It was 70 years ago this month ... LSD in literature

Kai Frederik Lorentzen lorentzen at hotmail.de
Fri Apr 19 08:49:00 CDT 2013


http://www.titanic-magazin.de/postkarten/karte/drogengott-ernst-juenger-feiert-100-jahre-ecstasy-495-2048/

This is satire on occasion of Jünger's 100th birthday, --- but then 
again Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) used a lot of drugs. Opium, cocaine and 
cannabis in the 1920s, psychedelics after WW II. He was a close friend 
of Albert Hofmann, and the two were tripping together several times. 
Jünger's short novel (or: long story) /Besuch auf Godenholm/ from 1952 
is, as far as I know, the first Acid story in fictional literature. Like 
most of Jünger's work not translated into English. But of his large 
essay /Annährungen. Drogen und Rausch/ (1970), in which EJ minted the 
term "Psychonautik", a small sample was published under the title  
'Drugs and Ecstasy' in: Myths and Symbols. Studies in Honor of Mircea 
Eliade. Edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa and Charles H. Long. Chicago and 
London: The University of Chicago Press (1969), pp. 327-42. Both, the 
narration and the essay, I can wholeheartedly recommend. In 
Hofmann's/LSD --- mein Sorgenkind/ there's a chapter on Jünger:

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/child7.htm

Here's the sample from /Besuch auf Godenholm/, giving a fine description 
how things start to get weird:

"Schwarzenberg burned an incense stick, as he sometimes did, to clear 
the air. A blue plume ascended from the tip of the stick. Moltner looked 
at it first with astonishment, then with delight, as if a new power of 
the eyes had come to him. It revealed itself in the play of this 
fragrant smoke, which ascended from the slender stick and then branched 
out into a delicate crown. It was as if his imagination had created it-a 
pallid web of sea lilies in the depths, that scarcely trembled from the 
beat of the surf. Time was active in this creation-it had circled it, 
whirled about it, wreathed it, as if imaginary coins rapidly piled up 
one on top of another. The abundance of space revealed itself in the 
fiber work, the nerves, which stretched and unfolded in the height, in a 
vast number of filaments.
     Now a breath of air affected the vision, and softly twisted it 
about the shaft like a dancer. Moltner uttered a shout of surprise. The 
beams and lattices of the wondrous flower wheeled around in new planes, 
in new fields. Myriads of molecules observed the harmony. Here the laws 
no longer acted under the veil of appearance; matter was so delicate and 
weightless that it clearly reflected them. How simple and cogent 
everything was. The numbers, masses and weights stood out from matter. 
They cast off the raiments. No goddess could inform the initiates more 
boldly and freely. The pyramids with their weight did not reach up to 
this revelation. That was Pythagorean luster. No spectacle had ever 
affected him with such a magic spell."

Does anybody know a fictional text about (or inspired by) Acid prior to 
1952?

http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Love-The-Works-Of-Ernst-Junger/2889672
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besuch_auf_Godenholm
http://www.mj67.de/ej/ej1970cm.jpg

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