Aladdin's Problem by Ernst Junger

Author:Ernst Junger [Junger, Ernst]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781568860268
Publisher: Marsilio Pub
Published: 1996-02-01T09:27:30+00:00

Wilflingen, January 6, 1982

AFTERWORD

The Parable

of Aladdin's Problem

BY MARTIN MEYER

A major influence on the German novelist Ernst Junger was the philosophy of Swedenborg, who presented his cosmic spirituality in De commercio animae et corpods (1769): God must envelop all spiritual things in visible garments, for that is the only way a finite human being can perceive the intention of Creation. Hence, matter must also be viewed as the reflection of the spiritual. The soul is the organ that must forge the link between the phenomena and their divine origin — but it can only be the soul of an initiate, whose "internal breathing" carries thoughts. In this manner, the mystical experience ofin-tuition "reconstructs" the primal images. What we have here is the neo-Platonic notion ofthe soul.

Junger, haunted by the issue of matter in the modern materialistic world, rejected any metaphysical deprecation of that concept. And that was the start of the "problem" — a term he even considered worthy of being used in a title: Aladdin's Problem, initially published in 1983. At first, this brief four-part novel seems to have little to do with a metaphysical "appreciation" of matter. In his habitual way, the author introduces a first-person narrator who, although not yet forty, has already dealt with and transcended a number of experiences. Friedrich Baroh begins his story by mentioning a "problem," one that bedevils him, casting gloom on his existence. He is forced to spend more and more time mulling over it, whereby his everyday life becomes secondary to this preoccupation. He therefore recalls his past, filling us in on his background. However, we learn nothing about the nature of his problem.

Baroh has served in the Polish People's Army — originally as a soldier, bullied by a vicious sergeant; then as an officer. In the military, he makes no waves, living as what Junger labels an "anarch," conforming unenthusiastically to the system; he spends quiet hours with a friend, a Polish officer, meditating on historical events and on their causes and premises. One day, Baroh flees to the West, where he attends university, marries, and eventually becomes an executive trainee in his uncle's funeral parlor.

After realizing that people without history have no peace and that even our graves fit in with the "chauffeur style," Baroh attempts to compensate for this lack. He starts deepening his knowledge of funeral customs and — in "a countermove to the motor world" — he founds Terrestra. His firm offers interested clients resting places for all eternity, permanent gravesites. Terrestra buys an extensive and intricate catacomb system in Anatolia; and before long, business is booming. "A primal instinct was rearoused."

But ultimately, success merely increases Baroh's frustration, and the fewer the demands placed on him, the more his problem gains the upper hand. In the last part of the novel, he admits, or at least hints at, the location of his pain.

My complaint is not housed in my brain. It is lodged in my body and, beyond that, in society — the cause of my illness.

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