Book Review: "On the Marble Cliffs" by Ernst Jünger

What does it mean, and what does it say to us today?

[WARNING: This review will include spoilers.]

Ernst Jünger's short novella, On the Marble Cliffs (1939)¹—published in English in 2023 by the New York Review of Books (nyrb) and translated by Tess Lewis—is an outstanding and ever-relevant work. Jünger's brilliant prose is on full display; his world-building and scene creation is vivid, and his characterization is masterful. Yet, there is so much more to the book than its prose. Like other good works of fiction, enduring meaning runs throughout it. In this review we shall explore some of the themes of On the Marble Cliffs; we shall uncover what it says about the historical moment it was written during, what it says about Jünger’s beliefs, and what it continues to say to us today.

Before actually reviewing the book, it is necessary to understand the circumstances of its writing. On the Marble Cliffs was written during a most tumultuous year. I could not find any the exact date the book was originally published, except that it was published “later that year” (front of very first page in the nyrb copy). Of course, by that time Hitler had been in power for several years. Jünger said he had essentially completed the manuscripts by the summer of 1939. Regardless, the timing of its publication was clearly explosive. Jünger relates how after its publication it was widely read within the Wehrmacht.

Jünger had already been staunch in his refusal to join the National Socialists prior to the publication of On the Marble Cliffs. He and his brother were not on good terms with the Nazis well before the war started, thanks to their many critiques of National Socialism. Nevertheless, Hitler was fond of Jünger, and had great respect for him as a person, so he never allowed the party to take action against him; this was the case even when this story was published, although the Gestapo would eventually suppress the book in 1942.

It is striking to me just how much care Jünger puts into painting a portrait of the physical world his characters inhabit. He does so through detailed descriptions of their environment, their home, and their country. It is one of sprawling vineyards, small towns, mountains, glaciers, taverns, market squares, gardens, marble cliffs, beautiful bays, rolling pastures, fields of flowers, bogs, and a dark and foreboding forest. The way he describes every part of this world is truly mesmerizing and it is a real treat for the imagination. It also has a certain dream-like feeling to it. In the author’s note, included at the end of the nyrb edition, Jünger actually refers to On the Marble Cliffs as an “assault from the realm of dreams” that “transcends—in time and space—the scope of the actual and the episodic” (117). He achieves this by fashioning a world that exists outside of any particular historical moment. The world of On the Marble Cliffs is at once modern and ancient. It has wars of a modern sort with guns and armored vehicles, though it also has horses and swords. The world has cars, electric bulbs, and a medieval flavor of Christianity. It also has devout pagans, swords, totems, and magic. The battle between the Head Forester and the band organized by the protagonists is one fought primarily by hunting dogs and men with blunt weapons and shotguns. This setting and its many characteristics—which transcend time and space and are even somewhat contradictory—give the reader a sense of the old passing away and giving way to the new, just as the old world was disappearing in the aftermath of The Great War. It also creates a sense of timelessness: the story of On the Marble Cliffs will never be dated because it exists outside time. Like every good myth, fable, and fairytale, On the Marble Cliffs is always timely and pertains to universal themes.

Though there is a story unfolding, it unfolds as a memory, and this memory is especially fixated on the “good times” which precede the later events of the book. The unnamed protagonist spends a great deal of time reminiscing about the past, which was more peaceful and tranquil. The narrator lives with his brother Ortho and his son Erio, as well as Erio's grandmother—the cook of the house, Lampusa—in an expansive ancient house called the “Rue-Herb Retreat.” The house is carved into the marble cliffs and overlooks the Marina, a huge lake. There, he and his brother Ortho, both veterans of the Alta Plana war (this world’s Great War, basically), spend their time away from the world studying botany.

It is important to note that Jünger himself had an interest in botany and zoology. In fact, I would say that as far as this novella is concerned, everyone in it ought to be thought of as corresponding to real people: Ortho to F.G. Jünger, Ernst’s brother; Erio to Ernst’s son Ernst Jr.; several other characters perhaps indirectly based on people Jünger knew. In the author’s note, Jünger recalls the inspiration for one of the key episodes of the story: a late night conversation he and his brother had with some unnamed people about things which had political undertones, as well as subsequent moments with Prince Sturdza, a Romanian noble and prominent member of the Iron Guard, as well as Karl Gerstberger, a German composer. One of the people the Jünger brothers spoke with during the night Ernst references ended up being executed, just like the events of the book.

