/lit/ - Literature

What makes you say that? Maybe you could. The first step to anything is believing in yourself.

Be the Achilles of your time.

>>19071178
>I wouldn't have the mental capacity to survive half the shit he describes here.
He was lucky. That's most of it.

"Hear it singing in the air, how on mighty wings
The heralds of death approach, hear how the iron shatters.
Faster, fiercer, it leaps forward, rushing, screaming.
It howls furiously and tears a hundred men to pieces at once.
Pillars of fire blooming. The earth rising and roaring
As the fountain erupts, smoke burns in the eyes,
Richly, the bloody dew from the blackening cloud,
Like the redthorn in May, fields glistening with blood."

>>19071667
Much more than luck.

>>19071489
Modern Achilles would have been sent to prison for refusing to fight

>>19072016
Nah, that really is it. He was certainly brave and skilled, but many of his slain comrades were too. He lived while many others died for no apparent rhyme or reason. Shit, he lived when he SHOULD have died.

>>19072025
You're talking about survival. OP asked about strength.

>>19072035
And you just answered the fundamental part of OP's question

Strength != survival

>>19071178
It's not possible for you.

>>19072467
Why not?

>>19072040
Reddit

>>19072891
Junger emerged from a context for which there is no modern parallel.

>>19072040
The irony is that the same logic applies, but inverse.
OP asked about mental strength. One could be mentally strong enough but still could get killed randomly. Another could be mentally weak and live.
Mental strength is largely something outside of the events of the war. Same reason why so many today experience far less of war yet are increasingly shocked by it. There is a great mental weakness that cripples man from the slightest shocks.
And yet still, there is a sort of nihilist strength which keeps him from even seeing a much greater destruction occurring.

There are several types of strength, chance as well as fate, and the physical and metaphysical realms. The Great War is so disorienting for modern man because of the catastrophic collision and turning of the physical and metaphysical. It was strangely the peak of democratic war, but also a war in which the highest laws returned. A war in the sense of the primordial battles, in which man is being recreated along with the face of the earth.

This requires another type of strength, even just being able to see it. And it was the very source from which Jünger drew his strength.

>>19073198
One can also say that modern man is like steel. In contrast to the fasces, steel resists through an appropriate crystalline structure, it has to be worn away to retain its sharpness - or be of a specific type to withstand repeated shocks.
In this sense, death is a necessary part of democratic strength or resilience. It is the case that many more die, but also many more live, and to the point that there are population shocks. We do not even recognise or acknowledge the deaths, we live as if others were dead, or wish it were so.
This is necessary to understand the thinking behind the apocalyptic heroism of the Unknown Soldier.

In forging steel there is hardness, strength, and toughness. Democratic man is primarily of the last type, which is why his mind and structures take on the appearance of an ugly resilience - like the mushrooming effect at the edges of an abused hammer.

>>19072040
>t. never read Junger

>>19073185
I don't think this is really true.
>During the First World War I was still a complete atheist. I remember that one day I found myself in front of a trench that was sustaining brisk fire. I had to get across it, and I mused that a prayer would be appropriate. But I told myself: "No, if I didn't care about the Good Lord when everything was going well, it would be awful to ask for his help now!"

>>19071178
>>19071178

which version and translation to get?

>>19073271
How does this relate to the post you replied to?

>>19071178
he was a LARPer

>>19071667
lucky = chosen by gods, Caesar was also lucky.

>>19073293

The Storm of Steel: Original 1929 Translation
published by Mystery Grove Publishing Co.

>>19073318
Such thinking is the very opposite of Jünger's, and only proves itself.
One has to be able to see the fateful, the providential, in things. Our situation has hardly changed in terms of the highest values, or laws of the era.

>>19073293
Penguin

"To survive the world war on the Western Front from start to finish, one of the lucky strokes was undoubtedly being wounded. The wound, which was neither too heavy nor too light, was one of the lucky wounds of the old warriors held in reserve by the great lottery of the war. It must not be too light, otherwise it would only result in a short stay in a field hospital behind the front and not allow the best fruit, a fortnight's stay at home, to ripen. But the real hit, whether saloon, cavalryman or home, was greeted with a joy that could not have been dreamed of at the start of the campaign. So amidst the shouts of the troop going into battle, congratulations could often be heard for the wounded walking towards them.
It was a particularly fortunate coincidence that they were wounded just before a battle which ended in the destruction of great units of troops. As the war progressed, with the increase in large-scale fighting on a material basis, it was increasingly common to see not a single man out of battalions leading a large-scale attack. This was all too obviously a consequence of the procedure that had been developed for such attacks. The preparatory fire first destroyed all communications in the rear, making it partly impossible for the fighters to communicate with headquarters and artillery, and partly preventing the reserves from reinforcing the front line. Thus the garrison in the front defence zone was covered like a huge fire bell and closed to any assistance. If the attack did succeed, the firewall remained in place, so that even the few survivors could not escape. Therefore the last to know the fate of such a unit were those wounded on the march, and the next, uncertain news came only through reports from the enemy army or letters from prisoners of war. In many cases it was not until after the war that details of when the enemy invasion took place could be learned. Such an injury deprived me of the fate of my battalion at Combles, which was to take up a position in the evening near Guillemont, and which soon disappeared to the last man. The disappearance without a trace of such an important unit in battle was too new to us at the time not to leave a strong impression - as was the whole character of this war, which began with the summer battle in question. The unimaginable and unprecedented force of the fire created the impression of a natural disaster, and the serious damage matched that impression. ... "

just dig a deep hole bro

>>19073381

Read the first review here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MTK7SE1/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Penguin/Hoffman translation doesn't capture the spirit of the original translation.

>>19073249
I have. I think a lot of people misinterpret Storm of Steel.

Junger was, no doubt, a skilled and brave soldier. He, like many other young men, loved the thrill of battle and had some fond memories of the war. That doesn't mean that Junger had some special skill set that made him survive while others perished. Junger should have died several times, but through a combination of skill and quite a bit of luck he survived. All it would have taken is at any point in the war for a spare splinter or shell to hit in the wrong place and you'd never heard of Junger.

Storm of Steel is the opinion of a German officer taken from the time he served--not twisted to weave a political message. It's this candidness that is refreshing and lets us see what the war was like. How the men coped with the destruction and death at the time. The gallows humor, if you will. Battle transforms men and lets them handle atrocities that they wouldn't be able to anywhere else.

Junger refers to this when he was completely disgusted at the sight of a driver's thumb being split open, yet feeling at ease around a mutilated corpse or man gasping his last breaths on the field of battle.

>>19073463
>As an American, born free, and will live free or die, I regard as enemies of mankind those who take it upon themselves to tell us what to think. I just want an unedited text. Let me draw the conclusion.

>For the above reasons I pronounce an anathema upon the Hofmann translation. Seekers of truth and authenticity I must wave you off; regard this translation as radioactive.

>>19073463
We just had that thread. You hardly get anything extra with the 1929 translation while you lose a lot that was added in the Penguin version.

>>19073460
Based

>>19073509
>American
>free

>>19073360
Kek you're a massive faggot