Кристаллография Невидимого. Боль, Эрос и Темпоральность у Эрнста Юнгера

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SANDRO GORGONE
CRISTALLOGRAFIE
OF THE INVISIBLE
Pain, eros and temporality in Ernst Jiinger
MIMESIS NECKLACE
essays and narratives on aesthetics and philosophy
This volume was published with the partial contribution of the scientific research funds of the University of Messina.
© 2002 - Mimesis Cultural Association

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to my grandparents, by their light

Thanks
This writing was born from a pain and from the impassive gaze that rested on it,
demanding that the laceration of that suffering become a flight of words and harmony of
forms. In the thoughtfulness of the voice, in the silences of the paths, in the generosity of
the restrained gestures and in the 'pitiful' transparency of the events, Caterina Resta gave
me the possibility of the path of approach in which the essential plot of these pages consists.
In the "subtle hunts" of the Jiingerian universe, I was also guided by the watchful and
patient gaze of Luisa Bonesio, to whom I owe, among other things, the initiation, in the
mountains of Sondalo, to the collection of mushrooms, the whose oblique and happy light
illuminates, here and there, between these lines, warm autumn clearings.
Proofreading has finally become an exciting training ground
glances thanks to the scrupulous passion of Rita Fulco.
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
The vision of the enigma p. 11
I. "TERRA VINTA GIVES US THE STARS" - THE PAIN

1. Dionysus torn apart p. 29
2. The dream of analgesia 3. p. 33
The sacrifice 4. p. 37
The mask of the Titans 5. Die p. 41
Schleife 6. Fragile p. 49
splendor 7. At the p. 56
customs station 8. Lo. say p. 63
p. 68
Il. "YOUR WONDERFUL CARESES, MY SISTER AND BRIDE" - FRIENDSHIP

AND EROS 1. Giving p. 71
solitude 2. The agreement of time, the light in the world p. 84
III. "A BROKEN MESH IN THE NET" - THE ESCAPE OF TIME

1. The flight of Icarus p. 105
2. Stolen time 3. The p. 118
Great Passage p. 131
ABBREVIATIONS
References to the volumes of Ji.inger's complete works (Siimtliche Werke, Klett-

Cotta, Stuttgart) will be abbreviated using the following acronyms:
sw 1 Volume 1: Diary I: The First World War, 1 978.

SW2 Volume 2: Diary li: Radiations I, 1979.
SW3 Volume 3: Diary /li: Radiations 111 979.
SW4 Volume 4: Diary IV: Radiations /li, Seventy Ve1Weht I, 1982.
SW6 Volume 6: Diary VI: Travel diary, 1 982.
SW7 Volume 7: Essays I: Reflections on Time, 1 980.
SW8 Volume 8: Essays left: The Worker, 1981.
SW9 Volume 9: Essays /li: The adventurous heart, 1979.
sw 10 Volume 1 O: Essays IV: Subtle Hunts, 1 980.
sw 11 Band 1 1 : Essays V.· Anniihrungen, 1 978.
sw 12 Volume 12: Essays VI: Versions I, 1 979.
sw 13 Volume 13: Essays VII: Versions left, 1981.
sw 14 Band 14: Essays V/li: Ad hoc, 1978.
sw 15 Volume 15: Narrative writings li: Narratives, 1978.
sw 16 Volume 16: Narrative writings left: Heliopolis, 1980.
sw 17 Volume 17: Narrative writings left: Eumeswill, 1 980.
sw 19 Volume 19: Essays IX: Versions /li, 1999.
SW21 Volume 21: Diary V/li: Radiations VI, Seventy Ve1Weht IV, 2001.
Time is poor not only because God is dead, but

also because mortals are barely able to know
their mortalness. They are not yet masters of
their own essence. Death retreats into the
enigmatic. The mystery of the pain remains
veiled. You don't learn to love.
M. Heidegger, Why poets?
What your fear invokes left written will not be

able to save you; You are not the others
Center of the , and you find yourself now
labyrinth that your steps Ordained. The

agony of Jesus or Socrates does
not save you, nor the strong golden
Siddhartha who accepted death In a
garden, at the decline of the day.
Dust too is the word written by
you, or the verb spoken by your
mouth. There is no mercy in Fate And God's
night has no boundaries.
Your matter is time, incessant Time. You
are every lonely moment.
JL Borges, You are not the others.
INTRODUCTION
The vision of the enigma
Silent friend of the many Femen, feel

how your breath increases the space.
In the gleam of the dark bell towers let

you blare. [ ... ]
Be at the crossroads of your

senses, this night of supreme magical
1
power, their strange encounter.

RM Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus.
Let's say someone was untied and

immediately forced to stand up, turn their
neck, walk and look up at the light and,
doing all this, felt pain.
Plato, Republic.
According to an acute definition by his brother Friedrich Georg, Ernst Jiinger would be an Augenmensch2, a man of
the eyes. In fact, no passion was greater in him than that of observing the surrounding reality, both natural and human,
focusing above all on the apparently most insignificant details. Hence his predilection for entomology to which he dedicated
much of his energy and time. Many of his works should be considered co-
«Tacitus friend of many distances, feel how the space grows with every breath you take. I
With the dark bells swinging in the cell I toll too. [ ... ] In this night in which everything
overflows, be a magical virtue at the crossroads of your senses, Be the sense of their
strange encounters" (RM Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, part II, XXIX, ed. it. in Poesie
(1907-1926), edited by A. Lavagetto, Einaudi, Turin 2000, p. 397).
2 FG Jiinger, On my brother, "Contributions to contemporary German literature and art",
60/6 1, 1 960, p. IO. Per una ricostruzione delle vicende biographie di Jiinger cfr.
H. Schwilk (a cura), Emst }unger. Life and work in pictures and texts, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart
1 988; Id., Il sogno dell'anarca. Incontri con Ernst }unger, tr. it. di A. Sandri and C. Beret-
ta, Herrenhaus, Seregno 1999; P. Noack, Ernst }unger. A biography, Fest, Berlin 1 998.
11
me of real "vision exercises" [Ubungen im Sehen] in which not only the correct
perception of phenomena is at stake, but that profound meaning that modern
scientific knowledge is unable to grasp3• What Jtinger pursues through his
patient naturalistic observations and his lucid historical-epochal analyses, is a
progressive refinement of the gaze, which gradually allows us to make our eye
sensitive to the hidden plot of reality4, and, at the same time, a progressive
strengthening of the visual faculty, which allows to see and tolerate the
brightness of the mysteries that lie at the bottom of the phenomena, and of
which the phenomena themselves are only superficial manifestations. This
mysterious background, which usually remains unseen, constitutes the
elementary transparency of reality, that crystalline depth which does not manifest
itself except on the phenomenal surface. The gaze towards which jtingerian
vision exercises aim is a gaze capable of grasping this depth through the flat
and transparent surfaces of the crystal, that is, platonically, of tracing the unitary
meaning of the multiplicity of phenomena.
On a page of that unique book of its kind, always poised between narrative
and non-fiction, between the aphorism and the short story, which is The
Adventurous Heart, Emst Jtinger reveals to us one of the secrets of his writing
which, together with the tireless practice of reading, has accompanied him
constantly throughout his more than century-long existence6 and which is now
recognized as one of the most valuable and singular manifestations of twentieth-
century German literature7: «It seems to me - writes Jtinger - to have learned, in rec
3 Jiinger deals with this "teaching of seeing" in a significant page of the Adventurous
Heart (Das abenteuerliche Herz. Figuren und Capriccios, 1st edition 1929, 2nd
revised edition 1938, now both editions appear in SW 9; tr. it. (of the 2nd edition)
edited by Q. Principe, Il cuore adventuraso. Figurazioni e capricci, Guanda, Par-ma
1986) in which the master Nigromontanus, later protagonist of the novel Sulle cliffs
di marmo, invites to trust in the senses as luminous "testimonies of the golden age"
and to interpret the world as a puzzle, whose "mysteries are clearly displayed on
the open surface, while only a minimal adaptation of the eye is needed to see the
fullness of its treasures and its wonders" (ibid., p. 268; tr. it., p. 109). A suggestive
practice of vision and a wise guide to that "vigilant passivity" which is precious for
seeing well in every sense, is offered to us by A. Huxley, The art of seeing, tr. it. by
G. Gnoli, A-delphi, Milan 1989.
4 The Platonic reminiscences of this gradual asceticism of vision are evident: cf. Pla-
tone, Republic, VII, 514a-517a.
5 For Jiinger the meaning of things rests in their intimate "connection with depth". On
this topic see V. Katzmann, Ernst Jiingers Magischer Realismus, Georg Olms, Hilde-
sheim-New York 1975, pp. 50 ff.
6 «It is a good thing if one starts writing a diary very early - even better if it is continued
to the end, at the very end, close to death» (E. Jiinger, Siebzig verweht IV (1995),
in SW 21 , p. 89; partial Italian translation by Q. Principe, Twice the Comet, Guanda,
Parma 1987, p. 95). But solitary writing is never intended as a passive recording or
contemplation of reality; it acts, albeit in an inconspicuous way - we could say 'subtly'
- on the reality it describes: «The world is transformed through writing» (E. Jiinger,
Eumeswil (1978) in SW 17, p. 91; tr. it. by MT Mandalari, with critical notes by A.
Andersch, Rusconi, Milan 1981, p. 87).
7 In 1982 Jiinger was awarded the prestigious Goethe literary prize and, above all, by
12
something of that ability, typical of the art of language, which illuminates the
word to the point of transparency. I consider this ability, more than any other,
suitable for resolving a conflict that often disturbs us with violence - the
conflict between the external appearance and the profound reality of life"8•
All of Jiinger's work, from "realism heroic" of the diaries of the Great War lived
on the front line, up to the most rarefied pages of the travel diaries of recent
years, is crossed by the continuous effort, pursued with implacable rigor, to
grasp «the physiognomy and the meaning of this profound reality of life"9 by
means of a patient and tireless practice of observation of the external
semblance, of that "zest of the world lit up by the colors of the rainbow, the
sight of which moves us with ardent intensity"10• This is only possible
through the use of a "transparent" word, freed, through a process of stripping
down to the essential, of all the rhetorical, psychological and doctrinal
encrustations that the Western philosophical-literary tradition has stratified over the
then, analyzes of his work multiplied. For a context of Jiinger's production in the
context of German literature, the studies by F. Masi-ni are worthy of note, although at
times they tend towards an excessively decadent vision: F. Masini, Periplo
dell'avventura , in La via eccentrica, Marietti, Casale Monferrato 1986; Id., The "rotten
ta-lisman" by Ernst Jiinger, in The slaves of E. Festo, Editori Riuni, Rome 1981; Id.,
Emst Jiinger: from the "Arbeiter" to the "anarch", in the rooms of the labyrinth, Ponte
alle grazie, Florence 1990. To the characterization proposed by some literary critics of
the style of the war diaries as "heroic realism", which later, starting from the 1930s,
"magical realism" would take over, capable of combining the lucidity and accuracy of
the modern with a mythical-symbolic background of immutable and transcendent
archetypes (see F. Fiorentino, Ernst Jiinger: from the con .fusion of the modern to the
archetypes of writing, "German Culture", 14, 2000, pp. 205-221 and J. Herf, «The
magical realism of Ernst Jiinger», in Il modernismo rea-zionario, Il Mulino, Bologna
1988) , it seems preferable to me to interpret the Jiingerian style as a "stereoscopic"
gaze, that is, as observation and description from a distance that allows us to see, not
without a sense of vertigo, the crystalline depth of being through the sensorial surface
that , to a long refined gaze, suddenly becomes transparent. It is Jiinger himself who
notes how, starting from the short written Sicilian letter to the man in the moon of
1930, there is a conscious "stereoscopic" turn in the style of his writing (see E. Jiinger,
Strahlungen, Heliopolis -Yerlag, Tiibingen 1949, p. 166; Italian translation - conducted
on this first edition of the diaries of the Second World War - by H. Furst, Irradiazioni,
Guanda, Parma 1993, p. 130. This passage does not appear in the edition of the
diaries included in the complete works). The interpretations of V. Katzmann, Ernst
Jiingers magischer Realismus, cit. and by H. Seferens, "leute von iibermorgen und
von vorgestern". Ernst Jiingers lkonographie der Gege-nau.fkliirung und die deutsche Recht
Many German-language studies are part of the mythologization of the modern, among
which I will simply mention P. Koslowski, Der Mythos der Moderne. Die dichterische
Phi-losophie Ernst Jiingers, Wilhelm Fink, Miinchen 1991. For an analysis of some
significant phases of Jiinger's work cf. AA.VY., Ernst Jiinger. An international
conference, edited by P. Chiarini, Shakespeare & Company, Naples 1987. An in-depth
survey of Jiinger's thought in Italian is offered by the study by L. Bonesio - C. Resta,
Passaggi al bosco. Ernst Jiinger in the era of the Titans, Mimesis, Milan 2000.
8 E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 182 (tr. it., p. 8; my italics).
9 Ibid.
I Ibid.
13
word allows, according to Jtinger, to access a vision that captures, at the
same time, the depth and the surface of reality, just as happens in the
observation of crystals, those wonderful mineral formations - loved and
collected by Jtinger - capable of «forming an internal surface and, at the
can be investigated, of externalizing its same time, 1 1• The whole world
own depth» seen as a crystalline structure, whose transparency, however, is
only rarely granted to our eyes; more often it manifests itself through
"revealing signs", runes of a secret language in which the universe is
mysteriously written, and whose decipherment requires new senses and a
new gaze. Only in particular circumstances do we witness the crystalline
shining of reality; then «men and things light up to the point of arousing in
those who look at them a sense of
vertigo or even a shiver of fear»12• The circumstances in which the
flashes coming from the abyss of life reach man and him deeply shaken are
those in which the inevitable emergence of the "elementary background" in
existence illuminates a side of the crystalline structure of reality and urges
the observer - and the writer - to find words capable of restoring the
transparency that it brightens. Recognizing a form in pain, death and eros,
and thus tracing their innumerable manifestations back to that meta-historical
succession of figures which, for Jtinger, is at the bottom of human history;
sinking into the underworld of horror and the deepest abysses of suffering,
crawling vigilantly alongside the greatest dangers, in no man's land where
the threat of nothingness becomes almost palpable, and then returning to
observe from sidereal distances and with sovereign detaching the enigmas
of existence, the wonderful manifestations of eros, the shy glances of lovers
and the extreme test of death: these are the paths along which Jtinger
exercised his 'subtle' writing and his lucid reflection. It will be precisely by
following this effort of a "crystallographic vision" of the invisible emergence of
Form from the abyss of Life13, that we will try, in the present study, to outline
a crystallography of the invisible with which we can analyze the themes of
pain , of death, of eros and of friendship in the historical horizon of the
dominion of technology and through the various figures that populate the Jtingeria
11 lvi, p. 182 (tr. it., p. 9). For the meaning that this figure has in Jiinger's work, see L.
Bonesio, «The puzzle and the crystal. Images of life in diary writing", in L. Bonesio - C. Resta,
Passaggi al bosco, cit.
12 E. Jiinger, Das (lbenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 182 (tr. it., p. 9).
13 The relationship between Form and Life was one of the central themes of the philosophical
debate of the first decades of the twentieth century; see in particular G. Simmel, The conflict
of modern culture, in The conflict of modern culture and other essays, edited by C. Mongardini,
Bulzoni, Rome 1976; G. Lukàcs, The soul and the forms, tr. it. by S. Bologna, SE, Milan 1991.
M. focused on this irreducible contrast, which characterized so much twentieth-century philosophy.
Cacciari, Introduction to G. Simmel, Essays on aesthetics, tr. it. by M. Cacciari and L. Perucchi,
Liviana, Padova 1970 and Id., Metropolis. Essays on the great city by Sombart, Endell,
Scheffler and Simmel, Officina Edizioni, Rome 1973.
14
crystalline structure of reality. What will indicate the direction of the journey in this
investigation is the search for a sort of spectroscopic 'topography' which, in a
Nietzschean way, shows the shining of depth in the phenomenal surface and the
emergence of the timeless in the cracking of time; which therefore captures the truth
as the crystalline transparency of being.
Jiinger has repeatedly mentioned in his writings what has just been defined as a
crystallographic vision, but, more often than not, he preferred to call this ability to see
surface and depth, multiplicity and unity together "stereoscopic sensitivity". , and
therefore to grasp the transparency of the crystalline fabric of reality. In a chapter of
the Adventurous Heart he describes some experiences in which this delightful
sensitivity is revealed as a pleasant perception, through a single sense organ, of two
qualities belonging to different kinds of sensations: «A stereoscopic pleasure is they
provide the complexion, the foliage, the direction of the hair, the colorless varnish, the
transparency, the oily patina and the background, which may be the grain or the sea
of the wooden table, the terracotta of the vase, or the chalky porosity of the
whitewashed wall»14. In all these cases, visual perception also allows for a tactile15
or olfactory perception, and this is only possible because one sense performs a dual
function, also taking on the attitudes of another sense16.
Through the stereoscopic gaze we grasp the intimate multiplicity of things, not
limiting ourselves either to their superficial and univocal appearance or to the concept
that science provides of them, which is always reductive and abstract17• It grasps thanks
14 E. Jiinger, The adventurous heart, cit., p. 197 (tr. it., pp. 25-26).
15 For Jiinger, the sense of touch is of particular importance, as it constitutes the most
elementary and original form of perceptive experience which, however, always refers
to a deeper level of contact with reality: «It seems [ .. .] that the sense of touch, from
which all the other senses derive, plays a particular role in knowledge. Just as we,
when concepts fail us, always seek refuge in direct experience, so, in many forms of
perception, we immediately resort to the sense of touch. Therefore we have the habit
of touching new, strange or precious things with our fingertips: it is a naive gesture,
but it is also a sign of refined civilization" ( ibid., p. 198; tr. it., p. 27) .
16 Aristotle had already considered the possibility that a sense could perceive a sensitive
quality that was not its own; he believed that this 'accidental' phenomenon referred to
the unitary configuration of the sensitive faculty of the soul: «The senses[ ... ]
accidentally perceive each other's objects; not however considered in themselves, but
insofar as they form a unity, if there is a simultaneous perception with respect to the
same object" (Aristotle, De anima, I, 425a 30). For the attention paid to the sense of
touch and for the idea of common sense found in De anima, the Aristotelian conception
of sensibility, together with his 'metaphysical' passion for the observation of nature,
one can, in my opinion, bring fruitfully closer to Jiinger's thought.
17 As Katzmann observes, Jiinger's criticism «is not directed against rational knowledge
as such, but against its absolutization, not simply against empirical science but against
the claim of being able to solve all the mysteries of the world with it, not against the
reference to measure and number, but against its unlimited use, against the adoration
that is directed towards it in the age of technology. Like many other observers, he
warns against abstract and mechanistic thinking that makes everything calculable."
(V. Katzmann, Ernst Jiinger's Magical Realism, cit., p. 31).
15
to its duplicity, as with pincers, things "from within" 18• Through this grasp, which far from being
an impressionistic and emotional intuition, represents an exact intellectual vision, poetic words
and images are also grasped which «even though they have been known to us for a long time,
open up like flowers
, and from which an intact splendor, a colorful music, seems to flow. It is the
hidden harmony of things that becomes sound»1 9• The stereoscopic gaze sees the authentic
essence of things in an overall vision of a neither analytical nor synthetic type but "synoptic"20,
in which the polyphonic is expressed harmony of every phenomenon. Just as binocular vision,
through the fusion of the two different images of an object that are formed in the two eyes,
allows the perception of relief, so stereoscopic sensitivity introduces the harmonic depth of
phenomena thanks to the superposition of their multiple planes semantic and symbolic; in the
same way, the shining depth of a crystal is perceived by observing the superposition of the
crystallized layers of the minerals. But this can only happen through a preliminary distancing
from reality, which is not a mere critical detachment aimed at a neutral and objective point of
view, but is a prospective distancing21 which makes perceivable
the cosmic-existential resonance of depth phenomena the , in front of whose abysmal

observer, apparently detached and imperturbable, is assailed by an intimate dismay:
18 Cf. E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 198 (tr. it., p. 27).
19 lvi, pp. 198-199 (tr. it., p. 27).
20 This comparative gaze on reality has clear Spenglerian and Goethean ancestry: like the
universal physiognomy developed by Spengler, the Jiingerian stereoscopic gaze aims to
grasp the specific form and unmistakable physiognomy of each phenomenon and to identify
the expressive value of events. On the relationship between Jiingerian stereoscopic
sensitivity and Spenglerian physiognomic sensitivity, see L. Bonesio, «The archaeologist's
telescope: geological time and human time», in L. Bonesio - C. Resta, Passaggi al bosco, cit.
21 This distancing necessary for stereoscopic vision recalls the dis-distancing [Entÿfernung]
that Heidegger considers as an existential component of spatiality, or of being-in-the-world
of Dasein. Based on the structure of the German word, Heidegger gives the term the
meaning of an operation whereby the distance of entities follows from the limits that Dasein
encounters in bringing them closer: «Dis-distancing [Entÿfer-nung] means making the
distance [Ferne] that is, the distance from something, means approaching. Dasein is
essentially distancing and, as it is the entity that is, it always allows the lens to be
encountered in proximity. Distancing discovers distance" (M. Heidegger, Being and Time,
Italian translation by P. Chiodi, Longanesi, Milan 1976, p.
137). The essential tendency of being-there to proximity manifests itself, therefore, in a
continuous effort to gain an effective and unmeasurable proximity to the world, starting from
what Heidegger calls the "prescient environmental vision" [Umsicht], that is , a being in the
world oriented by care. The stereoscopic vision that Jiinger speaks of could be considered
equivalent to this "environmental vision" which arises from a practical and not merely
theoretical attitude and reveals the "existential" character of the visual relationship, or rather
of the "contact", which, precisely thanks to distancing, it can never become a romantic
identification of man with the world, and thus overcomes the very presuppositions of the
traditional metaphysical split between the self and the world.
16
Every stereoscopic perception arouses in us a sensation of vertigo, and in the
meantime we savor in depth an impression of the senses that was initially offered
to us on the surface. Between amazement and fascination, as after a delicious fall,
a shock that hides a confirmation within itself - we feel that the play of the senses
moves lightly, almost mysterious veil, almost curtain of the marvelous.
On this laid table there is no food that does not contain a grain of
Rome of eternity22 •
Stereoscopic vision is, therefore, at the same time, distancing and a

"delicious fall"23 into the mysterious depths of reality, where the marvelous
a-reads as an ever-moving re-velation24 of the Eternal.
The writing in which the idea of stereoscopic vision appears for the first
time and which, as Jiinger himself confirms to us25, constitutes a decisive
22 E. Jiinger, The Adventurous Heart, cit., p. 1 99 (tr. it., pp. 27-28).

23 The understanding that derives from stereoscopic vision, in fact, grants the observer the
possibility of participating, more intimately than any scientific knowledge, in the "profound
mystery" that lies in every living being and this is a source of pure joy. After a fleeting
appearance of an insect that he cannot immediately identify, Jiinger notes in his Parisian
diary: «This very fleeting spectacle aroused in me a sense of happiness: I glimpse the
secret movements of nature. The animal appears in its particular essence, in its magical
dances, in its ability, which nature has granted it. From similar interpretations comes the
possibility of understanding a new and unknown creature more deeply with a single glance,
than through a particular study. This is one of the supreme pleasures that knowledge
offers us: we thus delve into the depths of the mystery of life and live in creatures. It is as
if a small spark of that singular and unreflected joy that vibrates in them was communicated
to us" (E. Jiinger, Strahlun-gen ( 1 949), cit., pp. 287-288; tr. it., p. 23 1 ). I don't think we
can consider, in light of these quotations, the stereoscopic gaze as a "regression to the
elementary" (see F. Masi-ni, The "rotten talisman" by Emst Jiinger, cit., p. 201), nor as
vitalistic exhilaration, since the attention is always placed on participation in the radiations
that come from life and not on an irrationalistic sinking into the indistinct elementary
magma.
24 Here revelation is to be understood as 'exposition of the veil' and not as definitive and total
unveiling. If we attribute this sense of re-velation to the term apocalypse, all of Jiinger's
thought can be considered as an attempt to make an apocalyptic of modernity possible;
his gaze would then tend towards an "apocalyptic stereoscopy".
25 On 16 September 1942 Jiinger wrote: «I consider the Sicilian Letter to the Man in the
Moon as an important anticipation. Starting from this point I understood that knowledge
should not be discarded but recast: these pages show me the way, albeit with figurative languag
They lead to one of those most secret workshops where consciousness rarely penetrates.
And I also consider them as a memory of that moment that followed not just a separation
but a choice: when I could have entered the path of romanticism or realism, the single-
track, "non-stereoscopic" path. Thus artists are divided into painters and designers.
While the pen must also act as a brush" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen ( 1 949), cit., p. 1 66; tr.
it., pp. 1 30-13 1 ). Horst Seferens analyzed the theme of stereoscopic vision starting from
the two versions of the Adventurous Heart, noting profound differences compared to the
stereoscopic theory enunciated in the Sicilian Letter: «Unlike its contemplative opening in
the Sicilian Letter, the act of perception stereoscopic acquires an aggressive and warlike
dynamism in the Adventurous Hearts , as if he [Jiinger] wanted to cover the act of
perception with the metaphor of hunting and fighting. [ ... ) Jiinger understands the
dynamic process of perception as a development of two elements, "as a lightning-fast shutdown
17
The highlight of his work is the short 1930 text Sicilian Letter to the Man of the Moon26, the result of a
trip to Sicily that Jtinger had made at the beginning of 1929. It deals with composing the contrast
between magical vision and scientific vision of the world, between aesthetic attitude and rational
attitude in a superior stereoscopic vision27, exemplified by the gaze of an imaginary man who is on
the lunar surface. Just as Leopardi in the incipit of the Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia
addresses the "silent moon", which goes "contemplating the deserts" of human existence from a
sovereign and superhuman distance, and questions its silent presence, so too Jtinger addresses the
moon which in the sweet "memories" of childhood appeared "great and terrible": «Hail, enchantress
and friend of enchanters! Friend of loners, friend of heroes, friend of lovers, friend of the good and the
evil. Accomplice to nocturnal mysteries. [ ... ] Aren't we for you like creatures lost in the depths of the
sea, and even more remote than them?"28• In the tense and enigmatic light of the moon a transfigured
world emerges in which men resemble " dormant white chrysalises"
.
immersed in an anguished
suspension in which a prodigious event seems to announce itself:
Who doesn't know those moments of indefinite waiting in which, sensing proximity, one strains one's ears to hear the voice of the
unknown, and in which the shapes only barely retain their mystery? A creaking in the roof beams, the vibration of a glass over which an
invisible hand seems to slowly pass: the space is as if charged with a presence, eagerly reaching out towards the sensorium capable of
picking up its signals! 29

•
Only the child, who has just crossed the threshold of existence, is able to grasp these signals
which, from a disturbing distance, point towards an understanding.
of perception and as its awakening"» (H. Seferens, «Lunarische 'Theorie' des stereosko-pischen
Blicks», in "Leute von iibermorgen und von vorgestem", cit, p. 1 67). Seferens also traces, to in
my opinion, in a somewhat forced way, an analogy between the structure of stereoscopic
perception and revolutionary praxis: "The revolution possesses the structure of the stereoscopic
gaze, and the stereoscopic gaze has the structure of the revolution. The aesthetic praxis of the
revolutionary gaze thus it becomes the anticipation of the anti-illuministic revolution and the
poetic exercise of a new way of seeing becomes the exercise of revolutionary action. [ ... ]
Stereoscopy is not a contemplative process but an aggressive-dynamic one" ( ibid., pp. 1 67- 1
68). But the stereoscopic gaze, as we will see, addresses the transparencies of reality without
promoting any direct action on it. C. Gaudin also focused on stereoscopic vision, De la lune à la
terre. La vision stéréoscopique dans "la let-tre sicilienne", "Les Carnets Ernst Jilnger", I, 1 996,
pp. 1 05-1 20.
26 Sizilischer Brief an den Mann im Mond, which appeared for the first time in 1 930 and then resumed
in the collection of essays Bliitter und Steine, Hanseatische Verlags-Anstalt, Hamburg 1 934; now
in SW 9 (Italian translation by F. Cuniberto in Foglie e pietra, Adelphi, Milano 1 997).
27 In this regard, Bonesio notes: «In Jilnger the "aesthetic" vision does not replace scientific
accuracy; indeed, the data of scientific knowledge often constitute the starting point for symbolic
in-depth analysis, as all the considerations relating to subtle hunts, mushrooms and flowers
show" (L. Bonesio, "Images and approaches: the meaning of nature", in L. Bonesio - C. Resta,
Passaggi al bosco, cit., p. 144).
28 E. Jilnger, Sizilischer. Brief and then Mann in Mond, cit., p. 11 (tr. it., p. 99). 29
lvi, pp. 100-1 1 1-12 (tr. it., p. 1 00).
18
sayable proximity and seem to lead towards a "profound brotherhood of
being". Only the child is still able to read the secret language of the runes in
things, since his sight is still complicit in the intimacy with which life concerns
its own perennial flourishing. His magical attitude does not yet need any
stereoscopic distancing to grasp, even if in an inexpressible way, the
harmonious depth of the phenomena. Soon, however, conscience gives in to
the temptation of rational knowledge, to the "intoxication of reason" which
announces itself as the spread of a dazzling "boreal light" whose vivid
acuteness painfully wounds the enchantment of the past. The cold accuracy
and the exhilarating ardor of the Enlightenment, which also carry within
themselves «a spark of eternal light and a shadow of eternal darkness»30,
pounce with feverish enthusiasm on the infinite possibilities of a world
abandoned to torment of "methodical doubt" and prisoner of an increasingly
dark immanentist closure31. But only those who immerse themselves in the
deadly abyss of the nihilistic vanishing of every aura and essence can
experience, in an excess of terror, the fatal closeness with the elementary
spirit, whose magmatic loom shakes the perennial dreamlike vigil of the
disenchanted world of Worker. In the prodigious moment in which the rational
cortex that oppressed the heart breaks, we discover that we are still capable
of an uncontainable nostalgia: we painfully foresee the poignant call of a
remote lost homeland to which a stellar love binds us . The moon is a silent specta
It was once and it is forever. With what impetus does the first intoxication
drag the heart into its flight! Wasn't this man dear to you when, for the first time,
30 lvi, p. 13 (tr. it., p. 1 0 1 ).

31 With the imposition of the scientific-technical consideration of reality, every possibility of
distinction between different levels of being collapses, first of all that between sacred and
profane. The task of stereoscopic thought is, first of all, to constitute a "new topology" of reality,
overcoming, however, the classical and humanistic conception of transcendence; Gaudin
writes in this regard: «If there is a Jiingerian metaphysics, its initial assumption consists in
installing transcendence in immanence» (C. Gaudin, De la lune à la terre. La vision
stéréoscopique dans "la lettre sicilienne '', cit., p. 1 19). Jiinger is convinced, in fact, that the
metaphysical effort should not be aimed at overcoming reality, but at seeing its different levels,
since it «can cross different levels, a bit like matter, which can appear solid, liquid or gaseous,
which can also become invisible" (E. Jiinger, Die Schere (1990), in SW 1 9, p. 524; Italian
translation by A. ladicicco ( La scissor, Guanda, Parma 1996, p. 101). In the debate on nihilism,
Heidegger recalls, alongside the need for a topography of nihilism, proposed by Jiinger's
intervention, the even more radical one of topology of nihilism, which at the same time allows
for a topology of!' being: «The topography must be preceded by a topology: that is, by the
localization of the place which brings together being and nothingness in their essence, which
determines the essence of nihilism and which thus allows us to recognize the paths by which
they are delineated the ways of a possible overcoming of nihilism" (M. Heidegger, The
question of being, in E. Jiinger-M. Heidegger, Oltre la linea, Adelphi, Milan 1989, p. 148).
Also for Jiinger it stereoscopic gaze must develop not only a topography, but above all a
topology of being, that is, an analysis of the regions and layers, incommensurable with each
other, of reality.
Corresponding to this, in the "traditional" context, is the vision of the various levels of reality
that are juxtaposed in the totality of the world. being, as described to us by René Guénon, The
multiple states of being, tr. it. by L. Pellizzi, Adelphi, Milan 1 996.
19
did he sink into the abyss in which the elementary spirit prodigiously multiplies
its forces? Are there not hours when one should be loved by everything, like a
flower blooming in wild innocence? Hours in which excess makes us shoot
away like bullets from the lanes of habit? Only then do we begin to fly, and only
in uncertainty do we aim high32 •
The moon casts its gaze on our cities, with their churches and buildings, with
the large industrial districts and places of entertainment, on the increasingly
intense traffic and on the profound solitude that reigns there. It is the cities,
«these gigantic accumulators of organic and mechanical forces»33, that show
most clearly the feverish alternation of historical eras and forms which, in the
variety of times and places, emerge from the elementary background . But to
those who have taken the right distance from things, this appears to be
sublimated, transfigured in a light that dampens differences and merges
individual characteristics into an elementary landscape in which the hidden
design of reality emerges, «the common crystalline structure into which the
raw material has fallen"34• The more the distance increases, the more clearly
the elementary texture of reality is shown: "The supreme order is hidden in the
multiple like a puzzle. These are surprising puzzles - the further the distance
grows, the closer we get to the solution. At the extreme
point, to infinity, we grasp it"35• Thus from the moon the frenetic movement
that agitates the sublunary world appears in its secret stillness36 and every
event is included in a superior harmony that removes it from the exhausting
search for justifications, historical conciliations or external purposes to its
occurrence. Seen from the moon, the events of man appear to be part of a
cosmic necessity that transcends the rational schemes of scientific knowledge.
This is the same "irrational necessity", i.e. not deterministic or teleological,
which according to Nietzsche belonged to reality as the eternal return of chaos,
of!' elementary, and according to which «all things are chained, intertwined, in love»
32 E. Jiinger, Sizilischer Brie.f an den Mann im Mond, cit., pp. 15-16 (Italian translation, p. I 04).
So further on: «What makes us exist, if not the mysterious ray that sometimes crosses, like
a shock, the wild interior region? And however imperfect this may be, man will continue to
speak of what is more than human in him" (ibid., p. 1 8; tr. it., p. I 06).
33 lvi, p. 19 (tr. it., p. 1 08).
34 Ibid.
35 E. Jiinger, The adventurous heart, cit., p. 181 (tr. it., p. 8).
36 Here returns the idea, dear to Jiinger and expressed several times, that the essence of
movement resides in stillness: «Isn't it true that the center of the wheel is at complete rest?
Stillness is the original language of speed" (E. Jiinger, Sizilischer Brie.f an den Mann im
Mond, cit., p. 19; tr. it., p. I 07). On this question see in.fra, chap. III, § I.
37 In the light of this cosmic necessity the world appears to the stereoscopic eye of Za-rathustra
in its enchanted "perfection": «A drop of dew? A vapor and scent of eternity? Don't you hear
it? Don't you smell it? My world has now become perfect. Midnight is also noon. [ . . . ] -
Everything new, everything eternally, everything linked, intertwined, in love, oh, then you
loved the world" (F. Nietzsche, Thus spoke Za-rathustra, Italian translation by S. Giametta,
Rizzoli, Milan 1 985, pp. 356-357). The Nietzschean overman is, like the man in the moon
addressed by Jiinger, the one who can want and love
20
we cease to reach the vision of this supreme necessity in which we also live:
only in particular moments, when we fully assume stereoscopic sensitivity38,
are we able to see its apocalyptic "projections" and the opaque reflections of
its elementary depths: «There are signs, metaphors and keys of various types:
we are like the blind man who is not able to see but who recognizes light in its
most opaque quality, heat»39. The existence of man takes place within "forests
of symbols"40 which, however, increasingly become invisible and withdraw
into the elementary, denying themselves to the scientific gaze41• More and more
the whole world, even what seems most distant and hostile in it, as he sees, through a
stereoscopic gaze, free from the conditioning of science and morality, the necessary connection
of the whole in which his own will is included.
38 The «stereoscopic gaze [ ... ] captures things in their most secret and most immobile
corporeality» (E. Jiinger, Sizilischer Brie.f an den Mann im Mond, cit., p. 20; tr. it. , pp. 1 08-
1 09), that is, he glimpses the crystalline structure of reality and the immobile center around
which all historical events gravitate.
39 there, p. 20 (tr. it., p. 1 09).
40 Baudelaire writes: «Nature is a temple where sometimes living columns , dark murmurings, let
slip: You , lost within forests of symbols, feel yourself following me from a thousand familiar
secret eyes. Like distant and long echoes, which a profound and mysterious unison chord
induces, The chorus as grandiose as darkness and light, The sounds, colors and smells
respond to each other" (Correspondances , in I.fiori del male, Italian translation by G. Bufalino,
Mondadori, Milan 1983, p. 19). Also for Jiinger, nature constitutes a "forest of symbols" which,
however, not only outline an infinite series of internal correspondences, but also refer to a
Totally Other, of which every natural phenomenon is a fleeting image: cf. E. Jiinger, Das
Spanische Mondhorn ( 1 962), in SW 13, pp. 75-76 (Italian translation by Q. Principe, The
Spanish scarabeo, in The solitary contemplator, Guanda, Parma 1 995, p. 236). For Masini,
the discovery of depth through stereoscopic vision would refer to an "ideologization of the
symbolic": «The dimension of the "symbolic", which includes the physiognomy of destiny
itself, allows us to identify an articulation of praxis productive social (technique) [ ... ] as the
basis for the liquidation of the humanistic Bildung with all its universalizing fetishes and as a
premise for an erasure of objective contradictions from the revolutionary or potentially
revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat. The ideological substance - in the Marxian
sense - of this operation must also be understood in the fact that it is precisely this transcription
of the language of technique into the language of myth that makes a Tie.fe dormant in its
abysmal ancestral distance once again active . [ .. . ] The mobilization of the world is therefore
a mobilization of Tie.fe in technocratic stereoscopy" (F. Masini, Il "rotten talisman" by Emst
Jiinger, cit., p. 203). This ideologizationof the symbolic which flows into a "lithograph of the
modern", on which many critics have insisted, seems very limiting to me because it is based
above all on Jiinger's works of the early 1930s, on what Jiinger himself called his " old
testament", without fully grasping the radical innovations that are already announced in the
stereoscopic vision of the Sicilian Letter and which will take him to a different level of
observation of the phenomena. 41 «the symbols are signs of the fact that [ ... ] the
awareness of our value is given to us. They are, on the one hand, projections of forms belonging
to a hidden dimension, but also reflectors with which to launch our signals into the unknown" (E.
Jiinger, Sizilischer Brie.f an den Mann im Mond, cit., p. 20 ; tr. it., p. 1 09). Man's gaze does
not grasp the truth, at most, it can grasp symbolic figures: «The road that crosses the labyrinth
does not lead to new truths, at most to new symbols. In the dark valley the sun does not
shine, but at times the dawn shines. Even the gods are symbols" (E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit.,
p. 549; tr., it., p. 1 28).
On the symbol and the allegory, cf. C. Gaudin, From the moon to the earth. The stereoscopic
vision in "the Sicilian letter", cit., pp. 1 09-1 1 0.
21
the symbolic value of the language that we now use almost exclusively as a
communication tool becomes inaccessible, while every syllable of the words we
pronounce is at the same time perishable and imperishable, as it carries stratified
within itself symbolic references that exceed its -particular meaning42• The
observation of nature allows us to see the symbolic passages that lead us into the
invisible realm of the undivided; thus, at times, we manage to peek, as if through a
slit, "into the workshop of the universe and the forms that it produces". The vision
of a heraldic animal such as the falcon gives, for example, "the immediate certainty
that power is one of the keys to access"43 into the timeless. But like every access
key, even power, considered by Jiinger to be the masculine principle of the universe,
needs another in whose symbolic correspondence it can be fully illuminated like a
gap in the Wall of time. The other of power is happiness, the feminine principle:
«Just as power is a key, so happiness is something to be unlocked and re-veiled,
a treasure that lies inexhaustible at the bottom of the universe»44• The symbols ,
therefore, manifest themselves only through this symmetrical correspondence and
this intimate duplicity. Only thanks to the coupling of power and happiness, the
falcon has access to the undivided reality of the world and can thus represent a
hieroglyph in which the mystery is concentrated on the invisible"45• To see the
shining of the symbols and to participate in their a «beautiful view overlooking
,
transfiguring power it is necessary, therefore, to exercise the stereoscopic gaze

which uses the exact observation of things arranged according to fixed and
necessary relationships in space, only as an instrument with which to aim at the
essential in a sort of «higher trigonometry, whose task is the measurement of
invisible fixed stars»46•
It is through this superior trigonometry that the moon can be considered

simultaneously the object of astronomical science and the "realm of spirits", just as
the scientific-rational and fantastic-childish gaze, still capable of de-
42 Jiinger has dedicated many reflections to the study of language and to what we could call a
stereoscopic etymology: see, for example, E. Jiinger, Lob der Vokale ( 1 934), in SW 1 2; tr. it.
by F. Cuniberto, In Praise of Vowels, in Leaves and Stones, cit.
43 E. Jiinger, Am Sarazenenturm (1955), in SW 6, pp. 272-273 (Italian translation by Q. Principe,
At the Saracen tower, in The solitary contemplator, cit., p. 1 5 1).
44 lvi, p. 273 (tr. it., p. 151).
45 Ibid. For Jiinger, dreams constitute privileged keys to access the invisible: through them we are
able to see what remains invisible in reality. Jiinger often notes the content of dreams in his
diaries and a dreamlike atmosphere runs through many of his prose, especially those contained
in The Adventurous Heart. His understanding of dreams is, however, very far from that of
modern depth psychology, especially from that of Freud who considered them as the royal road
to access the individual unconscious. For Jiinger, however, dreams allow us to penetrate not
into the individual soul, but into the depth of meaning of things. A closeness could therefore be
identified with the Jungian theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious: in dreams we
foresee something from the treasure room, from the prodigious depths of this world.
46 E. Jiinger, Sicilian Brief and the Man in the Moon, cit., p. 21 (tr. it., p. 109).
22
cipher the primordial writing of the runes, "the language of the demon" with
which the soul of each place is grasped. The power of stereoscopic vision
consists precisely in the ability to assume both these gazes at the same time
and to see «these two masks of a single being merge inseparably with each
other»47• It is not a mere superposition of these two masks, which allows
you to use only one of the two depending on the objectives that are pursued
in the observation: the two masks here merge inseparably into each other
since there is no longer a face behind the innumerable masks, and they are
stratified on a magmatic background which is shapeless in itself but which
generates all forms. At the moment in which the ste-reoscopic vision is
completed there is no longer the possibility of distinguishing between the
rational and magical attitude and the traditional contradictions between
materialism, idealism and romanticism also disappear, from which the last
two centuries, and with them the same existence of Jiinger, have been troubled:
For the first time, a tormenting disagreement was resolved in me that I, the
great-grandson of an idealist generation, grandson of a romantic and son of a
materialist, had until then considered insoluble. This did not happen due to the
transformation of the alternative into a juxtaposition. No: reality is no less magical
than magic is real.
This was the wonder that enchanted us as children in the double images
observed through the stereoscope: at the precise moment in which they merged
into a single image, we saw the new dimension of depth unfold in them48.
47 lvi, p. 22 (tr. it., p. 1 1 1 ).

