ITT: post authors who were great aesthetes / have unique prose...

Holy shit, they look like mirror images.

Jean Raspail

>In the name of imagination, which always invents a pretext for itself, since the most gifted of men grow bored between past and future, between memory and intuition, and burn to hasten the course of events...the dazzling flight forward.

Czesław Miłosz

>No one lives alone; he is speaking with those who are no more, their lives are incarnated in him; he is retracing their footsteps, climbing the stairs to the edifice of history. Their hopes and defeats, the signs left behind, be it a single letter carved in stone - here is the way to peace, to mitigate judgements he imposed on himself. Happiness is given to those who have the gift. Never and nowhere will they feel alone, as they are comforted by the memory of all who have struggled, like themselves, for something unattainable.

Great idea for a thread, though I only liked the von Rezzori and maybe the Ottlik quotes, and not even those can be said to be particularly great prose stylists. Do continue though.

We need a image for these writers, though I don't completely understand how you're using the term aesthetes for some of them. I've never read Junger, but just with casual references I can't imagine him valuing beauty above all else, even if his prose are fine.

great aesthetes apparently means glum...?

In my view, this idea of "aesthete", at least in the context of this thread, is less the exaltation of beauty above all, than an innate sensitivity to what "is", being able to perceive the elusive nature of meaning, feeling the course of time, and man's relation to the whole. Above all, it is most akin to a finely tuned sense of smell that fails strictly define and classify, yet is able to feel the currents of change, internal and external.

and Kafka has a unique Prose very much built on Von Kleist's unique Prose as well.

Boethius

>When the field is scarred by the bleak north winds, wouldst thou seek the wood's dark carpet to gather violets? If thou wilt enjoy the grapes, wouldst thou seek with clutching hand to prune the vines in spring? 'Tis in autumn Bacchus brings his gifts. Thus God marks out the times and fits to them peculiar works: He has set out a course of change, and lets no confusion come. If aught betake itself to headlong ways, and leaves its sure design, ill will the outcome be thereto.

seconding Kleist his prose was rly revolutionary
also Mann I guess esp. in things like Death of Venice (read in original)

I think sober is more appropriate.

Nice
His face looks like a mix of Hemingway and Faulkner

Haven't of any of these, thanks

heard of*

>Edith loves him. More on this later. Perhaps she never should have initiated relations with this good-for-nothing who has no money. It appears she's been sending him emissaries, or--how shall we put it--ambassadresses. He has ladyfriends everywhere, but nothing ever comes of them, and what a nothing has come of this famous, as it were, hundred francs!

Great thread.

>I've never read Junger, but just with casual references I can't imagine him valuing beauty above all else, even if his prose are fine.

Read The Adventurous Heart, the three volumes of his WWII diaries, the, uh, 5-6 volumes of his post-WWII diaries. After his Nazbol phase Junger spent most of his time traveling, reading and writing. Dude is highly literate, well-read and has a very, very great eye.

That said the whole 'aesthete/aesthetics' is a poor usage of the word, similar to how we use 'literally.'

Am I missing something? To my knowledge his diaries haven't been published in English. Though I know Telos Press printed The Adventurous Heart a few years back.

Sensitivity to beauty

Correct. His diaries have only been translated into french and spanish.

Shulze, Rilke

Ernst Jünger - Glass Bees

>Bees are not just workers in a honey factory. Ignoring their self sufficiency for a moment, their work - far beyond its tangible utility - plays an important part in the cosmic plan. As messengers of love, their duty is to pollinate, to fertilize the flowers. But Zapparoni's glass collectives, as far as I could see, ruthlessly sucked out the flowers and ravished them...Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of ways. Whoever realizes this will bet cleaner work one way or another. Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection toward the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stand an uncanny but fascinating hall of brilliance - evoke both fear and a titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe.

Shame he died just after fininshing his first novel.

>only published one novel so you don't have to defend weaker points of his bibliography
>said things like "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people."
>spent 15 years living with his mother rather than his wife even though they weren't separated

the hero Veeky Forums needs

Indeed.

What work is this from? I'm sold on it.

I loved The Leopard, Lampedusa really strikes me as one of the last genuine aristocratic writers that would probably ever inhabit the earth. An argument could also be made for Nabokov I guess, but e'en so

Lampedusa belongs in the company of these authors.

>The wealth of centuries had been transmuted into ornament, luxury, pleasure; no more; the abolition of feudal rights had swept away duties with privileges; wealth, like old wine, had let the dregs of greed, even of care and prudence, fall to the bottom of the barrel, preserving only verve and color.