At this point I will spend some time recounting the basic plot of the book. If you don’t want too much spoiled, I suggest skipping this part. I will place a divider later so you can know when it is over when scrolling down.

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Early on we learn of a mysterious figure known as the “Head Forester,” who is revealed to be a looming threat to the narrator's world. Gradually, we discover that the Head Forester used to be a governor of Mauretania, which is described as being a powerful and warlike nation with a very technical outlook. We are told that Ortho and the narrator used to regularly spend time with him and other powerful people around the world when they were younger. More and more the reader gets the sense that the Head Forester and his minions are a force to be reckoned with, a threat that begins in some distant and faraway region but inches closer and closer to the harmonious lands of the narrator. Terror is said to be the main weapon of the Head Forester, and his plan of domination is simple: he creates chaos to correct it. He ferments disorder to establish tyranny. He spreads terror so that he can swoop in and establish order, for a terrorized people always look for someone to pacify their fears. Therefore, the Head Forester is both the source and the solution of the problems which plague the region. But, in the beginning, the narrator and his companions only hear distant reports of killings and attacks as they continue living life as usual. The world continues on as normal and their lives are, so far, undisturbed. Two of their friends include a Christian friar who runs a shrine, and an old man who owns a large property.

A radical shift occurs when, one day, the narrator and brother Ortho set out to find a certain red flower called the red helleborine, a type of orchid found in Europe and Northwest Africa (the rough area where the book takes place). It is interesting to note that Jünger wrote of the color red: “it glows wherever there are tensions.”² The color red features heavily in the book for those with minds that notice such things. Eventually the brothers enter the forest, and they stumble upon a truly horrifying scene: a torture camp, where humans have been flayed alive and mutilated by various other means. This is the moment when the Head Forester and his “rabble” (the word Jünger uses several times to describe the underlings of the Head Forester) are revealed to be a truly demonic and evil force. It is also when the narrator and the others realize that what was once a foreign and seemingly insignificant threat is beginning to get dangerously close to home. They leave, and from this point onward the situation begins to spiral out of control.

Matters come to a head when a young prince and a Mauretanian named Braquemart, who the brothers knew, visit the Rue-Herb Retreat. They reveal that they are setting out to fight the Head Forester. The narrator knows it is fated to be a doomed expedition. As the two depart the Retreat, a cuckoo can be heard. The cuckoo traditionally symbolized foolishness, and features several times in the book. Finally, the two brothers join forces with the old man I alluded to earlier and his family, servants, and dogs in order to fight the Head Forester themselves. They venture into the forest at first with some success but are eventually routed by the superior numbers of the Head Forester's army. The narrator narrowly escapes death, only to again find the torture camp. Much to his horror, the young prince and Braquemart have each been beheaded, their heads atop a spear. He places the head of the young noble in his sack and flees. As he flees, he first sees the farm of the old man burning, then comes to the Christian shrine, also in flames, and watches as the rubble crushes the priest. Finally, he watches as all the neighboring villages burn. Even the main city comes under assault and is set alight. They are all being reduced to ash by the Head Forester and his followers. A battle for the Retreat ensues, though they eventually flee it. The story ends with the narrator, Ortho, Erio, and Lampusa escaping from the Marina on a ship as the Head Forester's troops reach the Marble Cliffs and destroy the Retreat. A hopeful and comforting tone is struck in the end, though, as they talk of the North.

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This summary does not at all do the book justice, but I have tried to give the overall plot and the important details.

What is most discussed about On the Marble Cliffs is not its excellent prose or style, but its story’s meaning. The description of this copy describes it as “an allegory of the advent of fascism,” and this seems to be the predominant opinion of critics. However, this is a huge oversimplification. To her credit, Jessi Stevens, who introduces the book, actually understands this to some degree. She writes,

The novel was immediately received as an allegory for the rise of the Third Reich, but as Jünger points out in a postscript indluded here, “People understood, even in occupied France, that ‘this shoe fits several feet.’” In other words, what happened in Germany wasn’t historically unique. Echoes were soon to be found in Axis Italy, Vichy France, and the Soviet Union, not to mention in the nascent authoritarianism stirring within Western democracies today. As Jünger saw it, Hitler’s nihilism was part of a more general crisis threatening civilization (viii-xi).

