ERNST JÜNGER’S “Storm of Steel”, based on his diaries as a young and enthusiastic German volunteer during the first world war, was first published in 1920. It became a classic, and has appeared in German in another seven versions since. The earliest translation into English, in 1929, was not very good. Michael Hofmann’s version, which Penguin Classics first brought out in 2004, finally does the book justice, staying true throughout to the original’s boyish, action-packed, fast-paced and entirely unreflective tone.To Jünger, war is not a puzzle or disaster but merely an elemental force, like the storm in his title or any of the other metaphors he draws from nature. It is about young men being manly mostly and sometimes not; about soldiers doing soldiers’ jobs; and about things—mortars, shrapnel, splinters, bullets, gas—that kill and maim. If Jünger sees evil in all this, it is in the materiel, not in his human adversaries. British mortars have “something of personal vitriol. They are treacherous things.”...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1g4gagd
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