48 Ibid. It is worth reading the decisive passage of this quote in German to grasp the meaning of
this fusion between different perspectives which is in no way dialectical, since the initial aut-
aut [Entweder-Oder] of Kierkegaardian memory does not is overcome in a conciliatory et-et
[Sowohl-Als-auch]: «Das geshah nicht etwa so, daB sich ein Entweder-Oder in ein Sowohl-Als-
auch verwandelte. Nein, das Wirkliche ist ebenso zau-berhaft, wie das Zauberhafte wirklich
ist». This statement, therefore, should not be understood as a simple reversal of the famous
Hegelian statement which proclaimed the identity of the real and the rational, but as its
paradoxical extension of possible Spinozian ancestry: the real is at the same time rational
and magical; it reveals this intimate duplicity only to the stereoscopic gaze, which manages to
grasp it as an inseparable "polemical unity". Gaudin also observes that we cannot speak of a
synthesis here: «One could ask whether the composition of these dualities. in balance, the
visible and the invisible, the action of the external environment and individual strength, writing
rational and hieroglyphics, does not obey the spirit of conciliation or at least the resolution of
opposites through a synthesis. This would be a sensational contradiction, the vision sought is
the complete opposite of a synthetic bond. [ ... ] The unity of nature has nothing of the
uniformizing synthesis. On the other hand, the stereoscopic procedure is empirical, there is
some bricolage involved. This bricolage responds to the need that gives rise to the fundamental
experience from a perpetual transformation of forms, a sort of Heraclitean experience of
things" (C. Gaudin, De la lune à la terre. La vision stéréoscopique dans "la lettre sicilienne '',
cit. , pp. 1 08- 1 09). Furthermore, it would be interesting to search for the Platonic roots of
this Jiingerian idea above all in the protological system, deducible from the unwritten doctrines,
of Platonic dialectics and in the bipolar structure of everything being founded on the first and
opposite principles of the One (limit) and the Dyad (illimit) and on the determining and
delimiting action of the One on
23
The stereoscopic gaze is the only method that we can follow in the
construction, which Jiinger has relentlessly pursued, of a crystallography of the
invisible, that is, a strenuous practice of vision which, with subsequent attempts
at collimation of the gaze, manages to open a gap in the reflecting surface of
phenomena and, through the power, in itself ambivalent, of symbols, allow us
to see the transparency and harmonious - non-phenomenal - depth of the
crystalline structure of reality49•
But this method, which we should think of as a way, a path, indicated to us
by those who have already had experience with it and not as a series of
repeatable procedures, does not offer us any guarantee of success. What is at
stake every time is our singular capacity for "vision"; this does not even mean
that through constant and diligent exercise of the stereoscopic gaze one can
progressively get closer to the goal which, sooner or later, will be achieved.
Jiinger does not believe that man, with his own strength alone, can access the
mysterious depths of reality: every authentic vision is the fruit of an adequate
preparation of the gaze, but also of an enigmatic giving of the mystery itself.
It is no coincidence that, in some aphorisms of The Scissors, he focuses
on the e-static visions of the seers, that is, those who through a "second sight"
are able to see the undivided time of life and experience in advance events
that belong to the future. The vision, understood in this way, does not produce
communicable images: «He who experiences it is assailed by the same feeling
felt by someone returning from an excursion for which he is unable to give any
account»50; it does not open up a broad perspective on the future, it rather
resembles «spying through the keyhole. The gaze is limited, it mostly falls on
accessory details", on details which then return with an abnormal and obsessive
vividness: this "vision contradicts experience; it produces an estrangement of
the person himself who is affected by it"51, so much so that often the subject
of the vision tries to remove it, bringing it back to a dream experience: the
image that is perceived does not come from his own inner
Dyad with which reality in all its levels originates in the Platonic perspective: cf. G.
Reale, For a new interpretation of Plato, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1 991.
49 The task that Jiinger has set himself is, as Katzmann observes, that of bearing witness to a
cosmic order, «an invisible plan, according to which the world is ordered, making it visible» (V.
Katzmann, Ernst Jiingers Magischer Realismus, cit., p. 35). He approached the scenario of
the world as a puzzle whose visible enigmas never cease to spur us to continuously refine
our gaze: the world «is ordered in the manner of a puzzle, [ ... ] its mysteries are clearly
revealed on the open surface, while only a minimal adaptation of the eye is needed to see
the fullness of its treasures and wonders." From this perspective, every method of observation
is reduced to the "art of leading one's own life".
considering that which is imperishable as the end. It [must] conform to the right image of the
world, implicit in what is usual as happens in a puzzle: elusively close.
[ ... ] The first symptom announcing happy contemplation is amazement, followed by
serenity" (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz. cit., pp. 268-269; tr. it., pp. 1 09- 1 10).
50 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit. 453-454 (cf. it., p. 23). 51
lvi, p. 458 (tr. it., pp. 28-29).
24
I fear, but it is a spark that has come from the elementary depths. The seer has .
surpassed the present and his limited possibilities of vision not thanks to a
superomistic enhancement of his perceptive faculties, but because a "time leap"
has taken place. Time itself raised its curtain and, becoming transparent for an
instant, allowed the extraordinary vision to occur. In this instant in which the seer
is thrown into the immobile center of the vortex of time itself, he sees face to face
the disturbing image of the Enigma, hears the mysterious resounding of a word
as dark as the indecipherable verdicts of the oracles.
Jiinger therefore does not think of any redemption from finitude; no re-velation
is possible: «What matters is not seeing the solution but the enigma»52. In those
moments, which then fuel our daily existence, an unparalleled energy is
accumulated: by staying at the limits of time, we experience the "limit" itself, its
prodigious power from which all earthly happiness arises. The Greeks had already
linked the idea of limit to that of form and perfection, confining the unlimited to the
monstrous and deformed. Even for Jiinger, the greatest gift of time is granted on
its thresholds, which are not only those between life and death.
On 18 July 1942 Jiinger noted in his Paris diary:
Yesterday, many Jews destined for deportation were arrested. They began by
separating the parents from the children: the children's crying could be heard in the
street! I must not forget at any time that I am surrounded by unhappy people, by
people who suffer in the depths of their soul53 •
In the vortex of catastrophe the 'limits' of life become increasingly visible and
time tilts seriously towards its end, but precisely in the abandonment of time the
miracle is announced: the Enigma is the time that ends, the time of the end and
not the irrevocable end of time; vision fixes the shining limit of being. The following
day, after a visit to a Parisian cemetery, Jiinger writes:
The contact of the being, which then disappears, with the dark scepter is the
most prodigious thing in this world. Birth cannot be compared to it, which is nothing
but a blossoming into a life that is known to us. Life lies in death like a small green
island in the dark sea. Investigating this, even if only on the edges and belts of the
tides, is called true science, compared to which all physics and technology are
nothing but trifles54 •
52 E. Jtinger, Sicilian Letter to the Man in the Moon, cit., p. 15 (tr. it., p. 104).
53 E. Jtinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 347 (tr. it., p. 1 06). 54
lvi, p. 348 (tr. it., p. 1 07). The metaphor of the island to designate life recurs several times in Jtinger's
writings. I limit myself to quoting a passage taken from a travel diary from the 1950s: «And what
is life? A small island on the surface. Yet such profound happiness dwells on the islands" (E.
Jtinger, Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 283; tr. it., p. 1 62). On the island as the solitary home of the
individual cf. E. Jtinger, Eumeswil, cit., pp. 269-272 (Italian translation, pp. 260-263). On the "in-
25
The island, as it is completely enclosed, is a representation of the entire
universe55. Living on an island means being surrounded by the edge, comforted
and protected by the swing of the tides. Primordial cradles, the islands are
«homeland in the deepest sense, the last terrestrial locations before the flight into
the cosmos begins. It is not language that suits them, but rather a song of destiny
echoing on the sea"56. The mythical fullness of life of the island is the happiness
of the threshold of time57, the happiness of the moment, which increasingly
withdraws from the world of technology, dominated by a widespread malaise and
poisoned by anguish; in it time is missing, it is increasingly less, or it seems to be
unstoppable and its duration becomes indefinite, its substance looming; However,
the possibility of experiencing the fullness of the moment is increasingly lost58. Along w
jiingerian "sularity" understood not as solipsistic isolation but as a principal spiritual configuration,
see F. Poncet, L'archipel jiingerien, "Nouvelle Ecole", 48, 1996. Poncet traces in the island a
fundamental topological figure of the jiingerian thought: «the topological life of the island reveals,
as a germinal cell, the totality of mythical and historical dramas» (F.
Poncet, The seascape as a mythical background of history, in AA.VV., The great hunts of myth.
Ernst Jiinger in France, a cura di P. Koslowski, Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1 996, p. 1 24 ).
Sull'esistenza insulare dell' Anarca si è soffermata ampiamen-te C. Resta, «L' Anarca», in L.
Bonesio - C. Resta, Passaggi al bosco, cit.
55 «In the flow of the current of time, it represents the plastic model of space. One therefore has the
impression that being was also preserved here in a higher concentration. It seems to beckon to
us to invite us to discover it and seems to promise us happiness" (E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden ( 1
967), in SW IO, pp. 1 29- 1 30; Italian translation by A. Iadicicco, Thin Hunts , Guanda, Parma 1
997, p. 1 24).
56 E. Jiinger, Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 302 (tr. it. , p. 1 84). On the island as a homeland see. Also
ivi, p. 316 (tr. it., p. 1 98).
57 Happiness is, in fact, the suspension of time, its laceration; it is linked to the irruption into time of
the Eternal and therefore to the kairological moment which puts the flow of chronological time
into crisis (on this, see below , chapter I II). In this, which in a Nietzschean way we could call
the immense moment, the instant of "full noon", that invisible and very powerful cosmic harmony
which already appears in the fragments of Heraclitus, and which is, at the same time, illuminates
unprecedented simplicity: «Happiness is the harmony in which we find ourselves faced with the
things that surround us. The fewer and simpler these things are, the purer and more spontaneous
the agreement. It so happens that simple men are also easily happy. [ . . . ] The man enlivened
by such harmony is surrounded by an environment in which harmony itself becomes visible.
They are the islands that emerge from the chaos of this world. [ . . . ] The extension of these
islands depends on the degree of elevation of man. Even the most insignificant man can become
a giver, can spread splendor despite being himself a very small light. The gardener's happiness
becomes visible in the fruits, it becomes perceptible in the song that his wife sings by the hearth.
A kingdom slowly builds around the prince who founded it. The stars are islands in the sea of the
universe; we assume that they are home to good forces. And, finally, even the universe is an
island in nothingness" (E. Jiinger, Heliopolis. Riickblick auf eine Stadi ( 1 949), in SW 1 6, p. 1 1
2; Italian translation by M. Guarducci , Heliopolis, Rusconi, Milan 1 972, pp. 1 33- 1 34).
58 According to Jiinger, however, it is precisely in the moment, understood as the salvation of time
and not from time, that happiness can be experienced: «Happiness is linkedto the moment: this
means that it cannot last. At best, life is like a chain made from the links of fulfilled wishes. Even
if you always win, like Alessandro, you cannot escape destiny. The enemy of hunger is satiety,
just as satisfaction is the death of desire" (E. Jiinger, Heliopolis, cit., p. 111; tr. it., p. 1 32). And
in the last pages of this novel he writes: «The moment of happiness, the great change, the
salvation in the
26
death is removed59 and happiness declines into a longed-for serenity which
now takes the form of an empty indifference, of a general anesthetization of
feelings. The spreading opacity of the gaze, which goes hand in hand with
the implacable exactness of the eye which has fallen into a mere optical
instrument of apprehension and measurement of reality, prevents any
stereoscopic vision and with this even the extreme desire of a stellar
communion of individuals; thus, the fragmented happiness of the archipelago
declines for the inhabitants of the metropolises who no longer know the insular
auroras and the tremor of the threshold; they are barred from the flashing
sparkle that passes through the crystal of existence when pain, death and eros
fly over it. The stereoscopic crystallography of the invisible attempts to grasp the ph
temporalities, however, continue to be wonderful. In myth, in history this can remain as a trauma that
gives hope and trust for millennia. Water of life flowed in the desert of the rock; the wave of the Red
Sea or the divine wind of the Yellow Sea swallowed up the enemy armies. [ ... ] That in the moment of
happiness lies more than the untying of a knot tied over time or the overcoming of the current of a
rapid, is often forgotten by the happy man. But in the thread of hope the source of light manifested itself
to him. In this hope there exists more than his individual happiness. He welcomed the gift as a new
viaticum" (ibid.; tr. it., pp. 429-43 1 ). In such prodigious moments sudden changes occur in the destiny
of individuals and peoples and the deepest and most disconcerting happiness is aroused, perhaps,
precisely by finding ourselves face to face with destiny and witnessing the "manifestation of the eternal"
in it. I think it is interesting to make this Jiingerian idea of happiness as a decisive change, irruption of
destiny and passage resonate with Benjamin's idea, expressed around 1920 in the famous Political
Theological Fragment, according to which the order of the profane, built having aims at the idea of
happiness, it would constitute a significant category of the "silent approach" of the messianic kingdom:
«In fact in happiness everything earthly aspires to its decline, but in happiness alone it is destined to
find it. - While, of course, the immediate messianic intensity of the heart, of the individual interior man,
proceeds through unhappiness, in the sense of suffering. To the spiritual restitutio in integrum , which
introduces immortality, corresponds a worldly one, which leads to the eternity of a sunset and the
rhythm of this worldly which eternally passes, which passes in its totality, in its spatial totality, but also
temporal, the rhythm of messianic nature is happiness. In fact, nature is messianic due to its eternal
and total passing" (W. Benjamin, On the concept of history, edited by G. Bonola and M. Ranchetti,
Einaudi, Turin 1997, p. 255). Happiness as the "rhythm of the messianic nature", i.e. as the rhythm of
the decline of the profane and the announcement of the Kingdom, is, in Rilkian terms, the endurance
of the transience of existence and, at the same time, the ability to grasp its extreme and fragile splendor
(see below, chapter I, § 6) thanks to a gaze sensitive to the harmonic depths of the elemental which
illuminate in the sunset. Again Benjamin, in the second thesis on the concept of history, through the
messianic category of redemption understood as the salvation of time, returns to the idea of happiness:
«The image of happiness that we keep within ourselves is completely imbued with the color of time
into which the course of our existence has now relegated us. Happiness that could awaken envy in us
is only in the air we breathed, with the people we could have talked to, with the women who could have
given themselves to us.
In other words, the idea of redemption

cannot be eliminated in the idea of happiness" (ibid., p. 23). Predicting in the sunset the fullness and
integrity of an "agreement" outside of historical time: this would therefore also be the only form of
weak messianic happiness that is granted to man, a weak happiness, for Benjamin as well as for a
force is delivered ' which binds him to previous generations and destines him to await the Kingdom.
Eros is, perhaps, the most evident manifestation of this weak and always deficient form of happiness.
59 Cf. i'!fra, no. I, §§ 2; 7.
27
silvery sparkle which, like the tremulous shining of the stars in the dawn, is
disappearing more and more every day from our skies and our hearts.
But perhaps a final root persists deep down, a "gap in the aravah" (ls. 40, 3)
60
a still alive wound of time, a cosmic current which, crossing, illuminates
,
the mobile threshold between visible and invisible. The lovers would be the last
witnesses:
Threshold: oh, think about it, for two who love to wear out their
rather worn home threshold a bit, they too, after the many before, and before those
after... Ieggermente61 •
60 The aravah in Hebrew indicates aridity, desert, absence, emptiness, silence, desolation, but also
internal pilgrimage, ascetic path, journey to the "end of the night", purification and liberation of the
heart. This is how Guido Cernetti evokes it: «Human crowds lost along the silent caravan routes...
erased furrows of messianic vicissitudes experienced and never experienced.
hundred... But the path in the interior aravah can still be found" (G. Ceronetti, Notes to Il libro del
pr<leta Isaia, edited by G. Ceronetti, Adelphi, Milan 1981, p. 234). The more it is similar to the
desert, the more abandoned it will be, the more the soul will be ready to receive a supernatural
whisper, an angelic memory (ls. 30, 29).
61 RM Rilke, Elegie duine.vi, IX, tr. it. by E. and I. De Porto, Einaudi, Turin 1978, p. 57.
28
I
"TERRA VINTA GIVES US THE STARS"
Pain
Where no value stands the test, the

movement that leads to pain remains
as an admirable sign: in it the imprint
of a metaphysical structure is revealed .
E. Jiinger, On pain.
I. Dionysus torn apart
The experience of pain belongs to the crucial experiences of human

existence1; in it the daily perception of the world is overturned and the world
itself seems entirely transfigured: through the discontinuity that the irruption of
pain produces, the individual accesses a dark vision of things which often
leads him to withdraw from communication until he abandons himself to silence or s
But every individual experience always refers to ideal scenarios, set up from
time to time by various civilisations, in which the pain of the individual can be
inscribed, interpreted and expressed2. Every individual pain is thus situated,
even if implicitly, within a "cosmology of pain" within which only it is possible
to give it meaning and seek consolation from it.
The task we propose here is to trace this "cosmology of pain" for each of
the "human figures" that animate the Ingerian universe and that Jiinger himself
has probably embodied in different periods of his existence or even at the
same time, when circumstances required it. In doing so, we would like to frame
the question of pain, to which Jiinger dedicated a short essay in 19343, but
which runs through almost all of his
Many of the considerations that will be carried out in these pages on the forms and meaning
of the experience of pain in reference to the Greek and Jewish-Christian world are deeply
indebted to the extensive, articulated and enlightening study of S. Natoli, The experience of
pain. The forms of suffering in Western culture, Feltrinelli, Milan 1986.
2 «Only through an ideal and social mediation does pain enter into discussion, only in indirect
ways does humanity dispel the silence that pain inevitably causes where it strikes.
[ . . . ] Rites and beliefs have a vocabulary for pain: therapeutic practices and philosophies are
based on this tradition" (S. Natoli, The experience of pain, cit., pp. 10-11).
3 E. Jiinger, Uber den Schmerz ( 1 934), in SW 7 (Italian translation by F. Cuniberto, On pain, in
Foglie e pietra, cit.). With this writing, Jtinger is convinced that he has reached a deeper level
of understanding of the phenomenon of technology and the era of the Worker; on the role of
29
written, in the meta-historical context in which the individual faces the
cosmic and universal - we could say mythical - dimension of the Earth and
of the arche-typical Forms that the latter, regardless of human activism,
continues to forge and impose on history Human. If we manage to illuminate
a gap between the abyssal depths resonating with tears and silence, in
which the still formless pain arises, and its acutely visible or subtly creeping
manifestations in the technical uniformization of modernity on the one hand,
and the secret torment distilled in the heart of the individual from the other,
we will have outlined what we could define as a "crystallography of pain".
Only then will we be allowed to understand, beyond any smug aestheticism
or aristocracy. cynicism, the meaning of a short note noted by Jiinger in his
Paris diaries on 25 September 1942: «A fine and wonderful pain, as if the
glass heart were being scratched by a diamond»4.
An essential reference along our journey will be the thought of Nietzsche,
whose writings echo in almost all of Jiinger's work, and who saw and
experienced that painful conflict between external appearance and depth of
life, from which we started, with extraordinary intensity. This disagreement
takes shape for the first time in the duality between Apollonian and Dionysian
in which Nietzsche identifies the birth of classical Greek tragedy and the
development of art. Apollo is the god of the solar wisdom of semblance, of
joy and beauty, of that serene and reassuring world of beautiful forms in
which Greek man learned to ward off the anguish of existence; but for
Nietzsche, as for Schopenhauer, the Apollonian world is only a divine illusion,
behind which lies the horror that grips man when he suddenly loses trust in
the forms of knowledge of appearance [ . .. ]; the ecstatic rapture which, due
to the same violation of the pri ncipium individuationis, rises from the
intimate depths of man, or rather of nature»5. In the inebriation that thus takes ov
importance that it plays in his work, it is Jiinger himself who pronounces himself in the introduction
of 1934 to the collection Bliitter und Steine: «The Total Mobilization describes the process as a
whole, The Worker describes the form whose historical task consists in implementation of the
process. The present reflection [On pain] takes the research one step further: it shows that the
touchstone of the entire story is not to be found in value, but in pain. It is this that provides a
relevant criterion for the legitimation of force. Among my works it is, so to speak, "the most
advanced". It detaches itself from the positions acquired in the Worker like a walkway, and through
a territory certainly not free from dangers it leads to an observation point from which the landscape
will appear to have changed again. Perhaps already here some points will be clarified which in the
Worker, and for good reasons, had been omitted" (E. Jiinger, Bliitter und Steine, Hanseatische
Verlaganstalt, Hamburg 1934, p. 12 ; tr. it., pp. 1 5-16). Among the not many studies dedicated to
this essay and to the question of pain in Jiinger, I remember: M. Meyer, Ernst Jiinger, Cari Hanser,
Miinchen Wien 1 990, pp. 2 1 8-229; H. Segeberg, Prosa der Apokalypse im Medienzeitalter. Der
Essay Ober den Schmerz ( 1934) und der Roman Auf den Marmor-Klippen ( 1 939), in AA.VV.,
Ernst Jiinger im 20.
Century, a cura di H.-H. Miiller e H. Segeberg, Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1 995 ; V. Vi-tiello, Above the
Pain, "Diorama", 222-223, 1 999.
4 E. Jiinger, Radiations (1949), cit., p. 1 70 (tr. it., p. 1 35).
5 F. Nietzsche, The birth of tragedy, edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari, Adelphi, Mila-
no 1 977, p. 24.
30
Apollonian serenity, the Vrene man has fallen into the Dionysian depths of nature, where
rites of revolution and transfiguration of the world are celebrated and where he can get
closer to his own natural essence and, singing and dancing, alienate himself from himself
to access a mysterious unity original. But this original unity, into which man falls at the height
of Dionysian intoxication, is nothing other than the incandescent and eternal germination of
pain, which in the fire of its radiation can even generate a wild pleasure6. The terrible truth
underlying Dionysian intoxication is revealed to us by the legend of King Midas:
The ancient legend has it that King Midas chased the wise Silenus, a follower of
Dionysus, through the forest for a long time without catching him. When it finally fell
into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable thing for man.
Stiff and immobile the demon is silent; until, forced by the king, he finally comes
out amid shrill laughter in these words: "Miserable and ephemeral race, son of
chance and punishment, why do you force me to tell you what it is most
advantageous for you not to hear? The best is for you absolutely unattainable: not
to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is - to die soon7 .
Greek man therefore knows the atrocity of existence, but in order to continue to live he
is forced to create the Apollonian world of the Olympic divinities which soon becomes a
transfigured mirror of reality; and the gods, inasmuch as they live a life completely similar to
that of men, even if not threatened by death, are able to justify and give meaning to human
,
existence. Thus, reversing Silenus' statements, life "under the clear sun of similar gods" is
felt as desirable in itself, and the real pain is now that of detaching oneself from it. Immersing
themselves in the beauty of the Olympic illusion, the Greeks lost the wisdom of pain, but
this was inevitable since the original one, torn by deep fissures, eternally needs, to free itself
and express itself, the ecstatic vision, the joyful illusion, of the divine measure, or of the
transfiguration of forms and art. To the Apollonian Greek, representative of a peaceful and
refined civilization, the effect caused by the Dionysian must have appeared 'barbaric',
without however being able to deny that he himself was intimately linked to those heroes
and those sorrowful fallen Titans.
But Nietzsche tells us even more: «His entire existence, and thus all beauty and
moderation, rested on a - disguised - foundation of suffering and knowledge, which was
once again revealed to him by the Dionysian. And behold, Apollo could not live without
Dionysus"8• This indissoluble union of Apollonian and Dionysian was celebrated in Attic
tragedy: through Dionysian music.
6 «That horrible witches' filter made of voluptuousness and cruelty was important here: only the
marvelous mixture and duplicity in the passions of the Dionysian possessed people recalls it
- as remedies recall poisons - that phenomenon in which pain arouses pleasure, in whose
jubilation tears anguished voices from their chests. From the heights of joy resounds the cry
of terror or the poignant lament for an irreparable loss" (ibid.,
p. 29). 7 lvi, pp.
3 1 -32. 8 lvi, p. 37.
31
ca, in which the echo of original pain resonates, tragic art manages to
transform the disgust and anguish for the atrocity and senselessness of
existence into ecstatic representations with which one can survive the terrible
revelations of the wisdom of Silenus. In the miraculous and always precarious
balance of Dionysian and Apollonian, in which Attic tragedy lived, if only for a
few generations, art saved the Greek from the abyss of desperation of original
pain and from the naive illusion of the Apollonian world, which shortly thereafter
it would express itself in Alexandrian culture; but through art it is life itself that
acts: it is life that saves from its own abyss. Life, thus, for Nietzsche - and will
also be for Jiinger - is a dispenser of suffering, it is itself pain and torment, but
it also hides within itself immense treasures that only at its borders9, in the
abyss of pain, on the limit of death or in the ecstasy of love, they begin to shine:
I stared into your eyes, it's not long now, oh life: in your nocturnal eye I saw
gold shine - my heart sank for this voluptuousness: - I saw a little boat of gold
glittering on nocturnal waters, a little boat of gold swinging, sinking, drinking,
beckoning again! [ ... ] Close I fear you, far away I love you; your running away
entices me, your seeking blocks me; I suffer, but what did I not agree to suffer for you! I
The tragic, beyond any consolation and any catharsis, captures the
ambiguous heart of physis, which in its entirety is an irreconcilable conflict
between life and death, revelation and concealment, happiness and cruelty,
extreme joy and extreme pain : Dionysus, the torn god, is the universal
emblem. It is along this laceration immanent to life itself that pain disposes us,
estranging us from that world in which the sharpness of borders and the clarity
of oppositions seemed evident to us and exposing us to risk, to decision. The
unnecessary negativity of the experience of pain is demonstrated to us by
the same etymology of the Greek word pathos, which originally denoted only
being affected from the outside and was synonymous with event, occurrence,
tura ,conjunction and which only later took on the negative value of suffering,
misfortune11• Even before wounding, damaging and threatening survival
9 The limits of life also have a decisive meaning for Jiinger, as we will see; it is precisely along
its edges that life acquires meaning and is defined: «Life is nothing but the edge of life, it is
nothing but a battlefield on which one fights for life. It is nothing but an external fortification,
built as best as possible according to the measurements of the citadel to which we retreat
when dying" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 318; tr. it., p. 84, Paris , 8 March 1942).
IO F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, cit., p. 253.

11 See S. Natoli, The experience of pain, cit., p. 1 9. Pathos would therefore originally indicate
the event that arrives and which cannot be escaped, coming very close to the other Greek
word, kairos, which indicates the propitious moment, the right time in which to carry out an
act. action. In the horizon of the considerations we are carrying out and also in reference to
the Heideggerian question of the Ereignis, it seems to me possible to identify a relationship
between these two names of the event, in the sense that every cariological fulfillment is based
on a commensurate 'suffering ' and that only a 'patient' and vigilant gaze is able to penetrate
the depths of time from which every event comes; with the advice of understanding here the 'patien
32
za of man, pain delivers him to the mobile source of essential oppositions and, above all,
to his own determination and unrepeatable singularity: no one is replaceable in his own
pain, as in his own death; as it points us to our insurmountable limits, pain is the main
way in which we experience our individuation and finiteness; since its strike is as
unpredictable as it is inevitable, in it we experience with dismay our unsalvageable
precariousness12• The singular experience of pain therefore brings with it the greatest
concern for one's physical and psychological integrity and the most radical question on
being matures, the metaphysical question par excellence: "Why is there, in general, being
and not nothingness?", the one that more than any other subtracts foundation from our
certainties13• Physiognomy, the nobility and greatness of a man, as well as of an era,
can be recognized by the way in which this concern was elaborated and this question
was asked:
There are some great and immutable parameters by which the value of man is measured. One of them is pain ; it is the hardest test in that chain of trials that
is, as they say, life. [ ... ] Pain is one of those keys that serve to open not only the secrets of the soul but the world itself. When we approach those points where
man shows himself to be at the height of pain, or superior to it, we access the sources of his strength and the mystery that hides behind his power. Tell me your
relationship with pain and I'll tell you who you are!
14
•
2. The dream of analgesia
Every historical humanity has its own particular relationship with pain and with every
significant historical change it changes, together with the relationship that man maintains.
re' not simply as bearing with resignation, but as the risky bearing upon oneself the ordeal of
laceration and estrangement. In the sense of a disposition and exposure to the manifestation of
entities, Heidegger interprets feeling astonishment as an original and archetypal pathos of
philosophy in M. Heidegger, What is the fi,
los<!fia ?, tr. it. by C. Angelino, il melangolo, Genoa 1 997.
12 Pain, therefore, more than the philosophical
'
thaumazein , causes a crisis and provokes man's
questioning. It generates on the one hand the restlessness of distinguishing, analysing, dissecting,
defining, typical of the Western ratio always aimed at knowledge with a view to domination, and
on the other, as an antidote to pain, philosophy presents itself - platonically - as the search for
unity in multiplicity, for the universal law through which to explain all particular phenomena. We
could say that philosophy and the sciences vivisect reality and then claim to save it by bringing it
back to unity and coherence. This is the extreme hubris of Western thought and its secret
complicity with pain.
13 «In certain moments of profound desperation, for example, when every consistency of things seems
to disappear and every meaning is obscured, the question arises again. It may be that it has struck
us only once, like the dark sound of a bell echoing deep inside and gradually dying away" (M.
Heidegger, Introduction to metaphysics, Italian translation by G. Masi, Mursia , Milan 1986, p. 1 3).
14 E. Jiinger, Uber the Blacksmith, cit., p. 1 45 (tr. it., p. 1 39).
33
nor with pain, even that which connects existence with the elementary background.
In the essay On pain Jtinger aims to investigate the role played by pain in the
context of the new "human race" of the Worker [der Arbeiter] 15, that is, of that
Form [Gestalt] through which technique mobilizes the world and which, born in the
"battles of materials" of the First World War, it displaced the bourgeois individual
and his liberal and economistic culture from the historical scene - which for Jtinger
also includes the worker described by Marx - by virtue of his power of evocation
and manipulation of the elementary (but Jtinger will begin to doubt the real ability
of the worker to keep under control the elementary forces unleashed by the
technique in the years following the publication of Der Arbeiter).
The bourgeois has a defensive relationship with pain: his entire existence is
inspired by the achievement of security and the containment of the elementary
vital forces that threaten his psychic and social balance based on the aspiration for
economic well-being, on rational knowledge and on 'faith' in unlimited progress16.
The contrasts are neutralized through an increasing formalization of relationships
which manifests itself in the imposition of law, both in the private and public
spheres: «The transformation of things into general concepts, for example goods
into money or natural constraints into legal constraints, generates an extraordinary
lightness and ease of living.
A lightness increased by the fact that refined taste and the capacity for artistic
enjoyment have not yet been completely lost" 17• The wide participation in worldly
pleasures, the security of property and the ever-increasing dis-
15 Jiinger describes this new human type and the world of work that it opens up in his fundamental
work Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt published for the first time in 1 932 and now in SW
8 (Italian ed. edited by Q. Principe, L'operaio. Dominio e forma, Guanda, Parma 1 991). From
now on we will use the expression 'Worker' to indicate the Type that Jiinger calls the German
term Arbeiter, even where it is rendered differently in the available Italian translations. There
are numerous studies on this Jiingerian figure and many interpret it as an anticipation of the
imminent affirmation of National Socialism, forcibly attributing to it an 'immediately' political
character. Among those who, however, grasp the essential 'metaphysical' character of this
figure I limit myself to mentioning: V. Droste, Ernst Jiinger: "Der Arbeiter". Studien zu seiner
Me-taphysik, Kiimmerle Verlag, Gèippingen 1 981; J. Pompa, The Worker: on nihilism and
technology in Ernst Jiinger, Economische Hogeschool Sint-Aloysius, Brussel 1 991; A. de
Benoist, The Worker among the gods and the titans. Ernst Jiinger "Seismograph" of the
Technical Age, tr. it. by M. Tarchi, Asefi, Milan 2000.
16 «The effort made by the bourgeois to hermetically close the living space to the irruption of what
is elementary is the effectively successful expression of a primordial desire for security» (E.
Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p . 52 ; tr. it., p. 44). The bourgeois, like the knight and the worker,
does not only represent a contingent historical figure, but is the realization of an eternal Form
which as such can also appear in other historical eras in which power is held by other figures:
«Behind the appearance of the bourgeois lies an eternal possibility, which every era, which
every man will find within himself - just as the eternal forms of assault and defense are
available to every era and every man » (ibidem; tr. it., p. 45).
17 E. Jiinger, Ober den Schmerz, cit., p. 1 54 (tr. it., p. 1 48). On the profound difference between
"irre-confidence typical of the belle epoque, of which Jiinger speaks here, and ease as the
the sistable grace of power" and sublime serenity, cf. below, chap. III.
34
availability of consumer goods make well-being the most effective narcotic against pain;
symbolic places of this world devoted to the cult of prosperity are for Jtinger the large
cafés and social gatherings which he defines, somewhat provocatively, as the true
"palaces" of liberal democracy.
In this climate of widespread optimism and serene and almost dreamlike abandonment,
the elementary energy - the Dionysian - is felt by the bourgeois as something immoral and
absurd and relegated to a pathological sphere; the danger of coming into contact with it
is what terrifies him most. The supreme power thanks to which he believes he can
guarantee his security is Reason and its capacity for mediation. Yet the danger, and with
it the "original pain" connected to the elementary powers
, it is always looming; it becomes destructive and deadly for those
systems - such as the bourgeois one - which attempt to oust it through the construction of
a rational order in which it appears only as an 'error' and 'disease'. Danger, however,
"does not only require being part of every possible order, but is also the matrix of that
superior security from which the bourgeois will always be excluded" 18•
For Jiinger, modern humanity has already reached the time in which the bourgeois
individual's faith in the power of Reason and its universal concepts begins to crack; the
supreme values which the entire Western tradition, and with it the bourgeois era, its
legitimate heir, had been inspired to guide human conduct, show their unstoppable
decline: it is the secret dynamic of nihilism that is now coming to light , in the era of its
devastating fulfillment, and whose lucid diagnosis Jiinger inherits from Nietzschean
analyses19• After centuries of triumphal
18 E. Jiinger, The Worker, cit., p. 55 (tr. it., p. 47).

19 Jiinger focused in particular on the question of nihilism in the writing Ober die Linie (now
in SW 7; Italian ed. in E. Jiinger - M. Heidegger, Oltre la linea, cit.) published in 1950 on
the occasion of the sixtieth Martin Heidegger's birthday. In it Jiinger sees an imminent
overcoming of the zero meridian of nihilism, which has now become a 'normal' and no
longer pathological condition. According to Jiinger, nihilism is close to reaching its
ultimate goals and at the moment in which, through the mobilization of technique, the
elementary and the undifferentiated emerges, 'spiritual' processes are determined that
lead to the beyond [ trans ] of the line. On this problematic theme and on the essential
relationships that link Jiinger's reflection to the thought of Nietzsche and that of
Heidegger, I refer to the introduction by F. Volpi, / tinerarium mentis in nihilum (in E.
Jiinger - M. Heidegger, Oltre la linea, cit., pp. 9-45) and to the accurate analyzes of P.
Amato, The gaze on nothing. Ernst Jiinger and the question of nihilism (Mimesis, Milan
2001; this text also contains a large and updated bibliography of studies on Jiinger
regarding this aspect). The reflection on the zero meridian of nihilism is connected to the
question of pain, since precisely on the line in which all values dissolve, the purifying
action of pain is exercised and its germinal force imposes itself. Below are some of the
most significant titles on the issue of nihilism: W. Sonn, Der Mensch im Arbeitzeitalter.
Das Werk E. Jiingers als Auseinendersetzung mit dem Nihilismus, (Diss.), Saarbriicken
1 971; M. Bo-noia, At the wall of nothingness. Heidegger, Jiinger and the beyond of
nihilism, "Aesthetics Journal", 23, 14-15, 1983, pp. 131-150; C. Esposito, On the essence
of nihilism. Reading Ernst Jiinger - Martin Heidegger, Beyond the Line, "Paradigms", 25, 9, 199
Caiia, Mtis alla del nihilismo. Meditactiones sobre Ernst Jiingers, Universitad de Murcia,
Murcia 1 993; G. Figal, The metaphysical character of modernity. Ernst Jiinger's writing
"
O over the line ( 1950) and Martin Heidegger's criticism Ober "the line" ( 1955), in AA.VV.,
35
journey, man feels the foundation of his steps disappearing and the loss of meaning imposes itself
as an irrevocable destiny: «We find ourselves in the condition of those travelers who have traveled a
long distance on a frozen lake, when, for the As the temperature increases, the surface begins to
split into large slabs. The platform of universal concepts shows the first cracks, and through the
cracks the ever-present
.
element shines darkly in its depths"20• With the breaking of the
Enlightenment-bourgeois certainties, the idea that pain is a "prejudice", an "error" which Reason can
remedy21 also vanishes. • The project of eliminating pain from the life of man, which entire
generations had believed with an almost religious faith, reveals its groundlessness the moment we
manage to unmask its intimate nature: in reality, it was pursued as a true "immunization from
pain"22, that is, as cunning and subtle - we could say 'subliminal' - introduction into existence of non-
destructive pain germs23 that protect - immunize - from acute pain, thus averting the threat of a
sudden and devastating attack by pathogenic germs coming from abroad24 • The pain, therefore, is
not defeated but only narcotized and, with this, life is lost. possibility of coming into contact with the
forces it arouses.
But the balance between well-being and pain, in the end, always ends even:
Even in the full enjoyment of one's own security, the individual is never
completely safe. The attempt to artificially harness the elementary forces may
certainly prevent the roughest contacts and eliminate the crudest shadows but certain
Ernst }unger in the 20th century, cit. ; C. Lavaud, Over the Line: Thoughts of Evil in
Nihilism , "Les Carnets Ernst Jiinger", 1, 1 996, pp. 107-1 35-50; AA.VV., Ernst Jiinger
and the Thinker of Nichilism, curated by L. Bonesio, Herrenhaus, Milan
20 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., p. 1 52 (tr. it., p. 146).
21 This idea has «also produced a long series of practical measures, typical of a specific
century of the human spirit», such as, for example, «the abolition of torture and the
slave trade, the invention of the lightning rod, the smallpox vaccination, anesthesia,
insurance and a whole world of technical and civil conveniences" (ibidem).
22 The Latin term munus has a wide range of meanings: duty, task, service, obligation,
tribute but also favour, help, offering, votive gift. Interesting , then, is the relationship it
has with the political concept ài com-munitas (for this topic see
R. Esposito, Communitas. Origin and destiny of the community, Einaudi, Turin 1998 and
Id., lmmunitas. Protection and denial of life, Einaudi, Turin 2002). It is, perhaps, no
coincidence that the discovery of vaccines against otherwise deadly diseases and the
consequent mass immunization occurred in the same period of time in which the great
liberal democracies were establishing themselves.
23 Just think of the sacrifices and compromises that the bourgeois is forced to endure in order
to protect their reputation and well-being. In this sense, bourgeois society is not a society
'freed' from pain, but only more or less effectively 'defended' from it and in-suffering is a
characteristic character trait of the bourgeois.
24 The idea of immunization as the elimination of differences would refer to a determination
of pain starting from the encounter-clash with otherness: this idea was perhaps developed
more by a thinker like Heidegger than by Jiinger himself: cf. M. Heidegger, Language, in
On the way towards language, edited by A. Caracciolo, Mursia, Milan 1973, pp. 39 ff.
36
the diffused light with which pain penetrates space and takes its revenge. The vase that
cannot be filled in one go will be filled drop by drop. So boredom is nothing more than pain
diluted over time. Another aspect of this invisible contagion is the feeling of being poisoned.
Thus psychic pain is one of the 25
lower forms of pain .
Everywhere spreads "the sensation of being exposed to the disintegrating

effect of dark evil forces"26. The attempt to anesthetize existence disseminates
restlessness and anxiety everywhere: these are the phenomena in which pain
resurfaces in modernity in a deaf and subterranean way. Thus the triumph of
psychology, a science that has a very close and ambiguous relationship with
pain (according to the caustic definition of Karl Kraus, psychoanalysis is the
disease for which it claims to be the antidote), is a symptomatic event of our time.
But the Stoic dream of a possible analgesia, that is, of a complete insensitivity
to pain, is definitively shattered when the bourgeois illusion of peaceful progress
and peaceful coexistence between European states is wrecked in the nightmare
of the battlefields of Great War: it is the 'original' pain that then re-emerges with
unprecedented violence.
3. Sacrifice
Loving and dying: two things that have
been married together for centuries.
Willingness to love: this is also being willing to di
F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Bourgeois culture, in its demeaning obsession with security, had paradoxically

already achieved one of the main effects of pain: the reduction27 of life. The
Last Man that Nietzsche described in his writings, the man who leads his
existence among the comforts and pleasures of a decadent and exhausted
civilization, is the man who, in order to avoid danger, renounces the fullness of
life : he is the "ugliest" man; who lives a half life. The generation that, in the first
decades of the twentieth century, was the first to experience the decline of the
ideals and faiths of the bourgeois world, felt such a limitation as unbearable and
sought the fullness of life in the exhilaration of risk, adventure28 and sacrifice.
Jtinger emblematically interprets this escape from the muffled security
25 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., p. 1 56 (cf. it., pp. 149-1 50).
26 Ibid (tr. it., p. 1 50).
27 Reduction [Reduktion] and vanishing [Schwund] are the two fundamental traits that Jiinger
identifies in the nihilistic process: cf. E. Jiinger, O ber die Linie, cit., p. 257 (tr. it., p. 74).
28 On adventure as an enhancement of life between catastrophic and numinous at the same time,
between telluric and titanic forces and as an allegory of mystery, cf. F. Masini, Mythography
of adventure, in AA. VV., Ernst }unger. An international conference, cit.
37
bourgeois class; on the first page of his World War I diaries, he writes:
Growing up in times of security and tranquility, we all felt the irresistible attraction of the
unknown, the fascination of great dangers. The war had gripped us like a drunkenness. Having
left under a deluge of flowers, we were intoxicated with roses and blood. Not the slightest doubt
that the war would have offered us greatness, strength, dignity. It seemed like real men's action:
lively rifle fights on flowery meadows where the blood would fall like dew. "There is no more
beautiful death in the world... we sang. Leave the monotony of a sedentary life and take part in
"
that great test. We asked for nothing else29.
What mattered was not the purpose of the war30, but the intimate
movement of rapprochement towards the elemental that it once again made
possible: in the "community of the front" Jiinger, like many other volunteers,
believed he could rediscover that chivalrous spirit of mystical elevation in the
presence of death that the verses of Orlando Furioso, read passionately in
the front line trenches, testified to him. Only in the proximity of danger can life
illuminate itself and, in fulfillment, pass into death. Consequently, the
relationship that the warrior has with pain changes: while in the bourgeois
world it was a question of removing pain, in the heroic world, as well as in the
cultic one (the knight and the monk are part of the same metaphysical horizon)
it is about «organizing life in such a way as to make it ready at any moment to enc
Life always tries to remain in tune with pain"31• The discipline that dominates
in this world - both the ascetic-priestly one aimed at mortification and the
heroic-warlike one aimed at tempering like steel - tends to make life resistant
to pain, always keeping it in contact with it: while in the bourgeois world of
sensitivity the body represents the supreme value (the soul being, understood
as a psychic apparatus, a mere epiphenomenon of the body, subject to
dynamics completely similar to the physical ones -corporeal) and the pain
that undermines it, as it threatens the essential core of life itself, is demonised,
in the heroic world the body is treated as an instrument, an object on which it
is possible to exercise a superior power. Life itself must be able to be
objectified, it must be able to detach itself from itself, considering itself a
simple "outpost" along a path that continues beyond its end.
But already from his first war experiences Jiinger realizes, with great regret,
that chivalric heroism is no longer possible: instead of the hoped-for
adventure and dangers, the soldiers now find the mud of the trenches, fatigue,
the nights of waking and the unbearable boredom of a war of position that
29 E. Jiinger, In Stahlgewittern ( 1 920), in SW I, p. 11 (Italian translation by G. Zampaglione, Nella

tempest d' steel, Guanda, Parma 1 990, p. 5).
30 «All goals are ephemeral, only movement is eternal» (E. Jiinger, Der Kamp.f als innere Erlebnis
( 1 922), in SW 7, p. 103).
31 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., p. 1 59 (tr. it., pp. 1 52- 1 53).
38
it soon becomes a battle of mechanized vehicles in which the role of, the individual soldier is
reduced to that of an anonymous bearer of a specific firepower. In the "storms of steel", in which
the clashes of this "war of materials" are transformed, the warrior with his heroism disappears
and in his place comes the unknown soldier who, as a "worker" of the war, already predefined
figure the Arbeiter Type. Through the "total mobilization", which was witnessed for the first time
during the First World War, according to which it is the "e-army of labor" that deploys its power
on the battlefields, the the planetary affirmation of technology: with it we inaugurate not only a
new era of war, but also a new era of the spirit32• The movement, which for the traditional
warrior and the romantic hero was a vital and creative impulse, is now transformed into work
whose presence can be found in any circumstance:
there is not a single atom that is not at work, and this delirious process is,
profoundly, our destiny. The Total Mobilization is not a measure to be carried out,
but something that is accomplished by itself, it is, in war as in peace, the expression
of the mysterious and inexorable law to which the age of the masses and of
machines. It happens then that every single life tends more and more indisputably
towards the condition of the Worker, and that the wars of the knights, kings and
citizens are succeeded by the wars of the Workers33•
The movement thus becomes a universal productive activism which feeds all the great
political ideologies of the early twentieth century, from fascism to Bolshevism to Americanism,
while the bourgeois idea of progress is replaced by the concept of planning, emblematically
adopted both by the socialist regimes, even in their nationalistic version, and by the liberal ones.
The consensus of the masses and propaganda become the decisive elements of political life,
and individual freedom vanishes in the iron grip of the inexorable technical necessity in which,
according to Jtinger, an ineluctable cosmic destiny manifests itself: «It is a grandiose spectacle
It is terrible to see the movements of the increasingly homologated masses, over which the spirit
of the world casts its net. Behind every exit marked by the symbols of happiness lie pain and
death"34•
32 Cfr. E. Jiinger, Feuer und Bewegung ( 1 930), in SW 7 (tr. it. di F. Cuniberto, Fuoco e mo-
vimento, in Foglie e pietre, cit.).
33 E. Jiinger, Die total Mobilmachung ( 1 930), in SW 7, p. 1 28 (Italian translation by F.
Cuniberto, La Mobilitazione Totale, in Foglie e pietra, cit., p. 121). And even more
explicitly: «The war front and the labor front are identical. There are as many war fronts
as there are work fronts" (E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p. 1 1 8; tr. it., p. I 03).
34 E. Jiinger, Die total Mobilmachung, cit., p. 141 (tr. it., p. 1 35). The passage ends with the
peremptory statement "lucky is he who does not cross these spaces unarmed", which
cannot be read as an incitement to war, since against the iron logic of Total Mobilization
traditional weapons are no longer valid; only new spiritual weapons, to be sought in the
heart of the individual, can be used, as we will see, to escape the implacable grip of
technical homologation that subjects everything to itself.
39
The individual suffering of the hero is sacrificed in the devastation wrought by the technical
paraphernalia which makes the battlefields similar to ghostly industrial landscapes, to lands of fire and
ice in which horror35 and death reign. Here we encounter the cold face of suffering and tragic pity is
replaced by the cold "mechanics of pain" which acts with implacable effectiveness and with total
indifference to any hierarchy of values. No human condition is safe from this. Misfortune strikes the
emperor and the last of his servants indifferently, just as the pathogen attacks
.
a blade of straw or a
brilliant brain indifferently. The pain, in short, which, after the experiences of the front, Jiinger
understands as the principle of disintegration, as loss of contact and as laceration, both physical and
spiritual, attacks every organism, regardless of its degree of complexity. If this is easily forgotten in
quiet times, in exceptional circumstances such as on the battlefields, the arbitrariness of the threat
becomes evident and the precariousness of existence imposes itself in a tragic way.
As the threat grows, so does a catastrophic, Plutonist (and not simply pessimistic) vision of reality.
Apocalyptic proclamations multiply. There is more and more talk of the decline of civilizations (and
indeed Sunset of the West is the title of the monumental and famous work by O. Spengler36, published
in 1923, which presented a "morphology of the world history" of civilizations and which greatly
influenced the Jiingerian conception of history).
Sciences that study only the vestiges of dead civilizations are spreading, including archaeology, the
science par excellence dedicated to pain and mourning37. But it is also the science which, by
investigating the geological layers in which man as a "guide fossil"38 has yet to make his appearance,
allows us to access primordial eras in which the human being was still close to
35 «Horror, something completely different from terror, anguish or fear. It is, rather, similar to the horror
that recognizes the face of the Gorgon with the bristling and disheveled hair and the mouth wide open
in the scream, while terror senses the disturbing more than seeing it, but precisely for this reason it is
gripped with greater force by its claw" (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 1 86; tr. it., p. 1 3).
For the disturbing representation of the horrifying face with which pain manifests itself in the age of
technology, Jiinger often refers to Bosch's paintings which «with their nocturnal fires and their infernal
forges resemble industrial landscapes in full activity.
[ ... ] One of the most recurring motifs is a mobile curtain from whose opening a large shiny knife
emerges. The sight of these machines arouses a particular type of fear: they are symbols of an
aggression disguised in mechanical forms, the coldest and most insatiable"
(E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., pp. 147- 148; tr. it., pp. 141- 1 42).
36 O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, tr. it. by J. Evola, Guanda, Parma 1 991. On the relationships
between Jiinger and Spengler cf. D. Conte, Chains of civilization. Studies on Spengler, Edizioni
Scientifiche Italiane, Naples 1 994, pp. 1 1 3-130; on the particular Jiingerian conception of archeology
cf. L. Bonesio, «the archaeologist's telescope: geological time and human time», in L. Bonesio - C.
Resta, Passaggi al bosco, cit.
37 «Archaeology is truly a science dedicated to pain: in the layers of the subsoil it finds empires whose
names have even been lost. The feeling of mourning that grips us in these places is extraordinary" (E.
Jiinger, Ober den Schmerz, cit., p. 1 50; tr. it. , p. 1 44).
38 Cfr. , E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer (1959), in SW 8 (Italian translation by A. La Rocca and A. Greco, Al
wall of time, Adelphi, Milan 2000).
40
elementary forces that is, to that crystalline structure - which Jtinger often mentions
,
"fundamental lattice" - of elementary forms in which the undifferentiated can integrate and
the multiple order itself39•
That modern archeology and paleontology rediscover the original civilizations and bring
to light their mysterious world is not a coincidence for Jtinger: the passionate archaeological
and museum longing characterizes modern man perhaps more profoundly than his
hypertrophic knowledge historical. He moved further and further away from that
"fundamental network", encountering an ever-increasing imbalance and disorientation which
also alienated his original Dionysian relationship with suffering. But through the Total
Mobilization of technology, on the battlefields of the Great War, that fundamental network
has forcefully returned to show its dark phosphorescence and, like a radioactive element,
has produced a mutation of the human lineage: in the forge of those battlefields were
forged the New Titans40 of the era of Technology, the Type of the Worker was born there:
«Over there a new lineage gave life to a new interpretation of the world, passing through
an ancient experience»41•
4. The Mask of the Titans
But the lrrsaal I Helps, like slumber, and makes

you strong in distress and in the night, I
Until then there are enough heroes in the bronze
Cradle grown, I hearts in strength,
39 See E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen. Drogen und Rausch (1970), in SW 1 1, p. 352 (Italian translation by C. San-
drin and U. Ugazio, A vvicinamenti. Droghe ed ebbrezze, Multhipla, Milan 1970, p. 323).
40 The mythical Titans described by Hesiod were a primordial divine lineage generated by Uranus and Gaia;
removed from Heaven, they violently seized power, but were later dethroned by the Olympic gods.
Prometheus, of Titanic origin, has always been considered the emblem of man's will to dominate, is also
the one who shares with man an unsatisfying shortcoming, in that he gives men the fire that would be
essential to them to achieve a perfect form of life, «revealing himself in this way as an alter-ego of humanity
and remaining the eternal image of his fundamentally deficient form of existence» (K. Kerényi, Myths and
Mysteries, tr. it. by A. Brelich, Boringhieri, Turin 1 979, p.
227). Even the New Titans of which Jiinger speaks, who will impose the undisputed dominion of
technology and will render poets mute, are the image of a lacking humanity: they lack, as we will see, the
euphonious wisdom of pain and life, of the transitory and the temporary. Cronus, the youngest and most
powerful of the old Titans, with his atrocious voracity (he devours all his children except Zeus), casts his
shadow on the Titans of the modern age: at the "wall of time", which the acceleration of technique leads,
they themselves will have to decline and give space to a new Olympic lineage by Jiinger only sketched in
some figures that we will meet later. On the revolt of Cronus against his father Uranus which inaugurates
the titanic phase of time cf. E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch (1954), in SW 1 2, pp. 224-225 (Italian ed. edited
by A.
La Rocca and G. Russo, the book of the dust clock, Adelphi, Milan 1 994, pp. 21 3-2 1 5).
41 E. Jiinger, Sturm (1923), in SW 15, p. 27 (Italian translation by A. Ladicicco, Il lieutenant Sturm, Guanda,
Parma 2000, p. 26).
41
as usual, similar to the heavenly ones. I'll
figure it out soon.42 F. Holderlin, Bread
and Wine.
In every stone, in every grain of sand, a

vein of gold could be hidden.
E. Jtinger, The scissors.
The Worker Type has a higher rank than the bourgeois individual or the
masses (both destined to decline in the age of technology43), as it
embodies a form [ Gestalt], that is, a totality of meaning, to which every
single representative of the Type can participate: «Form is also the
possession of the individual, and the highest and indelible right to life,
which he shares with stones, plants, animals and stars»44. In form man
discovers his own definition and destiny, and this discovery allows him to
face the most difficult trials up to the extreme sacrifice: life is valid only as
a reference to form. In the name of adaptation to form, the fickle sensitivity
that had so agitated the bourgeois soul is eradicated from life; personal
freedom is thus also denied and service (structured in a secular sense in
the various hierarchies of work which has risen to a total dimension)
becomes a fundamental and permanent condition. At the same time,
however, a new discipline was formed on the battlefields, a "discipline of
the heart and nerves" for which "proofs of supreme, unadorned, almost
metallic coldness, from which a heroic conscience derives in able to handle
the body as a pure instrument and to extract from it, beyond the limits of
the instinct of self-preservation, a series of complicated performances"45•
This discipline is imposed even in the physiognomic features of the
Worker: the face itself now becomes disciplined, losing the most markedly
individual traits, but gaining, on the other hand, clarity and incisiveness:
What in the liberal world was considered a "beautiful" face was precisely the refined
face, nervous, mobile, changeable and open to the most diverse influences and stimuli.
The disciplined face is instead closed; it is a face with a fixed, uni-vocal, objective, rigid
gaze. Wherever goal-oriented education is given, yes no-
42 «But it helps to wander, I like a drowsiness. The need and the night give me strength. As long
as heroes grow in bronze cradles, similar in power to the Gods, as in the past. They will come
like a thunder" (Italian ed. edited by E. Mandruzzato, Le liriche, Adelphi, Milan 1977, p. 525).
43 See E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., § 34. 44
lvi, p. 41 (tr. it., p. 34). 45
lvi, p. 1 1 6 (Italian translation, p. 101). While in the heroic-cult world of traditional civilizations this
willingness to sacrifice was aimed at spiritual elevation and could only be achieved in a mystical-
initiatory sense, the new 'hero' of the technological age is willing to sacrifice himself only for the
realization of "performance", i.e. to allow the functioning of the technical-productive apparatus
in which every moral category vanishes in the face of the urgency of Work.
42
It will immediately be seen how the intervention of strict and impersonal rules translates into a Hindu-46
facial expression .
This face hardened and galvanized by the blind militia of work, in which the destiny of the individual
disappears, is the rigid "mask of the Titans" which, between the steel of the machines, the concrete
of the buildings, and the everlasting twilight phosphorescence of the metropolis, falls on this humanity,
increasingly resembling a community of termites. This mask, an extreme subversion of the Dionysian
masks that evoked the geniuses of the earth and fertility, now becomes armor resistant to the assaults
of pain no longer demonized as in the bourgeois era. Therefore, the sinister flashes of the elemental
that technology brings forth from the depths of the Earth are reflected in it, the flames of that telluric
fire that is released from the energy of minerals dance on it, from which never, however, , the spiritual
flames of the solar fire, eternal officiant of sacrifices, are disjoined.
The New Titans can face pain only because, through their mask, they are made more "objective"47
and inserted into the flow of that elementary Will which Schopenhauer had already identified as the
profound essence of reality and to which the overman Nietzschean, prefiguration of the New Titans,
gives his assent48• Participating in the flow of the Will means, as for Nietzsche, exercising one's
dominion in time and over time: «Creation gives rise to time. The gods establish time, the Titans
shorten and extend it, like Procrustes in his abode"49• While space and causality are increasingly
prey to the representative activity of the Worker, time, as an image of the Will and of the automatism
of the technique, it becomes absolute, that is, freed from any conditioning. This idea reaches its
culmination in the Nietzschean doctrine of the eternal return, in which according to Jtinger, titular
time would triumph.
46 E. Jiinger, Ober den Schmerz, cit., p. 1 65 (tr. it., p. 1 59). And again: «[The face] has become
metallic, almost galvanized on the surface, the skeleton clearly stands out in relief, the
features are sunken and tense. The gaze is calm and fixed, trained to observe objects that
must be perceived in conditions of maximum speed" (E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., pp. 1 1 6-
1 1 7; tr. it., p . I 02).
47 In this sense the Jiingerian Worker is an emblematic figure of that artistic, literary and
architectural movement of the Neue Sachlichkeit which spread especially in the German
area in the first decades of the twentieth century.
48 «Nietzsche understands the titanic world more closely, no more consciously than
Schopenhauer understands it. He takes part in it, fights on the front line. He does not
observe it with a pessimistic gaze, but allows you, as a prophet. The will is not blind for him,
but sets goals; the kinship of the overman with Prometheus is immediately recognized" (E.
Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., pp. 536-537; tr. it., p. 1 14). Unlike Schopenhauer, who still
maintained a hostile attitude towards the Will and aimed to overcome it, Nietzsche says yes
to it because only from the Will to Power can the overman rise.
49 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 530 (tr. it., p. 1 07). The introduction of mechanical watches
radically changed the concept of time. This event, a necessary prerequisite of modern
technology, constitutes for Jiinger the remote origin of the titanic era which, through the
invention of elementary clocks, even went so far as to uncover the telluric sources of time:
cf. E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit.
43
tank50. But this conception of temporality promises, in its own way, a passage
beyond pain: «His eternity knows no limits. On the contrary, the life of the divine,
paradisiacal world is timeless. Here, as there, sublime happiness awaits.
Here: on this side, there: on the other side of the wall of time"51. The Titans,
these new children of the earth52, are on their way towards the Wall of time,
and their approach is accomplished through an ever deeper penetration into
the heart of the earth, into the abyss of the elemental. If on the one hand we
are witnessing an ever-increasing acceleration of time, increasingly pressing
rhythms of life and development in the face of which the "progressive fortunes"
of bourgeois humanity appear only as rearguard movements, on the other we
begin to experience a disconcerting expansion of time in a media synchronicity
in which we seem to link the same expectation of the novum, so characteristic
of modernity, and which for Jilnger preludes a state of calm to which the extreme
fulfillment of technology itself will lead53.
In this forced march of approaching the sources of time, the Worker
constructs a sort of artificial 'nature', in which technique abandons its
mechanical face and pursues the project of "organic constructions" "54, both
at the level of the individual representative of the Type and at the social level.
50 On the titanic time typical of the world of technology, see below, chap. III, § 2.
51 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 537 (tr. it., p. 1 14). This Jiingerian interpretation of Nietzsche's
eternal return as titanic time seems to me to be in profound harmony with the Heideggerian
interpretation which sees the origin of the nihilistic drift of the project in the self-referentiality of
the Will to Power (defined by Heidegger as the Will to Will). Nietzschean theory of the overman
and the "bad infinity" of the ring of return. See M. Hei-degger, Nietzsche, tr. it. by F. Volpi,
Adelphi, Milan 1 994. Even for Heidegger, an attentive reader of the Worker, the Nietzschean Will
to Power finds its fulfillment in modern technique and its titanism.
52 For Jiinger, the profound origin of all the phenomena that characterize the age of technology is the
Earth: «The Earth, from time to time, shows its totem, that of the ancient Serpent, freeing itself
from its limbs, or retracting them. This explains the Universal State, the disappearance of
civilizations, the extinction of animals, monocultures, deserts, the increase in earthquakes and
plutonic explosions, the return of the Titans [ ... ]. Those who had driven the Father from the
throne [ ... ] are now reason and science" (E. Jiinger, Eumeswil, cit., p. 87; tr. il., p. 8.1).
53 Jiinger shares with his brother Friedrich Georg the idea of the need for a halt in technical
development, but while for Friedrich Georg the "perfection of technique" refers to the achievement
of saturation of the technical process which results in total automation, for Ernst the perfection of
the technique is reached when all the needs that the Form of the Worker imposes are satisfied:
«The evolution of the technique is not unlimited; it ends when the technique lends itself, as a tool,
to the special needs that the form of the Worker imposes on it" (E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p. 1
76; tr. it., p. 1 53). See
FG Jiinger, The perfection of technique, tr. The. by M. de Pasquale, Settimo Sigillo, Rome 2000;
on this essay, which was written in 1939 but which was published only in 1946, cf.
K. Gauger, Zu Friedrich Georg Jiingers Perfektion der Technik, "Les Carnets Ernst Jiinger", 3, 1
998 (number entirely dedicated to the work of FG Jiinger and to a comparative reflection on the
thought of the two brothers}, pp. 75 -92 and G. Gregorio, Technique and modernity in Friedrich
Georg Jiinger, "Proceedings of the Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti", LXXII, 1 996, pp. 359-374.
54 Emblematic in this regard is the science fiction scenario that Jiinger outlines in his novel Gliiserne
Bienen ( 1 957), in SW 15 (Italian translation by H. Furst, The glass bees, Guanda, Parma 1 993).
44
If, as Jiinger states, the movements of the Titans constitute "events of
nature"55, here nature is to be understood as a structure standardized, or
crystallized, by the power of technology. The Titans' mask is nothing other
than the uniform that erases individual differences and even threatens
sexual ones. Jiinger wrote in 1934 (but his observations are surprisingly
current): «The role played by the uniform is even more notable today than
it was at the time of compulsory conscription. The homogeneity of dress
extends not only to all ages but also transcends sex differences, and the
curious idea arises spontaneously that the discovery of the Worker is
accompanied by the discovery of a third sex"56• Heidegger's statement
which dates back to a slightly later period echoes these words: «A man
without uniform today already makes the impression of the unreal»57•
The uniform, which is now the 'work clothing, be it the overalls of the
factory worker or the suit of the great entrepreneur, rather than the uniform
of the sportsman, is perceived as armour, as a particularly effective
protection against the onslaught of pain, while the military parades and
the human columns that advance incessantly through the streets of
European metropolises on the eve of the Second World War appear like
magical figures whose hidden meaning and power consists precisely in the des
Just as military and cult structures, as directed structures, similar to
crystalline ones, were refractory to pain understood as decay, separation,
disorder and chaos, the 'organic' structure generated by the multiplication
of the Type in the era of the Worker possesses a particular cohesion that
opposes the irruption of elementary forces58•
55 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 596 (tr. ill., p. 1 80).

