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

Mon Apr 22 06:16:59 CDT 2013

Borges loved it.

http://books.google.de/books?id=hHSWgyKFLYwC&pg=PA274&lpg=PA274&dq=borges+j%C3%BCnger&source=bl&ots=AiKOWbT8a2&sig=K9d5qKimzsrFAQgPVxOUwAa1uNY&hl=de&sa=X&ei=8hJ1UfjBMYbBtQbCioG4CA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=borges%20j%C3%BCnger&f=false 

"Wilflingen, 27. Oktober 1982

Wir hatten die Freude und Ehre, Jorge Luis Borges hier zu bewirten --- 
die  Begegnung mit einem Dichter ist fast so selten geworden wie die 
jene mit einem beinahe ausgestorbenen oder sogar mythischem Tier, dem 
Einhorn etwa. (...) Gespräch über Schopenhauer, dem wir beide von früh 
auf viel verdanken, dann über Kafka, Don Quijote, Tausendundeine Nacht, 
Walt Whitman, Flaubert. Whitmans 'Grashalme' zeigen die Demokratie in 
ihrer Stärke - Flauberts 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' ihre Infamie. (...) 
Borges hat seit sechzig Jahren meine Entwicklung verfolgt. Als erstes 
meiner Bücher las er 'Bajo la Tormenta de Acero', das 1922 im Auftrag 
der argentinischen Armee übersetzt wurde. 'Das war für mich eine 
vulkanische Eruption.' "

Ernst Jünger: Siebzig verweht III, p. 191f.

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=3278188&pageno=1

On 21.04.2013 22:28, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> 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
>
>