defining and far and away most important  work. At home I even have three copies of the hardcover English edition (Marsilio Publishers, New York: 1994) - which I picked up for $10 each on the bargain table at a Chapters in Vancouver 10 years ago!

A pity I did not buy everything on the table - as you see below:

If "the market is never wrong", this seems to be a confirmation of my highest opinion of this book.

It should also be an incentive for Marsilio to reprint - or for some other publisher, since the English translation rights in this case seem to have remained with the translator.

In the meantime the impatient reader always has the option to take matters into his own hands and look online for downloadable versions. At these high prices, I cannot imagine that a cult book like this is not available somewhere on the internet for free.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon only seems to be growing. I would pay this much for this book, but I am an exception - I already love the book, and, if need be, I could afford the sacrifice. But many cannot, however much they want to have the book. Such people go online and find free versions - and one can understand their position.

From all perspectives, it would really be time for a reprint!

August 28, 2012

"The Adventurous Heart": Solitary Sentinels

ON SALE FROM SEPT 1
One last appetizer has been conceded by the publishers before this new Jünger translation goes on sale Sept 1....

Solitary Sentinels - Berlin 

Swedenborg condemned the “spiritual stinginess” that locked away his dreams and insights.

But what of the spirit’s contempt for minting and issuing itself into general circulation, what of its aristocratic self-sufficiency in Ariosto’s magical castles? The inexpressible is degraded when it expresses and makes itself communicable; it is like gold that must be mixed with copper to make it useful as currency. A dreamer, attempting to catch his dreams in the light of dawn, watches them slip away through the mesh of his thoughts, like a Neapolitan fishermen watching the fleeing silver shoals that occasionally stray up into the surface waters of the bay.

In the collections of the Leipzig Mineralogical Institute, I once observed a foot-high rock crystal won from the inner depths of the Sankt Gotthard during tunneling work – a most solitary and exclusive dream of matter. Among the things that Nigromontanus taught me was the certain existence among us of a select group of men who have long withdrawn from the libraries and from the dust of the public arena, who are at work in the innermost spaces, in the obscurest of Tibets. He spoke of men who sit alone in nocturnal rooms, immobile as the rock through whose hollows that current flashes, which keeps all the mill-wheels and hordes of machines running in the outside world - but here it is liberated from all purpose and captured by hearts, which, as the hot, trembling cradles of all forces and powers, have withdrawn forever from the outer light.

At work? Are these the vital arteries in which the blood becomes visible under the skin? The weightiest dreams are dreamed on anonymous beds of soil, in zones from whose perspective work has something of an accidental character, a lesser degree of necessity. Michelangelo chiseled just the contours of the faces into the marble as his last step, then he left the raw blocks to slumber in grottos like the cocoons of butterflies, whose inwardly enfolded life he entrusted to eternity. The prose of “Will to Power” – an uncleared battlefield of thought, the relic of a terrible, solitary accountability, a workshop full of keys, thrown down by someone with no time to unlock. Even someone in the zenith of his creativity like Cavaliere Bernini speaks of an aversion to the completed work, and Huysmans writes in a late introduction to “A Rebours” of the impossibility of reading one’s own books. This too is a paradoxical image – like that of the owner of an original work who studies poor commentaries on it. The great, unfinished novels that were not completed because their very conception overwhelmed them - they resemble the construction of cathedrals.

At work? Where are those cloisters of the holy in which souls have won the treasure of grace in wondrous midnight triumphs, where are the hermits’ towers that rise as monuments to higher companionships? And where has the awareness remained that thoughts and feelings are really immortal, that something like a secret double accounting exists, by which all expenditures rematerialize as income in some very distant place? My only consoling memory in this regard is connected with moments from the war, when the sudden light of an explosion tore from the darkness the lonely figure of a sentinel who must have long been standing there. From these innumerable, dreadful night watches in the blackness, treasures have been accumulated that will only later be consumed.

Belief in these solitary men springs from a longing for a fraternity without name, for a deeper spiritual relationship than is possible between human beings.

July 28, 2012

Ernst Jünger - Goethe Preis Rede



Und hier den Radio Vatikan Artikel dazu.

From "The Adventurous Heart": The Combinatorial Inference

One more appetiser from the forthcoming Jünger translation "The Adventurous Heart. Figures and Capriccios". I might be permitted to add one or two more, then it will in any case be September and you can order the book yourselves from Telos Press!

The Combinatorial Inference - Berlin

Higher insight does not live in the separate compartments but in the structure of the world. It corresponds to a mode of thinking that does not move around in isolated and parceled-off truths but rather in meaningful connections, whose power to order lies in its combinatorial faculty.

The tremendous pleasure that comes from engaging with such minds resembles a walk through a landscape distinguished as much by the span of its boundaries as by the richness of its particulars. The viewpoints alternate in a whirl of multiplicity, yet all the while the glance takes them in with an even serenity, never losing itself in abstrusity and malformations or in pettiness and eccentricity. Despite the plethora of variations that the mind is able to generate and the ease with which it can switch fields, it perseveres with effortless rigor in making its connections. Its powers appear to grow as much when it turns from the motif to the execution, as when it returns from execution to motif. Using a variation on Clausewitz’s fine image, we can compare this mode of movement with a walk through a convoluted garden in which we are able from every point to see the high obelisk erected at its center.

July 6, 2012

The Adventurous Heart - Figures and Capriccios. Publisher's information sheet

Download here - for easier viewing, and to help spread the word to some certainly grateful ears.

The Adventurous Heart - Figures and Capriccios. Telos Marketing information

July 1, 2012

Drogen-Experimente des Ernst Jünger - radioZeitreise

Von radioZeitreisen (Bayern 2, 01.07.2012) kommt diese kurz und bündige Zusammenfassung des "Annäherung. Drogen und Rausch" (1970) von Ernst Jünger.  Eine wesentliche Seite Jüngers, die fast nie erwähnt wird!

June 28, 2012

From "The Adventurous Heart": Terror

Another short appetiser from the forthcoming publication of The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios from Telos Press:

Terror - Berlin 

There is a type of thin, broad sheet metal that is often used in small theaters to simulate thunder. I imagine a great many of these metal sheets, yet still thinner and more capable of a racket, stacked up like the pages of a book, one on top of another at regular intervals, not pressed together but kept apart by some unwieldy mechanism.

I lift you up onto the topmost sheet of this mighty pack of cards, and as the weight of your body touches it, it rips with a crack in two. You fall, and you land on the second sheet, which shatters also, with an even greater bang. Your plunge strikes the third, fourth, fifth sheet and so on, and with the acceleration of the fall the impacts chase each other closer and closer, like a drumbeat rising in rhythm and power. Ever more furious grows the plummet and its vortex, transforming into a mighty, rolling thunder that ultimately bursts the limits of consciousness.