SOURCE: "Ernst Jünger's Concern with E. A. Poe," in Comparative Literature, Vol. X, No. 2, Spring, 1958, pp. 144-49.

[In the following essay, Peters discusses the theme of terror in the works of Jünger and Edgar Allen Poe.]

Frequent references to E. A. Poe in the works of Ernst Jünger, particularly in those written during and after World War II, raise two questions: First, what is it that attracts Jünger and Poe? And second, has Jünger's interest in Poe influenced his own writings? This paper addresses itself to the first question. Concerning the second, let me simply say that I do not think it is possible to trace any direct influences of Poe on Jünger. Undoubtedly Jünger sees in Poe more than the expert craftsman of grotesque tales and romantic fantasies, although the role of the romantic element in Jünger's work should not be underestimated. The relationship of the two authors is one of affinity rather than dependency, an affinity rooted in their common concern with one major literary theme—the theme of terror.

Terror, as a literary theme, is as old as literature itself. The Greeks considered it an essential element of tragedy. In German literature the romantic poets, notably E. T. A. Hoffmann, were past masters at it—so much so that, when the theme began to appear in Poe's writings, he was accused of plagiarizing the Germans. He defended himself against this charge by protesting that, "if in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany but of the soul."

It is surely no accident that Poe's terrors of the soul find an echo among contemporary writers. The ever-increasing complexities of our technological civilization, the threat of total destruction which hangs over us in the shape of mushroom clouds, give rise to deep-seated fears. We may dismiss such fears and refuse to talk about them; they are present nevertheless. For, as Jünger says:

… was uns im Innersten beschäftigt, entzicht sich der Mitteilung, ja fast der eigenen Wahrnehmung. Da gibt es Themen, die sich geheimnisvoll durch die Jahre hindurch fortspinnen, wie etwa das der Auswegslosigkeit, die unsere Zeit erfüllt. Sie erinnert an das großartige Bild der Lebenswoge der asiatischen Malerei, auch an den Malstrom von E. A. Poe.

This entry in Jünger's war diary, Strahlungen, is dated Paris, November 18, 1941. The reference to Poe's "A Descent into the Maelström" is instructive. To understand its significance the reader must recall the events of the war winter of 1941. These were the months when Hitler's armies suffered their first serious reverses in Russia. Under the impact of an unusually severe winter, they reeled back before Moscow. To Jünger, the author of the subtly anti-Nazi novel, Auf den Marmorklippen, it meant that the end was in sight, the revolution of nihilism drawing to a close. "Wir haben in diesen Wochen den Nullpunkt passiert," he noted in his diary. "Dennoch ist es merkmürdig, daß mich im tiefsten Grunde Zuversicht belebt."

The narrator in Poe's story also passes through the "zero point" and is saved. Salvation from the jaws of death is one aspect of the terror theme. Jünger's image of the wave of life which carries man beyond destruction is exemplified by the manner in which Poe's hero is carried through the maelström and cast back into life. His brother is drowned because he lacks faith in the uplifting power of the waves. Paralyzed by terror, he clings to the ring bolt and is sucked down into the abyss.

The moral of Poe's story is that it is fatal to panic in the face of death. Terror is a test of character. If you succumb to it you are lost. It is a lesson that Jünger learned in two world wars. He feels it has a special meaning in our age. Are we not all standing at the brink of a maelström that may destroy us if we lose heart? That is why he says in a letter to me, dated January 9, 1957: "Der Malstrom erschien und erscheint mir noch als eine besonders gelungene Diagnose und Prognose unserer Zeit. Ihre Tendenz ist auf die knappste Formel gebracht."

An entry in an earlier diary, Gärten und Straßen, August 19, 1939, gives a clue to the nature of Poe's diagnosis as Jünger interprets it: "Die beste Schilderung des voll automatisierten Zustandes enthält die Erzählung 'Hinab in den Maelstrom' von E. A. Poe." Man's fate in a world of vast and terrifying mechanical forces that seem to be beyond human control is one of Jünger's major concerns. He thinks that Poe anticipated such a state and therefore deserves the epithet, "der erste Autor des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts," which the Goncourts bestowed upon him. Poe's image of the maelström is to Jünger a symbol of our age.

He gives a similar symbolic interpretation of Poe's story, "The Pit and the Pendulum."

