Like Atoms, Words Contain A Nucleus Around Which They Orbit, Vibrating, And They Cannot Be Touched Without

Like atoms, words contain a nucleus around which they orbit, vibrating, and they cannot be touched without unleashing nameless powers.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 25 October 1941

Hoh Rainforest Mid-January, Olympic National Park, Washington

Photo credit: Jim Hagen https://www.facebook.com/jim.hagen.756/

Conversations among men should be conducted like those among gods, among invulnerable beings. To duel with ideas is to use swords of the intellect that cut through matter without pain or effort. The deeper the cut, the purer the enjoyment. In such intellectual encounters, one must be indestructible.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 30 November 1941

I have a tendency to distance myself from people I love. It’s as if their images developed such power in me that their physical presence becomes intolerable. The man who murders his mistress chooses the opposite path: to possess her he extinguishes her likeness. Perhaps this is how immortals treat us.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 14 October 1942

Where motion is experienced time is unveiled. In such a mental action we can stop and dwell on something. We may recall the passage in De interpretatione: ΐστησι ή διάνοια, thinking stands still with something. The mind, too, has the character of a moving thing. Even when we are not experiencing something moving in the sense of some entity presently at hand, nevertheless motion taken in the broadest sense, hence time, is unveiled for us in experiencing our own self.

Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems

When something is right—right in the highest sense—it must not be demonstrable, it must be debatable. We mortals must strive for it in configurations that are accessible but not absolutely attainable. This then leads to areas where imponderable rather than quantifiable concepts honor the master and produce the artistic urge. Here it is especially the service to, and with, the word that enthralls me—that subtlest of efforts that takes the word to the dividing line that separates it from the ineffable. This also contains a longing for the correct dimensions according to which the universe was created, and which the reader should see through the word as through a window.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 18 July 1943