War as Inner Experience: Part Two

by Ernst Jünger

This is the second part of a new translation of Ernst Jünger’s profound treatise War as Inner Experience, which will be published here in installments.

Read part one here.

Blood

The human race is a mysterious, tangled jungle, whose crowns, grazed by the breath of free seas, stretch ever more powerfully out of mist, humidity, and dimness towards the clear sun. While the peaks are shrouded with scent, color, and flowers, in the depths a tangle of strange plants proliferates. When the sun sets, a chain of red parrots falls into the cups of springy palms like a squadron of royal dreams, while from the lowlands, already plunged into night, emerges the unpleasant jumble of creeping, slinking creatures, the screeching outcry of victims torn from sleep, cave, and warm nest into death by the treacherous assault of greedy, murder-trained teeth and claws.