Ernst Jünger Anarch

“In any case, I am willing to acknowledge that my genitor, in going after me, was behaving naturally [Manuel’s father wanted to have him aborted, as he was conceived in an accidental encounter, but his mother refused]. As an anarch, I have to admit that he was protecting his rights. To be sure, this is based on reciprocity.

Our city teems with sons who have escaped their fathers in a similar way. Usually, this remains obscure. The Oedipal relationship is reduced to a malaise between individuals. The loss of esteem is inevitable, but people get along with one another. Moreover, I am troubled less by my background than by the respect that my old man demands on the basis of his paternity. He cites a credit that is not his due: the fact that fathers, rulers, professors once lived and deserved this name. Nowadays, that is nothing but a rumor.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“A mine is anonymous, a crude weapon. Partisans like using mines because of the peculiar nature of their struggle, which makes the landscape uncertain. The anarch is not tempted by them, if only because he is oriented to facts, not ideas. He fights alone, as a free man, and would never dream of sacrificing himself to having one inadequacy supplant another and a new regime triumph over the old one. In this sense, he is closer to the philistine; the baker whose chief concern is to bake good bread; the peasant, who works his plough while armies march across his fields.

The anarch is a forest rebel, the partisans are a collective. I have observed their quarrels as both a historian and a contemporary. Stuffy air, unclear ideas, lethal energy, which ultimately puts abdicated monarchs and retired generals back in the saddle – and they then show their gratitude by liquidating those selfsame partisans. I had to love certain ones, because they loved freedom, even though the cause did not deserve their sacrifice; this made me sad.

If I love freedom above all else, then any commitment becomes a metaphor, a symbol. This touches on the difference between the forest rebel and the partisan: this distinction is not qualitative but essential in nature. The anarch is closer to Being. The partisan moves within the social or national party structure, the anarch is outside of it. Of course, the anarch cannot elude the party structure, since he lives in society.

The difference will be obvious when I go to my forest shack while my Lebanese joins the partisans. I will then not only hold on to my essential freedom, but also gain its full and visible enjoyment. The Lebanese, by contrast, will shift only within society; he will become dependent on a different group, which will get an even tighter hold on him.

Naturally, I could just as well or just as badly serve the partisans rather than the Condor – a notion I have toyed with. Either way, I remain the same, inwardly untouched. It makes no difference that it is more dangerous siding with the partisans than with the tyrant; I love danger. But as a historian, I want danger to stand out sharply.

Murder and treason, pillage and fire, and vendetta are of scant interest for the historian; they render long stretches of history – say, Corsican – unfruitful. Tribal history becomes significant only when, as in the Teutoburger Wald, it manifests itself as world history. Then names and dates shine.

The partisan operates on the margins; he serves the great powers, which arm him with weapons and slogans. Soon after the victory, he becomes a nuisance. Should he decide to maintain the role of idealist, he is made to see reason.

In Eumeswil, where ideas vegetate, the process is even more wretched. As soon as a group has coalesced, ‘one of Twelve’ is bound to consider betrayal. He is then killed, often merely on suspicion. At the night bar, I heard the Domo mention such a case to the Condor.

‘He could have gotten off more cheaply with us,’ he commented. ‘Muddle heads – I’ll take the gangsters anytime: they know their business.’

I entered this in my notebook. In conclusion, I would like to repeat that I do not fancy myself as anything special for being an anarch. My emotions are no different from those of the average man. Perhaps I have pondered this relationship a bit more carefully and am conscious of a freedom to which ‘basically’ everybody is entitled – a freedom that more or less dictates his actions.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“The forest passage confirms the independence of the anarch, who is basically a forest rebel anywhere, any time, whether in the thicket, in the metropolis, whether inside or outside society. One must distinguish not only between the forest rebel and the partisan but also between the anarch and the criminal; the difference lies in the relationship to the law. The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly.

When it is hot, you doff your hat; in the rain, you open your umbrella; during an earthquake, you leave your house. Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The state will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“Up in the bunker [a secret refuge that Manuel has selected and prepared for a potentially necessary escape from society], I will also have time for fishing and hunting. There will even be notes for Rosner. During my first exploratory outing, I had noticed an acacia; it grew in the type of clearing that emerges when a tree collapses. The bush, like a gallows, was hung with skeletons. Although the skeletons were small, I recoiled at first glance.

This sometimes happens when we unexpectedly stumble on nature’s cruelty. Rosner views this as resentment. He compares nature to a festive kitchen where everyone both consumes and is consumed. Nothing perishes; the equation works out. ‘Everything fertilizes everything else,’ as the farmers say. If I am to believe Rosner, we live partly on the beings that we produce in our innards in order to digest them. That is how one might picture the demiurge: up there as a world spirit, with Olympian serenity, delighting in the raging of animals and the warring of men; down here as a pot-bellied man, who benefits from every consuming and being consumed.

This of course releases me from pain as little as it does the grenadier whose leg is shot off for the greater glory of the king. As an anarch, I also have to steer clear of martyrdom. And for the historian, the issue of pain is fundamental.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil