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

[Matthew Cissell]

Of course Jünger is more well known for his In Stahlgewittern; quite a curious biography - we might put him up there alongside D'Annunzio.

ciao
mc


________________________________
 From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 3:49 PM
Subject: It was 70 years ago this month ... LSD in literature
 



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'sLSD --- 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