P(r)ose of Pain

383 REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY© BERG 2010 PRINTED IN THE UK CULTURAL POLITICS VOLUME 6, ISSUE 3 PP 383–388 CULTURAL POLITICS DOI: 10.2752/175174310X12549254318944 BOOK REVIEW P(r)ose of Pain Geoffrey Winthrop-Young On Pain, Ernst Jünger, translated and introduced by David C. Durst, with a preface by Russell A. Berman, New York: Telos Press, 2008, xlvii + 47 pages, ISBN 9780014386407 Anybody can despise bourgeois society for a decade or two, but it takes considerable stamina to do so for almost a century. Either the middle-class universe catches up with its detractors, in which case they are likely to end up on a pedestal, or history passes them by and they will be dismissed as tedious cranks. By the time he died just seven weeks short of his 103rd birthday, Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) had covered all the bases: he was a scandal, a legend, and a bit of a bore. To his critics he remains the gift that keeps on giving offence, a veritable cornucopia of irritation. There is so much to get upset about: his early glorification of war and combat; the anti-democratic polemics against the Weimar Republic; the fact that his misgivings about Hitler’s regime never translated into active opposition; the pathetic spectacle of a contrarian elitist who disdains the morals and politics he so fundamentally depends on to set himself apart; his implacable anti-humanist désinvolture. Not to mention the Geoffrey WinthropYoung is Professor of German at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in German media theory and is currently working on a study of German post-humanism. > CULTURAL POLITICS 384 BOOK REVIEW fact that Jünger, for all the rigid self-mummification he practiced later in life, can be a slippery fellow. He belongs to the illustrious gang of twentieth-century right-wing auteurs-poseurs, a highly select rogues’ gallery that includes Gabriele d’Annunzio, Curzio Malaparte, and Yukio Mishima. Jünger may have been less vain and flamboyant than the others, and more aware of the rule that the best way to keep one’s show on the road is to create the impression that one is not interested in it (or in one’s audience), but his oeuvre, too, is such a heady mixture of prose and pose that it is often impossible to nail him down. Few writers were so adept at adding aestheticized insult to ideological injury. His admirers enjoy a similar embarrassment of riches: the highly decorated officer who read Tristram Shandy in the trenches; the compelling visionary of war (In Storms of Steel) and author of the only true anti-Nazi novel published within the Third Reich (On the Marble Cliffs); the uncompromising observer of modernity whose grasp of technology (The Worker) impressed even Heidegger; the venerable sage who hailed from such a deep past that he had special access to the future. As he moved into octo- and nonagenarian respectability Jünger emerged as a larger-and-longer-than-life figure that towered over numerous generations snapping at his heels. In the end nobody really expected him to die, death being among the many things he appeared to have outlived. With a career so closely tied to the extremes of twentieth-century German history it comes as no surprise that the controversies sur­ rounding Jünger are a very German business. “German,” however, is a relative term, the meaning and intensity of which is determined by the observer’s background. Bluntly put, Jünger appears a great deal more German to English and American audiences than he does to French or Italian readers, among whom he enjoys considerable esteem. This makes the translation of On Pain (1934), a text from his most con­ troversial period, all the more interesting. To provide a very brief summary, On Pain is the attempt to view the evolution of society through theprismofpain.Whatmakespain–whichinJünger’stextencompasses everything from acute physical distress to collective mental anguish – such a powerful tool to “unlock man’s innermost being as well as the world” (1) is the way in which it straddles, indeed clamps together the nature/culture divide...