I appreciate Stevens’ recognition that Jünger was not just writing a critique of Nazi Germany or Hitler in particular, but of larger and more universal issues. Nazi Germany just happens to fit into the “shoe” that Jünger had constructed.

Of course, Stevens makes one of the most common blunders when analyzing Jünger; she cannot help but dwell on his being, supposedly, part of the “far-Right,” and she gets tripped up on this a lot. She remarks that On the Marble Cliffs does not “[exonerate Jünger] of his own far-right leanings,” as if that is either what the book was meant to do or as if he needs to be absolved of the “sin” of being far-Right in the first place (x).

Again, Stevens writes, “Kracauer captured what feels most damning about Jünger’s political thinking during [the Weimar period] in a review of his controversial treatise The Worker (1932) for the Frankfurter Zeitung, in which he accused Jünger of having ‘metaphysicized’ (metaphysiziert) politics: what about real, tangible action in our own historical moment? Metaphysics is an escape” (pg. xi). She then goes on to remark that Jünger, “then an influential conservative voice,” had a “tendency to view the world through the metaphysical lens of cycles of power as opposed to the ‘right and left’…Ever aristocratic, his critiques of Hitler could appear to be as rooted in intellectual snobbery as in moral outrage. He once complained that the Nazis ‘lacked metaphysics.’ They waged war like technicians” (xi).

Stevens is so blinded by her leftist assumptions that she cannot begin to see how prescient Jünger’s critique is. Still stuck in the left-right divide, the importance of metaphysics completely passes by her to the point that she sees complaints over a lack of metaphysics as snobbish escapism. According to her, the only real politics is that which takes place “on the ground,” at the ballot box or on the battlefield.

Later she comes to a judgement of the book: “To my reading, On the Marble Cliffs is a daring but ultimately inward-looking achievement. It is as if Jünger built himself an ivory tower in which to wait out Nazi Germany’s darkest decades. He never left. Nor did he repent. Until his death, Jünger dismissed criticisms of his wartime behavior. As he aged, he appealed to the growing asymmetry between himself and his younger critics: You weren’t there.” Despite this, Stevens also acknowledges that when read “In the most generous light, [Jünger’s novels/works] present an argument for the preservation of beauty, refinement, and human dignity in the face of Armageddon; in the harshes, a justification for a retreat into aesthetics and abstraction in the face of all too real atrocities” (xiii). Stevens ultimately worries about the novella’s “enduring sense of nobility, stripped of a politics” (xv). I worry about a politics stripped of nobility and metaphysics.

Stevens seems oblivious to the importance of metaphysics surrounding this whole topic. She at once derides Jünger for focusing too intently on the metaphysical realm of politics and historical moments, but then goes on to declare the Nazis actions as “atrocities” and clearly sees some issues with the Right. Yet, how can one pass a moral judgement on the Nazis or anyone else if they have no metaphysics? A materialist and nihilistic outlook is entirely unequipped to critique these sorts of Regimes. To those confused why Jünger would be so concerned about the metaphysical, I suggest they read G.K. Chesterton's Heretics. In it they will find the answer. Allow me to share an excerpt from it to illustrate why exactly Jünger would be so concerned about the lack of metaphysics within modern ideologies:

Now, in our time, philosophy or religion, our theory, that is, about ultimate things, has been driven out, more or less simultaneously, from two fields which it used to occupy. General ideals used to dominate literature. They have been driven out by the cry of "art for art's sake." General ideals used to dominate politics. They have been driven out by the cry of "efficiency," which may roughly be translated as "politics for politics' sake." Persistently for the last twenty years the ideals of order or liberty have dwindled in our books; the ambitions of wit and eloquence have dwindled in our parliaments. Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely become less literary. General theories of the relation of things have thus been extruded from both; and we are in a position to ask, "What have we gained or lost by this extrusion? Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher?"

