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Eumeswil

Eumeswil
Cover of the first edition
AuthorErnst Jünger
TranslatorJoachim Neugroschel
Cover artistHeinz Edelmann
LanguageGerman
PublisherKlett-Cotta
Publication date
1977
Publication placeWest Germany
Published in English
1993
Pages434
ISBN9783129041703

Eumeswil is a 1977 novel by the German author Ernst Jünger. The narrative is set in an undatable post-apocalyptic world, somewhere in present-day Morocco. It follows the inner and outer life of Manuel Venator, a historian in the city-state of Eumeswil who also holds a part-time job in the night bar of Eumeswil's ruling tyrant, the Condor.[1] The book was published in English in 1993, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.[2]

Themes

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The key theme in the novel is the figure of the Anarch, the inwardly-free individual who lives quietly and dispassionately within but not of society and the world. The Anarch is a metaphysical ideal figure of a sovereign individual, conceived by Jünger.[3] Jünger was greatly influenced by egoist thinker Max Stirner. Indeed, the Anarch starts out from Stirner's conception of the unique (der Einzige), a man who forms a bond around something concrete rather than ideal,[4][5] but it is then developed in subtle but critical ways beyond Stirner's concept.

The Anarch is the positive counterpart of the anarchist.

I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.

The Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist.

— Ernst Jünger

Reception

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Publishers Weekly reviewed the book in 1994: "In this acute if labyrinthine study of a compromised individual, [Jünger] telescopes past and present, playing over the sweep of Western history and culture with a dazzling range of allusions from Homer and Nero to Poe and Lenin, displaying his erudition but failing to ignite the reader's engaged interest."[6]

References

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  1. ^ Booklist, John Schreffler
  2. ^ Eumeswil. OCLC 722378431 – via WorldCat.
  3. ^ Macklin, Graham D. (September 2005). "Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction". Patterns of Prejudice (.pdf). 39 (3): 301–326. doi:10.1080/00313220500198292. S2CID 144248307.
  4. ^ Warrior, Waldgänger, Anarch: An essay on Ernst Jünger's concept of the sovereign individual Archived 2017-03-18 at the Wayback Machine by Abdalbarr Braun, accessed 14 May 2016.
  5. ^ An exposition of the figure of the Anarch through citations from Juenger's Eumeswil.
  6. ^ Publishers Weekly Review 1994-05-09 http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-941419-97-0
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