Die Wassergrube gibt uns das Bild des Kessels, der immer dichteren Umkreisung, der Raum wird enger und drängt auf die Ratten zu. Das Pendel ist das Sinnbild der toten, meßbaren Zeit. Es ist die scharfe Sichel des Chronos, die an ihm schwingt und den Gefesselten bedroht, doch ihn zugleich befreit, wenn er sich ihrer zu bedienen weiß.

"Kessel" refers here to the great battles of encirclement, the Kessel-schlachten of the war in Russia, the classic example of which is Stalingrad. Jünger, the author of In Stahlgewittern, continues to think in military images. But there is this difference—while Jünger in his earlier books glorified war, his concern in his later books is with the isolated individual threatened with destruction by impersonal technical forces.

Die immer künstlicheren Städte, die automatischen Bezüge, die Kriege und Bürgerkriege, die Maschinenhöllen, die grauen Despotien, Gefängnisse und raffinierten Nachstellungen—das alles sind Dinge, die Namen bekommen haben und die den Menschen Tag und Nacht beschäftigen.

These themes also occupied Poe. He anticipated many of the mechanical horrors that have become reality in our time. But the real significance of Poe's nightmarish visions is that he analyzed them and uncovered the strange ambivalence of the soul, which can be fascinated by what terrifies it. In "The Imp of the Perverse" he lays bare that streak in man which makes him seek out the very dangers that threaten to destroy him. "There is no passion so demonically impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge." Modern psychologists call this fascination with terror the death wish of the soul. It is a theme that often occurs in Jünger. "Der Schwindel vor dem kosmischen Abgrund ist ein nihilistischer Aspekt," he writes with reference to Poe's essay "Eureka," and asks: "soll man, und sei es auch nur geistig, die äußersten Gewässer aufsuchen, die Katarakte, den Malstromwirbel, die großen Abgründe?" He answers yes. "In unserer Lage sind wir verpflichtet, mit der Katastrophe zu rechnen und mit ihr schlafen zu gehen, damit sie uns nicht zur Nacht überrascht." Like Hölderlin ("wo aber die Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch") Jünger believes that the greater the dangers the better the chances of salvation. "Bei großen Gefahren wird das Rettende tiefer gesucht werden, and zwar bei den Müttern, und in dieser Berührung wird Urkraft befreit. Ihr können die reinen Zeitmächte nicht standhalten."

The difference between Jünger and Poe lies in their attitude towards "das Rettende," which may perhaps be interpreted as Providence. In Poe's stories salvation is usually the result of a rational act on the part of the threatened. Lashing himself to the water cask was such a rational act which saved the narrator of "A Descent into the Maelström." Jünger too believes in the saving power of courageous action, but courage alone is not enough. Something else is necessary, the support of a transcendental force, a wholly irrational power of salvation. While Poe is fundamentally a rationalist who knows the irrational yearnings of the soul, Jünger has been tending more and more towards mysticism. Rationalism, he thinks, leads to mechanism and mechanism to torture.

Zahllose leben heute, welche die Zentren des nihilistischen Vorganges, die Tiefpunkte des Malstromes passiert haben. Sie wissen, daß dort die Mechanik sich immer drohender enthüllt; der Mensch befindet sich im Inneren einer großen Maschine, die zu seiner Vernichtung ersonnen ist. Sie mußten auch erfahren, daß jeder Rationalismus zum Mechanismus, und jeder Mechanismus zur Folter führt, als seiner logischen Konsequenz. Das hat man im 19. Jahrhundert noch nicht gesehen.

Nor, we might add, did Jünger see it in his earlier writings. This difference in attitude towards salvation in Poe and Jünger accounts for the different emphasis in their treatment of terror. For Poe it is the fascination with terror that leads him back to the same theme time and again. Jünger's emphasis is on salvation from terror. While in Poe's stories unrelieved terror often prevails, producing a melodramatic effect, Jünger imparts to his readers a sense of man's ultimate conquest of the powers of darkness. In a rather mystifying entry in Strahlungen, dated Paris, January 15, 1942, Jünger draws this distinction between himself and Poe. He quotes a letter he received from a friend concerning his "schwarze Fürstin": "Ich meine, daß Ihre Fürstin etwas vom 'Untergang des Hauses Usher' beeinflußt ist. Doch wird hier der Weg zur Heilung gezeigt. Das ist gut. Poe zeigte nur den Untergang."