We were the Leopards and Lions, those who take our place will be little jackals, hyenas...

Strickingly, Martin Schulz, one of the leading champions of a cosmopolitan Europe, lists the Leopard as one of his favorite books. I wonder how common this view is amongst the Eurocrats (i.e. though they adore the old Europe, she must be sacrificed on the alter of "greater things")

>The Leopard, after all, is a novel about change and continuity during Italy’s unification: “for things to remain the same, everything must change” is the key line in the book. Books show a part of us, we see ourselves in them.

dagmedya.net/2013/10/23/martin-schulz-leopard-head-commission-eliana-capretti/

Note that Jünger was also respected by many of the architects of the European Union. Read his tract, The Peace, to catch a glimpse at this forgotten side of Jünger.

Sort of like Sarkozy claiming Celine as his favourite writer.

Is The Peace really proto-EU? Junger gives a lot more power and autonomy to small regions than does the EU. For Junger there shouldn't be a Belgium, but rather all the different regions in Belgium with their real cultural differences.

Yes, you are right, he speaks of a Europe of Fatherlands, whose outer unity is like a "shellfish, with a hard, gleaming embossed shell" yet a vital, organic core of nations rather like the creature's " delicate interior". That being said, I don't read this as a decentralized state, in the vein of Orban's "union of nations". Jünger recognizes the demise of the nation-state - but he wants to preserve the character of traditional Europe. His views an anathema to the typical New Right mantra because he often speaks of the coming World-State.

>Thus the European constitution must skillfully distinguish the cultural plane from that of material civilization, forming them into picture and frame so as to unite their benefits for the human race. It must create territorial and political unity while preserving historical diversity. That implies at the same time distinguishing between the technical and the organic world. The state as supreme symbol of technical achievement takes the nations in its toils, yet they live in freedom under its protection. Then history will take a hand and give new contents to old forms. Europe can become a fatherland, yet many homelands will remain within its territories.

European federalism / similar projects had been in vogue since the end of the first war. A Nazi post-war Europe structurally would not have been so dissimilar to what currently exists hilariously. A united political/economic union with autonomous states with Germany as the leading economic power. Many Nazis actually ended up in the France-Germany proto-EU in the 1950s.

>Strickingly, Martin Schulz, one of the leading champions of a cosmopolitan Europe, lists the Leopard as one of his favorite books.
So does Peer Steinbrück.

,,...,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,;,,,,,,,,,,...;,;,,,-,,,,

also

>hyping translated prose

Ok, give me an Anglophone writer with a comparable level of acuity.

>comparable level of acuity

arbasino is the last italian absolutely anti-pleb without snark and also with the best prose

What's this from? It sounds more like it's written about Walser rather than by him.

>>If aught betake itself to headlong ways, and leaves its sure design, ill will the outcome be thereto.
Can anyone translate this into contemporary pleb English for me, please? I got a brain sprain trying to decipher this.

Denis Diderot
Brillat-Savarin
Paul Valery

he is great

>but e'en so

>His views an anathema to the typical New Right mantra because he often speaks of the coming World-State.

I don't really care about New Right mantras but I'm not sure how you can claim Junger desires a world-state. The Peace fits in with On the Marble Cliffs, The Forest Passage and he's definitely not a statis but most definitely he wanted to see Europe reconstructed decently after the war. He was just being pragmatic and trying to save face for Germany.

William H. Gass

>Sadness was the subject. Disappointment. Regret. The recipe? a bit of emptiness like that of winter fields when the fierce wind washes them; acceptance, yes, some of that, the handshake of a stranger; resignation, for what can the field do about the wind but freeze? what can the hand do but grasp the offered other? and a soupçon of apprehension, like clods of earth huddled against the frost they know will knock someday, or an envelope’s vexation about the letter it will enclose; then a weariness of the slow and gentle variety, a touch of ennui, an appreciation of repetition. This sadness had the quality of a bouquet garni discreetly added to the sauce; it offered a whiff of melancholy, subtle, just enough to make the petals of plants curl at their tips.

Go to bed, Cormac.

>His views an anathema to the typical New Right mantra because he often speaks of the coming World-State.
Did you even read Junger? He talks about it but only as a failed project that ends in global wars. Actually read Eumeswil

I think he's saying that in single minded pursuit of a goal or whatever, is too easy to forget the cause or reason that motivated it in the first place.

