Approaches: Drugs and Ecstatic Intoxication – Ernst Jünger

Approaches: Drugs and Ecstatic Intoxication – Ernst Jünger Skulls and reefs 1 “Where did you find so many stories, Master Ludovico?” This is more or less what Cardinal Hippolytus of Este said to his protégé, Ariosto, after having read Orlando Furioso. Along with Byron’s poetry, Orlando Furioso was among the favorites of my youth. My first encounter with this book took place when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, specifically the impressive edition illustrated by Doré. It was translated by Hermann Kurz. I was not so pleased with the later translation by Gries that was published by Reclam. I read it in the spring of 1917 at the Siegfried Line and I came home with both volumes. I think that during the two wars I read more than at other times; many others have had the same experience. Reading Ariosto is dangerous, as Cervantes already knew. In general, literary culture lays down rules that should not really be obeyed; the playing field is far too large. The sceptical question posed by Hippolytus is not just the kind of question a Cardinal would ask; it is also a question of cardinal importance. I have often reflected on it, even while I was writing this book. Endless questions arise about why I do this or that, or why I did this or that—and about what kind of answer should be given to such questions. And we ask ourselves these questions out of a sense of responsibility. 2 We hardly need to fear that the swine of Epicurus, as they used to say, will break into the poppy and hemp gardens. The Epicurean is not inclined to excess: it would interfere with pleasure. He enjoys time and things and therefore represents instead the opposite of the addict who suffers from the passage of time. He has nothing in common with the chain- smoker; he is more like the sybarite who concludes a good meal with a Cuban cigar. He is the master of pleasure and knows how to moderate it, not so much from subjection to discipline as from the love of pleasure itself. There have been old Chinamen who similarly allowed themselves to smoke a bowl of opium now and then, and such people still exist today. It is as if, after a hearty banquet, one were not only to take a stroll on the terrace or a walk in the park, but were to extend the circle of time and space and therefore the field of the possible. This yields more than food and drink, and even more than wine and good cigars; it leads much further. In this sense, after a certain age, perhaps when you retire, you are supposed to refuse to be restricted to certain boundaries. Those who are approaching the boundless must set very distant frontiers. At that age, not everyone can do what the elderly Faust did; however, each person is clearly in charge of drafting plans for the vastness. This applies, above all, to the period that is closest to the ultima linea rerum, when the latter presents itself with the greatest insistence. There are old vintners who live for months and even years on nothing but bread and wine. Konrad Weis has paid homage to their lives. It is natural to alleviate the pain of the dying person whose time is running out, but that is not enough. It is our duty to approach; for the last time, the bed-ridden man, alone, the wealth of the world. During those last moments, it is not enough to administer narcotics; rather, what we need are gifts that expand consciousness and make it more acute. If one harbors even the slightest suspicion that such gifts might hasten the passage of the stricken person—and there are reasons to believe that this might be the case—then one must be wary. It is this possibility that necessarily gives rise to the conjecture that there are certain qualities that are inherent to this kind of passage. On the borders of this assumption, the experience of individual death possesses for many people enough value for them not to allow themselves to be deceived: for the captain it is a question of honor to be the last man to abandon ship. In fact, it is possible that with the administration of painkillers one not only eliminates the pain that accompanies death, but also its euphoria. Perhaps, in one’s last conscious thoughts as one is extinguished, important messages are concealed; transmissions, receptions. Death masks reveal a reflection of these messages. The plumage of the rooster of Aesculapius is many-colored. 3 We must contemplate, beyond pleasure, the spiritual adventure, whose enchantments are imposed on the consciousness of the highest and most refined culture. Basically, all enjoyment is spiritual; that is where the inexhaustible wellsprings emerge that give rise to every kind of unrest and anxiety, so that no satisfaction is ever really good enough. Every advertiser is familiar with this connection. When we receive our seed catalogues in the winter, their images trigger a more intense pleasure than the flowers that will bloom in the summer flowerbeds. So, too, in nature, more cleverness and more artifice is wasted on seduction than on the fulfillment of the ultimate purpose. This is demonstrated by the designs on the wings of a butterfly or the plumage of a Bird of Paradise. Spiritual hunger is insatiable; physical gain has narrow limits. If a Roman glutton like Vitellius devoured three large meals each day and rid himself of excess food by vomiting, this is because he suffered from having eyes that were bigger than his stomach, even if in a primitive way. The relation of disproportionality has its own scale: and so, too, does the faculty of sight that summons the spirit to its aid when it is not satisfied by the visible world. Saint Anthony was more capable of enjoyment than Vitellius and his kind; he was capable of enjoying not so much a more solid physis or more wealth, as a higher kind of spirituality. In Flaubert’s Temptations, imaginary banquets are depicted, full of the most alluring delicacies resplendent with the most striking colors, as if they had been created by gardeners or master chefs, or even artists. In his hut in the desert, Anthony beheld the source of all abundance; there it took direct shape as a phenomenon. That is why the ascetic is richer than Caesar, the master of the visible world, who consumes himself in pleasure.1 4 I tried to depict the type of the spiritual adventurer in the character of Antonio Peri: “At first sight, Antonio was hardly to be distinguished from the other artisans that one often saw busy at work throughout Heliopolis. Behind this surface appearance, however, something different was concealed: he was a hunter of dreams. He hunted dreams the way others caught butterflies in nets. On Sundays and holidays he did not go to the islands, nor did he frequent the taverns on the waterfront at Pagos. He closed himself off in his studio and withdrew to the land of dreams. He said that all the unknown countries and undiscovered islands were woven into the tapestry there. He used drugs as a key to enter the chambers and grottoes of that world. “He also drank wine, but it was never pleasure that he was after. He was essentially driven to do so by a mixture of a thirst for adventure and a thirst for knowledge. He did not travel to settle in unknown regions, but as a geographer. Wine was merely one key among many others, one of the main doors to the labyrinth. “Perhaps it was only his method that allowed him to navigate waters sown with catastrophes and nightmares. He had many run-ins with such obstacles. He was of the conviction that every drug contained a formula that granted access to certain enigmas of the universe. He also thought that it was possible to decipher the hierarchy of these formulas. The highest keys must reveal the secrets of the universe. 1 Concerning the temptations of Saint Anthony and their relation to ecstatic intoxication, the visionary faculty, abstinence and the desert, see the interesting discussion in [Ernst Jünger’s] La Tijera [Die Schere: The Scissors], translated by Andrés Sánchez Pascual, Tusquets Editores (Ensayo 18), Barcelona, 1993, pp. 40-42. [This and all the following footnotes were added to the text by the Spanish translator, except text in brackets and where otherwise noted—American translator’s note.] “He was looking for the master key. However, isn’t the supreme mystery necessarily lethal?”2 That the constant quest for adventure, for remote and unusual places, meant something very different would not be revealed until the end of his path. Antonio fell into a radioactive net, and was mortally injured, and suffered serious burns. In the throes of his agonies he refused morphine. It was not pleasure that led him to undertake his journeys, nor was it adventure. Yes, he felt curiosity, but it was a sublimated curiosity, one that was waiting to arrive at just the right door. Once upon that threshold one does not need any key: it opens by itself. 5 Every enjoyment lives thanks to the spirit. And every adventure lives thanks to the proximity of death, around which the adventurer revolves. I am reminded of a painting that I saw when I had just learned to read, a painting entitled, The Adventurer: a sailor, a lone conquistador, had just come ashore on an unknown island. Before him, a terrible mountain arose, and his ship had foundered.

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