Eumeswil
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Ernst Jünger |
|---|---|
| Translator | Joachim Neugroschel |
| Cover artist | Heinz Edelmann |
| Country | West Germany |
| Language | German |
| Publisher | Klett-Cotta |
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Publication date
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1977 |
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Published in English
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1993 |
| Pages | 434 |
| ISBN | |
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, an 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. The book was published in English in 1993, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.
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. Jünger was greatly influenced by individualist anarchist 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, 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 Nero to Poe and Lenin, displaying his erudition but failing to ignite the reader's engaged interest."
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