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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