Violence

Abstract

The great achievement of Ernst Jünger’s Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), first published in 1939, is to make the reader feel the danger confronting a peaceful and prosperous community: a menace set in motion by the violence of a leader, spreading disorder in the land.

But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of … all the appearances of success and power.

(Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness)

Proportion and rule [characteristic of civilised life] are irretrievably embedded in chance and disorder.

(Ernst Jünger, writer, war-hero, nationalist)