56 E. Jiinger, Ober den Schmerz, cit., p. 1 65 (tr. it., p. 1 59). For similar statements on the
androgyny of the new human type, see E. Jiinger, Der Weltstaat. Organismus und
Organisation (1960), in SW 7, pp. 509; 510 (tr. il. by A. ladicicco, The world state. Organism
and organization, Guanda, Parma 1 998, pp. 55; 57).
57 M. Heidegger, Oltrepassamento della metafisica, in Essays and speeches, edited by G.
Vattimo, Mursia, Milan 1976, p. 63. Heidegger, with clear Jiingerian accents, further
observes: «Since reality consists in the uniformity of plannable calculation, man must also
necessarily return to uniformity, to remain at the level of reality. The being that is only
admitted into the will to will relaxes in an absence of differences which is only regulated by
an organization process dominated by the "principle of performance". This seems to give rise
to a hierarchization; but in truth at its basis it is determined by the absence of hierarchy,
because the purpose of the performance is everywhere only the uniform emptiness of the
consummation of each work in the insurance of the ordering activity" (ibidem) .
58 Unlike the "organic construction", the mass generated by the gathering of bourgeois
individuals is uniform but at the same time shapeless and abstract since it does not embody
any metaphysical form; Jiinger, identifies the era of the masses, which already constitutes
the decline of the bourgeois era, with the first "dynamic-explosive" phase of the affirmation of
the technique which will be followed by the definitive phase in which the "perfection" of the
technique will correspond to the "fulfillment "of the form of work. Thus he can affirm that the
masses «not only do not guarantee against the onslaught of pain, but on the contrary attract
ruin with magnetic force, as soon as one approaches the sphere of elementary forces» (E.
Jiinger, Ober den Schmerz , cit., p. 1 67; tr. it., p. 161).
45
The technique, as pure power and will to dominate, constitutes the greatest antidote that the
Worker has against the aggression of pain59, because it immeasurably increases the ability to
tolerate it, in the perennial self-referential movement of ' increase in power. But the same technique,
in reality, causes pain, death and destruction, even if its victims appear to us to be necessary and the
result only of unfortunate and unavoidable accidents60: the pain, however, requires a fixed toll.
A decisive symptom of the "petrification of life" by technology is, for Jiinger, the emergence in the
Worker Type of the Second Consciousness (whereas the First Consciousness would be the
traditional one of a psychological-moral nature), that is, of that cold supra-individual ability to perceive
oneself, through artificial sense organs, as objects foreign to the sphere of sensitivity and, therefore,
immune from pain61• Jtinger identifies an emblematic manifestation of the affirmation of the Second
Consciousness in the enormous and revolutionary development of photography. The artificial eye of
the photographic lens is a fundamental sense instrument of the Second Consciousness: it observes
and reproduces events in a telescopic way, from an insensitive and invulnerable position, removed
from the urgency of the events. Thanks to this the photography allows a precise, objective and
detached description; it is a weapon at the service of the Worker whose sight thus becomes a 'subtle'
act of invasion and aggression. At the same time, the Type, having overcome
.
the metaphysical value
of the subject, tends to become invisible, to camouflage itself in the neuralgic network of the Second
Consciousness which embraces everything without it being possible to identify a centre62• It is the
Second Consciousness which attempts to neutralize the pain through
59 «Technique is our uniform» (ibid., p. 1 74; tr. it., 1 68).

60 Jiinger cites the victims of trafficking as an emblematic example: «trafficking claims its
victims year after year; they have reached a figure that exceeds the losses of a bloody
war - and more generally - the victims required by technical development appear
necessary to us because in conformity with our Type: that of the Worker. The Worker
Type insinuates itself in various forms into the empty spaces of the old corporate
system and introduces its own scale of values. A century ago, dying in a duel was a
normal accident for a young man; today such a death would be an extravagance. In
those same years the tailor Berblinger of Ulm, who crashed into the Danube with his
flying machine, was considered a madman, and a man who broke his neck climbing a
mountain without any apparent purpose was necessarily ill. of melancholy. Today,
however, dying on a glider or practicing a winter sport is normal" (ibid., p. 1 80; tr. it.,
pp. 1 74- 1 75). The increasingly widespread practice of so-called 'extreme' sports
today, in which the Titans' mask is put to the test, only confirms these considerations.
61 This is closely connected to the process, inscribed in the depths of the Western
philosophical tradition, according to which man's relationship with the world is configured
as a relationship of representation and image and the image of the world, through the
affirmation of the conception of truth as "correctness of representation", it is
progressively objectified. See M. Heidegger, The era of the image of the world, in
Broken paths, tr. it. by P. Chiodi, La Nuova Italia, Florence 1 984.
62 «The question arises whether this Second Consciousness that we see tirelessly at
work also possesses a center from which the growing petrification of life can receive
a deeper meaning capable of justifying it» (E. Jiinger, O ber den Sch-
46
its spectacularization and mediation; since the advent of the bourgeoisie, and even
more so in the era of the Worker, man no longer encounters lament, heartbreak,
groans: the Titan's mask does not reveal suffering; in every circumstance we feel
forced to remain composed, to have 'cold' blood, respecting an aseptic modesty that
only apparently distances us from pain: a style for suffering, a form for pain is
missing. But the armor of the Worker against pain is - like the katechon that delays
the inevitable advent of the Antichrist - a provisional defense, capable only of
prolonging the gray existence of this laborious humanity63• The ritual, however, with
its ordering forms (just think of the codes of
chivalry), in the heroic-cult world, were able to soothe the pain by attempting to
mirror and exorcise the hierarchies inherent in it. In the text Peace, whose
composition dates back to the years of the Second World War, at the height of the
catastrophe, Jtinger writes:
The kingdom of pain has an iron order, with its hierarchies, its ranks, its degrees through which man descends.
Here he searches for the sources of life, and just as the sources flow into lakes and then into the seas, so the
sufferings are collected in large containers of the purest form. Just as there, is awareness for thoughts, so too for
pain there are forms within which they acquire meaning and converge into a deeper meaning64 •
In the world of the Worker, however, the ritual is replaced by a repetitive

sequence of practices, technically exact, but devoid of form and therefore incapable
of welcoming and consoling the pain65•
merz, cit., p. 1 83; tr. it., p. 1 77). In the decentralized functional network of technology in which
even the boss is a servant, or rather the first, of the technical-bureaucratic apparatus, every
hierarchical reference is lost in the name of total pervasiveness and equivalence, as we can
see in the telematic network in which it operates today the Second Consciousness, the true
protagonist of the virtual world which has now almost completely replaced the world of
mechanical technique, according to that process which Jtinger defines as the "spiritualisation"
of technique and which gives rise to the 'subtle' phase of titanism.
63 In some revealing moments we experience the dark sensation of living in a dark and final era: we are
assailed by anguish, by a deep sadness or by an inexplicable sense of nausea for the world. This
sensation is beautifully described in a passage from CS Lewis's diaries, which lucidly recount the
various phases of grief over the loss of a loved one: «As in those dreams where nothing frightening
happens, but where the atmosphere and the things taste like death. So now. I see the rowan berries
turning red and for a moment I don't know why these berries should make me feel so sad. I hear a
clock ringing and the sound no longer has that something it always had. What does the world have?
Why has it become so flat, so mean and worn out?” (CS Lewis, Diary of a pain, Italian translation by
A. Ravano, Adelphi, Milan 1990, p. 43).
64 E. Jiinger, Der Friede (1946), in SW 7, p. 204 (Italian translation by A. Apa, La pace, Guanda, Parma
1 993, p. 21).
65 Jiinger here reiterates the amoral character of technology and expresses his distrust regarding a
possible ethics valid in the era of the Worker: «The new ethos of the type of technology, which is
invoked in many quarters, is still of all unknown" (E. Jtinger, Uber den Schmerz, cit., p. 1 85; tr. it., p.
1 79).
47
The body itself becomes an instrument of affirmation and challenge with which
the Second Consciousness measures the power of the new human type: this is
the meaning of that typical phenomenon of modernity which is sport, an emblematic
component - precisely in its position as an activity' recreational' - of the work
system: the soulless, tense and disciplined face of the sportsman is one of the
forms that the mask of the New Titans takes.
The effect of this chilling activity of the Second Consciousness is the strangeness
that, in an increasingly disturbing way, contemporary man begins to feel towards
his own body and the places he inhabits in an increasingly indifferent manner66:
equivalence abstract nature of places that has been threatening the landscapes
of the Earth for some time now is transferred to "corporeal matter" which becomes
increasingly manipulable and replaceable. The Titan's mask adheres more and
more intimately to the face to the point where there is no longer an iridescent face
under the steel mask.
«We find ourselves - Jtinger writes - in a final, and very singular, phase of
nihilism» whose evident symptoms are «the flattening and simplification of the
world, [...] the elimination of ancient cults , the creative impotence of cultures and
the gray mediocrity that distinguishes the actors on the stage"67• Only a new
elementary access to pain can allow the individual to become aware of this state
of things68. Faced with the imposition of the titanic will
66 On the topic of the loss of the meaning of living, Heidegger's reflections contained in
Costruire inhabiting thought (in Essays and speeches, cit.) are worthy of note. In this
regard, the following Rilkian verses seem illuminating to me: «It is certainly strange to no
longer live on earth [ ... ] what we were in such, so anxious hands I no longer be, and
finally one's name I abandon it , as a broken toy. I It's strange not to want what you
wanted. Strange is what was connected by relationship to see it floating, dissolved in
space" (RM Rilke, E-legie duinesi, I, cit., p. 7).
67 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit. 1 89- 1 90 (tr. it., pp. 1 83- 1 84).
68 Precisely in the titanic removal of pain, in the oblivion of its secret and implacable law,
lies the extreme nihilism of modernity. Heidegger also sees the loss of the sense of pain
as one of the most characteristic traits of the "polar night of nihilism" in which contemporary
humanity wanders. In this "time of poverty", suspended, as Holderlin writes, between the
"no longer of the escaped gods" and "the not yet of the god who comes", in this
intermediate time so poor that it is no longer able to recognize its own poverty itself,
even pain, although perhaps never so tragically present in our history as in recent
decades, keeps its intimate essence hidden: «The mystery of pain remains veiled. [ ... ]
Time is poor because it lacks the non-concealment of the essence of pain, death and
love. This poverty itself is poor, because the essential region in which pain, death and
love gather disappears. There is concealment because the region of their meditation is
the abyss of being" (M. Heidegger, Why poets?, in Interrupted paths, cit., pp. 252-253).
Only an experience of pain as loss could lead to a reminder of the absence that nihilism
has covered. The line, the threshold of nihilism is the painful threshold, the threshold of
pain, indeed the threshold is itself petrified pain (recites a verse by G. Trakl commented
by Heidegger: "pain has petrified the threshold"). Pain petrifies, makes one incapable of
speech, breaks, divides, but at the same time attracts everything into itself, collects and
joins what was separated in the tear, in the laceration. The other Greek word for pain,
algos, is supposedly
48
of the Worker, he cannot hold back, he must take part despite himself in the
enormous war apparatus that dominates the work fields of the earth, «whether
he sees in it a preparation for the sunset, or whether, on the heights where the
crosses rot and the palaces fall into ruin, he believes he recognizes the
restlessness that usually precedes the birth of a new lordship"69•
5. The loop
Go,
enter your rooms, my
people, and
close the door behind you.
Your hiding will last but a
moment, until the
fury passes.
Isaiah, 26.20.
Anyone who has not experienced the

enormous power of nothingness and
has not been tempted by it knows very
little about our era. One's chest: here
lies [ ... ] the center of every desert and
ruin [ ... ]. Here everyone, of any
condition and rank, conducts his
struggle alone and personally, and with
his victory the world changes. If he
prevails, nothing will retreat into itself,
abandoning on the shores the treasures
that its waves had submerged. They will
compensate for the sacrifices.
E. Jtinger, Beyond the line.
'
mily related to a/ego, which, as intensive of lego, would mean gathering: «Pain would then be that intimate
which gathers in the most intimate» (M. Heidegger, The question of being, in Segnavia, tr. it. by F Volpi,
Adelphi, Milan 1987, p. 354). But the pain threshold cannot be crossed through any liberation strategy; in it
we are called to live "intimately" as eternal wayfarers, eternally mourning a loss that any encounter, any
profound sharing, far from bridging the sea, can only illuminate. Perhaps only in the presence of the sacred,
of pure spirituality can the infinite torment of laceration and tearing away cease and the completed pain can
calm down, leaving the difference as difference, opening up to a new dimension of intimacy that does not
erase the distinctions in the ardor of compassion, but welcome them as precious resources. On Heidegger's
reflections on pain cf. C. Resta, The measurement of difference, Guerini, Milan 1988, pp. 2 1 5-223 .
69 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., p. 191 (tr. it., p. 1 85).
49
Beyond the Type of the Worker who leaves his mark on the landscape of
our era, Ji.inger believes he can see the birth of figures who manage to
maintain a profound inner freedom with respect to the world of technology,
evading, if only only in the depths of "one's chest", the metallic grip of
nihilism. They escape the cold logic of the "mechanics of pain" to access not
an immediate liberation from it, but a purifying experience of suffering, by
virtue of which pain is transformed into an initiatory test, a cure, a sacred
washing, the sowing of "tears and blood" from which a transfigured life can
germinate70• This conception of pain, together with the new figures that
embody it (the Waldgiinger and the Anarca71), emerges in the writings
following the essay On pain, focused on the way in which the Worker
experiences pain, and fully matures during the Second World War, in the
experience of "inner resistance" which is given to us in the splendid pages
of the diaries collected under the title of Radiations72• In the whirlpool of
horrors and of the barbarism into which Europe has fallen due to the war
there is no longer room for heroism or ideological proclamations; in the
desperate conditions and in the "lost positions" where the victims of this
immense catastrophe retreat and die, nothing has more value than the pain
that rises in the heart of the individual as in his true homeland. But this pain
can only bear fruit if one has crossed the realm of suffering to the end, only
if one has crossed the ocean of horror and nothingness without attempting
escape routes. The sacrificial victims of the war on each front are seen by Ji.inge
70 This conception of pain is present above all in Jiinger's reflections on the "great treasure of sacrifices"
that accumulated during the war years and which he considers as a terrible millstone that must bear
fruit for everyone. Precisely because suffering reached elementary and dark depths, to the point of
sinking its roots into the maternal substratum, concentrating in the universal pain of mothers, it could
become sacred purification, approaching the eternal truth of cult images; for this reason Jiinger hopes
that this suffering will constitute «the foundation of buildings that will rise higher than the light.
[ ... ] The new sacrifice will be effective and constructive far beyond their borders, as a sacrifice of the
earth itself" (E. Jiinger, Der Friede, cit., p. 24; tr. it., p. 24 ).
71 Jiinger presents these figures respectively in Der Waldgang (1951), in SW 7 (Italian translation by F.
Bovoli, Treaty of the Rebel, Adelphi, Milan 1990) and in Eumeswil, cit. For a careful analysis of these
two Jiingerian figures, see C. Resta, «The Waldglinger» and «The anarch», in L.
Bonesio - C. Resta, Passages to the woods, cit.
72 E. Jiinger, Radiations, cit. The significato 'esistenziale' di queste pagine e.più in
generale sulla scrittura diaristica di Jiinger cfr. W. Brandes, The "New Style" in
Ernst Jiinger's "Strah-lungen". Genesis, function, and reality production of literary /
eh in his daily books, Bouvier, Bonn 1 990; L. BI uhm, Emst funger as a diary writer
and the 'inner emigration'. Gardens and Strays ( 1942) and Radiations ( 1949), in
AA.VV., Ernst Jiin.ger in the 20th Century, cit., pp. 1 25- 1 53; E. Parath, Ernst
Jiinger's radiations. Notes on a diary entry, "Effective Word", 2, 1995, pp. 24 1
-257; G. Schneilin, reflections on Ernst Jiinger's Paris diaries, in AA.VV., The great hunt
Ernst Jiinger in France, a cura di P. Koslowsk.i, Fink, Munich 1996, pp. 63-78.
73 E. Jiinger, Der Friede, cit., p. 206 (tr. it., p. 25). Only through the terrible pain of war which Jiinger
interprets, beyond any humanistic horizon, as "sacrifice of the earth itself", will it be possible to
establish a new alliance and a new world order in which peace is authentically achieved.
50
me the precursors of a new attitude towards suffering. The fallen of the Second World
War were the first to experience the futility of any opposition to the forces of destruction.
The only possibility that life has left to support the titanic assault of pain is to support
its waves in the same way in which one abandons oneself to the phases of an illness:
to support the impact of pain it is only possible if one becomes plastic, if one takes on
forms complementary to those of its attacks.
The experience of pain, understood in this way, is very similar to one of those rites
of passage that in traditional societies mark the entry into a new phase of life74; but to
make the "passage" into pain requires courage and inner emptying - dangerously so
of estrangement from oneself ,
bordering on cynicism - which makes pain itself transparent and which allows a
detached and clear look at reality and oneself. No will, no 'ascetic' practice - Jiinger
never lived as an ascetic and never believed in a denial of the sensitive world - can
lead to this escape from oneself, but it is the experience of pain itself that grants this
"sovereign ease" 75. Thus writes Manuel Venator, protagonist of Eumeswil, and
figuration of the Anarch, commenting on the death of his mother:
I felt his loss like a second birth, like being pushed out into a clearer,
colder strangeness [...]. With pain it happens like with great illnesses: if
we manage, they no longer affect us. We are vaccinated against the
snake. The scar tissue no longer feels his bite. Since then [ ... ] the fear
has diminished. I grasped the world around me more clearly as my
participation was reduced. [ ... ] I remained a stranger in my father's house76
Only this experience of detachment allows us to see those "invisible doors" which,
like very thin cracks, crack the apparently granitic structure of the Worker's world.
Only in this painful emptying does the mask of the Titans become perceptible again,
but the individual does not he dares to remove it from his face because otherwise the
telluric fire would burn him. Only with the mask firmly in place can he, in fact
Schleife]77• And this can secretly find escape in evasion [Die
,
happen even in the heart of the activism of technology:
74 See A. Van Gennep, Rites of passage, tr. it. by ML Remotti, Boringhieri, Milan 1 981.
75 In this process of overcoming oneself, the individual reaches that "luminous force", which had
already disappeared at the dawn of history, which is serenity. In the feeling of Olympic security
and maternal welcome that then envelops the individual, he returns to feeling the living contact
with the earth: «Serenity is one of the most powerful weapons man has at his disposal; he
wears it like an armor forged by the gods, and closed in it he is capable of facing even the
horrors of destruction" (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 26 1; tr. it., p.
101). The plutonic mask of the Titans is replaced, in the heart of the individual, by the plastic
and crystalline armor of the Olympic gods.
76 E. Jiinger, Eumeswill, cit. 53-54 (cf. it., pp. 49-50).
77 Schle!fe properly indicates a curve, a bend, a turning point in the path, but Jiinger uses this
term to designate that imperceptible gap which, although apparently keeping in the same
direction, actually leads towards new goals. In this sense the
51
Those who know how to practice avoidance also know how to enjoy, within gigantic cities and their
stormy agitation, that wonderful calm of the sea that is solitude.
He penetrates into paneled and carpeted chambers, where one is minimally subject to the force of gravity
and the assaults of time. Here we think with more airy lightness; in an imperceptible moment the spirit
reaps fruits that it otherwise does not obtain through
7s
towards years of work .
It is in avoidance that freedom manifests itself in our time, in the individual's

ability to "pass to the woods"79, to withdraw into the uncontaminated forest
[Wildnis] of one's own internal resources in which the intimate belonging to the
the much debated Heideggerian Kehre , which beyond a change of direction in the philosopher's
research, indicates the same progression of beyond-metaphysical thought, is very close to the
Jiingerian Schle(fe) .
78 E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., pp. 200-20 1 (Italian translation, pp. 29-30). In Der
Waldgang Jiinger names art, eros and religion as possible oases in which the individual can
escape the world of the Titans; but, as Jiinger himself will later recognise, these too are "lost
positions" which will no longer be defensible for a long time and which will soon be sucked in
by the spread of the power of technology (as regards eros, see below, chapter II ) . Yet, as
Jiinger experimented in the defense of the "lost positions" on the front of the First World War
(see E. Jiinger, Das Waldchen 125 ( 1 925), in SW I; Italian translation by A. ladicicco, Bo-
schetto 125, Guanda, Parma 1 999), «in similar situations, life often acquires a clarity and
transparency that would otherwise be unknown to it. Just as from our observatories erected
among the glaciers we see the stars with maximum clarity, so in the lost position the orders we
receive or give become clearer to ourselves. Then even what is usual and everyday reaches a
particular dignity, a higher rank" (E.
Jiinger, The adventurous heart, cit., p. 263 ; tr. it., p. 1 03).
79 The term Waldgang dates back to an ancient Icelandic custom according to which outlaws
retreated to deserted and wild places where they could lead a free but risky existence.
Jiinger does not think of a gesture of anarchic rebellion or a romantic escape from society, but
of a spiritual and solitary battle against the devastation of the Worker's world and nihilism. And
as a solitary battle against nothingness, comforted by the regenerating forces of nature, he
thinks of the meaning of human existence: «If I close my eyes I sometimes see a dark landscape
with stones, rocks and mountains on the edge of infinity. In the background, on the shore of a
black sea, I recognize myself, a tiny figure that seems to have been drawn with chalk.
This is my vanguard place, on the extreme edge of nothingness: on the edge of that abyss I
fight my battle. The flowering of the lime trees these days: it seems to me that I have never
smelled their scent so strong and so intimate" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW2, p. 344, 9 July
1942; tr . it ., p. 1 04). In the "passage to the forest" Jiinger glimpses the possibility for man to
access an undifferentiated territory not subject to the organization of technology, which he calls
"wild land" [Wildnis] ; it is «the space from which man can hope not only to lead the fight [against
nihilism], but also to win. It is of course no longer a romantic wilderness. It is the primordial
terrain of his existence, the thicket from which he will one day burst out like a lion" (E. Jiinger,
Ober die Linie, cit., p. 273; tr. it., p. 96). These «gardens to which Leviathan has no access»
and around which he «prowls in anger» (ibidem), include, according to Jiinger, death, eros,
friendship and art, areas in which still man's inner freedom can be manifested. Massimo Cacciari
proposed an original interpretation of Jiinger's Wildnis , bringing it closer to the Heideggerian
theme of Lichtung, of the clearing: «The Wildnis is not the forest, but exactly its opposite: the
clearing, the open place, the Urgrund where the man 'retreats' into his silence -
in one's own childhood - in one's own original 'freedom' with respect to the impositional
calculation, to the constructive violence of technique" (M. Cacciari, Ernst Junger and Martin
Heidegger, in AA.VV., Emst Junger. An international conference , cit., p. 77). See also L Bonesio, «La
52
the earth. The place of this freedom is not the simple opposition to the prevailing power and does not manifest itself in
denying authority, but in the subtle difference with which one decides «whether to still have one's own destiny or to be
considered a number»80, a mere human material to be used in the technical system. Only on the threshold of
catastrophe and self-annihilation, in bottomless pain, does man, condemned, banished, on the run, encounter himself
again in his indestructible substance. Moving into the woods means rediscovering the absolute sovereignty over
oneself which does not cease even in the most extreme hours, that 'natural' freedom which lies within each of us81. In
the woods, a place of adventure and danger82, man celebrates his own regeneration through a 'ritual sleep' upon
awakening
, which he rediscovers his own boundless power83. Furthermore, the forest is the place of healing from fear
and pain which takes place, as with illnesses, precisely during sleep, in the gardens of dreams in which a profound
vacancy of time reigns: once the boundaries of historical world, numinous forces and creative energies invade us, while
«unknown ancestors celebrate their return within us»84•
wild land and the anarch", in Ge<?filos<?fia of the landscape, Mimesis, Milan 1997. Furthermore,
on the theme of Wildnis , we would like to point out the important contribution of FG Jiinger, The
wild land, tr. it. by G. Gregorio, "Criterion", XIII, 1 -2, 1 995, pp. 5 1 -60; on the similarities and
differences in the treatment of this theme by the two brothers, cf. the introduction to the text just
cited by G. Gregorio, Wildnis and Lichtung: the "wild land" by Friedrich Georg Jiinger, pp. 39-50.
80 E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 312 (tr. it., p. 50).
81 In this regard it seems inappropriate to me to speak of an intellectual and anarchic "aristocracy",
as has also been done. Nor, on the other hand, can we count Jiinger among the representatives
of egalitarianism. For him "men are brothers but they are not equal", however the "differences
are due exclusively to the extent to which the individual manages to make the freedom he has
been gifted operational" (E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit . , p. 3 1 3; tr. it., p. 51).
82 «The forest is - also - the great house of death, the seat of the danger of annihilation. The task of
the spiritual guide is to lead the disciple by the hand to free him from fear. The forest makes you
die and rise again symbolically. One step away from annihilation there is triumph" (ibid., p. 329;
tr. it., p. 73). Bonesio writes about the symbolic value of the forest in Jiinger's work: «For Jiinger,
the forest is the space of the sacred, of the being that releases its powers [ ... ]. We pass through
the forest with a conversion, that is, by putting ourselves in consonance with the profound rhythms
of being. The forest is that "sanctuary", that threshold, that invisible watershed between the desert
land and the celestial land" (L. Bonesio, Ge<?filosojia del landscape, cit., p. I 04 ).
83 «In the woods man sleeps [ ... ] The superior rhythm of history can even be interpreted as the
periodic rediscovery of man» (E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 313; tr. it ., p. 51). See also there,
pp. 345-346; 359 (tr. it., pp. 95-96; 1 14). For Jiinger the creative energy of the individual belongs
to "vegetative" life while the activism of the New Titans is the extreme and coherent realization of
the animality which in the Western tradition characterizes man as animai rationale: «The true
strength of The productive man consists above all in his vegetative life, while that of the active
man is nourished by animal will.
The tree can thus become very old: it is young at every flowering. Sleep, dreams, idleness and
wine belong to vegetative life" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 81; tr. it., p. 275). The
Waldgiinger, like the tree, is organically connected to the Earth, while the Worker, despite being
familiar with the elementary, is actually uprooted: his feet will soon be able to walk only on that
layer of asphalt and concrete with which attempts to cover the entire earth's crust.
84 E. Jiinger, Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 230 (tr. it., p. 1 05). For the topic of healing see
E. Jiinger, The Walk, cit., p. 346 (cf. it., pp. 96-97).
53
The turning point [ Wendung]85 of the passage to the forest opens a passage
into the dungeons of supra-temporal being, of which the forest is one of the
imperishable symbols, and of whose treasures technology, with all its power and
its promises of well-being,
cannot is that an ephemeral glow86• The gesture of the individual does not
remain, however, a selfish attempt to save oneself: even if it can only be
accomplished in solitude, its effects also radiate beyond the individual: «It is
enough that in only one point can truly touch the being, for this to have immense
repercussions"87• This is demonstrated by the calm that a single man can instil in
many people who are struggling in panic in situations of extreme danger or even despai
In the purity and simplicity88 reconquered through the "passage to the woods",
man acts by evaluating the concrete case from time to time without resorting to
moral or legal systems; as an Anarch, he does not allow himself to be captured
by any doctrine and ultimately does not take anything seriously, but this «not in a
nihilistic way, but rather like a border sentinel, who in no man's land sharpens his
eyes and ears in amidst the tides"89; he passes through all the regimes as if they
were a "flight of halls" and since his internal resistance is now solid, he can also
agree with them by camouflaging himself even in their armies: «The Anarch wages
his wars even when he marches lined up in ranks with others»90• The Anarch,
unlike the Waldgiinger, has already completed the experience of the "passage to
the woods" and brings with him, wherever he goes, its symbolic strength: far from
Being a quick-change artist, under all the uniforms he wears he keeps alive a
profound inner freedom.
85 The debate on nihilism between Jiinger and Heidegger focuses on this word and its
derivatives [Zuwendung, A bwendung, Oberwindung and Verwindung] : while for Jiinger
«the moment in which the line [of nihilism] will be crossed will bring a new dedication
[Zuwendung] of being, and thus what really is will begin to shine" (E. Jiinger, Ober die Linie,
cit., p. 268; tr. it., p. 87), for Heidegger the Zuwendung, understood as re-turning, and the
Abwendung, i.e. the dis-removal, constitute the very essence of being and the way in which
it manifests itself to man: «the being of man consists in the fact that he always , in one way
or another, it persists and dwells in this dedication [Zuwendung] and in this distancing
[Abwendung]" (M. Heidegger, The question of being, in Segna-via, cit., p. 356) .
86 Technique does not provide authentic wealth: as FG Jiinger observes, «the human condition
related to our technique is pauperism which cannot be overcome with technical efforts [...]].
Pauperism remains, because it conforms to the facts, because it invariably arises from
technical thought which is rational" (FG Jiinger, The perfection of technique, cit., p. 29).
87 E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 372 (tr. it., p. 131). Cfr. also E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3,
p. 1 70 (tr. it., p. 347) e The adventurous heart, cit., p. 265 (tr. it., p. 1 05).
88 Jiinger connects the "naive strength" that man can find within himself to the evangelical hymn
to "poverty of spirit": cf. E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, cit., p. 1 60 (tr. it., p. 339).
89 E. Jiinger, Eumeswil, cit., p. 88 (tr. it., p. 82). Impressive is the closeness of the figure of the
Anarch with the protagonist of Dino B uzzati's splendid novel, The Desert of the Tartars
(Mondadori, Milan 1989), who spends his entire existence in a border fortress, waiting in
vain for something to advance from the desert.
90 E. Jiinger, Eumeswil, cit., p. 136 (tr. it., p. 1 30). When the pressure of the regime becomes
unsustainable, the Anarch escapes from it through strategies of avoidance and
"invisibility" (see ibid., §§ 1 8-21).
54
In the world of the Titans, every attempt to face the Leviathan is doomed to failure, nor is the sabotage activity
typical of anarchists and terrorists of all political faiths any more productive. In a reality in which the same power is
expressed through the underground and media methods of technology, the action itself must be 'subtle', 'oblique', it
must tend towards an apparent passivity, which only a superficial glance conforms to moral titanism prevailing may
judge cowardice. «I know - writes Manuel Venator - that, within an oblique reality, my position is oblique, and I believe
that precisely this awareness gives honesty to thought»91• Where everything is ruin and desert, the the only possible
"redemption" is the invisible one that occurs in the heart of the individual. Redemption, here, means liberation from
shemamàh (ruin, emptiness and desolation); this term often recurs in the book of the prophet Isaiah, which Jiinger
read with great involvement during the
Second World War92 • The inner freedom and supreme detachment of the individual do not extinguish the
suffering in the face of destruction and annihilation until the luminous forces, foreshadowed in one's chest, they do not
yet shine. The infinite nostalgia for "homes never disturbed" and "spaces full of quiet" (ls. 32, 20) invades the still
opaque heart. And when anguish announces itself again to the individual in the extreme trials in which the Inexorable
manifests itself, all the cathedrals of the spirit collapse, leaving room only for the one "raised from the dome of clasped
hands. Only in her is there security"93• Prayer, the practice of which Jiinger never tires of recommending94, purifies
the heart and supports internal resistance: in it the elementary energies - the sap of the forest - join with the celestial
radiations - the dew - which eternally fertilize the earth. Beyond any adherence to a revealed religion, prayer leads to
an attitude of veneration that man shares, as we will see, with all of nature and in which, in the presence of the
divine95, his very solitude can opening up to friendship and love: the 'faith' in loners made by nostalgia for a cosmic
brotherhood and a "spiritual landscape" in which men have always participated, even if unconsciously96• In the
, was born in-
91 lvi, p. 101 (tr. it., p. 97).

92 «I continued to read Isaiah [ ... ]. His fundamental vision is that of the destruction of the
historical world, of the ancient cities, of the fields and vineyards, and the triumph of the
elemental which represents the necessary truce established to prepare that indestructible
reconstruction that will take place in the divine spirit . Men and kingdoms, as they have only
appeared to the inner eye until now, appear and will thus appear in the full light of reality."
(E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 2, p. 40 1; tr. it. p. 147).
93 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, p. 206 (tr. it., p. 375).
94 Cf. there, pp. 315-3 16; 353-354 (tr. it., pp. 46 1; 490) from E. Jiinger, Siebzig verweht IV, cit.,
p. 87 (tr. it., pp. 92-93).
95 Jiinger is convinced that «God must be conceived anew» (Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 65; tr. it.,
p. 263) and for this reason he never tires of invoking the advent of a new theology that returns
to thinking about the divine in the era of nihilism (see E. Jiinger, Der Friede, cit., pp. 228 ff.; tr.
it., pp. 59 ff.).
96 «The idea of a spiritual landscape that would exist immutably in the succession of eras
55
the enigma of the extreme sidereal inclusion that is announced in prayer, the
individual becomes a sign among signs, a silent witness in the face of the radiance
of the luminous glory of the world; in the lightning that passes through him and lets
his silent prayer resonate in the echo of a suffering that has become crystalline,
he withdraws: «From afar, oh Lord, I have gazed at your throne and willingly I
would have sent my heart forward, willingly the I would have handed over my tired
life to you,
creator of spirits"97• We thus access the astral side of the "crystallography of pain".
6. Fragile splendor
I'm wasteful of waste, Qoheleth said, waste

of waste, everything is waste.
Qoelet, 1,2.
Like a flower falling into the abyss.

E. Jiinger, Irradiations.
"Sorrow has plowed the earth." This biblical expression that Jiinger uses to
describe the historical, psychological and metaphysical situation in which man
finds himself in the era of the New Titans, that is, in the era in which the
unstoppable "desert grows", also expresses the feeling that captures when, in the
"elusive" horizon of the forest, we turn to nature. Then, with profound dismay, the
indissoluble bond of creative and destructive forces, of generation and
consumption, of manifestation and vanishing becomes apparent to us. The
surprising beauty of his creations fades over the course of a season or even a few
hours: a hint of decay lurks in its essence as in many perfumes98•
In Das spanische Mondhorn Ji.inger describes the short life of the Spanish
beetle, a beetle with very bright metallic colors99 which consumes its existence
in the space of a few days or even a few hours. In the season of
which is such as to make spiritual relationships visible " (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit.,
p. 262; tr. it., p. IO I).
97 Phrase by JT Hermes often quoted by Jiinger.
98 «All experience has the strange and nauseating taste of the water of the mouth: death and life
mixed together» (H. von Hofmannsthal, The book of friends, edited by G. Bemporad, Adelphi,
Milan 1980, p. 46). It is also strange that in some neo-Latin languages 'essence' indicates
also the odorous extract of natural substances.
99 It was counted among the sacred animals by the Egyptians and we often find it represented in their
tombs holding the solar disk with its front paws: «Its behavior is worthy of veneration and therefore
sacred, since it never causes direct damage to a vegetable but it feeds on the waste left by
herbivores, and so while it feeds itself it cleans the soil at the same time" (E. Jiinger, Am
Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 262; tr. it., p. 1 39) . Furthermore, due to its ephemeral existence, it was
connected to the ideas of rising and setting, burial and resurrection.
56
thousands of specimens populate the stony banks of the streams, busy only
with transporting and burying small balls of dung:
Sometimes, holding one of these beings in the palm of my hand, I wondered

why they are endowed with such magnificence. To what end the artistic paws,
the precious armor and the fine mane, for a life that after a fleeting flash of light
falls into the darkness, to what end the golden jewelery profuse in species and
varieties that like the Phanoids, born in the dung do they aspire to dung as the
supreme goal? And yet the magnificence didn't surprise me. It hinted at a
powerful benefactor, perhaps a great father who takes care of even the smallest
of his children, with a willingness to give that goes far beyond what is necessary.
The sons, there in the dust, adorned like kings with their comas and their serrated
crowns, proceeded in their shining armor with many-colored shields. In the end
they too were just figures in a great book and referred to more beautiful worlds .
«Hieroglyphics on a burnished sheet at the edges of which the flame of the

holocaust is already winding » 101, what is the meaning of their fleeting
existence? You have the sensation of entering a space where an extraordinary
abundance reigns, a fabulous prodigality. But what is dismaying is the brevity of
the time in which this scene is represented: «A sower spreads the dark seed; it
flashes in the light and has already vanished, and we have almost not noticed
its existence"102. Prepared for years in the womb of the earth, the existence of
the beetle comes to light only for a very short time. We are faced with an
apparent and absurd waste of nature which seems to want to show off its
superabundant opulence103, but also its cruelty: in the image of the Spanish
beetle, anguish for the fleeting nature of existence invades us. The mystery of
transience looms before us which, like a tremendous revelation, revokes the meanin
Then, ancient and eternal words come to mind: "The man born of a woman,
short of days and full of restlessness, like a flower sprouts and withers, flees like
the shadow and never stops" (Job 1 4 , 1 -2). The very act of living is a taking
leave of things: «But who has turned us around so that whatever we do is
always as if we were in the act of leaving? Like the one who on the last hill that
once again offers him his entire valley, turns, stops, induces me, so we live to
always say goodbye"104. Existence is a path already devoted to the
extreme abandonment that we painfully foresee in the losses and detachments
that we already experience during life105:
1 00 E. Jiinger, The Spanish Moonhorn, cit., p. 53 (tr. it., p. 2 1 1 ).