There is no doubt that this is an allegory which applies to the rise of National Socialism in Weimar Germany and the establishment of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. This I do not contest. But it is not meant to be an allegory which only or even primarily applies to the Nazis. I would posit that the story of On the Marble Cliffs is rather a critique of nihilism, of materialism, of ideological and collectivist politics, and of tyrannies. It it also a meditation on what it means to be on the losing side and to see your world pass away.

Furthermore, contrary to Stevens’ view, Jünger is actually rather critical of himself in this book. At one point, he laments, “There was an additional aspect, which I would call shameful, and that is that we did not consider the forest scum our adversaries” (61). The narrator also seems to regret how he and his brother had once associated with the Head Forestor and his minions: “In those days we enjoyed his presence—we were reckless and sat at the tables of the powerful of the world” (21). The narrator also has a change of heart during the course of the book. During the nighttime meeting with the young price and Braquemart, the narrator observes that the prince “considered us mere dreamers, ineffectual, and had soon passed judgement. There are situations in which each party deems the other a fantasist” (76). The narrator’s judgement was that the prince’s attack on the Head Forester would be folly. However, when the narrator later finds the dead prince, he “realized that the prince was worthy of his ancestors, slayers of monsters; he had vanquished the drag fear in his breast. I had often doubted; now I was convinced there were still noble beings among us in whose hearts knowledge of the higher order was preserved and perpetuated. A lofty example enjoins us to follow, and I swore before the head that for all the future I would cast my lot with the solitary and free rather than with the triumphant and servile” (98).

In some ways I see this book as representing a self-critique of Jünger’s earlier years as a hardcore militant nationalist. I also think he realized that there was value in outward resistance, even if he did not himself take it and saw it as ultimately doomed to failure in the face of inevitable movements of history. Ultimately, Jünger wants to bring our attention to the most important thing of all: not losing oneself to fear and power. As the narrator remarks, “mistakes become flaws only when we persist in them” (21). And, as Jünger says at the end of the author’s note, “A man can harmonize with the powers of his time or her can stand against them. This is secondary. At every point he has the opportunity to show how he has grown. That is how he can manifest his freedom—physical, spiritual, moral—especially in the face of danger. How will he remain true to himself: that is his problem. It is also the touchstone of the poem” (117). Having said all this, the narrator, and Jünger, certainly do no regret everything they did, and there are several instances where they clearly show their hand and how they believe they are in the right.

We must now turn to the theme of the book that features most prominently and is most discussed: the rise of a tyrant, of disorder, and the conditions which precede such a rise.

To understand the rise of the Head Forester, and of any tyrant, we must understand the world which allows them to rise at all. The narrator says at one point that “After the war of Alta Plana, what had once been customary took on a sinister cast. Through sores the healthy hardly notice, the exhausted body may be seized by decay” (30). The world, then, was like an “exhausted body,” perhaps due to the war, but also to the degeneration of society. The narrator recounts how “The core of barbarous honor that had kept violence in check disentegrated; all that remained was sheer crime…In this way, the old forms had lost their meaning” (30-31). We read of how old customs and traditions were being disregarded, how once sacred things were being blasphemed and desecrated, and how old feuds were being reignited and carried on. The following quote, which speaks to this rise of violence and hatred, seems to me key to understanding how ideologies operate and how mass movements give rise to authoritarianism and tyranny:

Soon it seemed that they barely saw each other as human, and their speech became laden with words reserved for such vermin as were to be wiped out, exterminated, and fumigated. They only recognized murder when committed by the opposing side and they praised acts committed by their own that they decried from their foes. Whereas all deemed the others’ dead barely worth burying in the dark of night, their own merited the purple shroud, the eburnum song, and the eagle soaring to the gods, living symbols of heroes and prophets (36).

Another aspect of this ideological takeover is the appropriation of art. “Now the battlers and bards were equals” (36).

The mobs and followers of the Head Forester are also said to hate civilized society. “In these circles, it was the fashion to disdain the cultivation of grapes and wheat and to see the herdsmen’s wild lands as the source of authentic ancestral customs. We are familiar with the confused, madcap ideas that captivate enthusiasts. It would have been easy to laugh them off had they not led to blatant sacrilege inconceivable to anyone still in possession of his reason” (33). I am sorry to say, but there are many prominent online figures today who carry on this fashion. This is also an interesting example of Jünger rebuking the Nietzschean vitalists and their interpretation of history and society.

