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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

http://carlabrahamsson.blogspot.se/2013/01/ernst-junger-master-in-making.html

"I can here be a bit shameless in announcing that they're not alone in 
this noble pursuit. Edda Publishing <http://www.edda.se/> will release 
an edition of Jünger's strange and superb /Besuch auf Godenholm/ (1952), 
translated into English by Annabel Moynihan-Lee and illustrated by 
Fredrik Söderberg <http://www.fredriksoderberg.org/>, in the 
spring/summer of 2013. That, my friends, will be an edition to savour!"


On 19.04.2013 15:49, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> 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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