101 Ibid.
1 02 Ibid (tr. it., p. 212).
1 03 The abundance and copiousness of nature manifest original forces more powerful than time
and death: cf. E. Jilnger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, pp. 344; 382 (tr. it., pp. 483; 512).
1 04 RM Rilke, Elegie duinesi, VIII, cit., p. 53.
1 05 In them, as in a chilling revealing light, the fatality of the end is announced: «If a separation
is being prepared, there are days in which the flame seems to become even more intense
and firm; It thus presents itself in its purest and most necessary form. And, yet, they are their own
57
What is the point of designing, digging and building on our ephemeral world?
Generations pass, and everything passes; if the world had never been perhaps it would be bet
Does the laborer on a construction site hand a stone to another so that it will eventually
be burned by fire and sink into the sea? Does the father generate his son so that he may
be snatched from him by death, which up to now has not let any of us escape, devouring
us all? Or is there still a foundation behind everything that sinks?1 06.
Is there a bottom that welcomes the vanishing beings, or are they, together with all
the ephemeral manifestations of nature, condemned to total annihilation? After the
collapse of the metaphysical foundation of God which gave stability and meaning to
all the entities of the fall into salvation from infinite pain is still possible
,
nothingness? To attempt an answer to this, which is the fundamental question of

nihilism, we should perhaps prepare ourselves to think of absence, disappearance as
«a mode of veiling thanks to which the veiled is not eliminated and annihilated at all,
but rather remains hidden and saved in what it is.
This veiling preserves. [ ... ] Perhaps there are [even] ways of veiling that not only
preserve and guard - and therefore in a certain sense they still subtract - but in an
incomparable way they convey and give something essential" 107• In "sacrifice of the
being", an essential light would radiate which transfigures and transcends the life of
individual living beings and of which we have some vague premonition only in dreams,
"foam of the infinite" 108• In the holocaust, in the stake final109, the entities pass into
the imperishable, they transmute into the invisible richness of the realms that extend
beyond destruction and time
these are the symptoms that confirm the fatality of its decline. Thus an uncertain time often follows
a series of clear days; then, a morning of particular clarity, in which all the mountains and all the
valleys appear once again in their full splendor, announces the great collapse of time" (E. Jiinger,
Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 37 ; tr. it., pp. 238-239). Is the ultimate gift of all abandonment perhaps
announced in the fire of the holocaust?
1 06 E. Jiinger, Das Spanische Mondhorn, cit., p. 52 (tr. it., p. 210). Jiinger himself will answer negatively
to this question: «What arises from earth, water and fire and falls into them again and sinks, cannot
have a solid foundation. Here the word has reached its limit" (ibid., p. 82; tr. it., 242).
1 07 M. Heidegger, Parmenides, ed. it. edited by F. Volpi, Adelphi, Milan 1999, pp. 1 27- 1 28. And
again: «The donation and the offering in an essential style are from time to time a veil, and not so
much of the donor but of the donated person himself, as he does not expose his treasure, but only
reveals that in it is a hidden wealth. [ ... ] The secrecy of the mysterious is a mode of veiling that is
characterized by its inconspicuousness, by virtue of which the mystery is "obvious"" ( ibidem). The
mystery of transience would thus coincide with letting the veil of what passes and its secret appear.
For the question of the foundation, see also M.
Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, ed. it. edited by F. Volpi, Adelphi, Milan 1 991.
I 08 «In our dreams we are neither mere individuals nor just a lineage of living beings. In them the
human species speaks but also everything that transcends it, indeed, everything that transcends
life. [ ... ] Dreams are steps that lead to transcendence" (E. Jiinger, Das Spanische Mondhorn,
cit., pp. 59-60; tr. it., p. 219).
1 09 'Holocaust' comes from the Greek holclkauston, composed of Mlos 'whole, whole' and the theme of
kaio 'to burn'.
1 1 0 Jiinger describes this process of assumption into the invisible by the solar mirror
58
The beetle follows this fate. His life is defined and his time has always been established within the
balance of natural becoming. It does not share in the pain of the brevity of its existence because it knows
neither boredom nor has the sense of duration, at least in the meaning that man attributes to these words.
We are the ones who radiate this pain onto nature, when we seek the sense of becoming in time,
understood chronologically, and contrast beauty and transience1 11• The "fragile splendor" of every entity
that comes to light is fulfilled in the moment112, outside of time: «the instant of happiness is not measured
in seconds - the clock never strikes anything happy» 1 13• In the sphere of temporality we can grasp this
fulfillment only through symbols: we only see the shadow of the marvelous . Thus the sumptuous flight of
the beetles is only an image of the invisible prodigy that perpetually takes place in the depths of nature and
in which the immutable fannas, the imagines invisibili, shine ; in them, through the purification of the
holocaust, all the sensitive images are collected: «all the visible images are holocaust in the ambulatory
that leads to an invisible image» 1 14• But in the fulfillment of visibility , that is, in the instant in which the
shape is impressed by the coin, every being is consecrated to its destiny of inexorable decline. In sensible
light the world reveals only a section of itself to us; only an oblique cut corresponds to our decomposition
plane, while «An invisible rainbow surrounds the visible one» 1 1 5• , they are liturgical service
Man, and above all his works of art, is assigned the task of bearing witness to the inexhaustible
alternation of images that on the world stage enchant us like wonderful fairy tales that we never tire of
hearing repeated:
The Thule cup flashes in the sun and sinks into the night-blue sea.
We see the comings and goings of the waves breaking on the coast of time and we do
not get tired of the spectacle: what one wave brings us the other takes back. On the u-
of Nigromontanus in the novel Auf den Marmorklippen ( 1 939), in SW 1 5, pp. 300-301

(Italian translation by A. Pellegrini, On the marble cliffs, Guanda, Parma 1 988, pp. 58-59).
For this transmutation of the visible into the invisible and for the "salvation" of transience
through trans-figuration (the German term sounds Ver-kliirung and refers to the idea of
illumination) operated through solar fire, see C. Resta, «Between visible and invisible», in
L. Bonesio - C. Resta, Passaggi al bosco, cit.
111 See S. Freud, Transience, in Works, 1915-1917, vol. VIII, Boringhieri, Turin 1 976; it is a
short text written in the years of the First World War and imbued with the same melancholic
sensitivity for the fading of all beauty.
1 1 2 In the instant, «more than the century next to eternity», in which we touch the being of
things, we rise above time while we gather all its treasures: «If the instant is harmonious
and golden , time penetrates it. But we leave time, and it becomes the background, the
motif sung by a distant reality" (E. Jiinger, Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 308; tr. it., p. 1 90).
1 1 3 E. Jiinger, Das Spanische Mondhorn, cit., p. 61 (tr. it., p. 220). For the distinction between
clock time and destiny time, see below, chap. III, § 2.
1 14 E. Jiinger, The Spanish Monkey; cit., p. 70 (tr. it., p. 230). 1 1
5 lvi, p. 61 (tr. it., p. 22 1 ).
59
midi margins fills us with ourselves and robs us Proteus, the great multiform, the creator of 1 1 6
metamorphosis. Iris unfurls veil after veil before our eyes •
The becoming of nature unfolds like a succession of waves in which the

distinctions between force and form, movement and matter1 17, beginning
and end are blurred. «Every separationis followed by an attraction, like a
pul-loss force will be compensated, by a birth or a regret. A 1 18• This
death" is present like an original echo in all beings and the entire cosmos
is imbued with it: "In the cosmos, which rises and sets, time pronounces its
prayer, as in every sunflower. Life runs its course and returns, like the surf:
At the wave it falls and swells again, regaining its original strength" 1 19•
beyond our sensitivity "the wave transforms into light" 120• In this in subtle
light the aerial dance of the beetle121 occurs in which nature celebrates its
celebration and transience is sublimated into the timeless. Human pain in
the face of the brevity of existence arises precisely from insensitivity to the
solemnity of the celebration in which eternity touches our lives. The fleeting
magnificence of the images brings to mind the festive wedding celebrations
in which men have always experienced the 'fullness' of time beyond its
mere passing1 22• Only in the solemnity of the celebration which interrupts
linear time whose masters are pain and death, man grasps the measure of
his stay on earth: he cannot overestimate himself as he «resembles the
grass that quickly withers and is cut in the evening. Nor should it be
underestimated, since, no less than the grass with its lilies and its starry
flowers, it resembles a totally Other, an image veiled by the enigmas of
space and time and the transience to which it is subject. His works and his
days are the area of approach to this image»1 23• Our living on earth
unfolds along the stages of this approach; in it consists our homeland [ Vaterlan
1 1 6 lvi, p. 72 (Italian translation, pp. 232-233). Iris, often symbolized by the rainbow, represents the link
between Earth and Sky, between men and gods, between visible and invisible.
1 1 7 "The wave as a motif. In it the differences between objective and abstract vision, between force and
form, movement and matter disappear" (E. Jiinger, Siebzig verweht I, in SW 4, p. 45).
1 1 8 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 603 (tr. it., p. 1 88).
1 1 9 Ibid.
1 20 Ibid. The relationship between wave and light is also present in the modern wave theories of light of
contemporary physics; but the light that Jiinger speaks of here is of a spiritual nature and perhaps
'
refers more to aura and divine glory rather than photons.
121 «Dancer, you who translated every ephemeral thing into the step» (Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, part II,
XVIII, cit., p. 385). In dance transience is resolved into movement and in the sensitive image the
imperishable imago shines through.
1 22 «The wedding is "high time", festive time. But they are even more: not just a red stain of time in the
gray series of days and moons, but something that in time refers to the existence of a timeless order.
They are the herald of eternal joys, and they are a foretaste of them" (E. Jiinger, Das Spanische
Mondhorn, cit., p. 79; tr. it., p. 240). 1 23 lvi, p. 75 (Italian translation, pp. 235-236). «Existence,
in a high sense, always means a repeating approach» (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 1 59; tr. it., p. 1 52).
60
path is our true homeland [Heimat], the place where only our anguish can find
comfort and where our soul, a stranger in this world, recognizes its original home.
We could say that this approach consists in the process of recognizing the unity
in multiplicity and in overcoming the resplendent variety of images124• Ji.inger
describes this process as a passage through a series of gardens in which the
colors and shapes they progressively become more and more intense and rich until
beauty undergoes extreme simplification and spiritualization:
The colors thus become, little by little, brighter, then diaphanous, like precious stones. [ ... ] The forms ascend to ever more sublime and simpler relationships,
through crystalline forms, to circular and spherical ones, in which the contrast between periphery and center is finally extinguished. [ ... ] We ascend from wealth to the
source of wealth, into the glassy treasure chambers. [ ... ] In paradise, as in the first and last of these gardens, in the garden of God, supreme unity reigns; good and
evil, life and death are no longer distinguishable. The beasts are not torn to pieces, but are still in the hand of the creator, in the original background, in their spiritual
and invulnerable figure.
1 25
•
Deep is the pain that assails us when we think that, one day, we will have to say
goodbye to the immense and evocative variety of nature, as well as to the diversity
1 24 Here Jiinger's profound Platonism is revealed, to which, in my opinion, sufficient attention

has not yet been paid. Not only is the idea of the meta-physical Forms that shape epochal
historical figures clearly of Platonic derivation, but the conception of 'elementary as one-
duality, together arché and telos of entities and their differentiation. Furthermore, Jiinger's
widely used metaphor of light is clearly of Platonic and Neoplatonic origin . In another sense,
Martin Heidegger highlights the Platonic character of Jiinger's thought; starting from the
Worker's statements, in which Form is designated as the "source of the conferral of meaning"
and as "metaphysical power", Hei-degger has a good hand in confining JUnger's reflection
on nihilism and technique in the scope of a metaphysics of unconditioned subjectivity of the
type with clear Nietzschean ancestry (see M. Heidegger, The question of being, cit., pp. 1
24- 1 25). This interpretation, which focuses almost exclusively on Der Arbeiter, is inevitably
forced and reductive, as it fails to consider all those non-anthropocentric motifs of Platonic
derivation, which emerge above all in the writings on the observation of nature; therefore
any attempt to place JUnger's thought in a metaphysical-humanistic horizon is very unlikely.
The Heideggerian criticism of Hungary's 'Platonism', read as an unrecognized dependence
on metaphysical thought and therefore - in Heidegger's perspective - necessarily complicit
in nihilism, derives, moreover, from the very reductive interpretation that Heidegger himself
gave of Platonism and the entire Neoplatonic tradition and on which few scholars have so
far focused: cf. M. Ruggenini, God absent. Philosophy and the experience of the divine,
Bruno Mondadori, Milan 1 997.
1 25 E. JUnger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, pp. 74-75 (Italian translation, pp. 270-27 1). The passage
continues: «The two great sects also originate from this garden, which can be identified
throughout the history of human thought and knowledge. Of the two, one remembers the
unity and sees things synoptically, the other is always intent on analytical work" (ibid., p. 75; tr. it.,
27 1 ). In this passage, in addition to the one-many dialectic of clear Neoplatonic ancestry,
61
created world of men, renouncing our own individuation. But in the final stages of this
approach to unity, we will acquire new organs and senses: «Mortal eyes will be
extinguished and we will be given a new iris. So, just as here we see the colors in their
variety, we will see them, then, with higher enjoyment, in their essence, in a light that is no
longer shattered" 126• In the world of sensitive experience we only
have metaphors, premonitions. already through this divine unity in which all differences
will be welcomed and transfigured, just as the multiple nutrients are synthesized by living
organisms into harmonious units. On the other hand, unity is already present in every
single fragment of reality and this explains the germination of the seed, the transformation
of the chrysalis into a butterfly and all the invisible alchemies and metamorphoses of
nature. This unity is also hidden in the heart of the individual as a secret (or perhaps we
should say 'secret') of time. Its rhythmic pulsation generates the phases of life and
dispenses pain, nostalgia and luminous happiness. In it we foresee the bond that
intimately connects us to the celestial realms beyond any destruction: «The rainbow in the
watery dust above the roar of the cataracts. ,
Are these veils made of tears, or of those same essences from which the pearl is born? It
doesn't matter, it gives us a glimpse of the marvelous spiritual bridge that leads beyond
destruction" 127• However, it is risky to cross this bridge, under which the raging river of
nothingness flows; we await a sign, a light coming from the Other Side:
My place is at the head of a bridge, which flows over a dark current. Existence
on this advanced arc becomes more and more unsustainable day by day: the
danger of falling becomes more threatening; unless the other side comes to meet
it from the opposite side to complete it. But the other shore is shrouded in dense
fog; and only occasionally do lights and sounds come from the darkness 128•
No faith, no consolation is given to us. The darkness is thick around us, even if a small
torch could illuminate vast spaces. We feel we are on our way towards the limit, the
approach becomes feverish now, calmer now, at times we see a fleeting light on the
horizon which soon disappears; we recognize ourselves once again as shadows in the
dark light of a suffering world
a strong religious component clearly flourishes which refers to the Jewish-Christian

experience even if it cannot bear to be confined to a specific historical and confessional
experience of the religious person.
1 26 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 26 (tr. it., p. 230). The assonance here is evident with the
famous passage from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: «Our knowledge is partial and our
prophecy is partial. When the fulfillment comes the part will be dissolved. As a child I spoke
like a child, I considered like a child, I reasoned like a child; having become a man I have
dissolved what is of the child. Now we see as in a mirror, in riddles; but then we will see face
to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know in full, just as I was known" (/ Cor 1 3, 1 2). In
Jiinger, however, the nostalgia for what is abandoned in this process is certainly stronger.
1 27 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 200 (tr. it., pp. 370-37 1 ).

1 28 lvi, p. 254 (tr. it., pp. 4 1 1 -412).
62
that is increasingly reduced and vanishes. We look with tenderness at the faces
of loved ones in whose love we have participated, even if for a moment, in the
sparkling unity of being, but who, with extreme sacrifice, one day we will have
to abandon to find them again, perhaps, in the transfigured light where we will
end up. We prepare for the great pilgrimage beyond time. The eyes become
transparent, a crystal of pain shines in the purified soul.
On the evening of the last day of the year 1944, aware of the imminent danger
that weighed on himself and his loved ones, Jtinger wrote:
We are approaching the center of the Maelstrom, almost certain death. I must therefore keep
myself ready, intimately prepared to cross over to the other luminous shore of being; not forced, but
free from any bond, with internal consensus, with serene waiting in front of the black portal. Without
pain I must leave my baggage and my treasures. All this has value only insofar as it is valid for the
other party. All my manuscripts, the work born from my maturation over the years: I have to get used
to the thought of seeing them go up in flames. [ ... ] The same happens with the people and things
that I abandon: the truth, the divine of what binds me to them is absolutely indestructible: the layer in
which I "loved" them. The most passionate embrace is only the symbol, the image of this inseparability:
there we will be united in the womb that cannot corrupt, and our eye will no longer be a mirror of the
light, but will be in the light 129
•
7. At the customs station
O death, launching pad into the crystalline

sea. Only, your height is scary.
E. Jiinger, Irradiations.
"And death? Where is it?" He looked

for his usual fear of death, the fear of
the past, and he didn't find it. Where
was it? Which death? There was no
fear because there was not even
death. In place of death there was light.
L. Tolstoy, The death of Ivan /l'ic
Every experience of pain, as a reduction of life and estrangement from it, is a

harbinger of the Great Passage of death, it is a way of dying. Only in the last
stretch of the journey, close to death, is the threshold of pain overcome and a
space of absolute calm is accessed, where time expands until it stops 130• The
separation from oneself becomes maximum : The
1 29 lvi, p. 352 (tr. it., p. 489).

1 30 «In the space surrounding death [ . . . ) the silence becomes more intense, bottomless.
[ ... ) Time becomes abysmal, as if, in the midst of its rush, it stopped, was shattered. The
63
individual sees himself from a distance and a supreme imperturbability
envelops him; we have entered the eye of the storm of pain, where "the
scissors do not cut, where the thorn does not prick". Here, in the profound
quiet in which every lament is extinguished, the Wall of Time looms, around
which the lives of individuals and those of all civilizations revolve131: «We
could see the external wall of the wall of time as the edge of a well» 132• As
in Leonardo's paintings, mosses and lichens grow on the surface of this wall;
their roots go to the bottom of the well where no gaze can penetrate: they
filter the water of life and wisdom which has its source here, in the abyss of
death. Each individual carries with them the passport to access this region
of "outside the 133 which feeds on it and in which the cosmic "escape
time" precipitates 134; time" all the cults and religious ceremonies,
ritualizations and preparations of the Great Passage, they can only make
this original possession manifest. Let us experience this precious inheritance
in the "immense moments" that we experience in our existence; they interrupt
the chronological flow of time and catapult us to the foot of the Wall of Time.
The instant135, which, like Zarathustra's noon, delivers us to the invulnerable and
the commotion stops" (E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 465; tr. it., p. 36). On the theme of death in Jiinger
cf. J. Pfeiffer, Tod und Erziihlen. Wege der literarischen Moderne um 1 900, Niemeyer, Tiibingen 1 997,
pp. 1 54- 1 90. Jiinger dedicates the essay Philemon und Baucis to the differences between the
"technological death" typical of the world of the Worker and death understood - in an Ovidian way - as
metamorphosis. Der Tod in der mythischen und in der tech-nischen Welt, in SW 12 (Italian translation
edited by A. Mezzolla, Philemon and Bauci. Death in the mythological and technical world, "The
notebooks of Avallon" , 25, 1 991, pp. 99-121). For an introduction to the themes of this short writing
which focuses on the horror and "banality" of death in the 'accidents' of technological society, see B.
Gajek, Ernst Jiingers Essay Philemon und Baucis. Der Tod in der mythischen und in der technischen
Welt, "Les Car-nets Ernst Jiinger", 4, 1 999, pp. 205-223.
131 For Jiinger, the titanic civilization of technology is already close to the eye of the storm, in the innermost
layers where acceleration grows. paroxystically and with it the centripeta force. For the "eschatological"
conception of the history of the Earth in which the human one is included cf. E. Jiinger, An der
Zeitmauer, cit.
1 32 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 546 (tr. it., p. 1 25). Jiinger recalls the legend of the Mime
spring: «The water that flowed from this source gave knowledge of the ultimate things;
but even the gods were forbidden to drink from that spring" (ibidem).
1 33 When we approach the Wall of Time something changes in the structure of the world: the "fundamental
lattice" begins to show its crystalline structure, «things connect differently, because time changes. In
measurable time, in everyday life, even in the chronology of history, something else intervenes. It also
happens in works of art, especially in music. Time must be relieved, but it is terribly heavy. To lift it, l
'
man invokes the "arms of the gods"" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 1 58; tr. it., p. 151).
In this approach the pain is decanted and becomes the pain of "time that ends", we could say
eschatological pain, whereas the pain, however, is extinguished in the apocalyptic unveiling.
1 34 I believe that a 'fugue' trend can be identified in the conception of history that Jiinger develops above all
in At the Wall of Time and in the idea of non-linear approach present in Anniihrungen, as well as in the
style of his writing itself: cf. below, chap. III. idea
'
of something looming and bursting from above
1 35 The instant, from the Latin instare, refers to
the flow of chronological time.
64
it is still close to the origin, where everything is still possible, where the path is not yet separated from the goal. [ . . . ] Time, like a
stretched bow, still has no direction, no quality. It is a void that every sort of course, simultaneously, passes through: from the
turning of the second hand, to the hourglass, in which the sand of the Sahara flows. Even the individual, who sinks into this
timeless instant, into this destined hour, becomes aware of how his own journey begins and ends here. Everyone has their own
calendar and their own death1 36
In such immense moments the transparency and brightness of the eye

of the storm are reflected in time: through thin cracks, increasingly evident
in our final era137, the "timeless" propagates and repeats itself in time138.
It touches us «like the touch of a hand on the shoulder, like the fleeting glow
of a lighthouse that, in the night, touches the forehead»139• The works of
art testify to this 'slight irruption' of the Absolute in the time in which it takes
it forms the dignity of man, as Baudelaire also suggests: «And truly it is the
highest proof and testimony of dignity , Lord, that we can offer you this
ardent sob that from age to age advances and comes on
your shores without time to die"140• Such experiences strengthen in us
the conviction that the entire existence is an approach to that immobile
center that fleetingly flashes, and that its meaning lies solely in gathering a
viaticum for this journey, in the put on a robe of light for the Great
Encounter141• Man can gain in metaphysical value in life by collecting oil for the
Through the great press of time and pain our lives produce the incorruptible
wine which, at the customs of the kingdom of death, will be transformed into
an eternal element: «Bodies are chalices; the meaning of life lies in filling
them with increasingly precious essences, with balm for eternity. If this is
done to the full extent, it does not matter if they break. [ ... ] We can gain or
lose in the course of our lives sub specie a?ternitatis: this is the high, terrible
stake that is at stake" 142•
1 36 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit. ,pp. 5 14-5 15 (Italian translation, p. 90). We live similar experiences
in "spiritual or erotic encounters of the first order, [in which] time completely loses its weight,
indeed its existence. Pain, on the other hand, and mental dullness prolong it indefinitely."
(E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, pp. 333-334; tr. it., p. 475).
1 37 In An der Zeitmauer, Jiinger speaks of an ancient restlessness that would herald an imminent
catastrophic metamorphosis of the Earth.
1 38 Jiinger, transforming the famous Nietzschean formula of the eternal return [ewige Wie-
derkehr], speaks of the "return of the Eternal" [Wiederkehr des Ewigen], understood as
"timeless", in history: cf. E. Jiinger, Eumeswil, cit., p. 88 (tr. it., p. 82). The theater of this
reflection, each time unique, of the timeless is the existence of the individual.
1 39 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 515 (tr. it., p. 91).
140 Baudelaire, Les Phares, in I fiori del male, ed. it. cit., p. 25.
141 The Eucharist administered to the dying has precisely this value of viaticum for the journey and
exhausted towards death.
142 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen (1949), cit., p. 323 (it. tr., p. 26 1 ). See also E. Jiinger, Strahlun-gen, in
SW 3, p. 1 69 (tr. it., p. 346). The network of human relationships that we manage to build will
be a precious currency at the frontier of death: «We human beings: our love encounters
65
We must put to good use, as in the Gospel parable, the talents that were
entrusted to us at birth; man can do nothing more: he cannot support as
an individual the revelation of eternity and the divine; only death grants us
this possibility, re-transforming us into the absolute: «Death has its mystery
which surpasses even that of love. When it leads us by the hand, we
become initiates, mystagogues"143. Death is the definitive access to the
timeless, already glimpsed in the immense moments; while the modalities
of dying are accidental and still belong to time, death is substantial and
always occurs in absolute solitude144. As those who have experienced a
situation of immediate danger of death say, even without crossing the
threshold, dying is perceived as a passage through a dark tunnel, a cavity
or a door, beyond which a light can be glimpsed; the sensation they report
is that of being on a journey towards a world they have always desired. In
this passage, which leads to the Wall of Time, the pain progressively fades
away and, in a fragment of a second, the entire course of life condenses
into an overall vision145; the man who is dying understands his own
existential story from a perspective of necessity and, now free from the
instinct of preservation, loves it completely; «his thoughts acquire
sovereignty because they are freed from the fear that disturbs and burdens
every idea and every judgement» 146. There is a stretch of the path in which
king, our struggles for loyalty, for affection. Their meaning is greater than we know: even
we sense it in our pain, in our passion. It's about this: what room we will share in the
absolute, beyond the realm of death, to what height we in common will rise. This explains
the terror that can grip us between two women: the problem of salvation is before us" (ibid.,
pp. 89-90; tr. it., p. 282). In the fatality of love encounters, the destiny essence of time and
the inexorable 'e-schatological' happening of essential events are illuminated, where
beginning and end are linked by the luminous plot of the timeless; thus some verses by
the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska taken from the poem Love at First Sight: «There
were handles and bells on which a touch rested on a touch beforehand . Suitcases placed
next to each other in the luggage room. / One night, perhaps, the same dream, I
immediately confused when I woke up. In fact, every beginning I is only a sequel I and
the book of events I is always open in the middle" (W. Szymborska, The end and the beginning,
Marchesani, Libri Scheiwiller, Milan 1997, p. 65).
143 E. Jilnger, Radiations, in SW 2, p. 400 (tr. it., p. 1 46).
144 «While we refresh his forehead, the dying person is already infinitely far from us: he stays
in landscapes that reveal themselves to him after the spirit has crossed the flaming curtain
of pain» (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, p. 280; tr . it., p. 1 22). The distinction
between death and dying is important because much of what we attribute to death actually
belongs to dying: torment and abandonment belong to the no man's land that extends
between life and death and not to death, but «the secrets of death occupy our mind with
such force that with their shadow they obscure the path that leads there» (ibidem).
1 45 See E. Jilnger, Die Schere, cit., pp. 590-594 (Italian translation, pp. 1 73- 1 78). Interesting
are the considerations that Jiinger makes here on the role that death takes on in the age
of technology: «in a field in which atheism dominates, transcendence no longer has any
part: death therefore loses its dignity and pain its counterweight value. It moves to the
centre, the road becomes grey" (ibid., p. 59 1; tr. it., p. 1 74). «Death has become a trifle
to be faced with the use of figures» (ibid., p. 594; tr. it., p. 1 78).
1 46 E. Jiinger, The Adventurous Heart, cit., p. 28 1 (tr. it., p. 1 23).
66
the dying person embraces with his gaze the territories of life and death as
if from a mountain ridge, and acquires complete security by seeing himself
housed in both at the same time. He makes a stop, as if in front of a solitary
customs station high in the mountains, where the small change of memories
is exchanged for gold. His conscience reaches out like a lamp by whose
light he recognizes that no one is deceiving him; there he changes fear into
sure certainty 147•
On the threshold of death the echo of terrestrial life is still strong, even though the atmosphere
in which life breathed has already vanished and man is now exposed, defenseless, to cosmic
radiation. He must have recourse to the extreme wisdom and art of dying148 that he was able to
learn during his life; he must rely on the "organs of death" 149 to orient himself and advance
along the path: but his steps are already marked by the proximity of death. The last veil to fall is
that of individuality150 which we believed we had to deal with until the end; with it the very
perception of death vanishes, and is an indistinct natural sphere in which death is no longer
fundamental; man regresses to a state of pain; a bit like what happens in the animal world in
the event of the death of the which the sense of the species overcomes and almost cancels
individual.
In the light that envelops him, faced with the inconceivable of the passing of time, thought
withdraws and the feeling of veneration emerges, as the extreme precipitate of existence: from
the flowers mysterious forms of a solar cult, to the
, ' man who advances in the light, «beings and
things venerate through their existence. The concert of the forest animals greets the sun as it
rises; the flowers reach out towards him. The stone itself begins to breathe, it relaxes.
[ ... ] The impulse to veneration is inherent in the matter" 151• The original veneration
147 Ibid.
148 «"Dying is not so easy". [ ... ] This is certainly true, and therefore we must learn. This is more
important than all machine technology, including that of flights to the moon" (E. Jiinger,
Anniihrungen, cit., p. 378; tr. it., p. 345). On the melete thanatou ("death exercise") in Greek
culture and in particular in Plato, and on its identification with philosophy itself, cf. U. Curi,
Learning to die, in AA.VV., The face of the Gorgon. Death and its meanings, edited by U.
Curi, Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2001.
149 «Just as the child is given organs that facilitate and make birth possible, so man also has
organs for death: forming and strengthening them is the task of moral theology. Where this
knowledge is extinguished, a kind of idiocy spreads in the face of death, manifest and
intuitable in the increase of blind terror but also in the rise of a blind and mechanical contempt
for death" (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 282; tr. it., p. 1 24 ). The need to "learn
to die" is manifested, in traditional civilizations, in the obligation to go through initiatory trials
during life that lead to close contact with death. Every "rite of passage" can be considered an
experience of "symbolic death". Many wisdom writings are dedicated to a detailed description
of the bumpy path of dying, its stages, its dangers and the ways in which to face them, just
think of the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead .
1 50 «The self is the last fortress into which the blindness of life has retreated, and from here it
makes its sorties» (ibid., p. 283; tr. it., p. 1 25) .
151 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 48 1 (tr. it., p. 53).
67
ginaria is the very pulsation of being, the dis-tension of pain that manifests itself
at all levels of existence. Just as the molecules of matter hit by the sun's rays
radiate energy and the flowers open up in the light, man opens up in pain, and
with him the world opens up1 52•
8. Bliss
In pain, man encounters perhaps the most radical figure of his finiteness and
of his being constitutively delivered to lack and precariousness and, therefore,
open to the world, turned to otherness, to that!' Something else that announces
itself in the torment of time and in the mystery of death. Cosmic veneration is
addressed to it, in which we, despite our imperfection, participate. To it is
addressed the profound thanks that rises from the depths of the oceans as well
as from the peaks of the mountains and which envelops, like primordial music,
every existence. In the poetic word, man possesses an instrument which in rare
moments can participate and tune into this abysmal music which life perpetually
feeds on: in his song "flying over the earth"153 one reaches that summit of
happiness and pain in which it consists the poetic remembrance154 that welcomes
and saves in the word the tragic and irrevocable vanishing of the present. Only in
this sense can one access the happiness of what happens in suspension on
nothingness into which one is inexorably destined, sooner or later, to fall155• A
poet of our times, Jorge Luis Borges, saw with extraordinary lucidity this extreme
form of salvation of things and events that goes beyond both the Greek tragic
sense and Christian redemption; he spoke of "nostalgia for the present", that is,
of the pain of detachment and at the same time of the return, of fascination for
what, despite being ephemeral, advances towards us in the guise of the light of
the eternal. This is how he expresses himself in some verses of his poem La dicha, 'ha
Whoever embraces a woman is Adam. The woman is Eve.

Everything happens for the first time.
The calm animals come closer for me to say their name.
I dreamed of Carthage and the legions that desolated Carthage.
I saw the newly sculpted young Sphinx in the desert.
1 52 «If we open up, the world opens up» (E. Jiinger, Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 268; tr. it.,
p. 146).
1 53 «Only singing that sweeps across the earth consecrates and celebrates» (RM Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, cit.,
part I, XIX).
1 54 In the German language there is a singular assonance between the words that indicate thanking [Danken],
remembering [Andenken] and thinking [Denken] on which Heidegger has focused several times (see M.
Heidegger, What does it mean think?, Italian translation by U. Ugazio and G. Vattimo, SugarCo, Milan 1988).
1 55 «And we who think of happiness as an ascent, would have the almost disconcerting emotion of when
something that is happy falls» (RM Rilke, Duino Elegies, X, cit., p. 69).
68
There is nothing ancient under the sun.
Everything happens for the first time, but in an eternal way156 •
The Greek wisdom of pain, the laments of Qoheleth, the abysmal

suffering of Nietzsche, the abysses of nothingness, the poison of the
Titans meet here. But their turbid whirlpools last no more than a moment.
The Earth becomes white and purified through pain and they are swept
away by the word that hovers over the waters of destruction: «When the
wave of time ebbs, what happens is comparable to a great exhalation -
the word it includes both the liberation of time and the liberation from
time. The receptacle of the flower has now been emptied. This means: the
condition for the return of the unnamed who wants to become word»1 57.
Our epochal situation is inscribed in the syncopation of this breath, in the
watershed of time, on the "zero meridian" of nihilism, beyond which every
evaluation becomes problematic. But as we approach the reversal of
pain, the emergence of the crystalline unity of being, time is suspended:
There is a limit reached at which we are no longer able to decide whether this or that is
caught in the moment of dissolution or sublimation, whether it is moribund or in statu nascendi.
We have glimpsed the plot, this time in its crystallographic version. Here, qualities and eras
merge and merge -
even life and death. Now it's a matter of waiting158 •
1 56 JL Borges, La dicha, in All works, vol. The, edited by D. Porzio, Mondadori, Milan
1 985, p. 1 1 83.
157 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit. 323-324 (cf. it., p. 298). 158 lvi, p. 300 (tr.
it., pp. 276-277).
69
II
"YOUR WONDERFUL CARESES, MY SISTER AND BRIDE"
Friendship and eros
I. Donate solitude
Friendship doesn't need words: it's a

loneliness freed from!' anguish of
loneliness.
D. Hammarskjold, Traces of the journey.
At dawn on 21 March 1918, the assault troops of the Wehrmacht began,

near Cagnicourt in France, what in the eyes of many participants in the First
World War, and of Second Lieutenant Jiinger himself, it appeared as the
decisive battle of the entire conflict: «The final battle, the last assault, now
seemed to have arrived. There the fate of two entire peoples was thrown into
the balance; the future of the world was being decided" 1• The front line unit,
under the command of Jiinger, enters the "no man's land" which extends up
to the enemy trench and which is the scene of a storm of fire, smoke , dust
and gas on which the bombs, thrown from both fronts, describe long arcs,
causing, when they explode, enormous craters and volcanic explosions. This
is how Jiinger describes this extreme situation:
The very laws of nature seemed to no longer have any value. The air trembled
like in Arden days. ti of the summer and its varying density made absolutely
immobile objects dance here and there. Streaks of black shadow filtered through
the clouds of smoke. The noise had become absolute: you couldn't hear it. We
could only dimly notice that thousands of machine guns behind us were launching
their lead volleys towards the sky2.
Ordered to return to the rear to replace the commander of the battalion

who was killed, Jiinger alone crosses this field of fire and death and, exhausted,
takes refuge in a deep hole, almost forgetful of the tragic circumstance in
which he finds himself. Thinking back to that short stretch of road, traveled
during the rage of the battle but experienced almost as a surreal event, Jiinger
writes thus: «I walked as if in a deep dream through the
I E. Jiinger, In Stahlgewittern, cit., p. 24 1 (tr. it., p. 266).

2 lvi, p. 239 (tr. it., p. 264).
71
storm»3• The traits of that "magical realism" with which Jtinger would later
characterize his work are already announced here: the courageous commander
of the 7th company passes through the storms of fire and steel of the
battlefields as if in a dream , as if he were at the same time the protagonist
and the reader of a novel. This is not a dreamlike experience of escape from
the terrible reality of war: the consciousness of the fighting Jiinger who, with
gun in hand, jumps out of the fortifications and runs across the open field
towards the enemy lines, remains, in fact , always vigilant even in the most
difficult moments. The writer Jtinger gives us always lucid and penetrating
descriptions of those events, of a crystalline clarity completely foreign to the
nebulous and equivocal atmospheres of a certain surrealist avant-garde4• As
in a nightmare Jiinger advances on the fiery fields in which an apocalyptic
upheaval of the Earth has trace of death, terror and desperation for entire
generations; a nightmare whose anguish is brought to the extreme by the
almost total absence of human relationships, the awareness of which flashes
in the war diaries only rarely, but always with particular intensity: «I followed
a sunken path on whose escarpment some shelters smashed by artillery. I
advanced with fury, on the dark ground plowed by the shots and where the
asphyxiating gases of our projectiles still lingered. I realized I was completely
alone»5. The camaraderie relationships that are established at the front only
serve to temporarily mitigate this profound solitude to which the soldier, now
only an instrument for the army's firepower, is condemned, and that
"community of death"6, which would have , according to some interpreters,
constituted a powerful attraction for young bourgeois people, including Jtinger
himself, dissatisfied with the safe and monotonous city life, it is never described as
3 Ibid (tr. it., p. 265).

4 A vast critical literature is available on the war writer Jiinger, of which only the most significant
titles are highlighted below: KH Bohrer, Die Asthetik des Schreckens.
The pessimistic romanticism and Ernst Jiinger's early work, Hanser, Munich 1 978; R.
B renneke, Militant Modernism. Comparative studies on Ernst Jiinger's early work, M&P, Stuttgart
1 992; F. Fiorentino, La sentinella perduta. Ernst Jiinger e la Grande Guerra, La Roccia di Erec,
Firenze 1 993; H.-H. Miiller , " Basically everyone experiences their own war " . of the war and its
literary raprisentation. Presented to Detlev v. Liliencron, Ernst Jiinger and Thor Goote, in FK
Stanze! - M. Li:ischnigg (a cura), Intimate Enemies. English and German Literary Reactions to the
Great War 1914-1918 , Universitlitverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg 1 993, pp. 277-29 1. Per un'analisi
delle varie figure presenti nell'opera jiinge-riana a partire dall'esperienza di guerra cfr. K. Gauger,
warrior, worker, forest hunter, A-narch: The martial early work of Ernst Jiinger, Peter Lang,
Frankfurt am Main - Berlin -
Bern - New York - Paris - Wien 1997; M. Alessio, Between war and peace. Ernst Jiinger master
of the twentieth century, Pellicani, Rome 2001.
5 E. Jiinger, In Stahlgewittern, cit., p. 243 (tr. it., p. 268).
6 On this theme and on the "ideology of war" in Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century,
cf. the well-documented study by D. Losurdo, The community, death, the West. Hei-degger and
["the ideology of war", Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 1991.
72
of death passes to arouse immediate and blind brotherhoods. Jiinger Much more real- .
looks at the soldiers in the trenches of the Great War as absolutely normal men, catapulted
into an extreme situation, whose only, but very powerful, strength was that of arousing a very
particular sense. , of solidarity:
These men, whose life in common, by those behind the lines, is dismissed with a few words, such as "comradeship", or
"brotherhood in arms", had left nothing at home that satisfied them in times of peace. They were the same as always, only in
another country and in another form of being. They had also retained that particular sense with which one perceives another's face,
his smile and, at night, even the sound of his voice, and which establishes an equation between "I" and "you"7
It is the ancestral solidarity in the face of extreme danger that the human being shares with
any other living being and which leads him back to the indistinct and regular flow of the
elementary forces of life8• But this solidarity, on which the very rigid Prussian discipline that
was in force in German army did
7 E. Jiinger, Sturm, cit., p. 12 (tr. it., p. 6). The experience of extreme pain breaks down the
boundaries of individuality as well as disarticulates the usual modes of expression: «Every
important pain, in whatever context it is experienced, is not expressed with words but with
pure sounds. The places of birth and death are inhabited by sounds of this type. Perhaps
the first time we heard them again in all their violence was during the war, at night. On the
battlefields full of the moans of the wounded, in the infirmaries, in the strangled cry of those
who are mortally wounded, and whose meaning is unmistakable. [ ... ] Here men become
very similar to each other: extreme pain cancels out the individuality of those who feel it" (E.
Jiinger, Lob der Vokale, cit., p. 22; tr. it., pp . 53-54). Like any other community in which the
safety of the individual man depends on others, the community of the war front also
develops, according to Jiin-ger, following the laws of organic nature: «It is generated by the
fusion of different sprouts and grows like a tree that owes its particular properties to a series
of circumstances", until it becomes like "A house that you visit often and willingly: you
acquire a solid image of it, which is also preserved in your memory" (E. Jiinger, Sturm, cit., p. 1 7;
The bonds that are created within this community are particularly strong, based on
experience, work and blood, characterized by a 'manly' sense of understanding human
relationships which, at times, arouses complacency almost moralistic of the young Jiinger:
«War, which otherwise takes so much away from us, also offers something: it educates in
male company and restores partly forgotten values» (E. Jiinger, Das Waldchen 125, cit., p.
327 ; tr . it., p. 35). The literature on the idea of community [Gemeinschÿftl and its radical
opposition to the modern idea of society [Gesellschÿftl] is vast, starting from the famous text
by F. Tonnies, Community and society, tr. it. by G. Giordano, Edizioni di Comunità, Milan 1 979.
8 the undifferentiated flow of life that supports plants and animals also exerts a powerful
fascination on the conscious human being, since it constitutes the deepest root, the same
one that connects him to the earth: «Always each of we feel the powerful attraction with
which the night of life, in all its dark depths, tries to suck him in. There is a vehement impulse,
veiled under ever-changing forms, intended to repeatedly and incessantly fix our life in that
regularity that prevails in the nests or in the darkness of the maternal womb. Here there is no
happiness, no greatness, no right other than deep, blind solidarity. Here are our roots; but
our life is woven of both, light and darkness" (E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p.
285; tr. it., p. 1 28).
73
secretly leverages, fails to determine any stable and profound relationship, indeed it is precisely
in the community of fighters that the "ephemeral and sad" nature of human relationships
manifests itself with great clarity. They light up in ecstatic moments of collective exaltation, in
hangovers, in stories of heroic deeds and erotic adventures, but reveal their inconsistency and
superficiality when the true protagonist of war, death, makes its appearance.
Then everyone goes back to being alone, closed within the insurmountable walls of an
unspeakable loss: «When death passed over the fields like the clouds of a storm, everyone was
on their own; each was alone in the dark, surrounded by hisses and crashes
, blinded by the explosion of lightning, with nothing in my heart
but an infinite loneliness"9. It is through this experience of radical isolation in the face of death
that the idea of the individual was born in Jtinger which would accompany, in a long and suffering
meditation, all his reflections on the modern figures of subjectivity, from the bourgeois individual
to the Type of the peraio, up to the Anarch; and it is precisely on the battlefields of the Great
War that the conviction matured in Jiinger, expressed only many years later, that the only place
where there is the possibility of salvation from barbarism and devastation is, in ours as in every
another time, the "heart of the individual"10.
If now it is the proximity of death, its almost palpable presence on the front line of combat,
that gives rise to this decisive experience of singularization and estrangement, which - as we
will see - is at the same time an escape from oneself and a dizzying immersion in Subsequently,
what will be elementary to induce this experience will be the perception, only apparently less
traumatic, and gradually more and more connoted in a religious sense, of the precariousness of
life and the transience of the world. Every single man is consigned to the enigmas of
)' existence without the possibility of authentic sharing of one's anguish, not even with those
who we believe to be closest thanks to the affection that binds us to them. On 22 February 1942
in Paris, on the front of another war, Jtinger writes, in what he himself, usually so modest in
revealing his moods, describes as a "new attack of sadness": «I realized the immense distance
between human beings, a distance commensurable precisely on those who are closest and
dearest to us. We are far from each other, like the stars, divided by deep endless spaces"11• A
desperate separateness would therefore be the destiny of every existence, a radical and
.
unextenuating solitude would lead, in the extreme, to

a solipsism that is careless of others. In fact, among the homologated individuals of the world
of
9 E. Jiinger, Sturm, cit., p. 13 (tr. it., p. 8).

ME «For the fight against nihilism to be successful, it must take place in the heart of the individual.
lo» (E. Jtinger, Der Friede, cit., p. 228; tr. it., p. 59).
11 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, cit., p. 307 (tr. it., p. 76). With an evident prophetic tone,
the passage continues: «But after death everything will be different. This is the beauty of
death, its power to extinguish, with the light of the body, even this distance. We will be in
heaven" (ibidem).
74
technique, deprived of any decision-making freedom and mere instruments of
a titanic will to power, one can feel so alone and alien that one can even doubt
one's own real existence12 or, even, the very consistency of the external
world : an attitude, this, which Jiinger designates as that "active solipsism"
according to which "the world is dreamed by us" and which corresponds, in
philosophy, to the idealistic tradition which, in the removal of the thing in itself
through disproportionate expansion of theoretical consciousness and of the
Spirit, had pursued that inclusion of the world (which Fichte emblematically
defines as not-it) in the increasingly capacious transcendental spheres of a
subjectivity assumed as judge of reality and of an absolute creative and
legislating Reason.
This idealistic overcoming, a parte subjecti, of the subject-object divide
constitutes for Jiinger the extreme risk for any authentic reflection on the
relationship between man and nature which, instead, should always start from
their original and structural co-belonging13, as well as for the 'indispensable
overcoming of solipsism itself14• The individual, as it is thought by idealistic
philosophy, overcomes his own original solitude only through overcoming
himself in the ethical and juridical structures in which the objective spirit is
incarnated ; this is equivalent to a self-denial, albeit partial and functional, that
is, to an alienation that already prefigures and prepares the homogenizing
uniformization of the era of the Worker, in which absolute Reason celebrates its aut
Nietzsche was among the first thinkers who, against the reassuring faith,
not only idealistic, in the progressive and painless "socialization" of man, had
"
12 «Sometimes it seems that they no longer exist, or that they are only ghosts that we see around us in a half-
demonic, half-mechanical concatenation" (ibid., p. 375; tr. it., p. 1 27).
13 It seems to me that Heidegger's famous characterization of human existence as an original "being-in-the-
world" constitutes an unsurpassable acquisition and a definitive overcoming of the philosophical need for an
epistemological and ontological connection of subject and object, I and world, thought and being (see M.
Heidegger, «The worldliness of the world», in Being and Time, cit.). The bond that Jilnger sees between
man and nature, however, differs considerably from the Heideggerian conception of being-in-the-world as
he above all emphasizes the '
panic and mythical-symbolic aspect to the detriment of the
hermeneutic-existential one which is, instead, central in the treatment of Heidegger. For an acute comparative
analysis of the positions of these two thinkers see M. Cacciari, Ernst }unger and Martin Heidegger, cit.
14 Jilnger takes pains to show how the Anarch cannot be considered a solipsist, since solipsism is a characteristic
of the most extreme anarchists . After denying that the Anarch is an individualist, he continues: «It is already
more difficult to distinguish him from the solipsist, who considers the world the product of his own
lucubrations: [ ... ] The world, as a building with its scaffolding , it is our representation, the world as a garden
full of flowers is our dream. Furthermore, the solipsist, like all anarchists and as the most extremist among
them, remains caught in his own traps: in fact he presumes an autonomy whose responsibility he is not up
to. If he is the only one to have invented society, he also bears the blame for its imperfection alone; and if
he is shipwrecked in it, he perishes mythically of his own impotenceas a poet, and logically due to an error of
reasoning"
(E. Jilnger, Eumeswil, cit., pp. 278-279; tr. it., p. 269). Sulla differencia tra Anarca ed anar-chista cfr. D.
Murswiek, The Anarch and the Anarchist. The freedom of the individual in Ern-st Jiinger's "Eumeswil",
"German Studies", 17, 1 979, pp. 282-294.
75
the courage to stare into the abysses that surround and isolate every
existence. He also saw how extremely painful is the moment in which the
illusion, cultivated with extreme sweetness and generous care, of being
fraternally and completely together with another man collapses:
Once upon a time we were so close in life that nothing could no longer constitute an
obstacle to our friendly and fraternal partnership, and only a small bridge still existed
between us. Just as you were about to take it, I asked you: "Do you want to come to
me on this side of the bridge?". - But then you no longer wanted to: and when I went
back to beg you, you remained silent. Since then, mountains and violent rivers and
everything that divides and makes us strangers have been thrown between us, and
even if we wanted to go to each other, we could no longer! But if you now remember
that little bridge, you have no more words - all you are left with are sobs and amazement15 •
This is the moment in which man emerges from his state of naivety and
discovers, with intimate terror, that he is wandering hopelessly alone on the
desertified earth. The most painful disenchantment is perhaps the loss of
what was the sweetest hope of all: friendship. Extreme closeness can
transform in an instant and for no apparent reason into a sidereal distance
that makes us strangers, cancels out any complicity and disappoints all the
promises of sharing. With Nietzsche, the history of friendship understood as
the supreme and immortal good and as a moral value that had accompanied
Western culture since Homer perhaps ended: Plato's Lysis , Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics , the De Cicero's friendship , Montaigne's De l'amitié ,
had labored to sing the praises of this bond which comforts and ennobles
the human soul both in prosperity and in misfortune. All of these connect
friendship to virtue and think of it on the model of the relationship between
brothers: according to Aristotle the true form of friendship is the bond that the
virtuous man establishes with the virtuous man because of virtue itself. And
virtue is that by which and in which man fully realizes his nature and his value
as a man, so that the true form of friendship is precisely the bond of man with
man according to the value of man himself. Aristotle, therefore, considers
friendship as essential to the full realization of man's nature and believes that
happiness itself depends on its possession. Furthermore, man, as a
structurally political being, by his very nature, needs friends precisely in
order to be able to receive and do good. Although friendship always maintains
this fundamental ethical-political function, it nevertheless seems to exceed
the law of utility. For E-picuro, for example, friendship starts from usefulness,
but once developed, it becomes a good in itself, because it gives pleasure
16• First of all the very sweet pleasure of confidence and intimacy; Cicero writes i
15 F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, tr. it. by F. Masini, Adelphi, Milan 1 977, p. 70.
16 See Diogenes Laertius, X, 1 20 b. Epicurus' exaltation of friendship is famous: «Friendship
passes through the earth, announcing to all of us to wake up to give joy to each other»
(Vatican Sentences, 52) taken up by Lucretius and Cicero.
76
How can you live a life that doesn't rest on the reciprocated affection of a friend? What is sweeter than having someone with whom you
don't hesitate to talk as if you were talking to yourself? What advantage can you find so great in prosperity if you do not have someone who
enjoys it as you yourself enjoy it? And then the misfortune would be difficult to bear without a friend who suffered from it even more than you
17
.
Confidence allows the sharing of the "secret" that inaugurates and

sustains every friendship18, since it is precisely in the exclusive possession
of a truth, which is the intimate truth of friendship itself, that friends dispose
of one another for the other and they harmonize their agreement, constituting,
in many ways, a monad closed to the world, a self-referential unity that
reproduces on the level of duality that same separateness that the individual
had experienced in solitude19• This is possible because the friendship
relationship, as it is understood by the entire Western tradition up to
Nietzsche, is - if not immediately, certainly in the outcome to which the
friendship itself leads - absolutely symmetrical, mutual and balanced to the
point that it has place a real process of confusion of friends: "In the friendship I s
17 Cicero, De amicitia, in De senectute - De friendship, edited by G. Pacitti, Mondadori, Milan 1

997, p. 1 05. For Cicero, friendship is the most comfortable support that human nature,
intrinsically lacking, cannot do without: «Nature itself absolutely does not love solitude and
always relies on something, like a support; to something very sweet, when it comes to true
friendships" (ibid., p. 1 59). In contrast to the Epicurean conception, the essential
characteristic of friendship is, for Cicero and for almost all the tradition following him,
gratuitousness, which it also shares with love; love that Cicero here - and this will be decisive
for all Western culture - places as the origin of friendship itself: "love, from which friendship
takes its name, is the main impulse that creates the bond of benevolence" ( ibid., p. 111 );
etymologically, friendship and love also derive from "loving", that is, from "caring for the
person you love, but without interest, without ulterior motives" (ibid., p. 1 69 ) .
18 Every confession of a secret presupposes a relationship of friendship, even within an

asymmetrical relationship such as that between master and pupil, as suggested by the
following Dante's tercet which describes a gesture of Virgil, emblem of spiritual guidance: «
And then that his hand placed me in mine with a happy face, whereby I comforted myself, he
put me inside the secret things" (Inferno, lii, 19-2 1).
19 This supreme traditional ideal of friendship cannot be achieved with more than one person
and requires absolute exclusivity; from here, as is understandable, jealousy, envy and
separation necessarily originate. Montaigne writes very clearly, in a purely "quantitative"
vision of friendly relationships: «The perfect friendship I speak of is not divisible: each person
gives himself so entirely to his friend that there is nothing left for him to share with others.
-tri; indeed he regrets not being double, triple, quadruple, not having more souls, more will to
offer them all to that one friend. Common friendships can be shared, [ ... ] but that friendship
which takes the soul and reigns there in total sovereignty cannot be twofold. [ ... ] Whoever
thought that between two people I could love one as much as the other and that they love
each other and love me as much as I love them, would transform into brotherhood the most
unique and indissoluble thing, of which it is very difficult to find even a single example in the
world" (M. de Montaigne, On friendship, Italian translation by G. Pintorino, La Vita Felice,
Milan 1996, pp. 43;45). The total and symbiotic relationship that Montagne outlines here
would induce a closure of the couple of friends towards the others with the sole effect of a
mutual narcissistic satisfaction, making impossible that irruption of the Third which, only
thanks to his incomprehension ble otherness, could become the bearer of authentic ethical-politica
77
flow and merge into each other, in a fusion so complete that they cancel each other out and no
longer find the suture that united them"20• This complete identification of friends on the one hand
responds to an elementary need of emerging from ,a solipsistic individuality, on the other, within the
Western tradition, it favors a narcissistic perpetuation of the individual himself through infinite
mirroring in his friend. Thus, when Cicerone states that whoever looks at a true friend, contemplates,
in a certain way, the image of himself, he affirms the pre-eminence of the identity principle and the
self-referentiality of a relationship which, with the same methods and objectives of the Hegelian
dialectic, attracts, elaborates and finally, it engulfs the stranger, the other, the different, reducing it
to a mere celebratory and reassuring mirror, functional to the unconditional imposition of the
subject's identity claims. Friendship thus understood, invoked as a noble means to overcoming the
loneliness of the individual abandoned by the protection and comfort of the Christian god ends up
celebrating the solitary glories of modern subjectivity. Here is to be found, according to Jtinger - who
in this is a faithful Nietzschean interpreter - the origin of that profound, even if invisible, loneliness
that afflicts the "last" men who limit themselves to winking at happiness, the metropolitan masses
stunned by narcotics. tics of technology and increasingly forgetful of their desolate condition, reduced
to a silent field of farewells.
Nietzsche is the first to invert the Greco-Roman and properly philosophical tradition of philia,
opening it to a new, unprecedented conception of friendship as inequality, asymmetry, disproportion,
which overcomes any illusion of being -together con-fusively and turn to the possibility of being-with-
the-other respectful of his irreducible otherness. However, as Jacques Derrida21 has effectively
shown, this heterodox conception of friendship, which emerges for the first time with Nietzsche, is
not completely foreign to the classical philosophical tradition; indeed, we could say that it inhabits its
most secret corners. Already in
20 M. de Montaigne, Friendship, cit., p. 29. And further on: «Our friendship is sufficient in itself
and relates only to itself. Not a particular consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a
thousand: it is the quintessence, which I could not better define, of all this mixture, which,
having taken possession of my will, led it to immerse itself and lose itself in his; which,
having taken control of all her will, led her to immerse herself and lose herself in mine, with
equal ardor, equal enthusiasm. I rightly say getting lost, because we kept nothing that was
our own, neither his nor mine" (ibid., pp. 31; 33). Cicero already wrote that in friendship
man "seeks another being, whose soul he can fuse with his own, in such a way as to make
two beings one" (Cicero, De amicitia, cit., p. 1 53 ) .
21 See J. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, tr. it. by G. Chiurazzi, Cortina, Milan 1 995. Derrida
deconstructs the traditional "phallogocentric" conception of friendship starting from
Aristotle's saying "O my friends, there is no friend", cited repeatedly, from Montaigne to
Kant to Nietzsche, focusing above all on the political values of this concept and trying to
outline, starting from the other friendship, a new idea of politics and democracy; a
democracy still unthought of, only possible as a promise and always to come, no longer
based on brotherhood, proximity and equality. On these questions, in close relation with
contemporary reflection on the idea of community, cf. C. Re-sta, «Entre nous», in Thinking
at the limit. Traces of Derrida, Guerini, Milan 1 990 and Id., Politics of hospitality,
"Phenomenology and society", 2, 1 999, pp. 96- 1 1 6.
78
Aristotle, in fact, alongside the idea of friendship as reciprocity and equality22,
finds the idea of a possible friendship between unequals: a relationship that
implies imbalance and superiority, which Aristotle sees exemplified in the
relationship between father and son, or in the bond that unites the living with the
dead23• Therefore, alongside the traditional one, a concept of friendship linked
to dissymmetry, strangeness and unbridgeable distance which makes it extremely
apo-retic the very idea of a bond of friendship24• And it is, perhaps, precisely the
extreme distance that separates us from the dead, to whom we continue to be
intimately linked, that shows how unusual, but at the same time essential, this
enigma is -matic form of friendship that is based on an irrevocable separation and
an unbridgeable absence. Upon the death of his friend Bataille, Blanchot wrote:
«Friendship, this relationship without dependence, without episodes and in which
all the simplicity of life enters, passes through the recognition of common
extraneousness»; that is, "infinite distance becomes essential, the fundamental
separation starting from which what separates becomes a relationship"25• In
order for distance and separation to be safeguarded, it is necessary for a supreme
"discretion" to reign in the -friendship, that an infinite modesty saves the space of
difference and difference that unites friends by separating them. This is how
Blanchot describes this discretion, which already prefigures the "crack of death":
Here, the discretion is not in the simple refusal to make use of any
confidence (how crass it would be even to think this), but it is the interval, the pu
22 Primarily sexual equality, since, as Derrida well notes, the predominant model is that of a "man-sexual" and
fraternal friendship (of both Greek and Jewish-Christian derivation) which is born and nourished by an attraction
[ aimance] completely similar to the erotic one. On this relationship of profound ambiguity between friendship
and eros, see below, § 2.
23 See Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1 234b, 18 ff. (Italian translation by A. Plebe, Laterza, Bari 1 965). Ci-cerone will
take up the theme of friendship with the dead who survive precisely in the friendship that continues to bind them
to the living; in the passage already cited he writes: «Whoever looks at a true friend contemplates, in a certain
way, the image of himself. This is why the absent are present, the disinherited rich, the weak strong, and what is
more difficult to assert themselves, the dead live again" (Cicero, De amicitia, cit., p. 1 07).
24 But this aporetic aspect of friendship, as well as of the community that can possibly be based on it, cannot be
eliminated, even if it has long been removed in the Western tradition, since every identity and equality are
constituted starting from from a more original difference and inequality, as Derrida himself, in all his reflections,
has shown us. As Resta effectively notes, «friendship-equality is always crossed by friendship-difference,
reciprocity by dissymmetry, and this non-reciprocity goes so far as to put the very idea of bond at risk, making
the latter even paradoxical, taking it to its extreme limit, the one that describes the unusual relationship between
man and divinity, or between the living and the dead, a relationship in which distance and difference cannot in
any way be eliminated or suppressed. Perfect friendship then seems to increasingly resemble a sort of autarky,
the very dissolution of the bond, the more it tends to unite not what is the same, but what is maximally different,
absent and distant" (C Resta, Thinking at the limit, cit., pp. 229-230).
25 M. Blanchot, Friendship, tr. it. by DG Fiori, "In forma di parole", V, I, 1 984, pp. 262-
263 .
79
interval which, from me to that other who is a friend, measures everything that exists
between us, the interruption of being which never authorizes me to dispose of him nor of
my knowledge of him (not even to praise him), and which, far from preventing all
communication, connects us to each other in the difference and sometimes in the silence of the
But what is it possible to share in this strange, alienating and disturbing form of
friendship? How can we agree with those who remain foreign and distant to us?
What happens to the sweetness and joy that friendship, the greatest of all earthly
goods, promised us as an extreme comfort? Neither similarity, nor proximity, nor
familiarity: our existential condition of disorientation27 and bewilderment is reflected
in relationships with others in new friends who remain irremediably "beyond the
,
bridge"; sweet hopes fall, one by one, and the walls of our solitudes thicken more
and more; we are invaded by the yearning of Aeneas who in the underworld tries
in vain to embrace his father's shadow: «"Give me, father, give me your right hand,
and do not shy away from my embrace!" And as I said this, tears streaked my face.
I Three times she then tries to wrap her arms around his neck ; and in vain thrice
surrounded / the shadow escaped like a light aura equal to an evanescent
dream"28. Similarly, the friend becomes a ghost that eludes others
our hugs.
A solitary prophet of modernity, Sergio Quinzio, writes in a fragment of his
Prophetic Diary, lucidly interpreting this desperate solitude: «You are alone. The
breast of the mother or the wife, the shoulder of the father or of the friend are a-
completely insufficient to support our head"29•

