SOURCE: "A German-French Encounter: Ernst Jünger and Rimbaud," in AUMLA, No. 77, May, 1992, pp. 56-63.

In the following essay, Keller traces the influence of Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre" on Jünger's work.

Looking back to the First World War, Jünger documents his enthusiasm for Rimbaud's 'Le Bateau ivre' in recalling a visit of two fellow officers, to whom he read Rimbaud's poem, which, as he notes, occupied him greatly at that time. One of these officers was Werner von Fritsch who, twenty years later, rose to celebrity in the so-called Fritsch-Krise, as one of the first prominent opponents of Hitler's aggressive policies and one of the politician's first victims within the military. According to his surviving, unnamed fellow-visitor, Fritsch summed up his view of Jünger's recitation with the sentence: 'This man would do well to retire', a judgement which Jünger considered both well-intended and entirely...