#forest passage

[ahumourlessworld]

"Myth is not prehistory: it is timeless reality, that repeats itself in history. It is a good sign that our century is finding meaning again in the myths.” - Ernst Jünger, ‘The Forest Passage’ (1951) [p. 39]

[sylf8sothcyning]

The retreat into the forest (Waldgang) is not to be understood as a form of anarchism directed against the world of technology, although this is a temptation, particularly for those who strive to regain a myth. Undoubtedly, mythology will appear again. It is always present and arises in a propitious hour like a treasure coming to the surface. But man does not return to the realm of myth, he reencounters it when the age is out of joint and in the magic circle of extreme danger. It is not a question therefore of choosing the forest or the ship but of choosing both the forest and the ship.

Ernst Jünger, Der Waldgang, 1951.

[marmork]

[glaserneklippen]

Dionysus is the master of ceremonies, the leader of the festive procession. When Hölderlin refers to him as the spirit of community, this community is to be understand as including the dead, indeed especially them. Theirs is the glow that envelopes the Dionysian celebration, the deepest fount of cheerfulness. The doors of the kingdom of death are thrown wide open, and golden abundance streams forth. This is the meaning of the grapevine, in which the powers of earth and sun are united, of the masks, of the great transformation and recurrence.

Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage

[sylf8sothcyning]

The illusion of encirclement will also disappear there with, and another solution will always become visible beyond the automatic one. Two paths will then be possible — or, in other words, free choice will have been restored. Even assuming the worst possible scenario of total ruin, a difference would remain like that between night and day.The one path climbs to higher realms, to self-sacrifice, or to the fate of those who fall with weapon in hand; the other sinks into the abysses of slave pens and slaughterhouses, where primitive beings are wed in a murderous union with technology. There are no longer destinies there — there are only numbers. To have a destiny, or to be classified as a number — this decision is forced upon all of us today, and each of us must face it alone. The individual today is as sovereign as an individual in any other period of history, perhaps even stronger, because as collective powers gain ground, so the individual is separated from the old established associations and must stand for himself alone. He becomes Leviathan’s antagonist, indeed his conqueror and his tamer.

Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage, 1951.

Illustration: Hubert Lanzinger. View of Klausen (Chiusa) and Säben in autumn, 1931.

[lostprofiles]

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