1. So I have some thoughts on Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Herman Melville, slave revolts, Leo Strauss, allegorical & esoteric reading, & that anonymous New York Times op-ed.https://twitter.com/scottjshapiro/status/1038127090728615937 …
-
-
8. Junger, smartly, told Schmitt to quit & leave Germany. Schmitt didn't and in any case quickly lost political power but not before forever tarnishing his own name. By the late 1930s, both were in a kind of limbo, an "internal exile"
Show this thread -
9. The two men continued to correspond in the 1930s & 1940s, but (for obvious reasons) couldn't discuss their politics directly. So instead they relied on allegory (which Junger also did for his 1939 covertly anti-Nazi novel On the Marble Cliffs).
Show this thread -
10. So instead of talking about Hitler directly, Junger & Schmitt wrote to each other about Hieronymous Bosch, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville & Malraux. But, as Leo Strauss would note, it's best to read between the lines since persecution breeds esoteric writing.
Show this thread -
11. Schmitt kept returning to Melville's novella "Benito Cereno" -- about a slave rebellion. The title character (SPOILER ALERT) is a Spanish captain who seems to be the head of his ship but in fact is a prisoner of mutinous slaves who really direct the action.
Show this thread -
12. I'll leave aside the grossness of equating revolting slaves to Nazis for another day, but it is very tied to how order-loving German conservatives saw the 1930s: Nazis were an insurgency from below which elites failed to quell.
Show this thread -
13. The subtext of Schmitt's letters are clear. "I am Benito Cereno -- when it looks like I was collaborating with the regime I was actually a prisoner with no agency."
Show this thread -
14. (Tangentially: the exact relationship between Carl Schmitt & Leo Strauss is a subject of intense scholarly controversy, but the two read each others work. Strauss' discovery of esoteric writing came later, but was surely informed by aware of lived reality of tyranny).
Show this thread -
15. When I read the anonymous Times op-ed, it called to mind many of the dilemmas faced by Junger & Scmitt, about conservative elites trying to tame racist demagogues, about the need for secret communication, about how quickly the adult in the room can become a prisoner.
Show this thread -
16. To wrap up: both Junger and Schmitt overlapped socially with the members of the Officer's Plot, who tried to kill Hitler in 1944 but neither participated in the coup. Junger spent the war administrating Paris, which actually helped his post-war reputation.
Show this thread -
17. Post-1945 Schmitt was arrested & jailed for 2 years, stripped of his academic titles, and lived on as a contaminated figure. Junger, much admired not only in Germany but also in France, continued to be a literary hero, hailed by, among others, Mitterrand.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.