“Now and then I believe I sense that the book of the world is becoming a little more legible.” [1]
It happens to me sometimes: in deepest thought or in drunkenness.
[1] [“Zuweilen glaube ich zu spüren, daß das Buch der Welt ein wenig leserlicher wird.”] Ernst Jünger, 14. Juni 1940, Gärten und Strassen (Berlin: E.S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942), p.150.
3 comments:
It happens to me, too, in drunkenness or in thought, or at moments of flux like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the post 9/11 scramble after a new US security doctrine. I have had flickerings of that sense as the financial crisis has made ordinary civilians wonder what money is, really, and why central banks are in charge of it. The quotidian order of life, like religion, builds on myth. Much of our shared social life is a consensual hallucination, and hallucinations are subject to cessation and change. I think the book really does grow more legible at time for the individual, though I despair of its doing so for the body of men.
Clear as mud to me.
Funny that! I, too, have blinding insights usually somewhere between the 3rd and 4th (ultra) dry martini. Problem is, I can never remember them the next day.
It's a mystery.
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