But, perhaps, only starting from this desperate awareness is it possible to open
up to that other form of friendship which, unheard, like a light buzz, runs through our
entire tradition, to that paradoxical possibility in which we are given to become
"friends of solitude". Commenting on Nietzsche, Derrida seri-
26 lvi, p. 263 . Friendship, we could say, is nourished by this "lack" of being, by this extreme
poverty which is, at the same time, an urgency for fullness and love.
27 For an ontological analysis of the condition of disorientation [Unheimlichkeit] and isolation
of the human being as an authentic modality of being-in the world in relation to the
disturbing call [unheimlich] of conscience cf. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, cit., §§ 56-57.
28 Virgil, Aeneid, book VI, 1 004-1010, ed. it. edited by A. Bacchielli, Paravia, Turin 1 963.
29 S. Quinzio, Prophetic Diary, Adelphi, Milan 1 996, p. 36. Every happy friendship seems
irretrievably past, lived perhaps only in a dream: «Friends no longer go along the sea to
be with the sea and with the stars and expand into the past and the future, to affirm the
love, hope, glory with that anxious sweetness that kept us united until a few years
ago" (ibid., p. 48). Does the evangelical dream of being not slaves or disciples, but
"friends" of God, also fall into despair? “Where are the consolations, the 'light little
breeze,' in which God was?” (ibid., p. 36). Perhaps only death can, suddenly,
paradoxically, bridge the distance and fulfill the sweet promise of closeness: «When the
event arrives, it brings a change: not the deepening of the separation, but its cancellation:
not the widening of the caesura but its leveling, and the dissipation of the void between
us." In death everything that separates disappears. That which separates: that which
authentically relates the abyss of relationships in which the always maintained
understanding of the affirmation of friendship is supported with simplicity" (M. Blanchot, Frien
80
ve: «We are, first and foremost, as friends, friends of solitude. Completely different
friends, inaccessible friends, friends alone because they are incomparable and without
common measure, without reciprocity, without equality. Without horizons of gratitude or
of recognition, therefore, without kinship, without proximity"30• This perhaps31 is
impossible, but friendship, if there can still be one, must give us the right to what seems
impossible, to this impossible double bind, which it chains in the very act of untying us,
of untying us. But it is precisely this paradoxical injunction, which provokes us to what
Zarathustra calls the "love of the remote"
[Fernsten-Liebe] ; it preserves us from the identitarian and all-encompassing closures
of confused friendship, which Cicero praises: the other friendship, according to Derrida,
presupposes disproportion. It demands a certain breaking of reciprocity or equality, as well as the breaking of any fusion or
confusion between you and me. At the same time it means a divorce from love, even self-love. [ ... ] It requires us to abstain
"wisely", "prudently", from any confusion, from any permutation between the singularities of the you and the I 32
Only if we understand the term "friendship" in this new and unprecedented sense,
we can then speak, also in Jiinger, of a friendship between loners.
By nature solitary and taciturn, Jiinger intuited, perhaps without having full awareness,
the meaning of this extreme and enigmatic form of friendship which alone manages to
challenge the desolate time of nihilism33• We can grasp this by transparently analyzing
the relationships fraternal or friendship that Jiinger describes in his novels and which,
although apparently following the traits of the traditional model of friendship (male
homosexuality, reciprocity of experiences and sensitivity), upon a more careful analysis,
if differ from it in a very significant way: there is never a confusing intimacy, nor a tension
towards equality, on the contrary, more often than not, these relationships configure the
typical asymmetry of the relationship between teacher and student and the figure of a
"spiritual guide" who leads the younger of the two friends through a series of formative
experiences
30 J. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, cit., p. 50. And further on: «This is how the anchorite
community of those who love to distance themselves is announced. [ ... ] They do not love
to love, with love or friendship, except on the condition of this withdrawal. Those who only
love to melt in this way are intractable friends of the solitary singularity" (ibidem). Separation
becomes the only method of recognition between solitaries: not in the way in which one soul
approaches another, but in the way in which it distances itself from it, its secret
affinity is recognized. 31 This is the "dangerous perhaps" to which, according to Nietzsche, the "philoso
1' future".
32 J. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, cit., p. 79.
33 On 20 April 1943 in Paris Jlinger noted in his diary: «For me there is something enigmatic
about the fact that I, inclined, ultimately, rather to the solitude of elementary or even organic
nature, turn [...] to the company of men. However, it seems to me that I am making a kind of
selection in this, like someone who speaks from a series of sensitive microphones, or not at
all. [ ... ] So it may be more important, at a time when propaganda is aimed at millions and
millions of men, an audience composed of only a small group of people, a network of dream
figures" (E. Jiinger , Strahlungen (1949), cit., p. 308; tr. it., pp. 248-249).
81
tion and initiatory tests. Ji.inger felt that at the bottom of every authentic
friendship there is the profound sharing of solitude and the "impossible" desire
to give to the other, as well as the common suffering due to the inevitable
separation from the crystalline beauty (of surface and depth) of this world; the
friends he writes about (and, perhaps, the friend Ji.inger himself was in his life)
could be defined as the "immortal friends of absence", united by the solitary and
common loyalty to the giving of the Eternal over time, to the revelation of the
imperishable among the transitory forms of the earth: "friends of the Eternal" in
the time that inexorably identifies and separates. Extreme solitude is, perhaps,
the only way to access the transfiguration of transience34 and that paradoxical
'community' of the solitary which, now, is no longer simply blind solidarity in the
face of death, but is the lucid awareness of those who resist ruin and in the
darkness of hope perceive - almost a specter of a lost (or never been)
brotherhood - the "friendly" resounding of the hearts of the solitary:
The only comforting memory is linked to moments of the war when suddenly
the blaze of an explosion snatched from the darkness the solitary figure of a
sentry who must have remained hidden in the darkness for a long time. During
those countless fearful nights of guarding in the darkness a treasure was
accumulated that will be consumed later.
Faith in loners is born from the nostalgia of an unnamed brotherhood [Die
Faith in the lonely arises from the longing for a nameless brotherhood] and a
rapporto spirituale più profondo di quello che è possible fra uomini35 •
This friendship is not born from mutual knowledge36 or from moral

appreciation, nor - the last of the paradoxes - is it nourished by memory: the
sentinel in the darkness, who no longer shouts like the one in the book of
Isaiah37, remains immobile in the waiting in the face of ruin, forgetful of all
salvation and of his companions themselves. But the more the abyss of anguish
and solitude is delved, the more the Gnostic sense of nostalgia for a remote and forg
34 See above, chap. 1, § 6.

35 E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 1 90 (Italian translation, p. 1 8). Jiinger thinks that this
anachoretic community of loners crosses historical eras as an immutable network of reference
and orientation which it is the task of thought to make visible and describe as a landscape, perhaps
the most fascinating, the only one in which the man can recognize himself: «Among the thoughts
that return to me periodically, occupying my reflections, there is also the idea of a landscape that
would exist immutably in the succession of eras, and such as to make spiritual relationships
visible . It should correspond to a way of understanding philosophers as one reads travel reports
and descriptions" (ibid., p. 262; Italian translation, p. IO I).
36 «We must give up knowing those to whom we are linked by something essential; I mean, we must
welcome them in the relationship with the unknown in which they themselves welcome us, in our
distance" (M. Biancho!, L'amico, cit., p. 262).
37 «The cry of Edom. Towards me it is called from Seìr. Guard! What does the night bring? Look!
What does the night bring? The guard says: The morning that is coming is another night. O
questioners! Ask again" (ls. 21, 1 1 -12).
82
belonging to a land, a motherland [Heimat], beyond the Wall of time, and with it the faith in a
common spiritual destiny of the loners of an astral friendship which in this world can , only exist
in separation, In the
)' oblivion and in the distance38• Solitude is an inevitable destiny, and each individual brings
with him a world which with his death falls without residue into nothingness. Faced with the
destructive power of war, Lieutenant Sturm lucidly expresses this tragic fate: «The war was
like the storm, the hail and the lightning, it attacked life without caring where it hit. [ . .. ] The
individual lived only once in the light and, when he passed away, the image of his world
dissolved together with him»39.
Only a sidereal gaze, or, to use a term dear to Jtinger on which we have already focused40,
"stereoscopic", can recognize the affinity of solitary individuals who, in their earthly existence,
are destined to remain extraneous
, if not even to clash as enemies. Thus Nietzsche describes, in a very famous aphorism of
the Gay Science, the fatal fate of these Argonauts of the spirit in which he sees the image of the
"new philosophers" doomed to the disaster of friendship arise:
Stellar friendship. We were friends and became strangers to each other. But that's
right [ ... ] We are two ships, each of which has its own destination and its own route.
[ ... ] Perhaps we will never see each other again - perhaps we may even see each
other, but without recognizing each other: the different seas and suns have changed
us! That we should become strangers to each other is the law incumbent on us: but
precisely for this reason we must become more worthy of ourselves! Precisely for
this reason the thought of our past friendship must become more sacred! There is
probably an immense invisible curve and sidereal orbit, in which our different paths
and destinations could be included as stretches of road, let's rise to this thought! But
our life is too short, our visual faculty too poor, to be anything more than friends in
the sense of that noble possibility! And so we want to believe in our stellar friendship,
even if we were to be terrestrial enemies of each other41.
38 Commenting on Blanchot's aforementioned text on friendship, Derrida writes: «It takes

oblivion. Friendship even without memory, for loyalty, for sweetness and rigor of loyalty,
friendship without ties, for friendship, for friendship of the loner for the loner. Nietzsche called
for this: a "community without community", a bond without bond. And death is the supreme
proof of this disconnection without which no friendship would ever have seen the light" (J.
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, cit., p. 348). Once again the challenge of a proximity to the
remote, of a loyalty to what has passed almost without leaving a trace, of care towards the
non-presence of the unknown, of a bond torn apart by abandonment; we could say the
challenge of disaster, of abandoning the friendship that offers us the supreme gift of crossing
life itself. The understanding of such an unprecedented concept of friendship necessarily
involves the attempt to think together about gift and abandonment, memory and oblivion.
Significant, in this regard, are the words with which Blanchot concludes his memory of his
friend Bataille: «thought knows that one does not remember: without memory, without
thought, it already struggles in the invisible, in which everything falls back towards
indifference. This is his deep pain. It must accompany friendship into oblivion" (M. Blanchot, Friend
39 E. Jiinger, Sturm, cit., p. 48 (tr. it., p. 53).
40 See above, Introduction.
41 F. Nietzsche, La gaia scienza, cit., p. 20 I (trans. mod.).
83
Even for Nietzsche, therefore, at the basis of this "impossible" possibility of friendship there is
the faith in the existence of this nautical-astral landscape in which the terrestrial paths of individuals
can be recognized as traits of a single sidereal orbit . But to be able to see this spiritual landscape
it is necessary not so much to strengthen our visual faculty, but to gain a new one.
The trail of that astral orbit in which solitaries recognize their very remote affinity is shown only to
those who have been able to platonically operate a conversion of gaze: being the new believers of
this unprecedented astral faith42 means, perhaps, nothing other than having eyes for the invisible,
acquiring the right sensitivity for the enigmatic crystalline topography of reality, in which the sparkle
of the surface and the glow of the depth, the luminous face and the solitary heart of the individual
are simultaneously revealed. Through superior stereoscopic vision it is possible to transmigrate
from the "stellar friendship" of individuals to the elementary and cosmogonic forces of eros,
encountering the tremor of lovers in the wake of the astral gaze of friends
, .
2. The chord of time, the light in the world
The deep echo of the caress; a thrill,

which responds from the most secret
core of the being. One senses the power
of cosmic fluctuation, with which the veins
are linked as the last capillaries.
E. Jtinger, Irradiations.
«Lovers could, if they knew how, in the night air I speak wonders»43. With these verses Rilke,
in the second of his Duino Elegies, introduces the Liebende, the lovers, those who, in an endless
host, consume the threshold of time; those who tear apart the boundaries of being with hugs,
glances and "spasms of waiting". In fact, they are the ones who feel most; but for us mortals,
unlike the angels - "spaces of essence", "shields of delight" which like mirrors retain the beauty and
light of the world on their faces - "to feel is to vanish". We mortals are destined to fragility, to the
transience of time that consumes us, we "exhale, we fade; from embers to embers we emanate a
lighter odor»44• When we encounter the beauty of a face that enchants us, we already present its
poignant "evaporation":
42 Perhaps there can only be fidelity to that which is most distant from us and which inevitably
escapes us, deserting even our memory, but to which we feel, in some way, that we
belong, as to a homeland that has always been lost. This is how Blanchot expresses
himself: «Everything we say only tends to veil the only statement: that everything must be
erased, and that the only way to remain faithful is to keep watch over this movement that
is erasing itself, and to which something in us already belongs , which rejects every
memory" (M. Blanchot, Friendship, cit., p. 259).
43 RM Rilke, Elegie duinesi, li, cit., p. 1 3.
44 lvi, p. 1 1 .
84
Here, someone tells us: Yes , you enter my blood, this room, the spring, I is
filled with you ... What good is it, he cannot hold us, we vanish in him and around
him. And the beauty I oh, who holds it back? On the face the semblance I rises
and disappears without ceasing. Like dew from new grass, what is ours evaporates
from us, like heat from hot food . Oh, smile, where ever? Oh look up45 •
But in the voluptuousness of the embrace, in the frenzy of union, the lovers
delude themselves into recomposing themselves into each other, of calming
down in perfect union, of overcoming every distance: in mutual ecstasy they
nourish each other's one of the other; in the light touch of caresses that seem to
hold time, they feel the "pure permanere" [das reine Dauern], the stable presence
of an eternal being . «And yet, after the dismay of the first glances, and the pining
at the window , and the first walk side by side, once through the garden, the
lovers, are you still lovers? When you raise yourselves to put each other in your
mouth -: drink to drink: I or how strangely by drinking you escape that drink"46•
The lovers, who longed for a homeland, for a warm welcome, "they always
collide with each other within limits", and the embrace, the first promise of eternity,
is now transformed into a sinister omen of farewell. But if the dream of
interpenetrating with the other and resting in his arms vanishes, the strength that
is released from love is, however, enormous: it drags you deep inside, up to the
"powerful origin", in the "deepest blood". ancient" where fear, horror and
enchantment reign; eros leads into the "immense ferment" of the elemental, into
the "cosmic fluctuating" in which the harmonious fullness of being flourishes, in which l
For Jtinger, love, thus understood, constitutes one of the residual possibilities
of accessing the "elementary lattice", a luminous area in which to resist the titanic
power of technique47, a possible gap in chronological time, a passage beyond
the meridian of nihilism, even if its call becomes increasingly feeble, suffocated
by the hedonistic proclamations of modernity and by the dazzling din of a sexuality
stripped of symbols and degraded to the commodification and fury of bodies.
But love can exercise this function of crossing nihilism only if it is no longer
platonically understood as a healing force that
45 Ibid. 46
iv, p. 15.
47 The resistance that eros, understood as the original drive of the living, opposes to technology
is always punctual and, therefore, does not constitute a definitive liberation except when it is
transformed into love or sacrifice: «When two people love each other they steal ground to
the Leviath-no, they create spaces that he does not control. Eros will always triumph as the
true messenger of the gods, over all titanic creations. You will never be wrong by being on
his side." By dedicating oneself to sex, the world of machines is annihilated, but «this
annihilation is timely and must be continuously strengthened. Sex does not conflict with
technical processes, it is indeed their counterpart in the organic sphere. [ ... ] In fact, drives
do not act as an element of contrast except when they overflow, either in love or in sacrifice. This m
(E. Jiinger, Ober die Linie, cit., p. 274; tr. it., pp. 97-98). On the relationship, which Jiinger
never fully explains, between eros as an elementary force and love as a way of attracting
85
it leads to the conquest of a lost identity48, but as a power that reintegrates
man into the polyphonic harmony of the Whole through the encounter with the
otherness of the beloved. No identity to (re)conquer, but only an intense
experience of immersion in the elementary depths of nature, according to that
stereoscopic strategy, which we have already mentioned, which from the
visible surface of phenomena leads to the invisible depth of to be.
Jiinger, however, inherits a peculiar trait of the traditional conception of
love: the myth that Plato has Aristophanes narrate in the Symposium
establishes a close relationship between physis and love as dynamis, that is,
as a principle of re-union of individuals and of reunification of multiplicity in
unity49• If Zeus, through the cut, transformed the one into two, «opening a
"wound" that transforms the entire human life into an incessant and painful
exodus, in a sort of tormenting pilgrimage, in the relentless search for one's
other half, eros works by healing, reconstituting the original form, making "one
of two""50. Each of us thus becomes a symbolon, a "part" of need-
individuals, which takes up and amplifies the stellar friendship we have already mentioned, cf.
below. Few critics have focused on the theme of love in Jilnger's work: Gerber believes that the
main meaning of love, what allows it to cross the line of nihilism, derives from its ability to open up
a space of freedom for men: «Eros as love between man and woman, but also as friendship, takes
away unorganizable space from the Leviathan» (H. Gerber, Die Frage nach Freiheit und
Notwendigkeit im Werke Ernst amministrazioners , Keller , Winterthur 1 965, p. 74); Koslowski also
focused on the possibilities of liberation through love, especially starting from the novel Heliopolis :
«The warrior and worker discovers in Heliopolis nature and the feminine, the other with respect to
the "organic construction" and the "total character of work"» (P. Koslowski, In den Stahlgewittern
der Moderne. Ober das Werk Ernstfuners, "Scheidewege", 20, 1990/9 1, p. 273; here he also
proposes an interesting Gnostic interpretation of love in Jilnger). On Heliopolis cf. also H. Kiesel,
Wis-senschaftliche Diagnosi und dichterische Vision der Moderne. Max Weber und Ernst funer,
Manutius, Heidelberg 1 994, pp. 1 56-162; M. Meyer, Ernst funner, Cari Hanser, Miinchen Wien 1
990, pp. 381 -394.
48 For a detailed analysis of the Greek conception of eros, present in particular in the Platonic myths,
for the relationships between eros and philosophy, and for a rereading of the myth of Don Giovanni
in modern culture, cf. U. Curi, The cognition of love. Eros and philosophy, Feltrinelli, Milan 1997.
For a now classic reconstruction of the forms of love in medieval and modern culture and its various
literary representations see D. De Rougemont, l'anUJre el'Oc-cidente. Eros, death, abandonment
in European literature, Italian translation by L. Cantucci, Rizzoli, Milan 2001. On the erotic tension
towards unity and on the strongly identitarian character of the classical conception of love, Curi
expresses himself thus: «The love [ ... ] is the symptom of an intrinsically deficient human condition,
the testimony of a constitutive incompleteness, the demonstration of the non-self-sufficiency of
individuals, or more precisely of the fact that each of us is not one , but only half of a whole. [ ... ]
The "movement" inherent in the erotic relationship does not imply at all the exit from one's own
identity, in the direction of otherness, but is on the contrary a process that leads out of otherness
of a self only diminished, towards the conquest of the lost identity" (U. Curi, The cognition of love,
cit., p. 82).
49 This process of reductio ad unwn does not follow the path of a progressive discovery of a
transcendental order to which the variety and multiplicity of phenomena can be brought back; it is
rather configured as an instant vision of the simplicity of the necessary relationships that link every
phenomenon to the elementary background, or rather as the emergence of the intimate symbolism of rea
50 U. Curi, The cognition of love, cit., p. 80.
86
he knows he is reunited with the other side. The erotic tension, in which man
participates in love, manifests the constitutive incompleteness and "symbolicality"
of human existence which, according to Jiinger, tends towards a broader
reintegration into nature through the overcoming of individuality that occurs in the encou
The very perception we have of phenomena expresses our inability to relate to
the totality, which we can only understand as a «succession of partial aspects of
life. And we consider the missing element almost a complementary color"51. The
stereoscopic tension towards the invisible complement of our experiences is,
therefore, a component of the erotic tension which, almost a gnostic force, brings
out the substantial "surplus of the world" in which we live: «In every sector of our
existence there is a stimulus inherent in us that makes us inclined to complement
and has a healing virtue"52. This tension towards the invisible complement is at
the basis of all forms of intoxication [Rausch], which Jiinger experienced and which
he analyzed above all in his text dedicated to drugs53• Among these forms of
intoxication, sexuality is, certainly, one of the most intense and promising.
Beyond the function that eros plays in constituting and binding the community,
which is based on an ecstatic opening that goes beyond the boundaries of the
individual ego, the comparison with the Bataillian conception of the ego may be
interesting. rotismo54, which constitutes an original declination - very close to the
one that Jiinger himself operates - of the traditional idea of eros as nostalgia for an
original totality. Eroticism, for Bataille, is «An elementary disturbance, the essence
of which is a disorder that distorts»55, which is created in the moment in which
two discontinuous, fragmented beings lean over the abyss that separates them
and, at the same time, it attracts them. This abyss is, in a certain sense, the death
51 E. Jtinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 246 (tr. it., p. 83).

52 lvi, p. 247 (tr. it., p. 84). We experience the "surplus of the world" in every generative act
which, not surprisingly, is accompanied by the achievement of a high degree of physical
pleasure; but this experience, which for Jtinger coincides with the gesture of "passing to
the woods", means touching death itself, as confirmed by the custom, typical of some
languages, of defining the orgasm as "small death": «Passing to forest [ ... ] means first of
all going towards death. This road comes very close to death - indeed, if necessary, it even
crosses it. The forest as a refuge for life, reveals its surreal treasures when man has
managed to cross the line. Here the world's surplus rests. [ ... ] The grain of wheat, dying,
generated not numerous, but infinite fruits. Here we touch on that surplus of the world of
which every generative act is a temporal symbol, as well as a sign of victory over time" (E.
Jtinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 33 1; tr. it., pp . 76-77).
53 See E. Jtinger, Anniihrungen, cit. Intoxication is a path towards depth, and «the more varied
and subtle [are] the roots that a being sinks into the earth, the more varied and singular
[are] his experiences of intoxication» (E. Jtinger, Sturm , cit., p. 63; tr. it., p. 72).
54 M. Alessio focused on eros as the soul of the community in Estasi, eros, ebbrezza: the story
Sturm, "Diorama", 222-223, 1999, pp. 1 3-18, where, commenting on the erotic-sexual
component of the novel Sturm, the proximity of the Bataillian notion of "expenditure" to the
experiences narrated by Jtinger is noted: «the sexual act [is] understood as the liberation
of overabundance of energy, and therefore, [ ... ] as expenditure" (ibid., p. 1 6). See also
M. Alessio, Between war and peace, cit., pp. 1 8-22.
55 G. Bataille, Eroticism, tr. it. by A. Dell'Orto, ES, Milan 1 997, p. 15.
87
you, and death is "dizzying", it is "fascinating"; only in it is the sense of
continuity of being revealed56. But to tear being away from discontinuity, an
act of violence is always necessary, of violation of discontinuous individuality,
which occurs through a process of dissolution of the established forms in
which individualities are ordered and of mutual expropriation of pi; this
borders on death as the supreme violation of discontinuity57.
According to Bataille, the authentic sense of religious sacrifice, on which
the sacred is based, resides in the dissolution of the fragmentation of
individuals and in the showing of the continuity of being: «The sacred is
exactly the totality of revealed being to those who in a solemn rite
contemplate the death of a fragmentary being. Due to violent death, a
breaking of the discontinuity of a being is determined: what exists and what,
in the silence that falls, the anxious spirits experience is the totality of the
being, to which the victim is brought back " 58. Eroticism is the "random"
experience of this totality, in itself unknowable and unintelligible; his
intoxication consists in the «approval of life right up to death»59. As for
Jiinger, also for Bataille, therefore, eroticism, like poetry, leads, through the
experience of death, to the indistinct, to totality, to eternity. The indistinct,
here, is to be read as a name of the elemental itself, that is, of that profound
power of nature, according to which, for example in plants, each part is
capable of generating the others. This primordial force is what elsewhere
Jiinger, taking up the title of a famous text by Ludwig Klages60, calls cosmogonic
56 The continuity of being is the profound desire which, according to Bataille - but we will see that
Jiinger also thinks something very similar - reigns at the bottom of eroticism: «Reproduction
leads to the fragmentation of beings, but brings into play their continuity, that is, it is intimately
linked to death. Speaking about the reproduction of beings and death, I will try to demonstrate the
identity of the continuity of beings and death, which are equally fascinating, and whose fascination
dominates eroticism" (ibid., pp. 1 4-1 5 ) .
57 «If the union of two lovers is produced by passion, the union calls for death, as a desire for murder
or suicide. It is only in the violation - at the level of death - of individual isolation that that image
of the loved being appears which for the lover represents the meaning of everything that exists.
Being loved is, for the lover, the transparency of the world. What shines through being loved [ ... ]
is the full, unlimited being, to which individuality no longer imposes barriers. It is, in a word, the
fusion of being seen as liberation starting from the being of the lover" (ibid., p. 21). This passage
by Bataille is echoed by Jiinger's note of 22 February 1942: «The struggle for life: the weight of
individuality. Contrasted with the mass of the undifferentiated with its ever deeper vortices. In the
moment of intercourse we immerse ourselves in these vortices, we sink until we touch the roots
of the tree of life. [ ... ) Finally, death, which breaks down the walls of individuality. Death as the
supreme gift. All our most varied bonds have tightened their mystical knot only beyond death,
beyond time. We become seers when the light goes out" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p.
307; tr. it., p. 76).
58 G. Bataille, Eroticism, cit., p. 22. 59

lvi, p. 1 2. And again: «Eroticism opens up to death. Death opens up the denial of duration
individual" (ibid., p. 24).
60 See L. Klages, Dell 'eros cosmogonico, tr. it. by U. Colla, Multiphla, Milan 1 982.
61 It consists of an «attraction and fusion together of animal and vegetal organs», which for example
88
the human one is nothing but a reflection. In one of the first pages of his Paris diaries, Ji.inger notes a
naturalistic observation:
The willows [ ... ] were covered with a down of small roots even beyond the
height of a man; they sprouted like moss from the trunk and branches: a
beautiful example of how, in plants, each part is capable of reproducing the
others. The undivided vital impulse still lives in all being. We men have lost this
art and where, in our formations, leaves and flowers flourished, roots will never
be seen again. However, in conditions of growing danger, in sacrifice, we are
capable of producing other and more spiritual organs and roots that adhere to
the immutable, even at the cost of the ruin of the individual. But from this ruin
grows new prosperity for all of us62 •
Only in extreme situations, such as those of pain, death and love, does man still have the possibility of
drawing on the invisible germinal power that animates nature; in those rare kairological moments he is
touched by the «configuring force of the earth, which brings to light so much richness, but which remains
hidden»63• It is the shaping force of all za demiurgic beings which gives shape and supports entities in their
manifestation ; its invisible origin hints at a motionless fullness, a place beyond time where , the power
happiness and abundance reign. Ji.inger sees in mushrooms, of which he was a passionate researcher, an
effective metaphor for this invisible power. As in crystals, even in mushrooms the invisible becomes visible:
«They are both custodians of secret manifestos»64• The mycelium of mushrooms - infinitely divisible without
losing its regenerative faculty - participates, in fact, in an archaic indistinction of forms and organs that relate
to formations
we observe in the pollination of plants by insects, and in which «an unfathomable,

indecipherable trait of Mother Nature is revealed. [ ... ) The union of such distant beings
attracted towards each other is the sign of a nuptial desire, of a spark that lights up in all
objects at the beginning of a perpetual celebration of love" ( E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit.,
p. 23 1; tr. it., pp. 225-226). For an adequate observation of this phenomenon, once again,
a stereoscopic, or rather synoptic, view is necessary: «We need to look at this phenomenon
synoptically and not synthetically: just go out one morning when myriads of flowers bloom
and they turn towards the sun and all around resounds the hum of wild nature [Wildnis]. Most
insects are not only messengers of love, but they feast and take up residence in plants" (ibid.,
pp. 23 1 -232; tr. it., p. 226). Co-smogonic eros is what presides over generation in the post-
Edenic world, marked by transience. It can only give life to something mortal, hence the
unavoidable mix of pleasure and anguish with which it manifests itself to our eyes: cf. E.
Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 5 1 0 (Italian translation, p. 85) and Anniihrungen, cit., pp. 44-45
(Italian translation, p. 53).
62 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, cit., p. 226 (Italian translation, pp. 1 5-16). It should be
noted, here, how the Jiingerian conception of the sacrifice of individuality is close to the
Bataillian one, even if in Jiinger the sacrifice refers above all to the Greek and Judeo-Christian trad
Cfr. supra, cap. I, § 3.
63 E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit., p. 248 (tr. it., p. 242).
64 iv, p. 246 (tr. it., p. 240). Sui funghi cfr. also E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., pp. 3 84-385
(tr. it., p. 350).
89
crystallines typical of the mineral kingdom: «The proteic force of the original
plant still acts in it, allowing its hidden power to be felt in the sprouting of
buds and shoots, in the growth and healing of the branches, in the
reproduction and distribution of the two sexes, in the constitution of strains,
colonies and communities"65• In it shines the vital force that lives inaccessibly
in the "intimate nature" and which manifests itself only fleetingly in the
creations of nature and man. It exerts a charm that simultaneously enchants
and enraptures66, a fatal attraction that comes from the Neptune depths
and of which every form of erotic attraction is only a reflection:
There is only one kind of love, beyond space and time; all encounters
on earth are images, they are colors of the one and indivisible light. There-
65 E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit., p. 246 (tr. it., p. 240). Mindful of that "higher trigonometry"
to which the Sicilian Letter reminded us, the observation of similar phenomena leads us
to calibrate our gaze on the register of the invisible: «If to take our measurements we will
always refer to what is measurable, we will continue to linger in the vestibule. If, by
observing this growth, we draw conclusions on the action of an invisible force that makes
itself manifest in the visible, we use a symbol, a metaphor" (ibidem; tr. it., pp. 240-
24 1 ). Below Jiinger describes, in a splendid page, an autumn landscape, probably from
the hills of Swabia where he spent the last five decades of his life, in which mushrooms
represent an almost prodigious apparition. Considering the central role that they play in the
development of our crystallography of the invisible, I report some passages: «In autumn all
the images stand out more solid, more plastic. Spring is a painter, autumn is a sculptor.
Not only do the fruits begin to round, but also the vegetation becomes more rigid and
metallic. The leaves become turgid before rusting and falling. The profile of the treetops
appears clearer and darker against the sky. The swallows gather; the jay glides over the
clearings. This is the time in which, in the space of one night, mushrooms appear. They
constitute a self-contained world of forms. [ ... ] The cellars, attics and barns are all open;
you can smell earth, must and apples. The hunt is on; the gaze extends to the edge of the
forest. The air is clear and yet a thin veil is woven into it. White threads and flakes flutter
in the breeze of the weakest winds; they stick to clothes and the face. They say they bring
good luck, like the fabrics woven by the norns. The canvas becomes thicker in the woods.
The light falls slanting through the trees. The dew is preserved for a long time on the moss
and glitters on the webs of the cross spider. There are also mushrooms: they love the
coolness of the night; their funny heads are still beaded with dew. They re-shine in
myriads. [ ... ]Mushrooms not only bear the names of concrete objects, but also others
which, such as Schwindling [deceiver] or Tintling [coloured with ink], allude to a brief
epiphany. They continually return, they are not figures, but the continuous redesigning of
a figure: they are qualities that emerge from the substance devoid of quality. As such, they
appear to our senses to be more prodigious than what makes their constant return possible,
namely the mycelium. But what is that force that returns to the mycelium? It is the
configuring force of the earth, which brings to light so much richness, but which remains
hidden. When it touches us, like the filaments of the Madonna, this contact is much more
precious than the treasure that we discover and collect and that "falls before our eyes". It
comes from the place where happiness lives" (ibid., pp. 247-248; tr. it., pp. 24 1 -242).
66 M. Heidegger, in some writings from the 1930s, focused on a possible consideration of
beauty and artistic creation starting from these two elements, rapture [Entriickung] and
enchantment [Beriickung] which in the German language derive from the single root riicken,
'to turn', from which also derives verriickt, 'crazy': cf. M. Heidegger, Beitrii-ge zur
Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe Bd. 65, edited by F.-W. von Herrmann,
Klostermann, Frankfurt aM 1 989, pp. 191 ff.
90
more understood in a general sense, love in the whirlwind of temporality is
earthly, it is neptunium; the ocean is the cradle from which Aphrodite rises.
From its depths flows what in love is wave and rhythm, tension and mixture,
what is wonderful and fearful. On the seashore and on the rocks we perceive
its anonymous fatal song, the deep voices of the sirens who, emerging and
diving, attract us to get lost in their sea. The attraction is irresistible67 •
A poignant and disturbing call emanates from the depths of nature, from the immobile center from which the
current of time flows: in it bloom promises of happiness that are never fully realized in visible reality, just as a corolla
of flowers promises more of the ripe fruit that will develop from it. The transient forms of reality, the vast unfolding of
plants, flowers, insects, fish, birds, civilizations and constellations, refer to an ineffable nucleus whose immaterial
splendor surpasses the brilliance of all the realms of the visible, as in the « center of the wheel exists more than,
what develops in its turn"68• Jtin-ger almost seems to take up the famous Spinozian distinction between natura natu-
rans and natura naturata; but here it is not a question, as for Spinoza, of identifying on the one hand a Cause or a
generating Principle and on the other an effect or generated thing, with all the consequent risks of materialism and
mechanism. Attention is instead placed by Jtinger on the opposite process: not analyzing how the infinite
manifestations of nature proceed from the Principle, but going back from the immense natural variety to the living
source (not to the subsisting Cause in itself of metaphysics classical). The gaze that follows the generative power of
nature backwards is, as a search for synoptic unity (and not synthetic-comparative like that towards which science
tends), "erotic gaze"69: «The charm
67 E. Jiinger, Heliopolis, cit., p. 93 (Italian

translation, p. 1 1 4). 68 lvi, p. 94 (Italian translation, p. 1 1 5). The poetic word is an emblematic
expression of the creative power that inhabits the roots of being. Like the flame that feeds
on its invisible core, it lives on the resounding of silence: «In the depths of its origins the
Word is no longer either form or key. It becomes identical with being. Become creative
power. There is its strength, immense and impossible to monetize. Here only approximations
can be given. Language weaves its work around silence, as a loasis extends around the
source. And the poem confirms that man was able to enter the gardens outside of time. Of
this, then, time will live" (E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 373; tr. it., p. 1 32). Faced with
the unfolding of the primordial power of eros in nature, it is felt as a silent call which,
however, remains indecipherable. Jiinger wrote on May 17, 1941: «Every time I see the
flowers open so gently in the sunlight, their pleasure in living seems infinitely profound to me.
I also have the sensation that they speak to me with words, with sweet and consoling
phrases. And every time, the pain that from all this no sound reaches my ears. You feel
called, but you don't know where" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 240; tr. it., p. 26). A
Gnostic "call" seems to resonate here towards an elsewhere devoid of spatial and temporal locat
But only with great caution is it possible to speak of a Gnosticism in Jiinger, since he never
thought of a radical denial of the earthly world which, on the contrary, represents for him
the royal road to "approach" the wall of time.
69 Analyzing Orpheus' breath , Curi considers the essential correlation between the activity of
seeing, equivalent to knowing, and loving. The act of looking someone in the eyes, with
which the first loving contact is established, implies not only knowledge, through life,
91
it lies in the perspective that sinks through the infinite facets of natura naturata into the abyss of natura naturans.
The rays are those of the inverted prism: they shine first in the splendor of the iris, then return to a single
colour. [ . . . ] The spirit sinks into the vault of the treasure, where the great sigillum is found, the prototype of
every coinage»70• In this asceticism that leads «from wealth to the source of wealth»71, we foresee the shining
of a supreme undifferentiated unity which, far from being impoverishment and evisceration, is supreme and
incalculable abundance. Only by redrawing the essential and original simplicity of the life force is it possible to
collect and nourish our innumerable 'passions'; in this sense the enigmatic statement found in the diary of 4
June I 943 must be understood: «If our love must leave only one bud to the bud of the heart»72• Bearing fruit
is this process of simplification and ascension to unity, because it involves the progressive renunciation of
one's individuality, of the obstinate concentration on oneself which incessantly promotes action and the
exploitation of reality. The more we lose contact with the original power of nature, the more, even if imperceptibly,
us are nothing, we become impoverished. All the riches and artificial paradises with which technology seduces
compared to the "glassy treasure chambers" that announce themselves in the crystalline depths of nature. Only
in love can we foresee, for a moment, the joy of paradisiacal abundance that exceeds time and death:
True abundance, heavenly abundance, lies outside of time. There is

also the land of great, immediate creations, as myth describes them and
Genesis illustrates. And there is no death there. In the embrace of love a
spark of the great light of this creative world remained within us; we fly, as
if shot from a crossbow, beyond time73 •
vision of the other, but also that of oneself: it leads one to see oneself in the other, to recognize oneself
in the foreign face that captivates and attracts and which comes from an extreme and disturbing distance
(see U Curi, The cognition of love, cit., pp. 131 ff). For Jiinger, this face is not only that of the beloved,
but also the ever-changing and multifaceted face of natural beings and landscapes themselves, from
which the warning of Hindu wisdom cited several times by Jiinger incessantly arises: "this is you".
70 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, p. 30 1 (tr. it., p. 450).

71 See ibid., pp. 74-75 (Italian translation, pp.
270-27 1). 72 lvi, p. 79 (tr. it., p.
274). 73 liv, p. 343 (tr. it., p. 483). Jiinger returns to various places on the suspension of time that occurs in
the love-pink intoxication. As an example I report the "enchanting" description of a love encounter
between Lucius, the protagonist of the novel Heliopolis, in which all the characteristic elements of the
Jiingerian conception of love that we are outlining return: «It was getting dark. A large bird emitted a cry
in the reeds. A small owl answered from one of the destroyed chimneys. The two young men felt that the
primordial forces were moving, those forces that lay dormant under the earth of the vineyards. A chasm
of panic opened up. They stood in silence. Lucius stared at the face of the girl who gave off the glow of
a pale mask. Her eyes turned to him like dark cavities. They seemed to be framed by the pale bones of a
dead man. A sudden shudder seized him. He held out his hand to break the spell and touched the
smooth forehead, the cheeks, the lips that responded to him with a breath.
'
92
But the "crossbow of love" that hurls beyond time does not maintain
an oppositional relationship with temporality, as technology does74; it is not
The body stretched towards him blossomed in the embrace. The earth, the ancient, strong mother
earth cried out from all her being; that mother who stands, adorned with flowers and fruits, and
who here delightfully crowned herself emerging from a putrid land of death. The dark trees, the
moon, the stars were still as if the universe had stopped its race for a moment and conquered the
center of the first gardens in which time is destroyed. On the shore the wave edge advanced and
retreated in soft beats; with deep sighs the wind stirred the foliage. But, like a swimmer already
sucked into a powerful whirlpool, Lucius righted himself; he grabbed the girl's head with both
hands and kissed her fraternally. A jay crawled out of the bushes, making a shrill cry. They walked
arm in arm towards the gondola port" (E. Jiinger, Heliopolis, cit., pp. 1 66- 1 67; tr. it., p.
191). I wanted to report this long passage in full because I consider it very exemplifying of the
Jiingerian vision of love and eros and also of the man-woman relationship that is found in the
novels, especially in Heliopolis . It seems very ungenerous to me and, also in light of the passage
reported, very reductive to state that in Jiinger «the woman, without a life of her own and without
problems and personal opinions as an individual, is at the same time the protected servant and
the protective maternal womb , as perhaps it is suitable for the adventurer and the warrior: it is the
reflection and the shadow of man, in the primitive archaic style. [ ... ] The woman is, therefore,
perceived and accepted as an object of servile and erotic pleasure and as a biological-maternal
element" (MT Mandatari, The position of woman as an opposite pole in Ernst's narrative work
Jiinger, in AA. VV., Ernst Jiinger. An international conference, cit., pp. 206; 208). If anything, for
Jiinger, woman constitutes the concretion on a human level of the cosmogonic eros to which man
must, with his love, correspond.
Only in this sense does it seem possible to identify a gender difference which, however, never
means a submission or reification of women, but simply highlights a diversity that is progressively
and dangerously becoming extinct in the world of technology. Woman is a path that leads to the
immaterial depths of eros, '
a living challenge posed to man. This conception is, moreover, not
foreign to other non-Western traditions, as can be seen from the writing of M. Eliade, On Indian
mystic erotica and other writings (Boringhieri, Turin 1998); in the afterword to this text Guido Brivio
writes, in surprising harmony with what we are saying about the role of the woman in Jiinger: «The
woman leads the man through a trial. But he doesn't know it. Because this proof is herself. The
man, attracted by the woman, follows her without knowing that this is his test. The woman leads
him through herself as through the test that he must pass. But since this proof is herself, she
doesn't even notice it. The man is led through the woman - and in the woman - to a mortal test
where what is tested is his very essence. Without knowing it, the woman leads him to this. Without
knowing it, the man says yes. This is the hidden meaning of their love. Essential sense of love,
which derives from and concerns the very essence of the one who loves" (G. Brivio, Death and
the Fanciulla, in ibid., p.
87). Also for Jiinger, woman is a mysterious being precisely because she participates in the
depths of the earth. Woman is the authentic "daughter of the earth" who never fully reveals
herself: «Women are much more secret, true tombs of vanished loves; Is there only one that a
man, whether husband or lover, can say he knows everything about, even while holding her in his
arms? Anyone who has seen an old lover again after years is frightened by this mastery of silence.
Daughters of the earth truly. There are terrible and solitary sciences that women cultivate in secret
in their breasts" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 390; tr. it., p. 1 38).
74 In the erotic experience, time is not consumed or attacked, as instead happens in the world of
technology; rather it acquires an instantaneous and extraordinary intensity which makes it
supremely intangible, as some verses by Pedro Salinas suggest: «The time after having kissed
you was no longer worth anything , I was worth nothing before. I In the kiss his beginning and his
end" (P. Salinas, La voci a te due, edited by E. Scoles, Ei-naudi, Turin 1 979, p. 1 1 7).
93
exposed to the consumption and decay that time, understood as
chronological temporality, produces, since its roots sink into the geninal
power from which time arises as aion, that is, as the time of life . In love,
as in all the most intense and touching spiritual experiences, time
withdraws, disappears, we could say it becomes lighter: «in first-order
spiritual or erotic encounters, time completely loses its weight , or rather
its existence»75• This lightening of time refers to the corresponding
"lightness of the world" which transpires from all Jiingerian writings on
nature76; it, announced in the flash of the stellar friendship of the solitary,
overcomes the looming "heaviness" of the laceration of pain and manifests
itself in love as a 'punctual' liberation from the gravity of existence77 and
as the unveiling of the "light of the world": Lichtung78 der Zeit, that is, at
the same time, the thinning out and illumination of time: time loses weight,
withdraws into its transitory guise and leaves room for the manifestation
of its kairological source. The blanket of Chronos is lightened through a lacera
75 E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, pp. 333-334 (Italian translation, p. 475). Death as the

