On the Marble Cliffs

by Ernst Jünger, Jessi Jezewska Stevens, Maurice Blanchot Narrated by Julian Elfer

Overview

Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger's On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing vineyards. To the north of the cliffs are the grasslands of the Campagna, occupied by herders. North of that, the great forest begins. There the brutal Head Forester rules, abetted by the warrior bands of the Mauretanians.



The brothers have seen all too much of war. Their youth was consumed in fighting. Now they have resolved to live quietly, studying botany, adding to their herbarium, consulting the books in their library, involving themselves in the timeless pursuit of knowledge. However, rumors of dark deeds begin to reach them in their sanctuary. Agents of the Head Forester are infiltrating the peaceful provinces he views with contempt, while peace itself, it seems, may only be a mask for heedlessness.



Tess Lewis's new translation of Jünger's sinister fable of 1939 brings out all of this legendary book's dark luster.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Jünger brings to mind a different epoch, one when both soldiering and philosophy held a vastly different status in civic life...[his] writing has a comparable feeling with certain alchemical emblems: still waters, wise vipers, and black dogs. One encounters a blissed-out feel for the natural world here, but also terrible foreboding. On the Marble Cliffs is a warning of what lies up ahead.” —Ian Penman, City Journal

"On the Marble Cliffs [is] a parable of ascendant barbarism that contains an oblique protest against Nazism…[In] On the Marble Cliffs, Jünger attempted something riskier: a dark fable with unmistakable modern overtones." —Alex Ross, The New Yorker

“The classical beauty of the writing, in Tess Lewis’s exquisite translation, gives a sense of the author’s sympathies. . . . [H]is short, prismatic book is beautiful.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“[A] literary achievement of the highest order.” —Nil Santiáñez, The Massachusetts Review

“[Jünger] was a sporadic critic of the moral obtuseness that grew like vines all around him.” —Thomas Meany, Harper’s Magazine

“Jünger’s coolly detached empirical style, with its Nietzschean cadences evident in On the Marble Cliffs, has its detractors. . . . Yet the primacy of his poetic imagination, his born naturalist’s observational perceptiveness, and the noble humanness undergirding his writing lend it unequivocal greatness.” —Will Stone, Times Literary Supplement

“On the Marble Cliffs might be called Jünger’s descent into the maelstrom, a record of terror seen and survived. . . . An allegory that does not moralize, its hermeticism is inviolable and inimitable.” —Thomas R. Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914–1945

“On the Marble Cliffs is a great book and virtually no one I’ve ever mentioned it to has read it.” —W.S. Merwin

Library Journal

02/01/2023

First published in Germany on the eve of World War II, this haunting elegiac fable about the fragility of civilization gets a powerful and timely new translation by Tess Lewis. In a vaguely European monastic retreat, veterans of an ignominious war reverently study nature and observe ancient ways, humbly drawing "ever nearer the mysteries hidden in the dust." From their aerie, they observe with mounting alarm the rise of the Head Forester, a charismatic figure of "reckless arrogance" and "terrifying joviality" to whom the masses flock "the way snakes are drawn to an open fire." As time-honored traditions and taboos give way to strange new gods, "dreadful icons" devoted to a rude sense of justice and equality "centered solely on vengeance," the anchorites' quietism offers no recourse but flight. VERDICT More than a mere roman à clef about Hitler or Stalin (or both), Jünger's vivid and evocative narrative transcends its moment in capturing the ageless struggle between our individuality and creative wonder, and the darkness and terror sure to follow when people abandon themselves to belief, even if only to a belief in nothing.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191971636
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/27/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged