Eumeswil is a 1977 novel by the German author Ernst Jünger. The narrative is set in an undatable post-apocalyptic world, somewhere in present-day Morocco. It follows the inner and outer life of Manuel Venator, a historian in the city-state of Eumeswil who also holds a part-time job in the night bar of Eumeswil's ruling tyrant, the Condor.[1] The book was published in English in 1993, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.[2]
Cover of the first edition
| |
| Author | Ernst Jünger |
|---|---|
| Translator | Joachim Neugroschel |
| Cover artist | Heinz Edelmann |
| Language | German |
| Publisher | Klett-Cotta |
Publication date | 1977 |
| Publication place | West Germany |
Published in English | 1993 |
| Pages | 434 |
| ISBN | 9783129041703 |
The key theme in the novel is the figure of the Anarch, the inwardly-free individual who lives quietly and dispassionately within but not of society and the world. The Anarch is a metaphysical ideal figure of a sovereign individual, conceived by Jünger.[3] Jünger was greatly influenced by egoist thinker Max Stirner. Indeed, the Anarch starts out from Stirner's conception of the unique (der Einzige), a man who forms a bond around something concrete rather than ideal,[4][5] but it is then developed in subtle but critical ways beyond Stirner's concept.
The Anarch is the positive counterpart of the anarchist.
I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.
Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.
The Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist.
Publishers Weekly reviewed the book in 1994: "In this acute if labyrinthine study of a compromised individual, [Jünger] telescopes past and present, playing over the sweep of Western history and culture with a dazzling range of allusions from Homer and NerotoPoe and Lenin, displaying his erudition but failing to ignite the reader's engaged interest."[6]
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