extreme contact with the profound and as the last passage brings to a definitive completion
this suspension of time which, in earthly life, always remains linked to the moment: «We
must make this thought familiar to ourselves, if we want to understand death in its profound
meaning as destroyer of time" (ibidem).
76 The influence of the Nietzschean invocation of the innocence of becoming and the lightness
of the world is evident here, as well as the classic Nietzschean themes of song and dance
for which cf. C. Resta, Weight, lightness and the dance of the world, in AA.VV., Philosophy
of weight. Aesthetics of lightness, edited by G. Marchianò, Rubbettino, Soveria
Mannelli 1997. 77 he weight of living, to which reference is made here, does not refer to the idea
of an indistinct decadent malheur ; rather, in the wake of Nietzsche's Zarathustra's invectives
against the "spirit of gravity", it indicates that suffocating immanentistic closure which occurs
with the affirmation of the human type of the Worker and which prevents any access to the
elemental and any erotic experience. of otherness, confining man - the "last" man of which
Nietzsche spoke - in an increasingly heavy and dark atmosphere.
78 Lichtung, a fundamental word in Martin Heidegger's thought, refers to that area of openness
in which the unveiling of entities takes place; in the sense of a 'background' which, granting
the presence and appearance of entities, manifests itself only in its withdrawal as an
abysmal bottom; this concept is close to the Jiingerian concept of elementary and germinal
depth which thins out in the experience of eros. Lichtung is, in the reflections of the late Hei-
degger, the very thing [Sache] of post-metaphysical thought: cf. M. Heidegger, The end of
philosophy and the task of thought, in Time and Being, tr. it. by E. Mazzarella, Guida, Naples
1991. Jiinger speaks in a rather enigmatic way of "the light of time"
[Zeitleuchte] connecting this expression to the miracle of the resurrection. See E. Jiinger,
Anniihrungen, cit., p. 4 1 1 (tr. it., p.
373). 79 Lieutenant Sturm, protagonist of the novel of the same name, states resolutely: «One
thing was certain: what pushed him towards the female was not pleasure, but a wound
that burned deep» (E. Jiinger, Sturm, cit. , p . 63; tr. it., p. 73). I don't think we should see
in this "wound" the sign of an offense suffered or a loss, but, more radically, that original
vulnus which is existence itself as it is exposed to the torment and incisive determinations
of space. time and which manifests itself in the infinity of erotic-metaphysical desire. At
the conclusion of his analysis of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Curi writes in this
regard: «Orpheus is truly the very symbol of eros, torn between the poros of an inseparable
restitution, and the pain of an impending loss. [ ... ] Not being able to be only union,
without being at the same time separation, appropriation without loss, satisfaction without dissa
94
which provides access to the aionic depths of time in which the cosmic
rhythm of life pulsates80. And the more delicate the cut, the greater the
revelation. In the smallness of the cut made by the forces of eros, the
stereoscopic experience is fulfilled to the highest degree: surface and depth
are identified, while the moment falls into eternity81• Like a very thin nail
polish or a soap bubble, time it thus becomes thin and transparent like the
iridescent splinter of a crystal in which the infinite variety of the world is
reflected. The supreme wealth dwells only in that which has no extension,
just as the abysmal fullness of love manifests itself in the apparent
nothingness of a look or a caress and the rapture of eros arises from its
disturbing confidence with nothingness. The caress, that immaterial tremor
that comes from the depths of being, is the emblem of this heartbreaking
brush with nothingness. As Lévinas writes splendidly, who saw in the caress
a way of access to the event of the other,
the caress, like the contact, is sensitivity. But the caress transcends the sensitive.
This does not mean that it feels beyond what is felt, more deeply than the senses, it
does not mean that it takes possession of a sublime food... the caress consists in not
taking hold of anything, in soliciting what continually escapes from its forms towards a
future - never enough of a future - in soliciting what is subtracted as if it were not yet82.
happiness without pain, life without death. [ ... ] Love is tragic in itself, as it is an irreducible
tension, for which no dialectical composition can be imagined, as it is conflict, for which no
definitive pacification is conceivable. [ ... ] There is no art that can definitively tear eros away
from its indissoluble connection with tha-natos. Nothing better than love can demonstrate
the very foundation of the human condition, its inability to be anything other than hope, and
therefore its despair of complete salvation, its constant sinking into the limits from which it
would like to escape" (U. Curi, The cognition of love, cit., pp. 1 58- 1 59). But it is precisely
in the chiaroscuro region of the limit, of the border, in which eros, in its impulse, forces us
to live, that the insular happiness of lovers becomes accessible, beyond any deferral of
hope. .
80 For an analysis of the three fundamental dimensions of time in Greek and Western culture,
see M. Cacciari, "Chronos and Aion", in Dell 'Inizio, Adelphi, Milan 1 990.
81 See E. Jiinger, Heliopolis, cit., p. 19 (tr. it., p. 35). For Nigromontanus, the master
protagonist of both this novel and the Marble Cliffs, the entire universe that we perceive
represents only a particular perspective, a particular "cut" of a much vaster reality: «He
thought that the universe, as it appears to our eyes, represents only one of the myriads of
possible cuts; that the world is like a book of which we see only one of the infinite
pages" (ibidem). Through language we are able to cross this cut and, therefore, perceive
the invisible: «Words form a grate, which allows a look at the inexpressible. They are the
setting of a stone that remains invisible" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, cit., p. 297; tr.
it., p. 68). This figure of the "lattice of words" was ingeniously taken from Celan's poems in
the Sprachgitter collection, in P. Celan, Poesie, tr. it. by G. Bevilacqua, Mondandori, Milan
1 998.
82 E. Lévinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. it. by A. Dell 'Asta, Jaca Book, Milan 1 990, p. 265 .
The gesture of the caress, as a fundamental gesture of an 'other' thought, has been
invoked, not only by Levinas, as a weapon against the traditional metaphysics of subjectivity
and its procedures of violent representation and instrumental objectification of reality: cf.
AA.VV., Metaphors for a philosophy of caress. From the imagined feminine to the feminine
imagination, Schena, Fasano (BR) 1 986.
95
Yet, in this hyper-sensitive touching of the beloved's skin, man touches, without any
penetration, the depths of the other being, or of being other : in the tenderness with
which lovers touch each other the other, in the senseless and aimless generosity of
their infinite caresses which become even more poignant when they rest on the most
ethereal parts of the body, the hair, the eyelashes, the lips, the desperate attempt is
expressed more than the desire for interpenetration. tive to reach through the other
the limit of being and the threshold of time83, that is, that unheard of happiness of the
border in which life itself celebrates its supreme celebration: the image of this profound
liberation of life is, in addition to the song and to dance84, flight, which has always
been associated with happiness.
Desire, therefore, not as possession but as expropriation of oneself through the
other, as mutual relief from the weight of identity and conquest of an ecstatic dimension,
in which ek-stasis is to be understood as the exit outside of oneself -voiced by the
fascinating spell of the other.
This is how the protagonist of Heliopolis describes one of his meetings with Ingrid:
I took Ingrid to her farm located near the coast. We laughed as we went
down the slope. Ingrid walked a few steps in front of me; he had grabbed
my hand and raised it as if he wanted to teach me how to move - or rather,
how to fly - when dancing. The bodies became lighter, almost similar to
spirits. [ ... ] The landscape appeared illuminated by an electric light and
we were the poles on which the circuit closed. The circles of deep, dark and vibr
83 Eros is tragic precisely because it hurls itself against every limit and leads lovers to the threshold of
themselves, or rather to the face of death in an initiatory test, a rite of passage of which the unaware
officiant is the woman: «She pushes him to the threshold of himself, where he could never suspect he
was, where he would never venture - unless, as now, driven by love. There where his own self will no
longer exist. On the abyss of love he sees the nothingness of himself. For love of him beyond self, the
woman pushed him there. [ ... ] Aware of being a trace, the lovers push towards their death - into that
victory against their own life. Victory of love against existence: existing against I and you. [ ... ] The
woman knows, without knowing it, that she is a trace of something that is beyond life. Close to his body
- eyelid to eyelid close - man learns the meaning of life of these bodies - and ' agrees to overcome it. In
love, man learns the sense of death of life" (G. Brivio, Death and the Fanciulla, cit., pp. 91; 98). On the
relationship between eros and death, the Freudian analyzes contained in Beyond the Pleasure Principle
remain fundamental in which he distinguishes between the sexual drives understood as life drives and
the ego drives identified with the death drives, introducing a decisive differentiation in the conception of
"libido" which would also manifest itself in the tenderness-aggression polarity characteristic of object
love: cf. S. Freud, Beyond the pleasure principle, in Works, vol. IX, edited by CL Musatti, Boringhieri,
Milan 1 977.
84 «The freest manifestation of chthonic life is dance . Everything that earthly energy offers converges in it
- the rhythm of sowing and harvesting, the profound pleasure of wine and sex. The dance that people
express captures us and seduces us; we almost observe the playful repetition of the origin, of the
strange becoming that bursts from the depths and captures the image of man. [ . . . ] Men and animals
have in common the sense of dance and melody. Dances and songs accompany the work and party
time in a natural sequence.
From the most ancient times, this has been a reason for men to unite" (E. Jiinger, Spra-che und
Kiirperbau (1947), in SW l 2, cit., pp. 79-80; Italian translation by Q Principe, Language and anatomy, in
The solitary contemplator, cit., pp. 69-70).
96
more and more serious they became. I felt my blood swelling, like the surface
of the sea when it rises towards the moon85 •
The uprising of the elemental that is expressed in this "tide of blood" is the
way, tumultuous and still formless, in which life corresponds to the force of
gravity of the earth: the muscles tense and the veins swell in the "spasms
waiting". The over-abundance of eros, which manifests itself in plethora86 ,
gives lovers the sense of an enchanted power over the world. It is not the
predominance [ Vormacht ] over the things of the world, i.e. the manipulative
and calculating power of the technique which reduces nature to a storable and
employable basis87, but it is lordship [ Herrschaft ] over the world which in the
supreme decision for the being, that is, because the depth shines through on
the surface, he abstains from all will and action, and in the liminal inebriation of
eros, he opens gaps in the blanket of time: only in this way is the world transformed8
Like a magical force endowed with the power to act at a distance, leros
induces a new configuration in the beings it envelops; it requires nothing more
than the slight contact of a caress, or even a simple look. The lover does not
need to act, he is, if anything, acted upon by love itself: like Aladdin, a mythical
figure very dear to Jtinger, the lover enjoys precisely this ecstatic suspension
which is at the same time profound joy: «Aladdin's fortune consists in the fact
that he does not need to take action. He's under a lucky star. [ ... ]
Gifted with limitless power, Aladdin has the princess led to his bed. All he has
to do is reach out a hand towards her, yet he gives up some of it.
85 Thus the passage continues: «It seemed that the light erased Ingrid's features; it changed them
into a mask with dark eye sockets. How my partner was transformed, how the traits that were
so characteristic of her disappeared! I grabbed her face with both hands and to recognize her I
tried to find her shapes with my fingertips: I went from her hairline to her forehead and closed
eyes, to her lips that were touching me delicately and I reached her chin. I followed the shoulders,
the lines of the body that I discovered like an unknown kingdom. I felt that she responded like a
psychic, trembling before I touched her, but as if opening up in her delicacy. This is how the
strings of a harp vibrate, this is how the amphora, in the hands of the potter, rounds out its
shapes. The breath of crinkled seaweed blew from the sea; the smell of chestnut flowers followed
him. When I remember these nights, my eyes swell with tears. Perhaps they are debts that I
repay in time. Then, when I said goodbye to Ingrid, I felt the drops fall silently on my face, on my
hand. An infinite pain depends on the fact that the embrace cannot last" (E. Jiinger, Heliopolis,
cit., pp. 95-96; tr. it., pp. 1 1 6-1 1 7). The tenderness of the caresses hides an intimate and
delicate opening, a generous abandonment to the vibrations of the moment in which the plastic
power of eros erupts.
86 For Bataille «the moments of plethora in which animals are in the grip of sexual fever are
moments of crisis of their singularity; in such moments, the feeling of relative continuity between
animals of the same species [...] is abruptly reinvigorated" (G. Bataille, L'eroti-smo, cit., p. 95).
On the relationship between sexual activity as a moment of crisis of isolation and interior
experience, understood by Bataille as the supreme exposure of man on his own limit to
nothingness, see therein, p. 96.
87 See M. Heidegger, The question of technique, in Essays and speeches, cit.
88 «As if I had drunk vigorous wine, as if I had enjoyed Indian drugs, the world is transformed. To
the extent that I abstain from will, from action, the dominion [Herr-schaft] increases" (E. Jiinger,
Heliopolis, cit., p. 1 09; tr. it., p. 1 30).
97
be in contact. Between himself and the object of his desires he lays down his
sword"89• What Jtinger here calls "eros of pure presence" is to be understood
as the emergence at the level of human perception of a profound invisible
harmony that arouses and orchestrates the infinite vibrations of lovers; that same
invisible harmony whereby in nature flowers and trees "dream of each other"90•
In erotic intoxication, as well as in that of artistic creation, the spirit goes into
another and distant space, "collects experiences in the boundless •'91 which,
more often than not, do not lead to any lasting conquest in this world; often ,
however, cause an internal upheaval and an upheaval that seems to herald a
radical turning point, just as, at a microscopic level, the upheaval of the molecular
order announces the imminent change of state of matter, which will then also be
visible on a macroscopic level. Just as this reorganization of matter occurs due to
a pressing influence of the external environment, so love converts gazes and
unfolds gaps in time thanks to a "superior agreement"92, to a superior vibration.
In a page of the Parisian diaries, Jtinger reflects on the German word

Schwarmen which, I believe, can serve to characterize the Jtingerian conception
of eros in an overall way. Schwarmen commonly means to swarm, to flutter, to
proceed in no particular order, but also, in a figurative sense, to be enthusiastic,
to go into ecstasy, to be infatuated, to yearn. According to Jtinger, however, the
action expressed by this verb manifests itself in three fundamental ways: as an
increase in vital energy, as an instinct to reunite and as periodicity. All three of
these modalities are typical of the manifestation of Eros93; it is interesting, then,
to note how Jtinger here compares the vital impetus, or rather the cosmogonic e-
ros, to vibration, to that superior agreement which, as above
89 E. Jtinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 522 (tr. it., p. 98).

90 Ibidem (tr. it., p. 99). All observations, studies, analyzes make sense only if they aim to trace
in nature the signs of this "invisible harmony" which, although acting as a constant need of
the thought and the heart, always remains elusive: «We go grope forward through the visible
order of things to get closer to their invisible harmony, to proceed from the incompleteness of
knowledge towards that of which one can only perceive a premonition.
When you manage to put the speck of dust of a butterfly wing in harmony with the universe,
the goal achieved is worthless, but not the signal, the milestone that has been placed along
the path traveled . The wings themselves allude to something else" (E. Jiinger, Sub-tile
Jagden, cit., p. 226; tr. it., p. 220). On the mysterious living harmony of the universe cf. also
E. Jiinger, Ein Vormittag in Antibes ( 1 960), in SW 6, p. 413 (Italian translation by Q. Principe,
Una Mattino ad Antibes, in Il contemplatore solitaro, cit., p. 302).
91 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 2, p. 488 (tr. it., p. 212).
92 Love works «by vibrations: we change key in the same way, for a superior chord-
riore [ we agree to a higher chord]” (ibidem).
93 Regarding periodicity and its relationship with the party, Jiinger writes: «Periodicity, with its
ebbs and flows, is the opposite of technical monotony. Here the heartbeat and there the
rhythm of the engine, here the machine and there the poetry" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit.,
p. 1 1 2; tr. it., p. 1 1 3). On this topic see also in.fra, chap. Ili, § 2. A phenomenon entirely
analogous to the monotony of technique is the "repetition compulsion" according to which, in
Freudian psychoanalysis, the drive force of the libido understood in a mechanistic sense is manifes
98
he said, intones every erotic experience and every love encounter, leading
beyond individuality:
The vital impulse or vibration is, as can be observed in some mosquitoes, a

supra-individual force: it elevates individuals to the species. This activity serves
the community; examples of this are marriage, the harvesting of crops,
migrations, gaming. In primordial times its rhythm probably followed the course
of nature, and was determined by the moon, the sun, their influence on the earth
and the vegetation of the plants94 •
The cosmic rhythm is, therefore, for Jtinger, the very essence and
principle of e-ros, of that loving game that establishes infinite
correspondences in nature, like an interminable series of echoes of the
original vibration95• Its harmonious manifestation it proceeds rhythmically
and, therefore, according to periodicity, and tends to achieve increasingly
vast unitary configurations. Animals are completely in tune with this
vibration of the elemental and this is clearly shown by the periodicity of
estrus which is closely linked to environmental conditions and of which the
woman's menstrual cycle, increasingly bent to the needs of -rhythm of the
modern, it is only a pale reflection. But let's go back to the Schwiirmen:
«What exactly this natural phenomenon is can be understood, in a singular
and marvelous way, in the large trees in flower, when they are penetrated
by an infinite hum. The first awakening of the moods and their maturation
are in fact particularly distinctive." The Schwiirmen is also connected to the
sense of celebration and the celebration of sexual union which in nature still
has its own intimate harmonic musical value, as Jiinger does not fail to point out
The time of swarming is a nuptial time [die Schwarmzeit ist Hoch-Zeit], a

festive union of one life with another. Let's look at those insects. Sometimes on
the banks of lakes or streams or in beehives, individuals join in the swarm
forming tall figures, clouds, columns, rings in a circle, and this is not just the
sum of the individual insects: it is also a new superior reality. The fluttering of
the wings, the orchestral score of these dances, becomes more and more subtle,
similar to the vibration of the strings of a bowed instrument which are stretched, and a
94 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, p. 15 (tr. il., p. 222).

95 Each individual is the bearer of an echo of this vibration which is revealed in the
characteristics by which it is the image and manifestation of a higher order, of an
immutable imago : «The habitus of an animal resembles a shield that defends the its
bearer throughout life and which is predisposed for its needs. But its coat of arms, its
symbol, the sign of the great order to which it belongs is also set in it. [ ... ] Here it is
not legitimate to question the ends - an ancestral joy reveals us for what we are. And
this is also the meaning of these sumptuous signs in the love game: females do not
love males for what they do, but for what they are" (E. Jiinger, Aus der goldenen Mu-
schel (1944), in SW 1 2, pp. 98-99; ed. edited by G. Raciti, Viaggi in Sicilia, Sellerio,
Palermo 1993, p. 36).
99
increasingly towards the center the swarm transforms into a large body, which,
pulsating and breathing, rises and sinks96.
Here all the characteristics of Eros that we have encountered so far are
gathered: germinative force, overabundance, harmony, tension towards unity
and above all overcoming the limits of the individual97: through the intoxication
of Eros every individual, from the most small insect to man, returns to its form
and therefore to its specific way of belonging to eternity. All life is nothing but
a "metaphor of form"98 and eros is one of the ways in which this metaphor of life
96 E. Jiinger, Sprache und Kiirperbau, cit., p. 93 (Italian translation, pp. 83-84). Jiinger here
takes up the idea, already of Aristotle, that the form, assumed, in this case by the swarm of
insects, as a unitary whole, possesses a reality superior to the simple juxtaposition of the
parts, i.e. of the individual insects.
97 Another characteristic of Eros is, for Jiinger, symmetry: «Eros possesses a particular symmetry,
as its symbols also demonstrate, Cupid's bow, Venus' mirror and its birth from a shell. In the
Banquet , Plato says that the sexes arise from a division, from a cut. The figure of symmetry
is two, the couple that tries to cancel itself out in the whole, in unity. Hence the formation of
hermaphrodites in the world of insects: to the right and to the left of the symmetrical axis.
The sexual organs will always be symmetrical, and we have the most beautiful example of
this in flowers" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, pp. 217-2 1 8 ; tr. it., p. 384).
98 See E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p. 42 (tr. it., p. 35). The forms are 'testimonies' of the depth
of being; in this sense the style, which derives from them, can approach the stereoscopic
sensitivity mentioned above: «Forms are seals of signatures, they are testimonies: style is
the surface of existence. If we consider an algae, a butterfly, a flower, if we examine a fin, a
wing, an eye, they are the model which, drawn on the epidermis of the world, reproduces the
depth of creation externally" (E. Jiinger , Am Sarazenenturm, cit., p. 304; tr. it., p. 1 86). The
form, however, also brings with it a profound need for totality which can lead man to the
extreme sacrifice: «Man, with the form, discovers at the same time his own definition and his
own destiny, and this discovery makes him ready for sacrifice, which reaches its most
significant expression when it becomes blood sacrifice" (E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p. 42; tr.
it., p. 35). But the totality that Jiinger speaks of here, claimed by the action of the Worker as a
negator of bourgeois individualism, is not comparable to the unity to which eros leads; the
dominion of the Worker tends towards the creation of a monolithic, technical and homogenizing
totality which has constitutively rejected the harmonious contact with the earth. This is the
totality of the "organic constructions" generated by work, of the lands of fire and ice of
industrial and metropolitan landscapes, the desertifying totality of nihilism which, however,
paradoxically, brings with it an extreme beauty: the Totalitarian annihilation, even if perceived
with suffering and anguish, often produces a dreamy wonder, "like the first frost in the
woods" (E. Jiinger, Ober die Linie, cit., p. 253; tr. it., p .69). It is singular and significant that
a victim of political totalitarianism, Pavel Florenskij, Russian mathematician, philosopher and
priest, killed in 1937 after years of imprisonment in the Soviet gulags, undertook a long study
on the physics of frost in the Siberian labor camps (see P. Florenskij, Don't forget me, edited
by N. Valentini and L. Zak, Mondadori, Milan 2000, p. 83). Frost is, evidently, a great and
powerful symbol that unites different cultures, and manifests a particular combination of
perfection, beauty and death. Ice crystals, in fact, even if smooth and shiny, easily become
opaque even in thin layers: it is almost impossible to apply deep crystallography to them. It is
no coincidence that Max Weber spoke of nihilism as the polar night. Ice is, finally, the mask
of all disenchantment, but, seen as a form of whitening and purification, it can also be
considered the prelude to a great and promising upheaval.
1 00
visible in all its richness and multiplicity. In this sense, eros becomes the only antidote against the
uniformization of technique which tends to normalize and standardize the individual's relationships
with nature and the relationships between individual men: «The authentic clash occurs between the
erotic world and that of technology and its laws: it is an epochal phenomenon. In it the powerful clash
between organism and organization is repeated. This clash is an original phenomenon. It repeats
itself at every epochal turning point, before every mutation"99•
The desertification, the leveling, the whitening of the world are about to be completed: «The
numinous weakens and moves away» 100 and with it eros is reduced to distraction, curiosity. The
lover, on the other hand, approaches the Great Threshold of being in a completely different way
from the curious. The lights and shadows of the "cosmic hunt" rest on him. But the weakening,
deterioration and monotony, which increasingly invade our era dominated by technology and its
leveling theories, precisely because they lead to the undifferentiated, that is to a side of the
elementary, prepare imperceptibly but inexorably an "approach", a great upheaval, which at first
manifests itself as distancing, torment and waiting. Realizing the imminence of this passage, feeling
that something foreign is arriving requires, once again, an effort of stereoscopic vision. Ar-
101
duo is to distinguish between what emerges and what sinks •
Perhaps only through intoxication is it possible to experience this "approach". Intoxication, in

fact, for Jiinger does not at all mean abandonment of the state of consciousness, fainting, fainting102•
It, rather, indicates an expansion of
99 E. Jiinger, Der Weltstaat, cit., p. 508 (tr. it., p. 54). The construction, pursued in an
increasingly blatant and peremptory way, of a World State, as an affirmation of the
"totalitarian" demand, cannot fail to mortify eros and the bond it maintains with the
elementary demands and with the nature: «It is not uncommon in history that, where
great undertakings must be accomplished, Eros is involved and pressure is put on nature:
asceticism, celibacy, the withdrawal into isolation of man who achieves natural fulfillments
or spiritual, a religious consecration or an initiation, are experiences known everywhere.
[ ... ] It is therefore not surprising that even large state projects ensure that every need of
a natural nature is abolished. This abolition is part of the interventions of the organization
on the organism, of the State on the powers that develop in the people and in the family" (ibidem
I 00 E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit., p. 1 26 (tr. it., p. 1 20). «Where the marvelous disappears,
the strange, often actually comical, comes to the fore: this is irritating. As Eros weakens,
the interest in sexual pleasure grows, the substance swells instead of concentrating; the
qualities remain invisible. The varieties of games are multiplying, to the detriment of the
game; form and movement become the object of statistical calculations" (ibidem).
101 On the ambiguity of every "passage" situation, cf. E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, p. 24
1 (tr. it., p. 402).
102 Intoxication is, then, intimately connected to ecstasy, even if it cannot be identified with it:
«The close link between intoxication and ecstasy has always been known to those who
guide dreams and souls, to magicians and to mystagogues", but ecstasy rather indicates
the "laceration of the veil woven by the senses, a laceration to which the apprehension or
even the sudden pain that accompanies intoxication are closely linked. Ecstasy is nothing
more than a suitable vehicle for approaching a world in a state of rest and immobile in
itself. We are content to have used it as a ferry only once. In any case, it was a
manoeuvre, an experiment, a test run" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., pp. 54-55; tr. it., pp. 62-63
1 01
ment of consciousness103, a state of increased, vibrant vitality, and
in this sense it is to be compared to the Schwiirmen analyzed above.
But inebriation [Rausch] also includes the dampening of vital forces,
lethargy and sleep; it is essentially ambiguous:
The first contact with intoxication introduces us to its world of lights and
shadows. It is similar to the flame, which heats and illuminates, but also dazzles and bur
Through him the fortresses open and surprise [ ... ] Intoxication leads close to
time, [ ... ] to its mystery, and therefore borders on death. Danger hangs there,
and every physical evil is but a warning. We can, with Calderon, define life as
a dream, but even more precisely as an intoxication, one of the sublime
decompositions of matter1 04•
As in drugs, even in the intoxication of love one experiences a

disturbing and poignant "shaking of time", in which life itself, as in a
syncope, fails. The approach is nothing other than this "tremor of
time", this vibrant "agreement". Only if time lightens, intoxication is
able to make us cross, for a moment, its heavy curtain, thus bringing
us closer to the Absolute, bringing us into the presence of what comes [ d
1 03 See ibid., p. 415 (tr. it., p.

376). 1 04 lvi, p. 93 (tr. it., p. 96). And again on this decisive theme of the ambiguity of
intoxication: "Forgetting something, escaping something and on the other hand wanting
to achieve something, wanting to gain something - the problem of intoxication in general
moves between these two poles" (ibid., p. IIO; tr. it., p. 1 1 1 ). Inebriation necessarily
leads to a weakening of individual lucidity and a reduction in operational power, but this
has as its effect an increase in "spiritual splendor", the opening of a super-individual eye
(of which the Se- Consciousness of the Worker is only a distorted, albeit symptomatic,
reflection that penetrates the crystalline structure of reality: «To the extent that the
consciousness of a spiritual splendor flows, impotence grows. Inebriation not only leads
to bodily stiffness, but also to a stiffening of thoughts and their mobility. This naturally
increases the awareness of a spiritual power, the statuary contempt of the effect" (ibid., p. 217;
202). What is released from intoxication is a sort of "dark light", a shine that appears
radiant through its own darkness. This is how Heidegger interprets this concept starting
from some verses by HOlderlin: «The dark preserves the fullness of what it can give in its
radiant appearance. The dark light of the wine does not make one lose one's mind, but
elevates it, beyond that mere semblance of clarity which is also typical of everything that
can be flatly calculated, in the height and in the proximity of what is higher. [ . . . ]
Intoxication is that sublime disposition [Stimmung] in which only the voice [Stimme] of that
which determines this disposition is perceived, so that those who are so disposed because
it is extremely other than itself. [ ... ] Inebriation confuses the "mind" so little that instead
it alone brings clarity to what is higher, making us think about this . [ ... ]
Intoxication raises in the luminous clarity in which the depth of the hidden opens up and
darkness appears as the sister of clarity" (M. Heidegger, The poetry of H;jfderlin, Italian
ed. edited by L. Amoroso, Adelphi, Milan, 1988, pp. 1 42- 1 43). The darkness-clarity
polarity that Heidegger identifies here as a characteristic trait of intoxication reproduces
that polemical relationship between depth and surface to which Jiinger's stereoscopic
vision and our crystallographic method apply; this contrast, however, does not resolve
itself, in a Hegelian way, in any revelation of the profound [0.ffenbarung der Tiefe], that is,
it never leads to a complete and definitive exhibition of the hidden as happened in Hegelian
absolute knowledge totally transparent to itself.
1 02
Eintretendes] 105; it does not consist in a simple increase of a dynamic or
vital nature nor in a mere increase or completion of an already existing
condition. With its arrival, the door of time itself becomes transparent: the
absent participates in the light of presence and the invisible announces itself
through the radiations that come from the bottom in which the fundamental
lattice vibrates: «When time expands we hear more clearly the sound that
comes from silence" 106• Intoxication is therefore, in its essence, neither a
vital nor a spiritual impulse, but a "catapult in front of the wall of time".
In the transfigured vision of the world that eros opens up to us, the supreme
agreement of time leads us to expose ourselves on the sacred threshold of
nothingness, to penetrate the sharp void of the nakedness of time, to attempt the
most risky of passages, aware that this will lead to a laceration, an irreparable
loss107• But existing means attempting this passage, preparing oneself for the
approach that already announces itself in the distant echo of the agreement of
time, despite the dullness and opacity of the era in which we live:
The approach is confirmed by what comes, the present is completed by the absent. They meet in the
mirror, which dissolves time and discomfort. Never has the mirror been so empty, so free of dust and images;
two centuries have taken care of it.
And then the bangs in the workshop - the tent becomes
translucent; the scene is free1 08 .
1 05 Describing a scene of a banquet contained in the saga of Odin, regarding what happens,
Jiinger writes thus: «The voices outside become fainter, they almost fall silent.
The fire, around which the horn revolved, burns without wavering, with a calm light,
which was hidden in the heart of the blazing flame. Now they have entered; everyone feels it,
everyone knows it, whether they perceive it in its form, or just as a glow that they spread. Now
there is no more time. All this continues to act for a long time to come in faces, hair, weapons
and clothes. Even in the eyes that see far into the future. [ ... ] Something changes in the
structure of the world when they get closer. Things connect differently, because time changes.
In measurable time, in everyday life, even in the chronology of history, something else
intervenes. It also happens in works of art, especially in music. Time must be relieved, but it
is terribly heavy. To lift it, man invokes the "arms of the gods"" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit.,
pp. 1 57- 1 58; tr. it. p. 151).
1 06 lvi, p. 233 (tr. it., p. 216). Later Jiinger uses the metaphor of the door to describe the
experience of the passage: «The door begins to open - we are called to an examination or to
act as witnesses, the court enters to pronounce the verdict, the doctor returns from the
radiology department, we try the anxieties of the outcast, the ecstasy of the lover who has
waited for his beloved for a long day. All this instruments, with clear and confident tones, the symph
The door is like a mirror - it sends us the usual image. But here it becomes transparent. This
or that destiny is not about to enter, with its transitory happiness or unhappiness. Time is now
being drawn like a curtain. Not this or that destiny, destiny in summa, destiny projects its
shadow like a mountain" (ibid., p. 407; tr. it., p. 370).
1 07 «Every step is at the same time a fracture, every achievement is also a loss. When you feel it
in the most profound way, even if you don't understand it, then the pain is particularly
great" (ibid., p. 44; tr. il., p. 53). 1 08 lvi,
p. 415 (tr. it., p. 377).
1 03
And the scene that appears beyond the raised curtain, on the clear surface of the man and the woman existing
mirror, it is the eternal scene of many lovers on the threshold of the forest, ,
before the supreme test of the passage to which their love has led them in which their love itself consists:
,
In the heart of the woods, the man finds himself in front of his gate. The woman led him there, and now he stands aside. We
are at the height of love. In the ecstasy of their union the bodies stopped; now, right now, the little gate is indicated. The man
must step forward. It's up to him to open the way into the heart of the forest. Woe betide him if he didn't have the courage to
open that little gate that resists in the dark, that blocks access to the heart of the woods.
1 09
The woman looks at him motionless, and doesn't understand why he doesn't smile •
109 G. Brivio, death and the girl, cit., p. 99.
1 04
III
"A BROKEN MESH IN THE NET"
The escape of time
The future is as irreparable as the

rigid yesterday. There is nothing that
is not a silent letter of the
eternal, decipherable writing
whose book is time. Anyone who
moves away from their home has already
returned. Our life IS the future and already traveled path.
Nothing says goodbye to us. Nothing leaves us.
Don't give in. The life sentence
is dark, The hard plot is of incessant
iron, But in some corner of your cell
There may be an oversight, a crack.
The road is as fatal as the arrow,
But in the cracks God lurks.
JL Borges, For a version of the / ' "/ King "
I. The Flight of Icarus
Existences suspended over the "irreparable" future: when the 'light' of the
lacerating wound1 goes out and the slight tremor of the lovers unfolds in the
comfortable forms of a plain and talkative sharing, when death, with its ordeal
The pain, as we have seen, becomes real and complete in the moment in which the
light of lost unity rests on its laceration, the consolation of a quiet abandonment [Gelas-
senheit] which, overcoming every exhausting practice of distinction and of separation,
leads to the brink of the "happiness of the living": «The distinction appears at first for
what it is at first - a wound: but if our study has begun, this wound is bright. A glimmer
of the happiness of the living shines on her. Thus, it seems to me, we can begin to say
"how" it happens that happiness does not abandon us: because it is attested at least
with a wound, through which our being mourns the lacerated one, the split" (R. De
Monticelli, Live, Rizzoli, Milan 2001, p. 1 22). On Gelassenheit as a gesture of a
thought freed from calculating fury and the will to power cf. M. Heidegger, Abandonment,
tr. it. by A. Fabris, il melangolo, Genoa 1 989. De Monticelli focuses again on
abandonment as the 'salvation' of love: «Gelassenheit. That art that each of us must
sooner or later learn to practice also towards each loved one, if we want to save it.
Because our desire has this deadly characteristic, which afflicts the beloved of our
finiteness and makes our arms his prison." This letting go, this terrible capacity for
detachment «does not atrophy our depth but makes it the well and heart of each thing,
the ear and sounding board for the call that comes from the depths of each thing.
1 05
unspeakable horror, gets lost in the unimaginable future of the 'not-yet' and, caressing our faces, we delude
ourselves that we are finally free from every mask, protected, in the warm and muffled cockpits of the metropolis,
from the titanic fury whose echo from afar reconciles our sleep, then, unseen and uncertain, the moon, the ancient
companion, rises: «When you rise on the vast stones you see us numb in sleep, pressed close to each other, pale
faces, similar to the infinite white chrysalises dormant in the corners and tunnels of ant-heap cities, while the night
wind wanders through the great fir forests"2• Chrysalides
, dormant in the endless labyrinth of technology, we have
fallen into the lethargy generated by the automatism of Work and its complicit narcotizing powers. Like ghosts we
sleepwalk around the corridors and tunnels of a world reduced to a large termite mound, full of people and yet
deserted and desolate; sleeplessly we walk along narrow walkways at the edge of no-man's land, chasing, between
the haze of Hephaestus' caves and the blinding glare of telluric fires, the vague call of a crack, the faded trace of a
passage, the vivid light of a gash of sky. The tyrant who for centuries had imposed order with terror was murdered,
Theseus killed the Minotaur, and now a myriad of lemurs occupy and plunder the labyrinth abandoned to decay and
anarchy. This is the time in which the myths return: Minos locks up his own builder, Daedalus, in the labyrinth, with
his son Icarus, but Daedalus fabricates, for himself and his son, wings, which he fixes with wax to his shoulders,
,
however recommending Icarus not to fly too low and not to rise too high. Icarus, full of pride, does not listen to his
father's advice and rises into the sky so close to the sun that the wax melts and he is thrown into the sea.
The wings of Icarus, the wings of Leonardo's flying machine, the wings of the first Zeppelin: the Worker, a new
Hermes, has forged his winged sandals in metal and now flies over the world! The age-old dream of escaping the
slavery of gravity and imitating birds has finally come true, but the wax is already starting to melt, Icarus loses altitude,
at the peak of his acceleration, the "crazy flight" gives in to the attraction of the motionless sea depths; the human,
"too human", Edenic construction of modernity, launched at crazy speed into the airy waves of the infinite search for
"virtue and knowledge", like the mythical Atlantis, sinks: «We rejoiced, and soon he returned to tears; Because from
the new earth a turbo was born and the first song was struck on the wood. I Three times the fé revolves with all the
waters; I at the fourth lift the stern upwards I and the bow downwards, as others pleased, until the sea was closed
above us"3•
Which does not anesthetize the soul, but makes it a silence offered to the voice of the voiceless, a
sky offered to forms that have no light - and so it happens that the mute regain their speech, that
our blindness let it fall from our eyes" (R. De Monticelli, Dal vivo, cit., p. 1 20).
2 E. JUnger, Sicilian letter to the man in the moon, cit., p. 11 (tr. it., p. 99).
3 Dante, Divine Comedy. Inferno, XXVI, 1 36- 142. The high mountain that appears to Ulysses and
his companions shortly before their shipwreck and which undoubtedly symbolizes the earthly
Paradise, is interpreted here, in the wake of the secularization typical of modernity, like that
'artificial' paradise towards which technological civilization tends and which, imposing itself as the ultima
1 06
The New Titans conquer space, satisfying that pathos of domination of the
third dimension of nature that Spengler had already indicated as a fundamental
characteristic of Faustian civilization4: from the height of his presumed command
position, the new "creative predator"5 observes full of ' pride the world reduced
to a large anthill crossed by an increasingly agitated and delirious activism. The
Faustian Sehnsucht , the poignant desire to go beyond every limit, the longing
for an indefinite elsewhere, manifest themselves not only in the outbursts of
romantic poetry, but also in the spiritual "intoxication" of the technique in which
it still resonates the ascending impetus of medieval mystics: «The inebriated
soul wants to take itself beyond space and time. An unspeakable nostalgia
draws her towards boundless distances. We would like to detach ourselves from
the earth, we would like to lose ourselves in the infinite, we would like to loosen
the bonds of the body and wander in the cosmic space among the stars"6•
Nostalgia, search for lost origins and a mythical Edenic happiness, on the one
hand on the one hand, and uncontainable impulse towards the future, i-dolatry
of the novum and faith in progress, on the other, constitute the two dimensions of
the Faustian civilization, whose secret complicity fuels the Worker's activism.
From them arises the whirlwind acceleration that characterizes the modern world
and to which no ethical or political concern can oppose, since it is a feature of
'our' destiny as Westerners. Jiinger is fully aware of this:
This acceleration is something general. The desire to stop it where the

disadvantages become manifest is understandable, but it is destined to
remain a wish, since acceleration reigns not only in the external circles and
not only in the technical effects. It is produced and maintained by virtue of
a substantial adhesion that recognizes its task not in the depths of ethics
but in those of destiny7 •
intimate, if inaccessible, of every human action, causes the loss and shipwreck of existence, as
it deprives it of the possibility of experiencing the Simple and the Inexhaustible which gives itself
as authentic and quiet paradisiacal abundance. On Dante's Ulysses as scelerum inventor cf. M.
Cacciari, The archipelago, Adelphi, Milan 1997, pp. 63 ff.
4 See O. Spengler, The sunset of the' West, cit., p. 1 388. 5 It is
always Spengler who defines the man a "creative predator", the complete expression of
formidable union of life, the free and mobile struggle of the will to power, with technique
understood as the creative and changeable "tactics" of life. See O. Spengler, Man and technology,
tr. it. by G. Gurisatti, Guanda, Parma 1 992.
6 O. Spengler, The decline of the West, cit., p. 1 391.
7 E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., pp. 42 1 -422 (Italian translation, p. 36). The destiny character
of the technique, and therefore of the acceleration that it produces, had already been noted by
Spengler, but he linked it to the inevitable decline of the Faustian civilization now in its twilight:
«Mechanized technique comes to an end with the Faustian man; one day it will be destroyed and
forgotten [ . . . ]. Optimism is cowardice. We were born in this era and we must valiantly follow
the path assigned to us to the end. There are no other ways. It is our duty to maintain the lost
positions, even if there is no longer hope or salvation" (0. Spengler, Man and Technology, cit., p.
1 00).
1 07
In the "demonic intoxication"8 of speed we perceive all the strength of the
enchantment of the technique that holds us in its power. Acceleration drags
our existences and our entire civilization in a frenetic race towards an unknown
destination9• This endemic desire for speed arises from the attempt to e-
exorcise - or remove - the anguish in the face of the mystery of the world10
and the fear of death. The invention of increasingly faster machines and
increasingly rapid information transmission processes, which increasingly
reduce spatial and temporal distances, corresponds to a secret instinct to
escape from the void that can be foreseen beyond the reassuring conquests
of technology1 1. The frenetic swarming of contemporary cosmopolises
hides, then, a dark background of bewilderment and horror, "the counterpart,
the gray area of the will to power" 12; and it is the same quivering activism
that, if on the one hand, through a process of anesthetization, exorcises the
perception of emptiness, on the other hand it generates and increases it, just
as the gusts of wind from the typhoon create within it a completely empty and quiet
8 This purely technical type of intoxication does not, however, possess the disturbing ambiguity
of erotic intoxication: lacking the process of amplification of consciousness and enhancement
of vision, it is consumed entirely in the 'demonic' immanence of the technical world, in its
alternating and complementary phases of narcosis and excitement. Only a stereoscopic
gaze, which manages to delve into the depth of the movement, can be able to access, as
we will see, the stillness as the original dimension of the movement, making the thrill of
speed 'ecstatic'.
9 Our movement is comparable to a «bullet that passes through space with increasing
acceleration. Who shot him and who could stop him? Localization itself becomes difficult,
almost impossible, where the movement no longer has a center or banks" (E.
Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., pp. 422-423; tr. it., p. 37). In the de-localized and equivalent
space of technology it is also problematic to define a direction and a sense of movement
that overwhelms us: thus the traditional concepts of progress and linear evolution also fall
away and a chaotic activism that resembles 'magmatic boiling typical of the most elementary
forms of matter; as the temperature rises, disorder increases and the disintegration of old
structures becomes irreversible.
I For Jiinger, one of the signs of nihilism is the disappearance of the marvelous and the
consequent disappearance not only of all forms of veneration, but also of amazement as a
'
source of science, that is, of those attitudes with which man traditionally related in a non-
anguished way to the enigmas of the world: «The vertigo in front of the cosmic abyss is an
aspect of nihilism. It can even reach the sublime [ ... ], but it will always be accompanied by
a particular fear that has to do with nothing" (E. Jiinger, Ober die Linie, cit., p. 258; tr. it. , p.
75).
11 The increase in speed is a symptom of that fear of the void in which nihilism manifests itself:
«Two great fears in fact dominate man when nihilism is at its peak.
The one rests on the terror of the inner void and forces it to manifest itself externally at any
cost: with the deployment of force, with the dominion of space and increased speed. The
other acts from the outside inward as an attack on the world and its power that is both
demonic and automated. The invincibility of Leviathan in our time is based on this double
game. It is illusory; but this is precisely its strength" (ibid., p. 270; tr. it., p. 92). The void
becomes an invisible source of anguish, precisely because it never shows itself as such, but
always under the aspect of innumerable fillings that it itself produces: «when we see an
image of the Leviathan collapse, we immediately see how it emerges Hydra heads new
creations. The void itself demands them" (ibidem).
12 lvi, p. 258 (tr. it., p. 76).
1 08
ger considers the growing acceleration of our times one of the causes of nihilism.
It, in fact, generates a reduction [Reduktion] of things and the world which, together
with the connected perception of vanishing [Schwund], constitutes a fundamental
symptom of nihilism13• The very consistency of things is progressively undermined
by ' increase in acceleration: the presence of entities loses its character of objectivity
to become a "background" that can be used by the operation of technology and
even to vanish in the total circulation of information in which the domain of
cybernetics, the science par excellence dedicated to speed14• Every technical
device no longer appears to us with the classic connotations of objectivity; the
presence of every automatic device tends to be identified with its functioning: the
machine
it is not at all just a more complicated kind of instrument and tool, just a gear
that - unlike the peasant's spinning wheel or the spinning wheel in the Chinese
rice fields - makes itself work. The machine is by no means limited to replacing
tools and instruments, nor is it an object that is there in front of it. It exists only
"insofar as it goes, and it goes insofar as it works 15•
13 «The nihilistic world is by its essence a reduced world which is increasingly becoming smaller;
this necessarily corresponds to a movement towards the zero point. The dominant sensation is
that of reducing and being reduced. [ ... ) The superabundance runs out.
[ ... ] The reduction can be spatial, spiritual, psychic; it can concern the beautiful, the good, the
truth, the economy, health, politics - but ultimately it will always be felt as a fading. This does
not exclude that it is accompanied in large sectors by a growing deployment of power and
penetration force [ . .. ). Furthermore, the inclination to reduce the world, with its intricate,
multiple tendencies, to a common denominator is characteristic of nihilistic thought" ( ibid., p.
257; tr. it., p. 74). On the question of nihilism in Jiinger cf. above, chap. I, note 19.
14 According to the Heideggerian interpretation of technology, every entity is reduced to the bottom
[Bestand]. With this term he indicates the «way in which everything related to the provocative
disclosure [of the technique] is present. What is in the sense of the "background" is no longer in
front of us as an object" (M. Heidegger, The question of technique, in Essays and Discourses,
cit., p. 1 2). For Heidegger, cybernetics constitutes the new universal science of the era of
technology, or of the fulfillment of metaphysics, as it unifies, through the concept of information,
the different methods of the autonomous sciences in which philosophy has dissolved, affirming
the dominance of the single method that is at the foundation of modern techno-science. The
imposition of the power of the method, in its extreme manifestation as cybernetics, refers to
the non-technical essence of the method, i.e. to that original movement which for Jiinger is the
elementary itself: «It may be that the same enigmatic power of the dominion that the method
exercises today also originates from the fact that the methods, without this wanting to diminish
their capacity for realization, are nevertheless only the regurgitations of a great hidden river, of
the path that moves everything and everything opens the way with overwhelming force.
Everything is away" (M. Heidegger, On the way towards language, cit., p. 1 56). Regarding
cybernetics, see M. Heidegger, Philosophy and cybernetics, edited by A. Fabris, ETS, Pisa
1989.
15 M. Heidegger, The Plant, in Bremen and Freiburg Conferences, tr. it. by G. Gurisatti, A-delphi,
Milan 2002, p. 58. For further reflections on the machine and "machination"
[Machenschÿft] and "lived experience" [Erlebnis] as characteristics of the world of technology
cf. Id., Besinnung, edited by F.-W. von Herrmann, Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 66, Klostermann,
Frankfurt aM 1 997, § 9.
1 09
The provocative fury of technology dissolves everything into kinetic energy:
the mass itself is considered a reserve of energy and the deeper the elemental
is stimulated, going as far as mobilizing the constituent components of matter
- as happens in the case of atomic energy - the more powerful the energy that
can be released16• The world of total Work is a "kinetic world"17 and every
single representative of the Worker Type participates in the system to the
extent in which he realizes, in his own existence, the call to movement and
speed that is inherent in the Form of work.
The ancient Heraclitean statement on the perennial flow of all things, in the
world of technology, takes on a disturbing declination: everything is in
movement in the sense that everything is "at work". The movement, as work,
becomes total18• The totalization of the movement is the sign of the imposition
on a planetary scale of the Mobilization of technique and of the entry into the
final phase of a process that leads to the borders of History. Faced with the agitated
16 It is significant that the study of the elementary constituents of matter - in particular the sub-atomic
ones - was only possible thanks to the invention of gigantic machines (the 'accelerators') capable of
bringing the elementary particles to very high speeds .
Modern quantum theories, indeed, maintain that the more the speed of a particle increases, the more
its corpuscular component decreases in favor of the energetic one: here a sort of 'magical' "vanishing"
of matter is at work , while great flows of energy are offered to the Faustian man, the new "sorcerer's
apprentice". The vanishing of matter in turn increases the degree of general acceleration, as can be
deduced starting from the inverse proportionality relationship that follows from the well-known
Newtonian law that connects force, acceleration and inertial mass (F=a*m from which a=F/m); in the
nihilistic vanishing of the mass, the acceleration therefore tends to increase to infinity, since the
elementary forces can only be considered constant, as Nietzsche had already stated in one of his
attempts at demonstration cosmology of eternal return.
17 Thus in Heliopolis Serner, inventor of the radio telephone - prefiguration of our mobile phones,
describes -,the revolution brought about by the advent of the Worker: «Finally the Worker had appeared,
and had transformed the rights of the bourgeoisie by adapting them according to the superman . In
this last change, freedom had vanished; it had dissolved into equality.
Men resembled each other like molecules that differed only in the degree of movement. And Serner
called this state kinetic, or world of work" (E. Jiinger, He-liopolis, cit., p. 280; tr. it., p. 308). Below
Jiinger offers interesting considerations on the relationship between tele-technology and planetary
democracy: «The radiotelephone had developed in this environment, later becoming the ideal
instrument of planetary democracy, a medium that connected '
everyone invisibly, one with another
perfection, the referendum and popular consultation had other. [ ... ] Since it arrived
become technically very easy; the will, the mood of the great masses could be immediately tested
and measured, almost with the power of thought. [ ... ] A passive equality dominated in the great
differences of function. The ancient functions of electoral law were repeated in the new automatic
style" (ibid., pp. 280-28 1; tr. it., p. 308). Planetary democracy and its plebiscitary derivatives are
based precisely on the speed of transmission of communications which generates an absolute
'synchrony', almost a kind of omnipresence of the individual, and, therefore, an extraordinary capacity
for control; taking up the reflections carried out above, we could affirm that ours is starting to become
a "cybernetic democracy" increasingly distant from the democracy of the Greek polis .
18 On the relationship of the Worker with the movement cf. C. Resta, «The ambush», in L. Bonesio - C.
Resta, Passages to the woods, cit., pp. 20-24.
110
history in the frenetic acceleration of technique two feelings impose themselves
which for Jtinger characterize the achievement of the highest speeds and in general
man's relationship with the 'unchained' yet rigorously disciplined technique,
exhilaration and dismay:
It is enough to observe the spectacle of our life in its exuberant unfolding and in its implacable discipline, with its production
areas smoking and glittering with lights, with the physics and metaphysics of its traffic, its engines, aeroplanes, planes and
metropolises teeming with people, to understand with a sense of dismay and exhilaration that here there is not a single atom
that is not at work, and that this delirious process is, in depth, our destiny1 9
The thrill of speed20, the vertigo of the incessant and increasingly complex
movement of our cities, the disturbing emergence of a devastating telluric power
caused by technology, the ever-looming threat of cataclysms, floods, landslides and
disasters of all sorts , give a feverish and eager character to our existences: with the
speed of each process also grows the anxiety that something terrible and
unpredictable could happen, that the spaceship on which we travel at breakneck
speed through unknown spaces can, of a suddenly, crashing as happened to the
ocean liner Titanic during its glittering and tragic crossing.
Even Jiinger, at least until the decisive turning point of the Second World War,
was sensitive to the fascination of the growing speed that characterizes every
procedure and development of technological civilization; he too was enraptured by
the disturbing "singing of the machines"21, by the sirens of the engines "at full power", by
19 E. Jiinger, The total mobilization, cit., p. 1 28 (tr. it., p. 121).