H.D. - HERmione

>She wanted George with some uncorrelated sector of Her Gart, she wanted George to correlate for her, life here, there. She wanted George to define and to make definable a mirage, a reflection of some lost incarnation, a wood maniac, a tree demon, a neuropathic dendrophile...She wanted George to make the thing an integral, herself integrity. She wanted George to make one of his drastic statements that would dynamite her world away for her. She wanted this, but even as she wanted it she let herself sink further, further, she saw that her two hands reached toward George like the hands of a drowned girl. She knew she was not drowned. Where others would drown-lost, suffocated in this element-she knew that she lived. She had no complete right yet to this element, hands struggled to be pulled out. White hands waved above the water like sea spume or inland-growing pond flowers...She wanted George to pull her out, she wanted George to push her in, let Her be drowned utterly.

If anything goes against the current of the divine order of the world (gathering fruits in winter, sowing seed at the wrong time of the year being the archetypal examples), bad things will happen to them.

I’ve heard Gass’ most exuberant bouts of flatus have been known to make not only the edges of tulips, but the wallpaper itself curl

mmm

You missed the forest for the trees.
The point here is avoiding the catastrophe of a destroyed Germany and a Europe which sinks itself into self-destruction - as was clear from their post-WWI intent.

Kafka:

>I would gladly explain the feeling of happiness which, like now, I have within me from time to time. It is really something effervescent that fills me completely with a light, pleasant quiver and that persuades me of the existence of abilities of whose non-existence I can convince myself with complete certainty at any moment, even now.

...

Depending on how far gone his dead body is into putrefaction and decay (unless he was cremated) I'm sure it's letting off some vile stinkers right about now.

What a weird-looking qt.

It is important to include the so-called "New Right" in this discussion, because they, more than any other political movement, tend to invoke Ernst Jünger as a sort of intellectual godfather. Like him, they harbor a distaste for modernity. However, I believe they are misguided because Jünger was not a reactionary, though he did sympathize with their plight – remember Eumeswil's Venator and his view of the Vendée Revolt; they were a doomed class fated to be crushed by more powerful historical forces, yet they retained “very ancient reserves” which would survive their defeat. You are right, he was no ideologue, preferring to watch events from the sidelines, which allowed him to survive several regimes. However, he was clearly a proponent of a United Europe, which, in his view, would eventually lead to a World-State. Granted, this utopian vision would avoid the self-destruction wrought by the “European Civil War”, but that is not the ultimate point of this political process. He opposed the nation-state, even the conception of his native Germany! “[It’s absurd] …that they never talk about a common government or the elimination of borders…Everything is global…but we still don’t have a global government. That’s exactly Aladdin’s Problem.” It is ridiculous to claim that he wrote “The Peace” in order to “save face for Germany”. This idea is central to his political philosophy - the World-State being the only mechanism that can contain the onslaught of technology (akin to Schmitt’s Katechon). It must come into being in order for humanity to pass into its next, more spiritually inclined stage - this is his “greatest wish”. Thus, the when the time comes, the energies, ideas, & legacies conserved by figures like the Anarch, will have the opportunity to burst forth when the historical tide changes. Yet, this idea must be tempered by the fact that the World-State is not the “end of history”, as shown in Eumeswil – “… the course of the world as cyclical; hence, both his skepticism and his optimism are limited.”

>66 replies
>No mention of Joyce
Turned an otherwise good thread into a questionable one.

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.”

Oedipus at Stalingrad

...

>no excerpt
you're lucky i believe you

Joyce is far too democratic (sloppy) given the species of very mannered though highly intelligent form of writer clearly sought here. And not near so tentative, exacting (despite occasional appearances). In other words Joyce just isn't THIS type of non-snob adored by snobs. Geeks love Joyce, and Pynchon as well. Not that this love doesn't elicit a kind of snobbery too. It's just different.

Glass Bees may be a better introduction than the Adventurous Heart. It's still captures his sensitivity to aesthetics while at the same time successfully portraying his worldview. NYRB published it some time ago so it is relatively common.

>Not Manganelli
>Se ogni discorso muove da un presupposto, un postulato indimostrabile e indimostrando, in quello chiuso come embrione in tuorlo e tuorlo in ovo, sia, di quel che ora si inaugura, prenatale assioma il seguente: CHE L'UOMO HA NATURA DISCENDITIVA. Intendo e chioso: l’omo è agito da forza non umana, da voglia, o amore, o occulta intenzione, che si inlàtebra in muscolo e nerbo, che egli non sceglie, né intende; che egli disama e disvuole, che gli instà, lo adopera, invade e governa; la quale abbia nome potestà o volontà discenditiva.

