"Can the being in man be destroyed?
To oppose this, it is essential to know that every man is immortal and that there is eternal life in him, an unexplored and yet inhabited land, which, though he himself may deny its existence, no timely power can ever take from him. For many, indeed for most, the access to this life will resemble a well into which rubble and rubbish has been thrown for centuries. Yet, if someone manages to clear it out, they will not only rediscover the spring but also the old images. Man is infinitely wealthier than he suspects. It is a wealth that no one can steal from him, and in the course of time it wells up, again and again, above all when pain has dredged out the depths.
... The words move with the ship; the home of the Word is the forest. The Word lies beneath the words like a gold base coat on an early painting. When the Word no longer animates the words, a horrible silence spreads under their deluge—at first in the temples, which are transformed into pretentious tombs, then in the forecourts.
... A very significant event here is philosophy’s turn from knowledge to language; it brings the spirit back into close contact with a primal phenomenon. This is more important than any physical discovery. The thinker enters a field in which an alliance is finally possible again with the theologian, and with the poet."
Excerpts from The Forest Passage, Ernst Jünger, Chapter 33, pps 99-100, published 1951
To oppose this, it is essential to know that every man is immortal and that there is eternal life in him, an unexplored and yet inhabited land, which, though he himself may deny its existence, no timely power can ever take from him. For many, indeed for most, the access to this life will resemble a well into which rubble and rubbish has been thrown for centuries. Yet, if someone manages to clear it out, they will not only rediscover the spring but also the old images. Man is infinitely wealthier than he suspects. It is a wealth that no one can steal from him, and in the course of time it wells up, again and again, above all when pain has dredged out the depths.
... The words move with the ship; the home of the Word is the forest. The Word lies beneath the words like a gold base coat on an early painting. When the Word no longer animates the words, a horrible silence spreads under their deluge—at first in the temples, which are transformed into pretentious tombs, then in the forecourts.
... A very significant event here is philosophy’s turn from knowledge to language; it brings the spirit back into close contact with a primal phenomenon. This is more important than any physical discovery. The thinker enters a field in which an alliance is finally possible again with the theologian, and with the poet."
Excerpts from The Forest Passage, Ernst Jünger, Chapter 33, pps 99-100, published 1951