20 Jiinger seems to share the thrill of speed with the Italian futurist avant-garde who advocated an exaltation of
the machine understood as the symbol of a new dynamic sensitivity that should have given rhythm, order,
discipline, strength and precision to existence Human; they even hoped for a "metallization" of the flesh
as the only possibility of ethematization and glorification of the body. The Futurists were enchanted by the
roar of speeding cars and the whizzing of the first planes, but they remained, despite everything, prisoners
of a protest and contestation movement which most of the time was reduced to sterile rhetoric and empty
terrorism. expressive. Participating and enthusiastic supporters of reductionist and determinist scientific
thought, they celebrated the triumphant activism of technology, but did not see the immutable form of
Work that underlies the unfolding of modern technology; one could therefore say that according to the
futurists every atom is in motion but not at work. What only Jiinger has in common with the futurists is, in
my opinion, the attention to the change in human sensitivity due to great scientific discoveries and new
forms of transport and telecommunications; but, while the futurists limited themselves to exalting the
Promethean impetus of the honw technologicus, sinking into the intoxication of the machine and of speed,
Jiinger managed, with an acute stereoscopic gaze, to see the non-technical and timeless essence of the
technique and of the whirling world of machines. On the 'metallization' of man in the technological age,
see L. Bonesio, Metallic bodies and icy gazes: physiognomics of nihilism, "L'imaginale", 24, 1998.
21 «There are moments in which the singing of the machines, the subtle hum of the electric current, the tremor
of the turbines moved by the waterfalls, the rhythmic explosion of the engines, grasp us with satisfaction.
III
«imposing motion of an energy activated and controlled with safety» which
irresistibly seduces the senses and the intellect bound to the drowsy and at
the same time exciting grip of the rhythmic «buzz of steel in friction with the
air»22• In In the thrill of speed, the Faustian man is struck by a feeling that is
both proud and painful, «the feeling of someone who finds himself in a state
of emergency [Ern-stfall]»23. If the German word Ernstfall recalls the ideas
of firmness, gravity, seriousness [Ernst], the Italian translation, however,
which refers to emergence as appearing clearly24, leads us to think of the
emergency that dominates in the realm of acceleration, as a particular
unveiling of a situation of extreme necessity and precariousness which
clearly points towards an imminent overcoming, an irrevocable transition of
state which leads to the very end, to the bottom of the vortical expansion of
acceleration . But this unveiling remains hidden in the rage of technical
paraphernalia, and the more it remains invisible, the more the radical solitude
of the individual - which he can experience only in areas foreign to those of
technology such as pain, 'eros and death - is misunderstood or removed:
«The image of this emergency is difficult to grasp, since solitude is one of its
conditions, and this image is even more impenetrably hidden by the collective
character of our time»25• But despite all the false consolations devised by
technology to fill the void and anguish, the emergency leads "without escape"
and without the will being able to play any role, to the completion of the
domination of technology over the world; in fact it acts "under the impulse of
a compulsion, as in the cases of birth and death"26• A feeling of panic, then,
takes possession of man; in the ecstasy that is thus achieved, and which
recalls those handed down to us from antiquity, resulting from the appearance
of the god Pan at midday, the crossing of the Maelstrom27 is already
announced, the first light of the kingdom of calm is already glimpsed.
filled with a secret pride: the pride of the winner" (E. Jilnger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 225; tr. it., pp.
57-58). These statements echo the Spenglerian characterization of man as a creative predator who, using
technology, triumphs over nature. 22 lvi, p. 223 (tr. it., p. 56). «And then I felt again what one feels in front
of the devices of the airplane, when the fist pushes the throttle lever forward and the tremendous roar of the force
that wants to escape from the earth rises up; or when at night one throws oneself through landscapes of
Cyclops, while the flaming columns that emerge from the blast furnaces pierce the darkness and in the midst
of the fury of the movement one has the intimate conviction that no atom can no longer exist which is not at
work" (ibid., pp. 223-224; Italian translation, ibidem). 23 liv, p. 224 (tr. it., p. 57). This emergency does not
depend on a real dangerous condition, but belongs to all the manifestations of the world of technology,
even those that apparently seem safer: «It makes no difference whether we are traveling in a luxury cabin or in a
shell of mother-of-pearl or if our eye frames the opponent in the collimation reticle of the viewfinder" (ibid., p.
224; Italian translation, ibidem). In the rage of the movement there is no safe place safe from the agitation.
24 The verb 'emerge' derives, in fact, from the Latin emergo, to come out, to free oneself, to show oneself, to con-
connection with evideor, appear completely, manifest clearly.
25 E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 224 (tr. it., p. 57). 26 iv, p. 224
(tr. it., ibid.).
27 According to a Scandinavian myth, which Jiinger takes up several times to exemplify the fi-
112
At the center of the whirlpool, the "sweet and risky" opium of speed begins to lose
its effect28; The closer we get to the eye of the storm, the more the acceleration
increases, but once we reach the center, the speed suddenly gives way to rest: «Isn't
it true that the center of the wheel is completely at rest? Stillness is the original
language of speed. As much as we want to translate speed and enhance it, will every
enhancement only be a translation of the original language of man's own
understand the tive of translating speed language?”29• No attempts. But how will it
into stillness within the technique is possible; only a glance from above - the lunar
and stereoscopic gaze - can perceive, in the transparency of speed, the original
stillness and therefore that immobile crystalline structure into which the raw material
has "precipitated". The chaotic alternation of forms and times, states, cities and
individual existences, if observed by the lunar eye, are recomposed - not already
justified or ordered - in a higher cosmic dimension, in that "profound brotherhood of
life" 30 in which every fragment of becoming31 is included in an intangible destiny
necessity.
Every acceleration finds its origin and its nourishment in the stillness, thus the axis
like the word arises from silence32• Like the eye of the storm, the wheel of
is immobile: «Every increase in speed is [ ... ] only transmission from the immobile
and invisible central point , transposition from the unextended to the extended, from
the timeless to the temporal. If this is not known, every thought remains on the
margins, exposed to the action of time"33. At the center of the whirlwind activism of techno
nal of the age of technology, Amloai - progenitor of Shakespeare's Hamlet - owned a fabulous
mill from which peace and abundance flowed. With the decay of time it began to produce
only salt and finally, now, having fallen to the bottom of the sea, it grinds the rocks and sand
creating a vast whirlpool - the Maelstrom - which constitutes the access to the kingdom of
the dead. See G. de Santillana - H. von Dechend, Hamlet's mill. Essay on myth and the
structure of time, edited by A. Passi, Adelphi, Milan 1983.
28 «Our landscapes with their myriads of whirling wheels, the frenzy that moves the hand of the
clock and the mad rush of the airplane's crankshaft[:] The sweet and risky opium of speed» (E.
Jiinger , Sizilischer Brie.f an den Mann im Mond, cit., p. 18; tr. it., p. I 07). 29 lvi, p. 19
(Italian translation, ibidem). From another perspective, rest can be thought of as the extreme
fulfillment of movement, as Heidegger suggests: «Rest is an eminent mode of motility. In
stillness the movement is accomplished" (M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, cit., p. 867).
30 Cfr. E. Jiinger, Sicilian Brie.f and the Man in the Moon, cit., p. 20 (tr. it., p. 108).
31 No "creative will" is capable of carrying out this sublime recomposition, of redeeming in a
Nietzschean way the horrendous randomness and enigmatic nature of history: no
reconciliation with time by the will to power (see F. Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra , cit.,
«Of redemption»), but only the stereoscopic gaze that connects the surface of events with
their profound destiny necessity. This non-deterministic concept of necessity, which Jiinger
mentions here, contains an implicit interpretation of the Nietzschean doctrine of the eternal
return.
32 «Language weaves its work around silence, as the oasis extends around the source» (E.
Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 373; tr. it., p. 1 32).
33 E. Jiinger, The Hourglass Book, cit., p. 146 (tr. it., p. 83).
113
rests its quiet, non-technical and timeless essence; it becomes visible in the
final moment of the Total Mobilization in which the "perfection" of the
technique is reached and which corresponds to the completion of the form
of work34. With the idea of perfection of the technique Jiinger does not mean
the result of a process of gradual improvement which would follow the
dynamics of the bourgeois ideal of the "magnificent and progressive destiny"
of humanity, since the improvement aims at calculable, and the perfect,
instead, to the incalculable35. The perfection of the technique rather refers
to the idea of a sudden and incalculable breakthrough of the final threshold
of speed, beyond which no acceleration is possible.
But how can we trace a center of movement36 in our chaotic and
undifferentiated space? The only possibility is to rest your gaze on an
immobile 'object'; but where to find such an 'object' when everything is
dominated by the technical agitation, by the doing and suffering of the
Worker? For Jiinger there are only two areas - never, however, rigorously
defined - which escape the fury of movement: "one's chest"37 and the
firmament, where what were once called the fixed stars shine . In this sense
the sacred "sciences of the heart" - among which Jiinger includes, together
with poetry, also a reborn theology38 - and astrology39, which indicates a directio
34 At the moment in which the perfection of the technique is achieved, «a dynamic and
revolutionary space is replaced by a static and highly ordered space. Here therefore
occurs a transition from change to invariability" (E. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, cit., p. 1 82; tr. it., p.
1 59). On the idea of "perfection" of technique, see above, chap. THE.
35 Cf. E. Jiinger, Gléiserne Bienen, cit., p. 121 (tr. it., p. 1 69).
36 In the light of a broader cosmic dynamic, even the millennial acceleration that dominates our era must
be inscribed in a cosmic cycle and therefore in a circular movement with a center. This is what Jiinger
attempts to do in the text At the Wall of Time, whose main objective is to include human history in the
history of the Earth. In this sense all movements are, in their essence - as Aristotle and the Scholastics
already maintained - circular movements: «Probably in the universe there is no movement that does
not rotate around
-, a centre. This belief was specific to theology and mechanical and astronomical,
dynamic and static explanations of the universe can also be compared to it. On the other hand, the idea
of a linear progression is problematic" (E.
Jiinger, Anneihrungen, cit., p. 289; tr. it., pp. 267-268).

37 «One's chest: here lies, as once in the Thebaid, the center of every desert and ruin [ ... ]. Here everyone,
of any condition and rank, conducts their struggle alone and personally, and with their victory the world
changes. If he prevails, nothing will retreat into itself, abandoning on the shore the treasures that its
waves had submerged. They will compensate for the sacrifices" (E. Jiinger, Ober die Linie, cit., p. 279;
tr. it., p. 1 04). Another recurrent image of quiet is the forest: cf. E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 336
(tr. it., p. 83).
38 Nihilistic acceleration leads, for Jiinger, invariably to the disappearance of theology and induces an
exclusively catastrophic vision of the divine, since for those traveling at high speeds the encounter with
stillness inevitably becomes a clash: «At a given speed even objects in a state of rest constitute a
danger and as a result of projectiles" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen (1949), cit., p. 1 6; tr. it., p. 3). Inhumane
wine therefore tends to take on the appearance of a terrible annihilating force.
39 «Astrology lends itself well to making us look away from the figures of a dynamic monoculture [ ... ]. [It]
stands like an erratic boulder reaching us as a remnant of ancient times, as evidence not only of a
different style of thought, but also of
I 14
intentions and human actions, would be the only sciences - or perhaps we should say 'arts' - capable
of ferrying man beyond the growing acceleration towards stillness. The possession of these sciences
already introduces us into tranquility, makes us foresee its seed of eternity in everything.
There is on this earth an attitude that unequivocally characterizes the one who intimately assumes
it, as a foreigner and, at the same time, as a 'stellar' friend of the quiet: it, which is the true habit of
the Anarch and the i - Waldgiinger 's invaluable discovery , has many names and derives from a
long practice of stereoscopic vision and the right detachment. Jtinger uses the French word
désinvolture to say this «divine-like superiority»40 with which even in the vortex of the Worker's
agitation, one is able to enjoy a luminous serenity and an intangible stillness41 • But ease does not it
is acquired, through rational strategies or by 'force' of will: it is rather a "free gift"42 which refers to
luck and magic rather than to will, even if only a constant exercise of the gaze can make it manifest;
it is based on an intimate, spontaneous and unreflected contact with the elementary depths of life; he
who is casual possesses an irresistible power [Herrschaft] over the world which is completely
different from the predominance [Vormacht] of technique which degrades and wears things out with
a constant process of mediation and reduction. In turn, ease is only a sign of serenity, or rather of
that "luminous strength" belonging to the mythical golden age, which resonates in the most vivid and
touching spiritual experiences:
Confidence, as an irresistible grace of power, is a particular form of

serenity [ . .. ]. Serenity is one of the most powerful weapons man has at
his disposal: he wears it like armor forged by the gods, and closed in it he
is capable of facing even the horrors of destruction. From this luminous
force, which disperses at the first dawn of history, ease derives like a scion
raised in a noble house, and survives it by continuing its impulse and
penetrating deeply into the historical substance of the successive eras.
Precisely by keeping the myth of lost serenity alive, ease exerts its charm on pe
a different spirituality. Linked to it is a way of seeing that is largely foreign to our

scientific observation; through it, forces that have remained dormant for a long time are
reanimated" (E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., p. 423; tr. it., p. 37).
40 E. Jiinger, The adventurous heart, cit., p. 260 (tr. it., p. 99).
41 For Jiinger, "nonchalance" manifests itself essentially as the innocent aspect of power:
«Where ease is intact there can be no doubt about the extent of power. [ ... ]
If they possess this gift, princes are unassailable, and even rebellion is promoted in
their name. However, when ease is lost, the powerful begin to move like men who lack
balance; they cling to a second-order rule, to virtue. It is the certain symptom of
decline" (ibidem). Power, therefore, would not be linked to the virtue of command, but
to the innate gift of ease. 42 lvi, p. 26 1 (tr. it., p.
100). 43 lvi, p. I. Jiinger
connects the appearance of ease to the overcoming of pain and anguish due to
approaching the immobile center of movement: «Perhaps [ ... ) is destined to decrease
the pain that fills our world of work , and which is indeed, essentially
115
We could identify ease with that extreme distillation of the movement
which already preludes stillness and which contains the germ of crossing
the Wall of time, as it leads to an increasingly evident liberation of the
essence of the movement, freeing it from any concrete and finalistic
determination, that is, making it, at the same time, unconditional and pure.
For Jiinger, only music captures this final aspect of the Mobilization, since
it as «pure movement, emancipated from everything that is concrete, does
not, in itself, have any purpose»44• They are specific to music, in fact ,
that extreme speed, agility and lightness that outline another image of
mobility, only apparently similar to that of the Total Mobilization of the
Worker which uses movement, but is not movement. Jiinger's reflections
on this theme are few and fragmentary, and, according to some of his
statements, it was the music of nature, the voice of the forest, that
fascinated him more than actual musical compositions (with the exception
perhaps for only Mozart, who he loved to listen to especially during his
experiences of alteration of consciousness brought about by the use of
drugs45). But it is precisely from his writing that a profound musicality
emanates: it is the music of his style and
his thought that represents an admirable figure of ease46• Jiinger's
writing, in fact, especially his diaristic one, lives on a continuous digression47
which generates a sort of multiplication of time within the work, a perpetual
'escape' of time. The circular, but not returning on itself, movement of fugal
compositions draws the structure of a mobility that is no longer technical,
light and transparent, freed from the dark immanence of the world of work
and ecstatically exposed to the attraction of stillness. The agility, the
promptness, the snappy and casual rhythm of Bach's fugues - and of J
iingerian prose - resonate like an ancestral reminder of Wildnis and its timeless
Returning to a mythical image, we could define Jiinger's writing and work
as one of the happiest attempts to harmonize with stereoscopic
initially, pain of conscience. Perhaps from this, ways can arise to achieve ease" (ibid., p. 308; tr. it., p. 1 53).
44 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 448 (tr. it., p. 17).

45 See A. Gnoli - F. Volpi, The Next Titans. Conversations with Ernst Junger, Adelphi, Mi-
wool 1 997, pp. 101-1 99-1
46 Some considerations made by Italo Calvino regarding speed, in the context of his famous American Lessons,
lend themselves effectively to describing the musicality of Jiinger's writing: «The speed of style and thought
means above all agility, mobility, ease ; all qualities that match with a writing ready for digressions, to
jump from one topic to another, to lose the thread a hundred times and find it again after a hundred
turns" (I. Calvino, American Lessons, Mondadori, Milan 1993, p. 53 ).
47 As Calvino further notes, the great inventor of the literature of digression was Lawrence Sterne, an author,
not surprisingly, much appreciated by Jiinger himself. Calvino interprets the digression as an attempt to
escape from time and death, while for Jiinger the digression, as a source of radiation of spiritual energy,
tends to overcome the fear of death: «Overcoming the fear of death is the task that a writer gives himself;
his work must radiate it" (A. Gnoli - F. Volpi, Ivenire Titani, cit., p. 59).
116
sensitivity the world of Mercury and that of Vulcan48• The dexterity and
ability of style and thought presuppose great ductility and the ability to
grasp the 'polyphonic' structure of reality; for this reason every thought, as
well as every attitude marked by mercurial sensitivity, cannot possess a
rigidly defined status, but must remain mobile, oscillating49• Vulcan is,
instead, the god who, closed in his forge, incessantly fabricates every type
of objects starting from the elements of the mineral world, from jewels for
the goddesses to weapons, from nets to traps. He is another image of the
Worker who agitates telluric energies and continually forges tools and
consumer goods of all kinds. Vulcan contrasts the aerial and harmonious
flight of Mercury with the discontinuous pace of his step and the cadenced
beating of his hammer, but also with the precision and focus that belongs - and
both to the world of technology and to the stereoscopic gaze that has
reached collimation. Syntony and focality represent, therefore, the two
worlds of Mercury and Vulcan50; both are based on a happy
'correspondence', the 'involuntary' and miraculous fruit of an inexhaustible
and silent exercise in refining style and gaze51 and on a superior
'synchronicity' that manages to reconcile the mobility and quickness of
Mercury with the titanic labors of Vulcan. The task of writing is to
summarize the different times of Mercury and Vulcano. Calvino writes in this reg
The writer's work must take into account different times: the time of Mercury
and the time of Vulcan, a message of immediacy obtained by dint of patient and
meticulous adjustments; an instantaneous intuition which, as soon as it is
formulated, takes on the definitiveness of what could not be otherwise; but also
the time that passes with no other intent than to let feelings and thoughts settle,
mature, detach themselves from any impatience and any ephemeral contingency52 •
48 «Mercury, with wings on his feet, light and airy, skilled and agile and adaptable and self-confident,
establishes the relationships of the gods among themselves and those between gods and men,
between universal laws and individual cases, between forces of nature and the forms of culture among
all the objects in the world and among all thinking subjects" (I. Calvino, American Lessons, cit., p. 59).
49 It would also be possible to rethink the figures of the Anarch and the Waldgiinger in the light of the
mercurial sensitivity dominant in every page of Jiinger: the Anarch's wings allow a mobility and an inner
freedom thanks to which he can transmigrate, like Mercury, from one layer of reality to another. In this
sense every "crystallography of the invisible" descends from the 'angelic' flight of Mercury.
50 These two qualities derive from the mythical descent of Mercury from Uranus and of Vulcan from Saturn:
cf. therein, p. 61.
51 This 'event' is described by Calvino, at the conclusion of his conference, with the following famous quote
from Chuang-zu: «Among Chuang-Tzu's many virtues there was his ability to draw. The king asked
him for a drawing of a crab. Chuang-zu said he needed five years of time and a villa with twelve
servants. After five years the drawing had not yet begun. “I need five more years,” Chuang-zu said.
The king granted them to him.
At the end of ten years, Chuang-zu took the brush and in an instant, with a single gesture, he drew a
crab, the most perfect crab anyone had ever seen" ( ibid., p. 62). 52 lvi, p. 61.
117
The aerial agility and ease of Mercury and the serious accelerations of Vulcan's elementary
work are understood at the Wall of Time; in the liminal dimension of absolute speed53 the
buds of the silent kingdom of stillness are revealed: aerial spirits, followers of Mercury, indicate
the crystalline transparencies of the invisible, while the blinding incandescence of Vulcan's
forges and the omens of an astral serenity announce the flashes of the beyond of time.
2. Stolen time
Not water, honey will be the last drop
in the hourglass. We will see her shine
and sink into darkness.
But in it there will be the beatitudes
That someone or something gave to the red Adam:
Mutual love and your fragrance, The act
of understanding the universe,
Even if fallaciously; that moment in
which Virgil invents the hexameter;
The water of thirst and the bread of
hunger, The impalpable snow in
the air, The feel of the book we
seek In the disorder of the
shelves, The jubilation of the sword in
battle, The free sea that plowed
England, The pleasure of hearing
afterwards the silence The longed
for agreement, a Precious and forgotten
memory, the exhaustion, The moment in which sleep disso
JL Borges, The Hourglass.
Born in time, with time we will vanish: existing means having time and as long as time flows
everything can happen, because everything is born from time, the silent maturation of what
comes, and from time, atrocious devourer of worlds, perishes. The alternation of individuals,
peoples, cities, empires, leaves, voices and landscapes is the appearance of the visibility of
time; in it everything falls: «Time is like a river formed by events, like an impetuous torrent; as
soon as it emerges into sight, everything is immediately dragged away, and another is brought
which in turn will be dragged away"54•
But is this only time: fury that annihilates, illusion and veil over the eyes, hand immersed in ,
the fleeting current, incessant 'delirium'? Did Heraclitus55 pronounce the first and last words
on time? Is time that great whirlpool in which everything is lost?
53 Cfr. E. Jiinger, Heliopolis, cit., p. 35 (tr. it., p. 52).

54 Marcus Aurelius, Pensieri, IV, 43, ed. it. edited by M. Ceva, Mondadori, Milan 1 989, p. 77.
55 «Heraclitus walks in the evening I of Ephesus. In the evening he left him, I Without his will taking him over
118
This conception, be it the fruit of a phenomenal observation or of a
sober wisdom of living, constitutes for Jilnger the "most deep-rooted
prejudice"56 that has always accompanied Western civilization and which
has gained absolute predominance in the modern era . Almost by chance,
observing an hourglass at night, his gaze turns instead to a quieter and
more comforting dimension of time, to its invisible gathering:
While I was working at night, I was struck by the fact that from this hourglass,
clamped between its metal rods as in a cricket cage, a reassuring sense of
peace emanated, the idea of a peaceful existence. [ ... ] The white powder
flowed silently from one container to another. It was hollowed out in the shape
of a funnel in the upper one and arched into a cone in the lower one. This
small mountain, formed by all the lost moments that fell on each other, could
be understood as a consoling sign of the fact that time disappears but does not van
It grows in depth57.
It is here that the last chapter of our crystallography of the invisible

begins, the one in which we awaken our gaze to what has no time in
time, to the invisible return to the time of the eternal. Only then will time
take on, as an alternative to its traditional image of great destroyer, that
of "form of absence", or trans-sparency of being in its disappearance as presen
But only he who is able to see a difference in the nature of time itself and
take up residence in it can grasp this aspect of time. Time is constitutively
split, disconnected, multifaceted and our existence extends to its various
forms, but finds calm only in the deepest dimension of temporality, the
one in which we perceive the rhythmic pulsation of nature and with it we
measure our time and its precious "growing".
This intrinsic difference of time emerges first of all in the opposition of
the two fundamental conceptions of time, the linear and the cyclical58.
For the linear conception «time passes, flows, elapses, flees
bia decided, I On the bank of a silent river I Of which he ignores the name and the outlet. [ ... ]
He looks at himself in the fleeting mirror IE he discovers and rethinks the sentence I Which the
generations of men I Will not forget. His voice enunciates: I No one will ever descend into the
waters of the same river twice . Stops. He feels I With the tremor of a sacred horror I That he
himself is also a river and an escape. I He wants to recover that morning, IE his night and the
eve. It is impossible" (JL Borges, Heraclitus, in All works, vol. Il, cit., p. 1017).
56 E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit. , p. 1 07 (Italian translation, p. 1 6). For an analysis of the
question of temporality in Jiinger's thought, especially in relation to his conception of history
and the end of history, cf. I. Rozet, Die grojJen Jagden. Eingang in die Welt des Mythos, in
AA.VV., Die grojJen Jagden des Mythos, cit. and V. Vitiello, «The impact of time», in Topologia
del moderni, Marietti, Genoa 1 992.
57 E. Jiinger, The Hourglass Book, cit., p. 1 03 (tr. it., pp. 1 1-12).
58 For Jiinger these two concepts derive from two different methods of measuring time on which
cosmic clocks are based on one hand and telluric clocks on the other. Cosmic clocks, like the
solar one, are linked to cosmic light, to the alternation of day and night, to the movement of
the stars in the firmament. Telluric ones, however, measure time
119
ge»59 and therefore has a "progressive" trend; in the cyclical one,
however, it is represented as a wheel and we use to speak of return and
"courses and recurrences". Time, in reality, includes both of these
dimensions60, even if from time to time, in each historical era and in each
individual, only one of them imposes itself; for Jiinger, the most original
one is the dimension of cyclical time; with it the first awareness of time
awoke, just as the first clock was the solar one. Time as a return belongs
to man's primordial experiences and his first contact with nature: first the
sun returns, then all the other stars; but the holidays also return which, in
ancient times, were experienced as the day in which the gods themselves
met men. The party is the emblem of cyclical time; in it the bounty of time
is manifested and its crystalline transparency illuminates. It is closely
connected to the periodicity that dominates in the mythical world61• Here
a further form of the difference between cyclical time and linear-progressive
time comes to light: starting from the only apparently similar concepts of
periodicity and monotony, emerges the abysmal difference between
technical time and party time, mechanical-measurable time and the mythical tim
Periodicity, with its ebbs and flows, is the opposite of technical monotony. Here the
heartbeat and there the rhythm of the engine, here the car and there the poetry.
[ ... ] Periodicity is perceived more intensely where the meaning of the celebration and
its joys are still known, more so in intact and archaic areas than in urbanized areas.
More in the countryside than in the city. In the city it's a party every day, there is light
night and day. For this reason the return is limited and the mystery of periodicity
slumbers in it while waiting for better opportunities. The return takes place when that
which rests in movement appears, and therefore announces itself, the invisible in the visible62
by means of the elements of water, earth and fire, but «for the measurement we do not use the
light radiated by the matter [as in the case of cosmic clocks] but rather its mass and its weight» (E.
Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit., p. 1 32; tr. it., p. 62). Earthly forces, internal to matter, such as
that of gravity, activate the various devices of telluric clocks - of which the hourglass is also part
- giving them linear motions measured not on a dial but on a graduated scale, while the cosmic
revolutions, on which cosmic clocks are based, describe circular movements. On cyclical time in
traditional civilizations, see M. Eliade, The myth of the eternal return. Archetypes and repetition,
tr. it. by G. Cantoni, Boria, Rome 1 999.
59 E. Jiinger, The Hourglass Book, cit., p. 1 33 (tr. it., p. 63).

60 Man's task is to harmonize these two dimensions which Jiinger also identifies with celestial and
earthly time: «In the paternal embrace of solar light and in the attraction of the gravitational force
exerted by mother earth they influence of us celestial times and earthly times. It is within ourselves
that we must harmonize them" (ibid., p. 1 37; tr. it., p. 69).
61 In history, however, "repetition" dominates: «In the historical dimension there is repetition, not
return. Achilles returns in Alexander, but the first Napoleon does not return in Napoleon III.
Within calculable time there are analogies, not identities. [ ... ) In the case of the return, what is
hidden in man is something stronger than memory. It is something that becomes identical to him,
just as man and woman become identical in conception, in which the timeless power of creation
returns to temporal life. Without return there are only dates, no more parties" (E. Jiinger, An der
'Zeitmauer, cit., p. 437; tr. it., p. 53).
62 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 1 1 2 (Italian translation, p. 1 1 3). While periodicity bestows every
1 20
In the return of the 'high tempo'63 of the party, the transparency of time itself
is shown and the stereoscopic gaze manages to see the invisible; it is as if in
the celebration time showed its intimate suspension64 which is, at the same
time, a generous radiation and offering: «The time that returns is a time that gives.
The hours are dispensing hours"65, while progressive time, in its inexhaustible
escape, perpetually takes away nourishment from life. Cyclic time is based on
the return of the timeless and mythical Beginning which is relived in every
celebration; progressive time, on the other hand, is entirely aimed at reaching
a final goal which in modernity has taken on the form of utopia66• Both of these time
once again new wealth as in it, through the emergence of creative powers, life is regenerated, monotony
only causes boredom; it consists, in fact, in a mechanical repetition and reproduction of the existing, of
which the assembly lines of our factories are an emblematic example. Jiinger often returns to the celebration:
«It is important for us to sometimes be led to the limits of the human, according to what was originally the
meaning of the celebration. The history of the festival can be traced back to two great expectations: the
desire to be identical to the animal and the hope that the gods will arrive. A necessary condition for such
approaches is that man remains open. It is well known that today it is less capable and certainly less
predisposed than it has ever been in the course of its history, rather disposed to humanize the world and
imbue it with human substance" (ibid., pp. 3 1 2-3 13 ; tr. it., p. 288).
63 In German the celebration par excellence, the wedding [Hochzeit] literally means 'tem-
a little tall.
64 We could think of this suspension of time as the instantaneous appearance of the sacred which, in
celebrations, as in nature, manifests itself through an incomprehensible expenditure of energy, resources
and goods accumulated over a long time: «We can [...] say that waste establishes the celebration, that the
celebration is the culminating point of religious activity. Accumulating and wasting are the two phases of
which this activity is composed" (G. Bataille, l'erotismo, cit., p. 66; for the notion of "expenditure", at the
center of all of Bataille's reflection, see in particular G. Bataille, La par-te maledetta preceded by The notion
of dépense, Italian translation by F. Serna, Boringhieri, Turin 1 992). Even if the moment in which time is
suspended and the sacred makes its appearance soon vanishes, in the celebration one experiences the
joyful sensation of being participants in a cosmic cycle that surpasses and includes the destiny of individuals:
«But that moment, intractable, he vanished. Like when you dismantle the booths at fairs after spending the
whole day outdoors; in the evening all that remains is straw on the road. The children had fun, the merchants
collected the day's proceeds. Yet there was something else in the party, the return of a repeating cycle.
Even in that ephemeral activity there is something ancient and festive, something that made men reflect
even before the pyramids were built" (E. Jiinger, Subtile Jag-den, cit., p. 65; tr. it. , p. 60). In modernity only
the melancholy of the "holiday evening" has remained despite the echo of the ancient certainty that "life is
a party" still resounding here and there, as in the splendid ending of the film 8 and 112 by Fellini in which
the torment and creative emptiness of the protagonist radiates in a dark and degraded world, incapable of
hosting the luminous revelation of the sacred, and where the only refuge is the memory of an enchanted
childhood in which he still the mystery and anticipation of the party were alive.

66 See ibid., pp. 1 35- 1 36 (Italian translation, p. 66). Jiinger associates the two forms of time in question with
two typical states of mind, memory and hope: «Cyclic time and progressive time stimulate two fundamental
states of mind in man, memory and hope. They are the two builders of his house. In them, father and son, a
conservative spirit and a reforming spirit meet" (ibid., p. 1 35; tr. it., ibidem). Hope still retains the longing
for a supra-temporal fulfillment, while progress, "secularized hope", pursues an earthly goal completely
inscribed in time.
121
these are 'real' times; in their intertwining the existence of man took
place until the modern era in which, with the invention of the mechanical
clock, a true "time machine", as a producer of time67, the man has
become a prisoner of the inescapable network of conventional time. The
"titanic vault of abstract time" now extends over our cities, invisible but
increasingly impenetrable.
The gear clock is neither a cosmic clock, even if its dial recalls the
cyclical nature of time, nor a telluric clock, since, although it uses the
force of gravity, at the same time, through the mechanism of the
escapement, suspends it, harnessing its acceleration and generating a
uniform and periodic movement. His invention represents the first of the
great challenges that the Faustian civilization, in its project of domination
of nature, has launched against the force of gravity69 • It is therefore a
sort of "intellectual clock" which measures neither astronomical nor
astronomical time. earthly, but once abstract70 and disembodied,
completely available to human action; its ticking measures the progressive
imposition of the technical mobilization of the world. With this 'different'
time compared to that measured by traditional clocks71, modernity begins wit
67 «If our clocks were just machines that measure time, the change would not be so important.
What is decisive is the fact that they are machines that create time, that produce time" (ibid.,
p. 1 76; tr. it., p. 1 30). On the gear clock cf. also E.
Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., §§ 1 83-185. Jiinger considers the mechanical clock as the first
automatism produced by our civilization; with it modern technology was inaugurated: «it can
be said that the great spectacle of human technique and increasingly rigid automation began
with the movement of the first mechanical watch» (E. Jiinger, Das San-duhrbuch, cit. , p . I
IO; tr. it., p. 22).
68 lvi, p. 1 40 (tr. it., p. 74). On the time measured by mechanical clocks and on temporality in
general, see H. Schumacher, "Die Uhr schliigt keinem Gliicklichen". Essayism and
consideration of time in Ernst Jiinger, in AA.VV., Between symbolism and the avant-garde.
Studies dedicated to F. Masini, edited by C. Graziadei, A. Rete, F. Rosso Chioso, V. Vivarelli,
Ed. Riuni-ti, Rome 1992, pp. 341 -358.
69 The gear clock is the first symptom of the new dynamic conception of the world that already
manifests itself with the flourishing of Gothic architecture; it, in fact, represents a formidable
and singular challenge to the force of gravity: «The challenge inherent in this daring project
does not make us fear that the construction will collapse, even if its pillars and its arches
seem to rise towards the sky resting on both spiritual and immaterial foundations. What we
really fear at the bottom of our hearts is that it will instead open up like a flower, like a crown
of fire. It does not separate us from infinite spaces; on the contrary, it tends to penetrate it.
Never before had man conceived such temples" (E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit., p. 1 70;
tr. it., p. 1 22).
70 «The time measured with the clock is one of the most important abstractions among those
that characterize our world: it is a 'derivative' time, a distillate. It is evident that, as such, it
constitutes the prerequisite of our historical existence. It is not just money, as the naive
American proverb states, but essence, which makes it much more interesting" (ibid., p. 1 1 3;
Italian translation, pp. 25-26). The tendency, typical of the world of technology, to measure
both the performance of machines and the performance of man, with the aim of achieving a
"record" is based on abstract time: cf. E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., § 1 5.
The Second Conscience of the Worker deals with this (see above, I, § 4).
71 The liturgical time of the clergy is a form of this different time which, albeit precariously,
1 22
obsessive: «In the gear clock [ ... ] uniform and uniformly periodic
movements interpenetrate, giving rise to new rhythms unknown to
nature. The intellect has approached the force of gravity by means of a
magic
formula»72• The gear clock achieves that submission of time which
has always been perceived as a condition for the affirmation of the
Faustian soul, but this happens at the cost of the definitive loss of the
destiny73 sense of time which survives, perhaps, only in astrology. The
time that can fall under the control of man is exclusively measurable,
quantifiable and uniform time, calculated by modern chronometers14
which mark an equivalent and empty time in which the fatal hour never strike
continues to resist universal clock time, even if secularization has profoundly undermined this
diversity. See E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 556 (tr. it., p. 1 36).
73 The category of destiny that Jiinger inherits from Spengler and, before that, from Nietzsche,
is thematized above all in the pages of At the Wall of Time. It is opposed by the concept of
both historical and naturalistic causality. The desire to feel part of a destiny is ineradicable in
man and becomes more and more burning the more the homogeneous and empty time of
clocks imposes itself: «Hearing that one's actions, works, meetings mean also something
other than what is commonly supposed; that great forces are reflected in them, providing them
with meaning; in short, to know that you have a destiny -
hearing all this is evidently an ineradicable desire of man. The more the turnover increases,
the more the activity grows, the more life takes on a metropolitan, technical-abstract character,
the more overbearing this desire manifests itself. This happens particularly in times of crisis
or even catastrophes, in the face of which the optimism of technology is threatened or falls
to pieces. The man then feels he needs an interpretation. [ . .. ] This is the reason for the
extraordinary fascination exercised by astrology" (E. Jiinger, An der 'Zeitmauer, cit., p. 415;
tr. it., p. 29). One of man's greatest desires is to know his future "irrevocably", even if unknown:
destiny can only be foreseen, felt, feared, but it must remain unknown.
74 Gear clocks measure only the chronological dimension of time, completely leaving aside the
other two dimensions that Greek thought had identified, the aionic and the kairological. On
this triple nature of time in Greece and on the need for its symbolic understanding cf. M.
Cacciari, «Chronos and Aion», cit. Jiinger also speaks in favor of a rediscovery of kair<is, that
is, due time, time 'stolen' from the occasion and hopes for a rebirth of the «great art of seizing
the right moment» (E. Jiinger, Das abenteueriche Herz, cit., p. 322; tr. it., p. 1 69) which for
him essentially coincides with the innate gift of ease. On kair<5s and on the relationship
between individual freedom and the favor of the instant [Gunst des Augenblickes) cf. H.
Gerber, Die Frage nach Freiheit und Notwendigkeit im Werke Ernst Jiingers, PG Keller,
Winterthur 1 965, pp. 91-92. For a more general reflection on time as kair<is cf. G. Marramao,
Kair<is. Apologia del tempo due, Laterza, Rome-Bari 1 992.
75 With the affirmation of the abstract time of the clock, it becomes increasingly difficult to
reconcile the uniform and progressive time typical of modern science with that of destiny: «It
is difficult to bring the two elements to a mutual agreement, just as it is difficult to compose
the great a -stronomy with astrology, natural science with theology. Which does not exclude
that such an agreement has always been possible, and always will be in the future" (E. Jiinger,
Die Schere, cit., p. 457; tr. it., p. 27). These statements show how Jiin-ger's attitude towards
technique is never one of rejection or condemnation: linear and measurable time is a
dimension of time - certainly not the original and deepest one - which becomes dangerous
only when it is absolutized, as happens in the world of the Worker.
1 23
canics are built according to the principle of the wheel of fortune76, they have completely
lost that "horoscopic significance" that connected the wheel of fortune to the time of
destiny77• The wheel still remains decisive for the functioning - but only as a mechanical
rotation, is the most evident symbol of element78• The chin of gear clocks, its incessant
the restlessness and activism of the technical world; yet the circular movement of the
wheel, as a symbol of the returning time of life, also arouses a joyful wonder in those
who participate in the stillness of an 'other' time79•
Not being able to access, despite their immense efforts, the sources of the time of
life - that is, the paradisiacal abundance from which every creative act arises, the Titans
-, degrading it through mechanical measurement. While the gods
rage over telluric time,
institute time, the Titans limit themselves to shortening and extending it, like Procrustes
in his home.
The Worker never finds his time: most of the time he lacks time, but in some situations,
paradoxically, he does not know how to use it80• The Titans act in time and on time,
but they suffer because of the time in how much they cannot enjoy the calm dispensed
by the Return of the Eternal and remain prisoners of an eternal return of the same. For
Jiinger, in the Nietzschean doctrine of the eternal return, in which the will to power
culminates, the time of the Titans of the technological age triumphs. In fact, they are
unable to cross the Wall of time, remaining entangled in an entirely modern and
anthropologically centered conception of temporality81• Only through the «Underlying
76 Astrology considers the cosmos a revolving wheel of fortune [Gliicksrad] in which to read
'
the fate of individual. H. Schumacher focused on the Gliicksrad , "Die Uhr schliigt keinem
Gliicklichen ", cit., pp. 343 ff.
77 Only the player recognizes the clock as a wheel of fortune: «For him, therefore, the hours are
also full of unexpected gains, twists of fate, changes, travel, romantic trysts and adventures
of all kinds» ( E. Jiinger, Das abenteuerliche Herz, cit., p. 322; tr, it., p. 1 69). The time of
destiny is a tragic time: the plot of every tragedy is woven by destiny and its dark forces. In
'
measurable time the dimension of the tragic and every misfortune man no longer knows the
is interpreted as an 'accident' that only momentarily disturbs the regular course of life.
78 Jiinger dedicates several pages to the history of the wheel: cf. E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch,
cit., §§ 1 3- 1 5. Modern clocks are born from the composition of the wheel, understood as a
continuous lever, and from the conception of progressive and measurable time: «The
movement of our clocks it is based on the idea of linking like gears, uniting the wheel and
time" (ibid., p. 1 54; tr. it., p. 97).
79 «Today that everything, even the atmosphere, has been transformed into a road and we live
in a universe, in a whirlwind of wheels, the wonder of their movement, the magical virtue that
they embody, escapes us. No physicist will ever come up with the theory that can explain the
wheel phenomenon. Yet, if for the first time we give a child a toy that rotates on itself, like a
pinwheel, we will notice that he begins to laugh. It is a reflection of ancient gaiety" (ibid., p. 1
52; tr. it., p. 92).
80 From this derives the reduction of 'free time' to complementary working time with which to avoid
getting lost in the swamp of time that separates one work shift from another: the entertainment,
entertainment and tourism industry deals with integrating even this risky surplus of time in the
reassuring time of work. Holidays thus become a mere extension of work: cf. therein, p. 228
(Italian translation, pp. 220-22 1).
81 Cf. E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 537 (tr. it., p. 1 14).
1 24
tile fissure that opens with the existence of the individual, it is possible to recognize [ . . . ]
the necessary, the irrevocable, the eternal»82.
The inner freedom of the individual is measured by his ability to dispose of
time, thus remaining intimately immune from the fury of the hands:
Real time is more important than having space. Space, power, money become
chains if they don't leave us time. Freedom is placed in time; the single individual
can derive extraordinary power from it - and can even make it grow. The struggle
for sovereignty that he fights with society reaches its maximum tension when it
comes to conquering the availability of his own time [...]. With each new watch the
circle that surrounds us becomes increasingly narrower and the sacred escape
becomes more and more difficult. [ ... ] In the end it is always the individual who
must account for how he spent his time. It is an asset of his property83 •
Time does not simply place limits on every life, but constitutes its most precious heritage.
With the birth of every single man his time arises and his unrepeatable destiny is illuminated,
once and for all.
The hourglass84 is the hieroglyph of the time of destiny, of the time 'stolen' from the
clock85. In music, "tempo rubata" usually means a slight phase shift
82 lvi, p. 538 (tr. it., pp. 1 15-1 1 6).

83 E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit., p. 1 05 (Italian translation, pp. 99-100). This intimate availability
of time does not arise from a calculation on time, from a wise 'economy' of time, but solely
from the discovery of the profound sources of time itself, that is, from access to cosmogonic
abundance: «Who he desires quiet, rest, memory, he must seek the deepest sources of time.
The world of clocks and coincidences is the world of time-poor men, who have no time. [ . .. ]
Inside you need to have time" (E.
Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit., p. 230; tr. it., p. 223). He who has no time cannot even be
happy, hence the absolute lack of happiness in our times, or its tragic replacement with well-
being, comfort ; the West, which prides itself on possessing the scientific truth about
everything, lacks the most important of the sciences, that of happiness: «Wherever the West
penetrates with its methods and instruments, energies flow in, but it disappears happiness.
Men become more powerful and richer, but not happier. [ ... ] The man who has no time [ ... ]
is unlikely to have happiness. Inevitably he is denied great sources and strengths, such as
idleness, faith, the beauty of art and nature.
Thus what escapes him is what is the culmination of work, the blessing, i.e. non-work, and
what is the completion of knowledge, the meaning, i.e. non-knowledge. This is immediately
evident in the slow decline of what we call culture" (E. JUnger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., pp.
439-440; tr. it., p. 55). But it will never be possible to eliminate man's longing, even if indistinct,
towards happiness, even when it disappears completely from the face of the earth: «In him will
always live, indestructible until his last breath, the feeling that whether it is something else,
infinitely great, a cascade of light that redeems him, pacifies him, even if he has never seen
the sun, never learned its name" ( ibid., p. 56). Jiinger's reflection on happiness is inextricable
from that on luck and destiny, since the German Gliick means both happiness and luck. On the
time-happiness-luck connection in JUnger cf. H.
Schumacher, "Die Uhr schliigt keinem Gliicklichen ' ' , cit., pp. 354-355. For a more general
reflection on the concept of happiness in Western culture see S. Natoli, Happiness .
Essay on the theory of affects, Feltrinelli, Milan 1999 and F. de Luise - G. Farinelli, History of
happiness. The ancients and the moderns, Einaudi, Turin 2001.
84 From the Greek klepsydra, clock that steals [kleps] water [ydra].
85 On hourglass time as a possible remedy for the "shattering of time" caused by
1 25
a small advance, compared to the rhythm of the composition. Similarly, destiny time is not only
out of phase with respect to the temporal order marked by mechanical clocks, but constitutes
its immeasurable surplus, the secret passage that leads to the timeless gardens of the Eternal;
flowing below the chronological surface, it manifests the intimate harmony of nature: «In the
slow flow of the hourglass, non-mechanized time still pulsates, the time of destiny. It is the same
thing that we hear in the whispering of the woods, in the crackling of the fire, in the crashing of
the sea, in the swirling of the snowflakes"86.
Jiinger focuses on a particular depiction of the time of destiny that he finds in a famous
engraving by Diirer, The Knight, Death and the Devil81. The knight who advances with his
visor raised and with a proud gait in the dangerous gorge, followed by Death who holds the
hourglass and the devil who threatens him, depicts the image of the man who has become fully
aware of his destiny and confidently accepts it. meeting, sure of his own inner 'salvation': his
gaze turns towards the celestial Jerusalem, a luminous fortress beyond time, in whose quiet
he already lives despite the dangers that loom over him; and Jiinger thus concludes: «It can
only be a good thing for each of us to find ourselves in such a corner from time to time and to
be brought before the lords of the world and of time. This is how souls are put to the test"88•
And the most arduous test that men, sooner or later, are called to face is that of the transience
of existence89, of which the flowing of the sand in the hourglass is one of the most evident
and ancient
symbols: what flows here is earthly matter, «the temporal habit by which we are modeled.
The dust returns dust, sand, earth, ash that we throw to the deceased as a final farewell» 90 •
The hourglass is the emblem of fleetingness - Jiinger only rarely speaks of creatureliness -
.
which possesses our existences: but in the silent and continuous flow the intrinsic symbolism of
transience itself illuminates; let's think about the final lines of Faust by
ted by mechanical clocks cf. V. Vitiello, «Time of man and time of the earth: Ernst Jiinger», in The
tale of Cadmus. The history between science and myth from Blumenberg to Vico, Later-za, Rome
1 998.
86 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, cit., p. 37 (tr. it., p. 239).
87 «We see the knight proceeding in a gorge; behind him is the devil with the appearance of a demon.
Next to him, as if he wanted to block his way, rides death, represented as the god of time with the
insignia of destruction and return: the serpent and the hourglass. [ ... ] It is curious, in this image,
how the knight does not seem to pay the slightest attention either to the devil or to death. He
advances along the gloomy path with his visor raised, immersed in his thoughts. From his
expression it is difficult to understand whether his mood is one of fear or serenity. It is actually an
internal event, a radical awareness of our ineluctable destiny, acquired through one of those
sudden omens of death that assail us in the prime of life, when danger looms or anxiety oppresses
us. [ ... ] The painting communicates a sense of trust to those who look at it. We feel that the knight
is perfectly equal to the situation" (E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhrbuch, cit., pp. 223-224; tr. it., p. 2 1 1).
88 lvi, p. 224 (tr. it., p. 212).
89 On the pain of transience cf. above, chap. I, § 6.

90 E. Jiinger, The Hourglass Book, cit., p. 226 (tr. it., pp. 216-2 1 7).
1 26
Goethe: «Alles Vergiingliche I /st nur ein Gleichnis; I Das Unzuliingliche, I Hier wird's Ereignis»91 ,
«Everything that passes I Is just a symbol; What is unattainable I Here becomes an event." The
hourglasses of our existences are perhaps astral indicators, destined, when they run out, to be turned
upside down in another world, beyond time. Transience becomes a symbol when it becomes trans-
sparency of time, when we are able to see, with new and very ancient eyes, the shine of being beyond the
vanishing of time. This illumination of being in time is what, for Jtinger, gives meaning to existence: «We
give the name of meaning to this transpiring. It is still miraculous the moment when the blindfold falls from
man's eyes and he can see others, plants, animals and things illuminated by this light: perhaps the only
authentic miracle of our world. Religions are devoted to it"92• Jtinger attributes enormous importance to
them, since, especially in our time, only religions could93 maintain that openness to the symbol that the
world of technology increasingly reduces, and which only can make the individual available for the "big
meeting"94•
The feeling of transience is beautifully restored to us by the thoughtful

angel of Dtirer95's Meditorelia : surrounded by numerous instruments,
crystals and scales, Melancholy sits with her head resting on her hand;
his gaze is lost beyond what we can see in the engraving; above her
hangs an hourglass halfway through its course and in the background
an alchemical fire burns. Time and sadness totally merge in the melancholic g
91 JW Goethe, Faust II, Act V, vv. 12104- 12107.

92 E. Jiinger, The Hourglass Book, cit., p. 220 (tr. it., p. 202).
93 But Jiinger is under no illusion that existing religions are already capable of doing this and they are not
tired of hoping for a rebirth of theology.
94 For Jiinger, symbolic space is the sacred space of the forest in which dispensing time and abundance
dominate: «Here, a moment can compensate for an entire life spent in mechanical time. Here dry old
age can flourish again, at the end of the journey, in the desert, the pilgrim's staff can green up or
make the springs gush" (E. Jiinger, Das Sanduhr-buch, cit., p. 22 1; tr. it. , p. 206).
95 For an in-depth analysis of this work see. R. Klibansky - E. Panofky - F. Sax!, Satur-no and
melancholy, tr. it. by R. Federici, Einaudi, Turin 1983, pp. 267-349. Thus the sense of impotence and
vanity that pervades this Diirerian figure of melancholy is described here: «The eyes of Meditorelia
are fixed in the realm of the invisible with the same vain intensity with which her hand draws the
impalpable. His gaze owes its mysterious expressiveness [...] to the fact that the whites of the
figure's eyes, which in a gaze of this kind are particularly striking, stand out vividly on a dark face,
that "dark face" which [ ... ] was also a constant feature of the traditional image of Melancholia, but
which in Diirere's representation indicates something totally new. [ ... ] By representing the "dark
face" not so much as dark-skinned, but as obscured by the shadow, he transformed the physiognomic
or pathological fact into an expression, almost an atmosphere. It is the shadow of the paralyzing
transience that spreads over the face of Diirer's Melen.colia : she "sits in front of her unfinished
building, surrounded by the tools of creative work, but meditating sadly, with the sense of not
achieving anything. With her hair falling disheveled and her gaze, thoughtful and sad, fixed on a
distant point, she watches, isolated from the world, under a darkening sky, while the bat begins its
flight in a circle" (ibid., pp . 299-30 1 ).
1 27
this angelic figure. Here we are dealing with the same melancholy that the
time of destiny and its irreversible decline towards an end, our end, arouses
in us . This feeling constitutes the main character of the condition of mortality
itself. From it derives a poignant sense of loss and regret that grips man in
the face of the irrevocable passing of time: a sense of profound nostalgia
towards what has definitively passed, towards having-been connotes the
angelic figure of Dtireri 's Meditorelia like every lucid human awareness of
time and destiny. This nostalgia is not necessarily aimed at a real condition
of past happiness, but at the past as such. As Jankélévitch observes,
it is not necessary for the nostalgic person to have been happy once, or even to
have been in love; and it is not even essential that he was particularly young then
[ . . . ]. It is not necessary that he was this or that, it is enough that he was in
general, and that having been, he naturally, according to the occasion, lived, loved
and suffered, like everything that exists. The object of nostalgia is not this or that
past, but the fact of the past, in other words the passiti. [ ... ]
Nostalgia has as its object the misery of the irreversible and the primordiality of what
will never be again96 •
It is not a question here, therefore, of a simple regret for the lost past, but
of a vague and poignant yearning for an 'elsewhere' from time, for that
internal surplus at the same time that never, however - except in enlightening
oneself of transparency in the extreme experiences of pain, death and eros
- manifests itself as such. No 'exodus', no ecstatic "exit from the world" can
satisfy this nostalgia for the Other, for the "Other world" which for us is
uniquely the other from the world. The traditional Gnostic and Neoplatonic
theme of the foreign soul on earth then seems to emerge: the homeland, to
which the yearning of nostalgia tends, is not of this world. But it is precisely
from this perpetually active yearning that, according to Jtinger, that metaphysical l
96 V. Jankélévitch, La nostalgia, in AA.VV., Nostalgia. History of a feeling, edited by A.