Volevo postare quella parte di La Letteratura come menzogna in cui parla delle "chiappe policrome" del mandrillo ma ma non trovo da dove copincollarla :'(

True, Arbasino is a master. Also, he had read the whole Western Canon + all of philosophy at the age of 23.

secondo me arbasino è più un esteta rispetto a manganelli

perché è autenticamente aristocratico

questo era per te

sicuro di sé come nessuno, non sbava inutilmente nemmeno quando quando scrive troppo come nelle sue super liste. non ha bisogno di aggraziarsi nessuno, non sta attento a evitar di calpestare il piede sbagliato, fa rosicare tutti i giornalisti italiani che in fondo lo trovano sprezzante e cinico, sbagliandosi alla grande

hai ragione
hai letto Fratelli d'Italia?

sì, ho letto tutti i suoi con adelphi, ho il meridiano ma penso non l’ho aprirò mai

Junger always looked so healthy, even in old age. It must have been good genetics

What's impressive is the continuity running through his work. There's no doubt his thought changed over the years - usually divided into soldier, worker, forest fleer, & anarch. However, I can see the same veins of thought whether I am reading The Worker or Aladdin's Problem.

How is Aladdin's Problem?

Yeah, that's where I started actually. Not sure why I always neglect to mention it. It is great and the NYRB translation is very good.

It's the opening line of The Robber

That's a great post and I don't disagree with any of it really. Hervier is also a very good scholar of Junger.

Junger is also published by Telos Press who publishes Schmitt as well. If you look at their history they are anti-liberal Marxists who like Gramsci, aspects of the Frankfurt school (but they see problems with it), Italian Marxism and Castoriadis to give a small outline. Let's not forget Benoist of the so called "New Right" has moved steadily away from his early materialist racism and what is left is essentially an anti-liberal anti-capitalism.

I could be wrong but it's largely to Alain de Benoist (in Europe) and Paul Piccone (in English speaking countries) that would owe the revival of Schmitt and Junger.

Lil Ugly Mane

"I don't acknowledge systems, I never found it wise
I wasn't born to just support the shit that's palpable
I don't see Earth as disproportionally valuable
If there's a god, I'm sure his name is unpronounceable
If there's a hell, I'm sure we'll all be held accountable
I drew a portrait of Abraxis on a napkin
Sex has never given me an ounce of satisfaction"

>I drew a portrait of Abraxis on a napkin
>Sex has never given me an ounce of satisfaction
When normies try to sound interesting.

Although most don't view it as a major work, I see Aladdin's Problem as a summation of his oeuvre and it's a personal favorite of mine. This book was written in the early eighties, when he was nearly ninety years old. Like much of his work, it deeply personal, though not autobiographical. He openly admits at the start of the book that he is paralyzed by nihilism - i.e. He is alone in the universe. Now that the gods are dead, what is to be done?

Modern man, like Aladdin, has harnessed the power of magical forces, to conjure up a vastly different world from which he came. Yet he does not know what do to with his power. Shall he be like Aladdin and be satisfied with playing the role of a minor despot (similar in this sense to Faust, who uses his vast power to manipulate the trivial.) If it is our destiny to merely play with the titanic forces at our disposal, we will end up in ruin. Is another path possible? Perhaps Phares has the answer...

As a side note, it has always intriguied me that he turned to Catholicism a couple years prior to his death.

Very nice, I will have to look out for a copy.

Have you read any of his diaries? The later volumes may have clues about his conversion. I think Carl Schmitt influenced him somehow in this direction. I believe it is Schmitt as well who got Junger reading Leon Bloy.

>As a side note, it has always intriguied me that he turned to Catholicism a couple years prior to his death.
After life insurance

A timely quote for the Gravity's Rainbow reading group

Explain to an idiot what he means here?

Is he telling us patience is a virtue?

Do things when the time is right or you'll fuck up

I can see how it looks that way and maybe it was but he had becoming more interested in Christianity from '38 onwards. He read the entire Bible twice during WWII and his diaries attest to him being deeply moved by many books in the Bible. Like I said before, I believe Carl Schmitt may have had a significant influence on Junger's eventual conversion to Christianity. I can't proof it, but I think his long friendship with Schmitt helped him understand aspects of Catholicism. Schmitt's political theology is strongly pro-papist.

It's strange reading so much writing coming out of WWII and Pynchon manages to capture that mindset so well. He must have taught himself German and read a lot of primary sources.