In a letter to me, January 9, 1957, Jünger explains that this entry refers to his story "Der Hippopotamus," published in Das abenteuerliche Herz. The heroine of his capriccio, as he calls it, is that unhappy Brunswick princess who was queen of England at the time of Napoleon. She was a victim of severe mental depressions, and the story deals with a method of treatment. As in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," the narrator in Jünger's story faces a strange and threatening situation. He finds himself in the presence and at the mercy of a person who is obviously going mad. But, while in Poe's story madness finally overwhelms everything, with the narrator fleeing aghast from a scene of horror he has been unable to alleviate, Jünger presents a cure. It combines scientific and magical elements. Scientific are the prescriptions of sleeping drugs, magical the incantations the princess is to use when she feels the approach of her illness. This combination of scientific and magical elements is a distinguishing feature of Jünger's prose. It has given rise to the expression "magischer Realismus."

Scientific and magical elements also intermingle in Poe's work. But Poe saw in magic mainly a destructive force, a dark demonic power that both terrifies and fascinates the soul. To Jünger the magical forces in life are those that uplift man, carrying him beyond destruction. The mediaeval distinction between black and white magic might perhaps be applied to Poe and Jünger. The latter's concern is with man's ascent from the dark realm of demons. To his wife, who was living amidst the terrors of aerial bombardment, he wrote in June 1943: "Was Dich betrifft, so fühle ich mit Gewißheit, daß Du unbeschadet dem großen Malstrom entrinnen wirst; verliere das Vertrauen zu Deiner eigentlichen Bestimmung nicht." Poe did not have such faith to counterbalance the terrors of his soul.

Jünger is interested in Poe's world because it gives him insights into the "dark mathematics" of fate.

Im Malstrom Edgar Allan Poes besitzen wir eine der großen Visionen, die unsere Katastrophe vorausschauten, und von allen die bildhafteste. Wir sind nun in jenen Teil des Wirbels abgesunken, in dem dic Verhältnisse in ihrer dunklen Mathematik, zugleich cinfacher und faszinierender, sichtbar werden.

Both Poe and Jünger know that there are powerful and irrational forces that urge man to seek his own destruction. This knowledge terrified Poe and he communicates to his reader a sense of doom: "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted—nevermore!" Jünger sees a challenge to rise above it, not merely through resolute action but through faith in God's saving grace. At the end of Auf den Marmorklippen, when after a night of terror the powers of darkness seem firmly established, the sound of an organ is heard and the words:

      Weil denn kein Mensch uns helfen kann
      Rufen wir Gott um Hilfe an.

It should be noted in conclusion that Jünger's religious position, as reflected by writings cited in this paper, has puzzled many readers of his earlier works. They are not convinced that the former champion of "total mobilization," the herald of the front soldier, the author of Der Arbeiter, has undergone a genuine conversion. They feel that his metaphysical speculations are forced and his dreams, visions, and belief in magic are at best a substitute for religion. Jünger himself has noted that an age of terror inevitably gives rise to "Ersatzreligionen von unabsehbarer Zahl."

I would suggest that these critics ponder the significance of the maelström image which occupies such an important place in Jünger's later books. In its dual aspect of death and rebirth it symbolizes the human condition as all the great teachers of religion have taught us to see it. Like many writers of his generation in Germany and elsewhere—T. S. Eliot is a case in point—Jünger descended into the maelström, embraced nihilism or, as he put it, was for a time a fellow traveler of the "Mauretanians." But he did not stay there.

Tatsächlich war, als ich diese Fabel ["Der Hippopotamus"] vor einem Besuch bie Kubin konzipierte, die Sehnsucht nach dem Aufstieg aus den dunklen Dämonenreichen des Malstroms in mir besonders stark. Man muß derartiges auch als Prognostikon betrachten, denn die erfundenen Figuren eröffnen den Schicksalsreigen, sie tanzen ihm bald lächelnd, bald schauerlich voran, und Dichtung ist unsichtbare, noch ungelebte Historie.

Amidst the terrors of a world in chaos Jünger found "Das Rettende." That, it seems to me, is the heart of the matter.