The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios by Ernst Jünger

Author:Ernst Jünger [Jünger, Ernst]
Language: est
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780914386612
Publisher: Telos Press Publishing
Published: 2016-04-14T04:30:00+00:00

At the same time, this relationship suggests a weakness in us, namely, that the whole is only comprehensible to us through the sequential nature of life. Initially we also perceive the missing element as the complementary color. We do not proceed in a straight line but in a wave pattern, and not from one step to the next but from one extreme to the other. We must regard these deviations as inevitable; they are part of life, which a pulsating element indwells, as is already apparent in breathing or the heartbeat. Yet our spiritual path resembles that of the hands on a clock, which are moved by the stroke and counterstroke of a pendulum.

So it is that we develop higher insights over the course of our life, or over successive generations, than in any of the particular moments from which these periods are assembled. If we keep this in mind, many contradictions in our nature can be understood. Thus, although we decidedly tend toward injustice, yet in the course of time we also come to see that which passion hides from us; our judgments become more apt. With all the daily inanities that we busy ourselves with, in our memory the important and the true always emerge more clearly. And however much we may be subject to the spirit of the times, we nevertheless at the same time put it to ceaseless trial on all counts. Thus there is inherent in us a tendency toward the complement, which has a healing effect.

This emerges with particular clarity in great historians: our history, which is one of parties, is complemented by a divine eye. Put in architectural terms, the historian draws into the Babylonian plan of our labors the arches that must necessarily escape the perception of the active powers, which are like the weight-carrying pillars.

The Zinnia

Überlingen

There are riches that come into our lives like gifts. One day we find them before us like images unfolding out of the invisible, and before long they are familiar to us, belong to us. This is what happened with the zinnia and me, a flower that migrated into our gardens a few years ago.

Besides the merits that gardeners normally find in it, the most surprising thing about this plant is the facility with which it uses color as a medium. Not only does it generate a rich scale of pure tones, as other garden flowers do, but it also has the unique talent of being able to develop a whole series of such color scales in different keys. Its blossoms thus appear to be tailored from and impregnated with vastly differing materials: ivory, fine skins, velvet, and cast bronze. This matches the plethora of pigments that are laid down on the petals, such as colored chalks and inks, but also oil, stone, and metal-based colors, and this moreover with numerous interpenetrations and mixtures.

A further augmentation is produced by the coloration of the undersides, which often become visible by a slight arching of each petal. In other cases, the color flows over onto the upper side, like ink over a wet edge.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.