At the Time Wall - Ernst Jünger
Part Five
Continuing this essay.
Arguably Jünger’s greatest work, an essay on the unease of time, from the world revolution to the earth revolution. As a successor to the philosophies of history of Herder and Hamann here Jünger struggles with poetry, myth, Spengler’s morphology, prehistory, and the interim at the end of history.
Because of the importance of this work I suggest comparing it with other translations, such as the one provided by Ormlore. And feel free to offer any suggestions if you have any experience translating or reading German.
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In the consideration of character, both the scientific method and an intuition quite different from it are equally applicable. Here we come close to the language of astrological signs, where characters acquire a force that shatters personal singularity as well as historical uniqueness. Something there seems to be returning, something that was once known becomes visible in time, and is understood by people not by virtue of reasons, but as a figure that reveals itself.
Images of animals emerge, when Moses and Alexander are shown with horns, when Christ says: ‘I am the lamb’, when Heinrich appears as a lion and Clemenceau as a tiger. Mythical figures are also celebrating their return to popular memory. One of their characteristics is the doubt about whether they lived or not.
In the context of history, there is repetition, but not return. Achilles returns in Alexander, but the first Napoleon does not return in the third. Within calculable time, there may be analogy, but never identity. Fathers can appear, but not the Father. This is what the Arian quarrel was about, where the resemblance or identity of the Son with the Father was debated. In the deepest sense, the problems of the time were at stake.
With the return, something penetrates man that is stronger than memory. This something becomes identical to him, just as man and woman become identical in begetting, where the timeless creative force returns to temporal life. Without return, there are only dates, there are no more festivals.