ERNST JUENGER
461
It is unnecessary to point out the political meaning of this
novel. Only the fact that Juenger enjoyed the support of very high–
placed army leaders explains how it could be published. Though with–
drawn from sale for a time after a violent attack by the
Voelkisc her
Beobachter,
it quickly sold 30,000 copies. Many passages are un–
related to the political message, undoubtedly in part to lead the censor
off the track, but also because Juenger wanted this book to be a
work of
art
in its own right rather than a simple
roman
a
cze.
Written
in the style of German romanticism that recalls Novalis, the book,
though contrived in parts, abounds in passages of splendid beauty,
and the whole effect is powerful both in intent and execution. Even
apart from its historical message, it will probably find a secure place
in German literature: the only enduring piece of anti-Nazi literature
written inside Germany during the years of Hitler.
The Marble Cliffs
represents a complete break with everything
Juenger had stood for in the past. The nihilist has come into direct
contact with the nihilism he himself has not been innocent of bring–
ing into existence, and he now views its results with unmitigated
loathing and horror. The Nazi regime is the negation of all values,
but now this negation is repulsive to him. The values of peace, com–
munity, and natural order are those that make life worth living.
Juenger turns to a completely new conception of the world: the
nihilist becomes a conservative, desiring to preserve what can still
be saved from chaos:
Our most important activity was the study of language, because we recog–
nized in the word that miraculous blade before · whose rays the power of
tyrants pales away. There is noble strength in the trinity of freedom,
the word, and the spirit.
The man who had once advocated a new subservience and sub–
ordination to
material
writes: "I swore to live in loneliness with the
free rather than celebrate triumphs with the slaves."
Juenger, of course, states that his work must be understood in
its totality, .and that there is a natural development rather than an
abrupt switch in philosophy. Yet recalling the examples of other
artists too, we may very well question whether the author himself
is always the best judge of his own development. It is true that
Juenger in his nihilist period was also obsessed by the idea of order:
the old society was to be destroyed because it no longer embodied a
valid order; dynamite was needed "to blast a free living space for
a new hierarchy." But now, tradition is rediscovered as the guardian
of order, and behind this tradition there is also the rediscovered order
of nature: the friends in
The Marble Cliffs
study crystals, flowers,