I think we all feel these words in our bones. How often today, on the Left and Right, can we observe people speaking of one another as less than human? How many times do we see the Left and Right cheer on actions done to the other side that they would protest if done to their own? How much today do we see art and culture being appropriated and used as propaganda and as a blugeon to beat the other side into submission? Things once sacred, meant to act as bridges and stopgaps to violence and hatred, have been vandalized and perverted into weapons, or disregarded entirely. Tradition, which kept order far more than it suppressed creativity, is pushed to the wayside. Ultimately, like the narrator says, we can see many “signs of manifest decline” in our world today (37).

It is this decline and degeneration which accompanies the Head Forester. “The role he played in this turmoil, planned in minute detail in his forests, was that of a force of order, for while his lower agents, members of the herders’ clans, extended the reach of anarchy, his adepts infiltrated the ministries and courts, even the monasteries, and were seen there as powerful figures who would bring the rabble to heel. In this the Head Forester was like an evil doctor whoe inflicts and ailment in order to subject the patient to his intended surgery” (37).

The Head Forester, like every tyrant, seizes on a society already shaken, injects it with terror and strife, and then offers himself as the solution. But his solution, which positions itself as bringing order, is less than humane; it is downright demonic.

At this point, one may wonder why no one is doing anything to stop the Head Forester. One reason given is that the Head Forester’s followers are essentially outside the law and are able to inflict vengeance on anyone who fights back. “Many had thought of resisting, but cases of resistance were met with plundering that was clearly a strategic response” (31). This plundering was not limited to mere destruction of property, either. It included “the vilest and basest acts humans are capable of,” including, we can safely assume, torture, rape, and murder. The narrator recounts how, “to stoke fear, [the mobs] would pack their victims’ dead bodies into chests or barrels and these baleful messages would be delivered with cargo from Campagna to the houses of relatives” (32).

The mob is also able to carry out such violence and terror because the law is utterly incapble of dealing with it thanks to the government being unable to organize itself properly against it, as well as corrupt and ineffectual officials. The narrator says that, “While there were a few magistrates clear-sighted enough to see through [the Head Forester’s] game, they lacked the power to stop him. In the Marina, the state had long relied on troops of foreign mercenaries and as long as order reigned it was well served” (38). However, the leader of the main mercenary group felt that allowing the Head Forester to grow in power served his interests, and he did not deploy his troops. “He carried on zealously about justice and order—but no one saw him strike a blow for either. At the same time, he negotiated not only with the clans but also with the Head Forester’s captains, whom he wined and dined at the Marina’s expense” (38). He even “handed control over the rural districts to them and their forest ruffians. So terror establiushed its reign behind a mask of order” (38).

Finally, we learn that “the law was far weaker than anarchy. Commissioners accompanied by armed detachments had, in fact, been dispatched immediately after the plundering began but they found the Campagna already in complete revolt: negotiations were impossible. In order to intervene decisively, according to the constitution, they first had to convene the estates, for a country like the Marina, with a long history of law, is loath to abandon legal channels” (32). Well, if that isn’t just the most Schmittian thing I’ve ever heard! The Marina needed to suspend its constitution and declare an exeption to deal with the Head Forester; it couldn’t.

I think we can see the resemblance of the circumstances of the Marina to Weimar Germany, but it goes well beyond that too. When tradition is weakened, when the law becomes weak, when the government becomes corrupt and ineffective, when customs are lost or abandoned, and when fear reigns supreme, tyrants and their followers are ready to sweep in and establish “order,” despite having assisted in bringing all these things about. Mobs form and get behind their strongmen. The idea that fear is able to pulverize a people and lead to their subjugation is picked up later in The Forest Passage (1951)³: “The great solitude of the individual is a hallmark of our times. He is surrounded, encircled by fear, which pushes walls in against him on all sides.” Isolation and fear are the tool of the machine, of the Total State, and it is the tool of the Head Forester.

Throughout all of this, we can pick up on Jünger’s belief that the world has meaning, that human freedom and dignity are of extreme importance, that tradition is important, and that order is held together by good people who keep watch over the situation. He writes fondly and extensively of symbolism, ancient traditions, myths, legends, and superstitions. He sees the universe as having an ultimate transcendent meaning, with each little detail and object having some higher symbolic value.

