The Ecstasy meaning the Initiation in “Sturm” by Ernst Jünger

Abstract

While analyzing Ernst Jünger’s novelette Sturm (1923), I focus on the problem of the war experience narrated by the young, well-educated and interested in literature front soldier. One of the leading motifs of the narrative is the phantasm of “ecstasy” (Rausch). It works as a prism through which the main protagonists, as well as his comrades, perceive their war adventures. In their free time, characters often tell fictional stories, in which the state of ecstasy plays an important role. Their war experiences as well as their narratives and memories of the past form peculiar phantasmatic complexes stimulated by initiation’s drive that is connected with a desire for liberation from constraints of conventional norms. In the article, I argue that such a focusing on ecstasy in the description of experiences and events, could be understand as Jünger’s conscious projection, devised to render the war experiences meaningful. This specific admiration of ecstasy appears also as an important factor molding the future of Jünger’s political involvement in the movement of the so-called “Conservative Revolution.”