A Fable for Our Time
The following is a condensed version of "A Fable for our Time" by Matthew Pheneger, published at Law & Liberty.
By the time of his death at the age of 101, the German author and veteran soldier Ernst Jünger had written enough to fill eighteen volumes with his collected works. The most famous of these remains Storm of Steel, Jünger’s account of his experiences during the First World War. Less well known, though no less relevant in our age of growing tyranny, is Jünger’s early novel, On the Marble Cliffs, a new translation of which has recently been published by the NYRB.
Set in a quasi-historical Europe, On the Marble Cliffs tells the story of two war-weary brothers who have taken up residence in the Grand Marina, an idyllic Mediterranean country. From their stately retreat carved out of the steep cliffs overlooking the Marina, the brothers spend their days cataloging the native flora collected in their herbarium.
Unfortunately, not all is well in the deceptively tranquil Marina. From the forests located far to the north, the malefic Head Forester and his restive outlaw bands have begun to stir, sowing chaos and discord wherever they rear their heads.
Critics have been quick to find an allegory for Hitler in the figure of the Head Forester. While there is much to be said for this comparison, we should be careful of reducing On the Marble Cliffs to a straightforward allegory. Comparisons might also be made with Stalin and the Soviet Union and even Napoleon and Revolutionary France. What united these regimes for Jünger was the nihilism permeating their core, which revealed itself in their overt hostility to anything oriented toward the past and rooted in the soil of tradition and religious faith. It follows that the Head Forester is less a metaphor for a particular dictator or regime than he is an embodiment of the spirit of negation itself—a chthonic, elementary force opposed to the formative work of culture and civilization.
It is telling in this regard that the spread of the Head Forester’s pernicious influence coincides with significant moral decline among the ancient society of the Grand Marina. While the source of this decline is unclear, the deterioration of the Marina’s customs provides the Head Forester with the inroads he needs to sow the seeds of his tyranny. “He could only act when things had already begun to falter,” the narrator observes.
Here, Jünger reminds us that society is not only at risk of succumbing to tyranny imposed by force from without. Society is also at risk of succumbing to tyranny when it loses sight of the inherited customs and traditions that have long served to anchor and safeguard its liberty. Jünger’s ability to recall this timeless insight makes re-publication of On the Marble Cliffs particularly timely. For in the Western world today, our collective understanding of liberty has increasingly come to mean liberation from all bonds and ties not freely chosen by the individual, often at the expense of traditional norms and institutions.
In light of the destruction brought on by the Head Forester, the two brothers redouble their efforts to catalog the native flora in their herbarium. By repeatedly emphasizing the sublime beauty of flowers and plants, Jünger directs our attention away from the carnage wrought by the Head Forester and towards that which transcends it—to the “eternal element locked behind the screen of appearances.” Even if a completed picture of the mosaic ultimately remains elusive, the timeless endeavor to glean something of its contours serves as a riposte to the chaos represented by the Head Forester. Indeed, “Such is beauty’s effect on power.”
At the same time, there is a sense in which the Head Forester, harbinger of chaos and destruction, is a necessary part of the very order he subverts. In the end, one is left with the impression that the Head Forester’s bloody triumph is something inevitable. The tragedy of On the Marble Cliffs is thus no less than the tragedy of civilization itself, which despite its myriad splendors is ultimately doomed to senescence and decline.
The story of civilization, Jünger tells us, is ultimately a tragic story. Time and again, we are reminded that what is difficult to build is all too easily reduced to so much rubble and dust. But we need not resign ourselves to the fact. On the contrary, there is something heroic in the resolve to carry on with the sacred task of recovery and preservation with which we are entrusted, even when the forces of entropy are arrayed against us. As our narrator soberly concludes: “No house is built, no plan created, in which ruin is not the cornerstone, and what lives imperishably in us does not reside in our works. We perceived this truth in the flame, and its glow was not devoid of joy.”
Matthew Pheneger is an attorney and writer currently based in northwest Ohio.