Meanwhile, the Head Forester is concerned only with power, material gain, and personal aggrandizement. This he accomplishes with the destruction of the old order in favor of the new, assisted by a grotesque collection of the lowest men. Together they assault civilization and humanity itself. Their torture camps and barbaric violence demonstrate how they view people as disposable. Any movement of this kind clearly does not see the human person as having inherent value and worth, nor do they believe in any kind of transcendent morality. It is notable that the Head Forester hails from the Mauretanians, who are said to believe that power ought to be wielded in a “dispassionate, godlike manner” and that, “for them, the world was reduced to a map like those that are engraved for amateurs using little compasses and polished instruments that are pleasing to hold” (22-23).

Is this not how we view politics today? Is this not the role the State has assumed for itself—one of dispassionate and godlike power?

This is precisely what Jünger is against. This is what the story is about. It is about the death of the old world of symbols, traditions, myths, legends, morals, nobility, freedom, and individuality. It is about the advent of a new order—or, rather, a new disorder—one led by charismatic figures and strongmen with the masses behind them, emptied of meaning, striving only for greater technological progress, increased efficiency, and ever more concentrated power. This is why Jünger is so concerned with faulty metaphysics or the lack of a metaphysics to begin with. Once good metaphysics and a sense of understanding of the world has been discarded, all is threatened and nothing is sacred, not even the human person.

To end this review, though there is so much I wish to say about this book, I would like to recall the narrator’s words from the fateful meeting with the young prince and Braquemart, which I believe are the clearest distillation of Jünger’s stance on how we are to deal with threats like these:

It was not a coincidence nor any adventure that had the old forester and his Lemures-rablle emerging from the forest depths and beginning their activity. Before, riffraff of this kind were dealt with like thieves, and their now swelling ranks indicated profound disruptions in the order and health of the people, indeed, in their fortunes as a whole. Intervention was sorely needed and this required marshals to restore order and new theologians able to see the evil clearly, from its external manifestations down to its finest roots; only then would it be time for the consecrated sword to strike a blow that would rend the darkness like a bolt of lightning. Accordingly, it was incumbent on each individual to enter more clearly and intentionally into ties with others and garner a new trove of legitimacy. One lives by special rules to win a race, even a short one. But in this case, the highest form of life, freedom and human dignity itself, were at stake. Braquemart, it is true, held such considerations to be rank foolishness and intended to pay the Head Forester back in kind. He had lost his self-respect and that loss is the source of all human ills (79).

Even though Jünger regretted his neutral stance towards the tyrants and rabble to begin, he is firm in his belief that responding to violence and barbarism by lowering oneself to responding in turn with more violence and barbarism is fruitless and, indeed, only contributes further to the deterioration of the situation. While he did assist in trying to fight the Head Forester in the end, he recognized that there was no saving the Marina, and that the only way to truly resist the forces in play was to focus on greater and more transcendent things like language, theology, and love. At one point the narrator claims that, “In the word we recognized the gleam of the magical blade before which the tyrant’s power pales. Word, spirit, and freedom form a trinity” (55). I find this reminiscient of a few comments in The Forest Passage, where Jünger writes that “we need poets—they initiate the overthrow, even that of titans. Imagination, and with it song, belong to the forest passage.” Finally, it is “the three great powers of art, philosophy, and theology” which are capable of “[breaking] fresh ground in the dead-end situation.”

Let us not lose sight of metaphysics, of philosophy, of theology, of good morals, of art, of poetry, of language, and of friendship in the face of terror and seemingly insurmountable danger. If we can hold on to these things and watch over them relentlessly, and if we can above all maintain our own freedom and keep from succumbing to our basest instincts, we can resist anything, no matter how powerful it may be and no matter if we are on the “losing” side or not.

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1. Ernst Jünger, On the Marble Cliffs, ed. Jessi Stevens, trans. Tess Lewis (New York Review of Books, 2023).

2. Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios, ed. Eliah Bures and Elliot Neaman, trans. Thomas Friese (Telos Press, Limited, 2012).

3. Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage, Print, ed. Russell Berman, trans. Thomas Friese (Candor, New York, United States of America: Telos Press Publishing, 2013).