Prete, Raffaello Cortina, Milan 1992, pp. 1 39- 1 40. And further on: «Every moment of our
life is semi-factual, in other words it happens only once in all eternity and is destined never
to return. For this reason every moment becomes the "symbol" of lost bliss. [ . . . ]
Nostalgia is a reaction to the irreversible" (ibid., p. 1 53). Also EM
Cioran felt with extreme intensity and clarity the nostalgia of having been, the obsession
with the passing of time and the vanishing of every instant of the irrevocable: «If you think
that every moment that passes is gone forever! A trivial observation, but it ceases to be so
when you lie down on the bed and think about that precise moment that escapes you, that
sinks irrevocably into nothingness. [ . . . ] I physically perceive the fall of every moment
into the irreparable" (EM Cioran, Quaderni 1957-1 972, Italian translation by T. Turolla,
Adelphi, Milan 2001, p. 224). And again: «Gare du Nord. There is a clock that indicates
the minutes: 1 6.49. - That minute, I thought, will never return, it has disappeared forever,
it has sunk into the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. [ . . . ] Everything disappears
forever. I will never see this precise moment again" (ibid., p. 270). But, ultimately, regret
for lost time takes on a religious aspect in Cioran: «In its ultimate essence, regret is
religious. Indeed, it is precisely what characterizes every man capable of praying" (ibid., p. 289)
1 28
a fact that technological civilization tries in every way to repress. In this sense,
all of Tinger's reflection on technology could be read as the Gnostic description
of an 'exile': the Worker is the exile who, however, is not aware of being one,
and his furious activism is nothing more than an attempt - doomed to failure - to
exorcise the ineradicable nostalgia that secretly torments him97• He no longer
feels the torment of separation from the Earth, nor the melancholy of its absence:
in him the languor of nostalgia, the saudade of the exile does not have the
strength of a passion, but takes on the appearance of a creeping and poisonous
anguish; the expectation of the radiant future of the Return also vanishes and
with it every possibility of enchantment. It is the terrible irreversibility of time,
in fact, which, while it tyrannizes man with its ruthless radicality, at the same
time enchants the ineffability of the past. This enchantment is constituted in the
phantasmatic return of consciousness towards the past in which the essence of
nostalgia resides: return towards an absent that will never become present
again98• Like the past, enchantment is evanescent, impalpable, pneumatic;
essentially indefinable and elusive, it is the "trap" of time, since, as Jankélévitch
writes, it «germinates in the present and flourishes in the past»99.
But alongside this nostalgic conception of enchantment, it is possible to
imagine an enchantment that, in an even more radical way, arises from a
definitive "farewell to presence" 100• This enchantment would refer to an absence tha
97 Through the paroxysmal expansion of action, the Worker tends to achieve that absolute
commutability of movement in space with which to remove the disturbing irreversibility of time,
the primary origin of nostalgia. But, in doing so, he precludes the possibility of accessing the
sources of the time of destiny and therefore the meaning of existence. Here we must also look
for the birth of the typically modern illusion of spatializing time, which technology is responsible
for realizing on a daily basis. It is also interesting to note how in the clinical description of the
nostalgic we find many typical characteristics of the Worker, at least those that pertain to his
expressive 'narcosis'; Starobinski refers us to a classic exposition of the clinical picture of
nostalgia: «The main symptoms consist of a sad, melancholic look, a dull look, sometimes
distorted eyes, a face that is in some cases dull, a general disgust, a ' indifference to everything;
the pulse is weak, slow, and in some cases accelerated but almost imperceptible; a rather
constant drowsiness: during sleep some exclamations escape between sobs and tears" (J.
Starobinski, The concept of nostalgia, in AA.VV., Nostalgia. History of a feeling, cit., p. 1 08).
98 «We must reanimate the past, recall it to ourselves in the movement of memory, or return to it,
evoke it, or rather reach it and go towards it, asks [ . .. ] to be sought, but also completed. [ . .. ]
Enchantment is a non-situable and infinitely absent presence, a perpetual alibi, a virtuality no
less mobile, evasive and fleeting than humour. [ . . . ]
Enchantment, flowing beauty, is essentially and forever incomplete" (V. Jankélévitch, Nostalgia,
cit., p. 1 59). 99 lvi, p. 1 62.
I 00 Heidegger has, throughout his journey of thought, recognized presence as the metaphysical way
through which Western thought has always interpreted the truth of being; analyzing the different
forms in which it has shown itself, he argues that presence has been, until now, the sole object
of philosophical reflection and that the fundamental characteristics of modern Western civilization
derive from this centrality. On these topics see M.
Heidegger, The saying of Anaximander, in Interrupted paths, cit. and the study of J. Derrida,
Ousia and Grammé, in Margini dellajiloscÿfia, edited by M. lofrida. Einaudi, Turin 1 997.
1 29
never been presence, to a more original context than presence itself, but from
which every presence comes; free space that welcomes every coming to light,
first origin and abyss of the time of destiny. This enchantment emanates from
the cracks of time, from the "broken mesh in the net", from the cracks that
open in the life of the individual, through which, for a moment, the gaze goes
into the incommensurable of the very essence of time; the enchanting no
longer arises from the yearning to go back in time, but from the wait in time
for what is outside of time: crystallization of time with which its 'apocalyptic'
transparency is illuminated, collapse and sublimation of the blanket of days,
harmony and "innocence" of becoming. Thus, the song of time becomes
music and silence, a primordial song floating over the earth, a divine breath
and the phosphorescence of the enigma.
Perhaps in enchantment lies the only possibility for man to save time , its
intimate symbolism and its quiet and luminous essence: the inclusion of the
destiny of the individual in that of the cosmos occurs only in light. of this
enchantment that passes through existence and manifests itself in song, music
or poetic words. This is how time enchants existence and becomes a light
caress: a caress that dries tears, that recognizes the lips of the beloved, that
closes the eyes of the dying; the enchantment is the splendor of the "power of
cosmic fluctuation", the invisible difference of the caress from the shiver that
responds to it: «The profound echo of the caress; a shiver, which responds
from the most secret marrow of the being"I02•
3. The Great Passage
Unbeknownst to even the mirror, he

shed a few human tears.
He cannot suspect that they lament
Everything that deserves tears:
the beauty of Helen, never
seen, the irreparable river of
years, the hand of Jesus in the
crucifix of Rome, the ashes of
Carthage, the Hungarian and Persian nighting
101 Thus Jankélévitch writes of the nostalgic essence of music and its relationship with
becoming: «Has not the nostalgic man perhaps found his language in music and poetry?
Music, an ambiguous "language", does not use univocal terms designed to convey a pre-
established meaning, it is made to express, indeed even to inspire unmotivated feelings.
On the other hand, music, not acting directly on things to transform them but lending a
voice to the powerless past and unhappy irreversibility - music has its natural dimension
in becoming. Music, a temporal discourse, is irreversible like life" (V. Jankélévitch,
Nostalgia , cit., p. 1 62). For other suggestive reflections on enchantment and music cf.
V. Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, tr. it. by E. Lisciani-Petrini, Bompiani, Milan 1 998.
1 02 E. Jiinger, Radiations, in SW 3, p. 349 (tr. it., p. 487).
1 30
the brief joy and the nagging anxiety, the
'
music and the ivory of Virgil, who sang
the labors of the sword, the configurations
of the clouds of each new and unique
sunset and the morning that will be the
evening.
Beyond the door a man made Of solitude,
of love and time, has just cried in Buenos
Aires over all things.
JL Borges, Elegia.
In enchantment, time becomes transparent: in it the majesty of being shines, its

heavenly abundance, its inexhaustible generative power. This enchantment can
fascinate, perhaps, in rare moments, even exalt man, but it certainly does not console
him, it does not console the "irreparable river of years", the slow fading of every sunset,
the tears shed" over all things" in the inconsolable anguish that invades But really .
man at every step, or rather the inconsolable "inhabitant of time", consists of the most
terrible and insidious test that he must go through to get the better of nothing. In this
test, he is questioned about himself, about his origin and his destination; whether he will
be "devoured or crowned" depends on his answer. [ . .. ] Nothingness wants to probe
whether elements live within it that time will never be able to destroy. In this sense
nothing and time are identical: and it is true that the enormous power of nothing gives
great value to time down to its smallest units" 103•
The growing dominion of mechanical time, the multiplication of clocks and the closing
over our heads of the metal vault of the New Titans are the visible signs of the
increasingly sinister resonance of this very ancient question about man104. Responding
to this question constitutes his supreme responsibility : it is a question of deciding from
the time of the nihilistic desert that progressively invades the earth; but this is only
possible if time is experienced as the desert itself in which we find ourselves wandering,
unaware of the paths that lead to the
1 03 E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 336 (tr. it., p. 84).

104 «The devices are the witnesses that time uses to demonstrate its excessive power to the times. If the man
'
responds correctly, the devices lose all magical brilliance and obey his hand. [ . .. ] This is the fundamental
question: a question that time asks man to test his strength. It is directed to the substance. All the elements
staged, empires, enemies, weapons, dangers, are an integral part of the direction that gives life to the
drama. There is no doubt that once again man will be able to tame time, to push nothingness back into his
cave" (ibid., p. 337; Italian translation, ibidem). This apparent Jlingerian 'optimism' is based on the crystalline
structure of time itself - analyzed above - according to which the victory over time is illuminated in time, as
the Eternal returns to it. Below Jiinger focuses on solitude understood as a characteristic way in which the
question about man and his belonging to time resonates: «One of the characteristic elements of the question
is solitude. And truly strange, in an era in which the cult of community flourishes. But seeing that the collective
itself takes on inhuman aspects was an experience spared few" (ibidem).
131
people of the LORD; the more we enter the "no man's land" of the equivalent
space and empty time of technology, the more our anxiety increases and our
thirst becomes burning: «The more time expands, the more time is aware and
tyrannical, and yet also empty down to its smallest fragments, the more
ardent the thirst for superior orders becomes"105. From this thirst comes
every possibility of salvation, and above all the awareness, at first vague and
hesitant and gradually more and more certain, of not only being an "inhabitant
of time", but of being the guardian and depository of an immense wealth: «
Man is infinitely richer than he supposes. His is a richness that no one can
strip him of, and which over the course of the ages always resurfaces,
especially when pain has exposed the depths"106. Whoever accesses such
profound and 'crystalline' richness has crossed the threshold of pain and while
nothingness withdraws into itself, time transforms, changes its substance; a
meta-historical dimension comes forward and the flames of destiny begin to
flicker107. The protagonist of the novel The Glass Bees, at the height of his
crossing of the dazzling "puppet world" of technology, states almost in ecstatic
rapture: «I saw the threshold of the painless world. Time no longer had any
power over those who had passed it. No shivers shook him anymore. He
would have entered like Titus into the destroyed temple, into the incinerated
sancta sanctorum . For him time had its rewards, its crowns ready»108.
But to see the cracks of time and approach its threshold it is necessary,
first of all, to resist the attacks that come from its power, to free oneself from
its suffocating immanence; this is only possible for those who have overcome
the fear of death and are able to sustain its terrible but precious closeness:
freeing themselves from time, "moving to the woods" essentially means "going
towards death"109 and, if necessary , even cross it. Only in this way can we
experience that "surplus of the world" which is also "surplus of time".
Resisting, not only against this time, but against all time, means overcoming
fear, that is, neutralizing the weapon with which time tyrannizes over men1 10.
1 05 lvi, p. 37 1 (tr. it., p. 1 30). Just above Jiinger decisively affirms man's belonging to a supra-
temporal order with clearly religious accents: «It is [ ... ] important to know that every man is
immortal, that within him lies an eternal life, an unexplored land and however inhabited that
even if he himself denies its existence no temporal power will ever be able to take away from
him. For many or even all, the access resembles a well where ruins and debris have been
dumped for millennia. As soon as they are removed, not only the source, but also the ancient
images reappear on the bottom" (ibid., p. 370; tr. it., p. 1 29).
1 06 Ibidem (tr. it., pp. 1 29-1 30).
1 07 But it is precisely in its overcoming by the power of destiny that the meaning of history
emerges, that is, man's encounter with himself, with his "divine power".
108 E. Jiinger, Gliiseme Bienen, cit., pp. 544-545 (Italian translation, p. 208). Similarly in the
concluding passage, already quoted, of the essay on nihilism: «One's chest: here it is [ . .. ]
the center of every desert and ruin. [ ... ] Here everyone, of any condition and rank, conducts
his struggle alone and personally, and with his victory the world changes. If he has the upper
hand, nothing will retreat into itself, abandoning on the shore the treasures that its waves had
submerged. They will compensate for the sacrifices" (E. Jiinger, O ber die Linie, cit., p. 279; tr. it., p.
1 09 E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 331 (tr. it., p. 76).
1 1 0 «The man who manages to gain ground here can impose his freedom in every other area
1 32
Those who have overcome fear can lucidly approach the threshold of
earthly life and thus see the cracks of time that light up in the presence of death:
The light becomes transparent. [ ... ] In the space surrounding death, silence
also filters and spreads: it becomes more intense, bottomless. Dostoevsky
speaks of the "dead silence" of the nocturnal space, where, next to the
murdered Nastasia, the prince and Rogosin remain. The prince is frightened
when a fly begins to buzz. His heart beats with fear. Time becomes abysmal,
as if, in the midst of its rush, it stopped, was shattered. The commotion stops111 •
In the sense of this luminous shattering of time which allows the "evidence"
of the fundamental network of reality, the experience of death becomes a
fundamental 'existential' experience1 12; the only one, perhaps, which
allows man to respond to the extreme provocation of nothingness, since,
through it, we perceive the immortal aspect of time, the temporal action of
the atemporal1 13• One of the ways in which this action is exercised in
phenomenal world is that of the shining of unity in multiplicity. The merit of
having paid attention to this emergence of the atemporal in time is to be
ascribed to the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition of which Jtinger is, certainly,
one of the greatest representatives of the twentieth century. He believed he
could carry out this 'research' of the timeless above all through his tireless
activity as an insect collector. What fascinated him was not so much the
beauty of the specimens collected in his "subtle hunts", nor the the usefulness
of the species analyzed, nor the ephemeral joy of knowing what is still
unknown; as much as the search for the mystery that hides behind multiplicity, of
governed by fear, and overthrow the giants, whose weapon is terror" (ibid., p. 333; tr. it., p.
79). Overcoming the fear of death also means experiencing an unspeakable communion with it,
immersing oneself to the depths of the horror of life and maintaining, however, a candid purity:
«Death. There are always some few, too noble for life. They seek solitude in white. The nobility of
these beings, who clean themselves with the light of filth, often stands out beautifully on their death
masks. What I love in man is his essence beyond death, and his commonality with it. Love here is
nothing more than an opaque reflection" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 309; tr. it., p. 78).
111 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 465 (tr. it., p. 36).

1 1 2 According to Heidegger, only in the anticipation of death can one access authentic existence and
reach one's own time and destiny : cf. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, cit., §§ 46-53.
1 1 3 Sparks of the timeless are present, like seeds, in every instant of time: «Just as earthly fire is
everywhere and not only in volcanoes, so there is something timeless in time, something in which
a desire for a particular genre - precisely in the current era, in which everything must be transformed
in time" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 278; tr. it., p. 258); and just as terrestrial fire is preserved,
albeit to a different extent, in every fragment of matter and can, at any moment, act again, so the
atemporal exerts its effects on time, but its emanations "arrive, as the last days of Pompeii,
unexpected; their rhythm is unknown" (ibidem).
1 14 «In the same way, the text of a great author is made up of letters, signs, sentences, paragraphs,
and someone reads it without understanding its composition. But the composition itself makes a mark
1 33
«In an hour of the night, surrounded by "papers blackened by smoke", sinking
into a fragment of formed matter: it's like knocking on a door. But it is also a
way of forgetting time, not only our time, but time as such, with all that is
unpleasant in it" 1 15•
We can imagine the relationship between the temporal and the atemporal
which constitutes, according to Jtinger, the originally 'polemical' scope of all
phenomena, as an alternation of different states in the substance of time: in
the moment of creation - meaning every creation , from that of the stars to
artistic creation - an extreme concentration of the timeless1 16 takes place,
while in the 'stereoscopic' experiences of pain, intoxication and death1 17, time
retreats, its substance thins out, leaving the timeless shine through. The
movement that leads rhythmically from time to the timeless and vice versa is a
movement of pulsation: it is the original movement1 18 that governs the
relationships between the immobile center and the periphery, between
stillness and movement 1 19• This original impulse which dominates the entire
history of the Earth, also includes within itself that movement of increasing
acceleration, as mentioned above, which characterizes the final era of
technological civilization, and which, now, is configured simply as a systole of
this cosmic pulsation which, as a vibration and echo of the origin, remains in all bein
towards something completely different. When the reader has understood this, he interrupts reading
to abandon himself to the joy of a silent understanding" (E. Jiinger, Subtile Jagden, cit., p. 85; tr. it.,
p. 80). 1 1 5 lvi,
p. 86 (Italian translation, ibidem).
1 1 6 «In the place where the timeless transforms itself in time (it happens at every instant: "let there
be"!), one must imagine there exists an absolute concentration. [ ... ] It escapes any measurement
and, in the same way, it must be recognized that even the movement from which each path starts
carries within itself an unimaginable concentration. By stating that the path is more important than
the goal, we think of the memory of a beginning in which they were identical" (E. Jiinger, Die
Schere, cit. , p. 602; tr. it., p. 1 87). By destination and path here we mean the timeless and the time
which, therefore, both derive from an original indistinction which, thinking above all of the creator
god of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we could define as 'divine'.
1 1 7 «Inebriation brings you close to time - not only in this or that ephemeral cell of it, but to its mystery,
and therefore borders on death» (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit. , p. 93 ; tr. it., p. 96).
1 1 8 «The first movement, like the one that pulsates from the point to the circle and from the circle to the
point [ ... ]. Time is still a sea without shores, which offers space for everything that may later
appear, and also for what will remain hidden" (E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 602; tr. it., p .
1 87). The movement of cosmic pulsation which, like the pulsation of our heart, passes through two
complementary phases separated by a moment of suspension and indistinction, remains in its
cosmic stability; this is what Jiinger calls Eternal and to which he refers when he takes up the
following sentence by Rivarol on immobile time: «The great mistake of men lies in believing that
time passes. Time is the shore that seems to move while we flow in front of it" (E. Jiinger, Rivarol
(1956), in SW 14, p. 298; Italian translation by B.
Lotti and M. Monaldi, Rivarol. Maxims of a conservative, Guanda, Parma 1 992, p. I 07).
1 1 9 For Schumacher, Jiinger's aphoristic writing, like that of Nietzsche, would be the expression of the
tension between timelessness and time: cf. H. Schumacher, "Die Uhr schliigt keinem Gliicklichen '',
cit., p. 342.
1 34
Among the variety of possible movements there is that of the pulsation which alternates from the beginning to the end:
each path can be retraced on the way back. Every separation is followed by an attraction, like a regret. A loss will be
compensated, by a birth or a death.
In the largest beings as well as in the smallest ones a pulsating force is preserved, the motion of the origin continues
to vibrate in them. In the cosmos, which rises and sets, time pronounces its prayer, as in every sunflower
1 20
•
In this cosmic pulsating movement, from which all the cyclical movements of nature
descend, a sort of "regeneration" of time occurs: it is as if, by immersing itself in the
timeless, time itself draws new nourishment for a new history. As the Greeks already
believed, the cosmos regenerates itself from time to time by immersing itself in fire. The
material begins to fall apart, it is now worn out; changes and rotations cannot help" 121
•
For Jtinger this process of decomposition of matter and thinning of time that precedes
regeneration is already underway: the Worker walks on the edge of time. A growing
vanishing accompanies this transfiguration of titanic time and the nihilistic reduction is
interpreted by Jiinger as a spiritualization - we could say today a virtualization - of the
earth.
It manifests itself, first of all, as destruction, leveling, whitewashing, invasion of
powerful and increasingly uncontrollable energies that uproot from the depths every
traditional way of inhabiting the earth.
At the 'turning point' of time, a sort of spectralization of the earth takes place and a
'mortification' of existence which leads, through the torment of
1 20 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 603 (tr. it., p. 1 88).

121 E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., p. 524 (tr. it., p. 148). Jiinger often assimilates the
pulsation movement mentioned above with the rotation of cyclical time, but while in the first
case it is a movement that includes the center and the circle, in the second the rotation
only concerns the points of the circumference. However, the center remains the disturbing
source that generates every movement: «However, there is something frightening in the
image of the eternal turning of the wheel - the question of which is the axis around which it
turns, or, wanting to stick to the similarity of the dress, of whichever body is wrapped in the
changing fabric of time. In this regard, only religions are able to tell us something
satisfactory, and this is one of the reasons why it is not possible to ignore them" (ibi-dem).
In many traditional civilizations this periodic regeneration of time and therefore of the world
and of life is accomplished through a repetition of the cosmogonic act: the new birth occurs,
that is, through a «restoration, even momentary, of mythical and primordial time , of "pure"
time, that of the "instant" of creation. Every new year is a re-taking of time at its beginning,
that is, a repetition of the cosmogony" (M. Eliade, The myth of the eternal return, cit., p. 60).
The reactualization of the cosmogonic act that occurs in the myth therefore allows the
regeneration of creation and consequently causes the abolition of every form of history.
But this repetition also consists in an annulment of concrete time and in a periodic
destruction of what exists: «The death of man and that of humanity are indispensable for
their regeneration. Any form, because it exists as such and lasts, weakens and wears out;
to regain strength, it must be reabsorbed into the amorphous, even if for just an instant, it
must be reintegrated into the primordial humanity from which it arose; in other words, to re-
enter the "chaos" (on the cosmic level), the "orgy" (on the social level), the "darkness" (for
the seeds), the "water" (baptism on the human level, "Atlantis" on a historical level)" (ibid.,
p. 90).
1 35
loneliness and abandonment, to a progressive regression into the
undifferentiated; but all this constitutes the necessary initiation for approaching
the Wall of Time122:
The anguish in the desert of the world, the loneliness in the cold of the world. The
whitewashing, the weakening, the monotony, the decay. All this is simply
abandonment. Everything must perish [ ... ]. The surrounding environment must
become uniform, if everything is to be uniformly captured in something unique. The descen
!' undifferentiated. The mountain, even that of our era based on the technique and
the leveling theories conforming to it, prepares the approach, which must present
itself first as distancing, then as torment and waiting123 •
Our existence as inhabitants of the West, of the land of the evening, is

inscribed in this "intermediate time" in which the uncertainty about the future is
greatest: we find ourselves wandering near the meridian of nihilism, where it is
increasingly difficult becomes «distinguish between what rises and what sinks»124•
1 22 «Forgetfulness and annulment precede initiation» (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 52; tr. it., p. 60).
This process also leads to an increase in nihilistic tension and therefore pain: «Initiation involves
creating a void, while the tension grows.
In the end even a grain of sand causes pain: it falls as if on the stretched skin of a drum. The
house is painted. Where the new arrives there must be emptiness. The tomb is also whitewashed.
Dying is part of initiation. It is the crisis that precedes the transformation [ . . . ] Death must have
passed through, must have consecrated the house. The cyclone that announces itself through a
growing depression cannot be avoided, neither in fact, nor on a moral and intellectual level - it does
not matter whether it is a personal or cosmic misfortune, or the end of the world. Only in this way
is it possible to overcome both. The road ahead leads beyond the zero point, leads beyond the line,
beyond the wall of time, and through it" (E. Jiinger, An der 'Zeitmauer, cit., pp. 544-545; tr. it ., pp.
171-172).
1 23 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 277 (tr. it., p. 257). The growing tension of waiting accompanies
both the typical fear of the end of times and the restlessness aroused by great beginnings: both
shed light and shadow on the epochal turning point we are experiencing. The certainty of imminent
and universal catastrophes alternates with the sensation of experiencing the pangs of initiation.
The only evident sign of this "intermediate time" is «the progressive growth of monotony, its
hammering and drumming, its continual progress. The world is filled with clocks, it itself becomes a
clockwork mechanism; time becomes more precious and more unsustainable" (E. Jiinger, An der
'Zeitmauer, cit., p. 539; tr. it., p. 1 65).
1 24 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 277 (tr. it., p. 257). The intermediate time indicates a return to the
undifferentiated of the historical substance which announces the birth of new figures and new
orders, such as the disappearance of the qualities of matter in the transitions of state: «Before the
figures arrive, something must be happened in the undifferentiated. At the zero point the particles
that formed the crystals and the particles that are about to form them are not only similar, but even
the same. The weft, in this intermediate time, extends forming a fabric whose fiber is devoid of
quality. Then it is recomposed according to new models. In the points where the fabric is devoid of
quality, not only the difference of materials disappears, but also that of directions - that of above
and below, of high and low, of right and left - and even that of life and death » (ibid., p. 311; tr. it., p.
287). On the undifferentiated cf. also there, pp. 299-
300 (Italian translation, pp. 276-277). Jiinger believes that the earth periodically goes through these
phases of re-gression to the elemental, of bleaching and desertification; interpreting the Nietzschean
doctrine of the eternal return, he even speaks of a periodic return of nothingness, which brings with
it anguish but also unprecedented hopes: «It is nothingness that returns. [ . . . ] Everything seems
1 36
As in a narrow and suffocating walkway, we have the impression of marching for a
very long time, one behind the other, without being able to see each other's faces
or hold each other's hands, in the deepest darkness, attracted by a blind force that
nullifies our will. : «In the narrowest passages, at the frontiers of time, freedom is
claimed by destiny»125• This ordeal is the "intermediate time": in it vanishing
reaches its maximum level and presence declines towards absence. Taking up
some verses of Novalis, Jtinger interprets the "intermediate time" as a short
pilgrimage, which is followed by completion, that is, the Great Passage beyond
time126• But the "intermediate time" is also the time of
initiatory sleep which captures the individual has just crossed the threshold of
the forest127: this "taste of death" which is sleep, constitutes the only paradoxical
form of action128 that is permitted to man in the intermediate time, precisely
because sleep is the opposite principle of the will129• Only in sleep - and in the
dreams which are its gems -
that thinning of time is accomplished which creates the void necessary for the
Passage to take place130•
possible, now - hence the anguish, the waiting, the hopes. The grand;. ;;cleaning, whitewashing,
give their contribution. [ ... ] Here there is no exchange; the time of princes is over. Cults are also
moving towards their end - on the entire planet, not just in the West. These are times in which
fathers are overthrown, times of revolts and demythologizations. The cleansing is part of the
celebration and its preparations - the old image of the world must collapse before the new one can
arise" (ibid., p. 323; tr. it., p. 297).
1 25 E. Jiinger, An der 'Zeitmauer, cit., pp. 564-565 (Italian translation, p. 1 94). The renunciation of
individual freedom is, however, only the necessary prelude to access a superior and luminous
'vastness' beyond the Wall of time: «However, when time expands and the waters subside, the
constraint diminishes. [ ... ] Through rapids and cataracts the salmon ascends the waters up to
the mountain lakes. It loses weight, it also loses its dazzling color, but there is a new meaning
waiting for it up there. Going upstream, abandoning the sea and its freedom, would not be
successful, it would be inconceivable, if the lake and its freedom were not already there to act
magnetically" (ibid., p. 565; ibidem ) .
1 26 Cf. E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 240 (tr. it., p. 222).
1 27 Cfr. E. Jiinger, Der Waldgang, cit., p. 3 1 3 (tr. it., p. 51).
1 28 Jiinger takes up the famous Heraclitean sentence which attributes a secret power to sleep:
«Sleepers are the creators of the things that happen in the world and help to produce
them» (Heraclitus, A 98, Italian ed. edited by G. Colli, La Greek wisdom, volume III, Adelphi, Milan 1980,
1 29 See E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p. 388 (tr. it., p. 1 37). Sleep, as an anticipation of death,
has an extraordinary importance for spiritual life: «the deeper it is; the more the forces of the
league of its fusion are manifested: and here are the prophecies, the warnings, the healings, the
contacts with the spirits and with the deceased. Even the refreshment that comes from these
depths can sometimes be completely unusual. [ ... ] Illnesses end with a restful sleep that frees us
like a bath from the waste of evil. [ ... ] Today all this is almost foreign to us; in our cities sleep
never touches the sphere where one is enticed by rich prey, and it is frightening to think that for
the same reason, perhaps even death loses its fecundity" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 2, p . 1
92; tr. it., pp. 364-365).
1 30 This is how Borges depicts the unraveling effect of sleep: «The night imposes its magical effort on
us. Undoing the universe, / the endless ramifications of effects and causes, which are lost in that
bottomless abyss, time. I The night wants me to forget tonight / Your name, your ancestors and
your blood, I every human word and every tear, I what could
1 37
Everything is lost in this "whitewashing" of consciousness: it is the same
advancing desert of nihilism viewed with a "stereoscopic" eye in the light of
the timeless which announces itself in its empty silence 131• In the void, in
the abandonment, in the desert time breaks like a wave on the rocks of the
Eternal; but it is precisely here, in its disappearance, that, for a moment, the
intimate essence of time shines: its being a gift of presence. Only in
abandonment 132 does its essential transparency illuminate. This
abandonment of time occurs in that supreme agreement of movement and
stillness, of time and timelessness that we described above as cosmic
pulsation. In an attempt to penetrate the mystery of this experience of
approaching the Wall of Time, Jtinger also uses another image, taken from a
verse by his brother Friedriech Georg: "the melody and the instrument are
one thing". It is here that the musical aspect of this supreme harmony of time
and eternity emerges; it is here that the 'escape' of time is revealed,
understood as an invisible and very powerful harmonic connection133: «In
the meeting of melody and harmony, which we can call the commissure
[ Fiigung], time no longer plays any role>; 1 34• The melody of time accords
with the harmony of the timeless, the history of the earth, with its epochal mutation
Whoever, in exhilaration or in pain, has experienced the 'syncope' of time,
forever carries its mark on him like an aura: the "awakening" that he has
experienced in returning to time fills him with a profound happiness, since the
threshold he crossed is that "crack in the elemental" from which
teach you about your vigil, / the illusory point of the geometers, / the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
I the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves, I the cheek on the pillow, the freshness I of the new sheet . . .
I the empires, the Caesars and Shakespeare I and, even more difficult, what you love"
(JL Borges, Sleep , in All Works, vol. II, cit., p. 1217).
131 The intermediate time is also the time of listening full of tension, of the "silence of the held breath", the time
in which the first disturbing signs of reaching the Wall of Time begin to appear and its call becomes
intense : «We are faced with one of the rare pauses in which modern man, left in the lurch by his
inexhaustible energy, reaches the state of inactivity and inaction, a place of exhaustion. We are not listening
to something unknown; thus we listen, through confusion and wild hunting, to what has always been known
[ . .. ]. This is also the meaning of going to the wall of time and of the investigations that it implies. However,
there are other signals that resonate here - even if initially not distinguishable, at all, from that call that so
terribly attracts" (E. Jiinger, An der Zeitmauer, cit., p. 580; tr. it., p. 2 1 1 ).
1 32 This genitive is to be understood both in a subjective sense, as the withdrawal of time at the peak of the
acceleration of the technique, and objective, in the sense of the experiences of dilation and suspension of
time which are realized in pain, in eros and intoxication.
1 33 The reference to the invisible harmony is more powerful than any obvious agreement that re-
sounds in the fragments of Heraclitus.
1 34 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 234 (tr. it., p. 216). It is precisely from the abolition of a rigid separation
between melody and harmony that Bach's art of fugue was born; the spiral structure of the fugal
compositions can be considered a very faithful model of the cosmic pulsation with which, as has been said,
time and eternity, history and myth alternate in the various phases of life of the universe, but also of temporal
movement that takes place in the vicinity of the Wall of Time.
1 38
every presence arises. The absence from time, which Jiinger experienced in the
use of drugs, becomes the only way to enter the regions of the timeless1 35• In
the attempt to cross the threshold of time - whose ultimate fulfillment will only be
achieved in death - on the path which leads to the Passage, we experience the
agreement that holds together absence and presence and which Jiinger names
with the philosophical term Wesen. Taking inspiration from an "approach" to the
threshold of time caused by intoxication, Jiinger writes thus:
What happened to the essence [Wesen] during those absences whose duration was as little determinable as
their content? What is it actually! "'es-sere" [ Wesen] ? [ ... ] Wesen must [ ... ] express more of an activity than a
state.
Absence and presence [das Ab- und Anwesende] are splits of being [des Seins]. Wesen has temporal power, Sein
extratemporal . [ ... ] The light is present in the shadow, the word in the silence, the woman in the man. But the
absent [das A bwesende] borders on the Wesen and is therefore at the same time "present" [anwesend]. If he
distances himself from it, he runs the risk of ending up like the "man who had lost his shadow"
1 36
•
In this sense, the statement, already cited, that "time is nothing more than a
form of absence" 137 is understandable; time would become, in its intimate
dynamic of revealing being-present, a very mobile threshold, a fleeting image of
the timeless, a luminous allegory of mystery: an "approach" to the Great
Passage. For Jiinger, the entire existence is a continuous process of
rapprochement: in it "small passages" prefigure the Great Passage beyond time,
just as the separations we experience during life are only the signs of the extreme
abandonment that we experience. at-
1 35 «Many times I woke myself up on nights like that, when I returned after long absences. And
there was always an inexhaustible happiness in those awakenings in which what was left
returned to life and the traveler recognized his homeland [Heimat] after having distanced
himself from the frontiers of time" (ibid., p. 235; tr. it. , p. 217).
1 36 lvi, p. 235 (tr. it., pp. 21 7-218). The absent is also that which, in the moment of the Passage,
will come to complete the presence; in this sense Jiinger rereads the religious concept of
the resurrection of the dead: «Deeply immersed in sleep, the dead waits through the millennia
for the absent to come to complete him. What is to come is not only a new life, but also a
superior life, since even the living had a premonition of it, even if only in a fleeting and
allegorical form. So in the embrace and in the prayer" (ibid., p. 240; tr. it., p.
22 1 ). In this sense the problem of the other side is the problem of approaching the absent,
of what is missing. Even Heidegger, in his criticism of traditional ontology, arrived at a
temporal interpretation of Wesen in a sense similar to that proposed here by Jiinger: cf. M.
Heidegger, Introduction to metaphysics, cit. The relationship between being and time, central
to all Heideggerian thought, is understood by Jiinger as the maximum exemplification of the
depth-surface, mask-face relationship, which illuminates in its transparency only in the
moment of passage, without that man can never completely reveal it: «Being uses time and
times as masks, but we cannot get to the bottom of it because, when we take off its mask,
the mask remains in our hands. Already a new fashion, a new face deceives us, dazzles
us" (ibid., p. 330; tr. it., pp. 304-305).
1 37 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 239 (tr. it., p. 22 1 ).
1 39
tends in death138• New "paths of exploration" open up after each passage, be it that
of birth or death, new abilities and new senses appear with which we begin to
perceive the shapes and colors of the new world that has arisen around us us, a new
vision lights up139• Every Great Passage can be imagined as the entrance into a
new home, but it is not we who cross the threshold; rather, in the temporal ecstasy
that precedes the passage, the reverse process takes place: the initiatory emptying,
the whitening in which the nihilistic reduction culminates generates an exhaustion of
the ego which, at the Wall of Time, becomes expropriation, extreme exposure. The
individuality of the ego is overcome; only a welcoming space remains for the coming
of what is announced in the Passage: «Entrance [Eintritt] also always means the
arrival of that which enters [Eintretendes]»
140
•
The coming of an unspeakable fullness, which can only occur in the most desolate
void, is typical of the "immense" moment which already resonates in the words of the
Nietzschean Zarathustra141, in which past and future meet142 and merge
1 38 But already in the small passages of life the metaphysical sense of the passage is manifested;
this concept has its counterpart in the religious field, in that of conversion, in the sense of
spiritual convergence towards a divine source; various metaphors express this idea of the
passage, always arduous and risky: the narrow door through which the Messiah will have to
pass, the eye of the needle, the crack in the wall. Jiinger, in this regard, on 27 March 1944,
after commenting on a passage from Paul, wrote as follows: «We must also see the slit, similar
to that of the hourglass; while the grains descend towards the point of greatest narrowness, of
greatest friction, their tendency is different from that which they have after passing it.
The first phase is under the law of concentration, narrowness, total mobilization; the second
under that of definitive adjustment, of enlargement. Yet they are always the same atoms whose
flow creates the picture" (E. Jiinger, Strahlungen, in SW 3, p., cit., p. 24 1; tr. it., p. 402).
1 39 «When the umbilical cord is cut, with a blade or with the teeth, and the newborn breathes for
the first time, a Great Passage occurs, which is combined with the opening of paths of
exploration. When the dying person stops breathing, he too, with more or less great
preparation, must face a Great Transition. It has continuously been assumed that at that
moment he finds a contact to set off along new paths of exploration. It is a problem that
concerns faith, not knowledge. Even a heartbreaking pain, the loss of a loved one, a great
love, a success, an epileptic seizure can be joined by the irruption of new views and new
abilities. [ ... ] Let's then mint coins of precious metal. There are numerous depictions of it: the
scales fall from the eyes, the tongue loosens, the spirit is infused, it descends from the clouds
or rises from the sea. Then a voice resounds: "Listen" or "Look and look again!" or even
"Come"!» (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 53; tr. it., pp. 6 1-62). 140 lvi, p. 29 1 (tr. it., p. 269).
Jiinger also describes as a
Great Passage the epochal turning point which is already announced with the bursting of the Worker
onto the scene of the world and which is achieved with the progressive emergence of
elementary powers: «A Great Passage manifests itself with the enrichment of forces which
certainly they continued to act in art and history, without however appearing there in their
purity. Cosmic radiation becomes more intense as it rises from the depths" (ibid., p. 298; tr. it.,
p. 275).
141 See F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, cit. and the related commentary by G. Pasqualotto.
On the immense moment cf. also K. Schlechta, Nietzsche and the great meriggio, edited by
UM Ugazio, Guida, Napoli 1 981 and AA.VV., Crucialità del tempo. Essays on the Nietzschean
conception of time, edited by M. Cacciari, Liguori, Naples 1980.
142 «Past and future are concentrated [ ... ] in the enormous tension of the moment. It is the bridge:
1 40
no. The Great Passage that leads out of time as such makes temporal
ecstasies resonate in a single harmony: in the 'escape' of time the "happiness
of full noon" in which all clocks stop is illuminated. One of these moments is
that of death143; the solemn power of the hour of death derives from the
passage that takes place in it and from its allowing the a-temporal source of
life to shine through: «There, at the customs station, in the anxious wait, the
Leitmotiv of life resonates once again»
144• The moment is the form of the void, the white figure of nothingness,
but, at the same time, it is the vessel of the eternal. At the edge of time on
which the man who suffers, who loves and who dies walks, the life that remains,
this 'remnant' that is life, appears as a fleeting, splendid and moving instant,
but fragile like an aspen sprout. - seated by ice145. The moment, the glance
is the cup, the 146 is the[Augenblick]
wine. presence [Gegenwart]
In the moment in which the world ends, sinking into the timeless, the
individual reaches an enormous power, incomparable to any strong individual
will: everything around can happen, but the individual remains imperturbable
like Archimedes who traces its circles in the sand while Syracuse is in flames.
In these moments the Eternal flourishes:
“Eternal” is just another way of saying moment. When the wave of time
flows back, what happens is comparable to a great exhalation - the word
includes both the liberation of time and the liberation from time. The flower's
recipe-colon has now been emptied. This means: the condition for the return
of the unnamed who wants to become word147 •
time flows underneath" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 3 1 9; tr. it., p. 294). This moment, which
for Jiinger is always also the hour in which destiny reveals itself, is the abolition of time but also
a return to its origin: «It is still close to the origin, where everything is still possible, where the
path does not he is still separated from the goal. The succession of moments has not yet begun;
time, like a stretched bow, still has no direction, no quality. It is a void, which every sort of course,
at the same time, passes through [ . . . ]. Even the individual, who sinks into this timeless instant,
becomes aware of how his own path has its beginning and end here" (E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit.,
pp. 514-5 15; tr. it., p . 90).
143 Jiinger repeatedly recalls the ancient tradition that at the moment of the death of a family member
all the clocks in the house must be stopped.
144 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 320 (tr. it., p. 294).
145 Jiinger quotes some splendid verses by Flavia Belange: «"Where death has its home I with
dances and conversations I and the love of the bride I still warms the bed I sumptuously adorned
for a party I in which the flutes - /it's the same life as before I'm just a brief moment"»
(E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 62; tr. it., p. 69).
146 Here by presence we do not mean that ontological characteristic by which entities persist stably
in their consistency, but rather the timely emergence of intense spiritual energies, as, for example,
in the expression "having presence of mind". On the moment and presence cf. also E. Jiinger,
Anniihrungen, cit., pp. 65-66 (Italian translation, p. 72). 147 lvi, pp. 323-324
(Italian translation, p. 298). Death is the supreme threshold where the moment comes together
with eternity.
141
In the ebb of time the pure vein of happening emerges, the silence teeming with
life of the timeless emerges. Having touched this depth of being then radiates over
all time and secretly influences the history of man.
In the astonished void of the immense moment, energies and constellations of
thoughts and feelings are generated which will then fuel entire historical cycles.
Enigmatically Hinger notes that in these timeless moments it is "the strength of love"
that grows. Love must be understood here as that metaphysical desire to cross the
sacred threshold of time, through the encounter with the other, which leads us on
the path of the Great Passage and of rapprochement, thus realizing the supreme
dignity of existence. Human. In this sense one could think of love as that extreme
and immensely lacerating gesture of abandoning time on the uncertain, if luminous,
path of the mystery of the Other, of the other from time .
The strength of love would therefore dominate both moments that precede the Great
Passage: that of eviction, emptying and that of the approach148 to the Door of
Time. It usually appears to us like a mirror, giving us the image of ourselves 149
and of other times, of other times. Like a crystal, it reveals its transparency only to
those who approach it from a specific direction: in pain, in love and in death, time
becomes transparent, its dark gravity vanishes and, as if from a "broken shirt", our
being and our destiny shines forth: «The door is like a mirror. [ ... ] But here it
becomes transparent. [ ... ] This or that destiny is not about to enter, with its
transitory happiness or unhappiness. Time is now being drawn like a curtain. Not
this or that destiny, destiny in summa, destiny casts its shadow like a mountain" 1
50.
We get closer, walking; we already foresee the imminence of the Passage: «the
narrow path, the shady valley narrow, become the bridge of Sirat, which divides time
and eternity like the blade of a razor»151; the luminous portal already appears: time
becomes wave and light, and the bridge of the Great Passage is made of light. The
closer we get to it, the more the surrounding environment, the landscapes of
technology, the decline of history and nature are transfigured [verkliiren sich]; in
them radiates the light of the Absolute to which our steps are directed:
It is only possible to get closer to the Absolute , staying in it is impossible.

Everything that we attribute to the past - grandiose temples and pyramids, convents and
1 48 For Jiinger the essence of knowledge lies in the approach to the mystery: «An approach is
hidden in knowledge - knowledge leads close to the miracle, without ever reaching it, and
beyond what has a name. If, as in our time, knowledge extends to assume gigantic
dimensions, the enigmas do not decrease, but increase: the number of points of contact
with the inexplicable, with the miracle grows" (E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 326; tr. it., p.
300).
1 49 Time, as a mirror of the soul, is a warning to the transience of existence; the same warning
of oriental wisdom that, according to Jiinger, emanates from every fragment of nature: "this
is you!".
1 50 E. Jiinger, Anniihrungen, cit., p. 407 (tr. it., p. 370).
151 lvi, p. 408 (tr. it., pp. 370-37 1 ).
1 42
Gothic cathedrals, republics and kingdoms of other eras - is reflected on the curtain itself. The same thing
also for future paradises, for the perfection of technology, for the universal state, without disease and
without wars, for nuclear fission, for interplanetary travel. [ ... ] We are approaching, certainly only
temporarily, the immeasurable wealth in which we have a share and which has always been promised to
us. In the temporal condition, his vision would be unbearable for us. But the approach can lead to
transparency 152•
This transparency is already announced in the changing physiognomic features , in gestures

and actions, in faces and works of art. Here, in front of the luminous threshold of time and in front
of the great arch of the supreme passage, the stereoscopic vision of the crystalline structure of
being reaches its ultimate fulfillment. The dream landscapes of our cities, the nervous and metallic
face of the Worker, the elusive step of the Anarch, the disturbing seething of the elementary, the
festive flight of the beetle, the spiritual eye that meditates on the enigma, the footprints of sand,
the stone that was fire, «the pendulum that time has stopped» 153: everything here becomes like
transparent crystal, a luminous passage; the entire cosmos lies before our eyes like a hieroglyph.
In the symbolic nomenclature of the being that unfolds in the light of the Passage, our
abandoned hand welcomes, as in the central scene of Michelangelo's Last Judgment , the nod
and the offer of the crystalline omni-power of the visible and the spiritual body rises again in the
clear revelation of the in-visible: «And when the worms destroy this body, in my flesh I will see
God» (Job 1 9, 25).
Of all the cathedrals, then, the only one remains that of two hands meeting:
The West and the Generations.

The days of which no one was the first.
The coolness of the water in Adam's throat.
The ordered Paradise.
The eye that is deciphering the darkness.
The love of wolves at dawn.
The word. The hexameter. The mirror.
The Tower of Babel and pride.
The moon that the Chaldeans looked at.
The countless sands of the Ganges.
Chuang-Tzu and the butterfly that dreams of him.
The golden apples of the islands.
The steps of the wandering labyrinth.
Penelope's infinite fabric.
The circular time of the Stoics.
The coin in the mouth of the dead.
1 52 lvi, p. 65 (tr. it., p. 72).

1 53 See JL Borges, Cose, in Tutti le Opere, vol. Il, cit., p. 485.
1 43
The weight of the sword on the scales.
Every drop of water in the hourglass.
The eagles, the pomp, the legions.
Caesar on the morning of Pharsaglia.
The shadow of the crosses above the earth.
Algebra and the Persian chessboard.
The traces of long migrations.
The conquest of kingdoms with the sword.
The incessant compass. The open sea.
The echo of the clock in the memory.
The king executed with the cleaver.
The infinite dust that was armies.
The voice of the nightingale in Denmark.
The scrupulous stroke of the calligrapher.
The face of the suicide in the mirror.
The card of the cheater. The greedy gold.
Cloud shapes in the desert.
Ogni arabesque of the kaleidoscope.
Every remorse and even every tear.
All these things I dreamed For our hands
to meet154 •
1 54 JL Borges, The causes, in All Works, vol. The, cit., pp. 1 1 05; 1 1 07.
1 44

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Кристаллография Невидимого. Боль, Эрос и Темпоральность у Эрнста Юнгера

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Machine Translated by Google

© 2002 - Mimesis Cultural Association

Towpath Nav. Pavese 34 - 20136 Milan

For emergencies: 347/4254976.

and website: www.mimesisedizioni.it All rights reserved.

to my grandparents, by their light

I. "TERRA VINTA GIVES US THE STARS" - THE PAIN

Il. "YOUR WONDERFUL CARESES, MY SISTER AND BRIDE" - FRIENDSHIP

III. "A BROKEN MESH IN THE NET" - THE ESCAPE OF TIME

References to the volumes of Ji.inger's complete works (Siimtliche Werke, Klett-

sw 1 Volume 1: Diary I: The First World War, 1 978.

Time is poor not only because God is dead, but

M. Heidegger, Why poets?

What your fear invokes left written will not be

labyrinth that your steps Ordained. The

Silent friend of the many Femen, feel

In the gleam of the dark bell towers let

Be at the crossroads of your

power, their strange encounter.

Let's say someone was untied and

the cosmic-existential resonance of depth phenomena the , in front of whose abysmal

Stereoscopic vision is, therefore, at the same time, distancing and a

22 E. Jiinger, The Adventurous Heart, cit., p. 1 99 (tr. it., pp. 27-28).

picking up its signals! 29

30 lvi, p. 13 (tr. it., p. 1 0 1 ).

transfiguring power it is necessary, therefore, to exercise the stereoscopic gaze

It is through this superior trigonometry that the moon can be considered

47 lvi, p. 22 (tr. it., p. 1 1 1 ).

On 18 July 1942 Jiinger noted in his Paris diary:

In other words, the idea of redemption

59 Cf. i'!fra, no. I, §§ 2; 7.

Where no value stands the test, the

I. Dionysus torn apart

The experience of pain belongs to the crucial experiences of human

IO F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, cit., p. 253.

2. The dream of analgesia

14 E. Jiinger, Uber the Blacksmith, cit., p. 1 45 (tr. it., p. 1 39).

18 E. Jiinger, The Worker, cit., p. 55 (tr. it., p. 47).

Everywhere spreads "the sensation of being exposed to the disintegrating

Bourgeois culture, in its demeaning obsession with security, had paradoxically

29 E. Jiinger, In Stahlgewittern ( 1 920), in SW I, p. 11 (Italian translation by G. Zampaglione, Nella

4. The Mask of the Titans

But the lrrsaal I Helps, like slumber, and makes

In every stone, in every grain of sand, a

55 E. Jiinger, Die Schere, cit., p. 596 (tr. ill., p. 1 80).

59 «Technique is our uniform» (ibid., p. 1 74; tr. it., 1 68).

In the world of the Worker, however, the ritual is replaced by a repetitive

Anyone who has not experienced the

69 E. Jiinger, Over the Schmerz, cit., p. 191 (tr. it., p. 1 85).

happen even in the heart of the activism of technology:

It is in avoidance that freedom manifests itself in our time, in the individual's

, was born in-

91 lvi, p. 101 (tr. it., p. 97).

I'm wasteful of waste, Qoheleth said, waste

Like a flower falling into the abyss.

Sometimes, holding one of these beings in the palm of my hand, I wondered

«Hieroglyphics on a burnished sheet at the edges of which the flame of the

1 00 E. Jiinger, The Spanish Moonhorn, cit., p. 53 (tr. it., p. 2 1 1 ).

nothingness? To attempt an answer to this, which is the fundamental question of

of Nigromontanus in the novel Auf den Marmorklippen ( 1 939), in SW 1 5, pp. 300-301

The becoming of nature unfolds like a succession of waves in which the

and invulnerable figure.

1 24 Here Jiinger's profound Platonism is revealed, to which, in my opinion, sufficient attention

a strong religious component clearly flourishes which refers to the Jewish-Christian