These letters were published along with Der Arbeiter and Maxima-Minima. We include them here since they help clarify the image of this difficult figure.
Delayed in French for this reason, there was an English edition in the 1980s (or at least a planned one). More here on the difficulties of translating it to French:
"One can locate the whole of Marxism in the form of the worker, but not the reverse. Machine technology is the garment of the worker, even his global language.
La figure du travaileur.” “Figure” is first of all not “phenomenon” (Erscheinung), it is a contouring within the phenomenal world. "Travail" goes back to the Latin “tripalium,” an instrument of torture. “Arbeit” (work) comes from the Gothic “arpeo,” which means inheritance."
Feb. 6, 1980's translation confuses Jünger's French publisher Christian Bourgois (no 'e'!) with 'the Bourgeois' as social type... Also, 10/10/1980: "the figure is not to be understood either as a class or as economic or national greatness." seems a mistranslation of eine ... Grösse, a quantity, as in a known or unknown quantity, a type of phenomenon: here economic or national.
God ! It was Junger who delayed the translation?
I wondered why it wasn’t in English until 2017, as far as I can tell.
“As you know, I have been trying to prevent this translation for decades. “ - EJ
Delayed in French for this reason, there was an English edition in the 1980s (or at least a planned one). More here on the difficulties of translating it to French:
"One can locate the whole of Marxism in the form of the worker, but not the reverse. Machine technology is the garment of the worker, even his global language.
La figure du travaileur.” “Figure” is first of all not “phenomenon” (Erscheinung), it is a contouring within the phenomenal world. "Travail" goes back to the Latin “tripalium,” an instrument of torture. “Arbeit” (work) comes from the Gothic “arpeo,” which means inheritance."
Feb. 6, 1980's translation confuses Jünger's French publisher Christian Bourgois (no 'e'!) with 'the Bourgeois' as social type... Also, 10/10/1980: "the figure is not to be understood either as a class or as economic or national greatness." seems a mistranslation of eine ... Grösse, a quantity, as in a known or unknown quantity, a type of phenomenon: here economic or national.
Thank you. Will check and make the changes.
Thanks for this-