In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

IMMANENCE = TRANSCENDENCE (DEATH) 379
has lost his secret. This allows him to be reborn. And just as his mistress
frees him from the spell of the mother, thus the woman literally frees him
from Mother Earth. Woman is the midwife cutting the umbilical cord
which the secret of nature has formed" (Benjamin, 140-145). Benjamin's
reflection is as pretentious as it is unclear (Ritter). For what could be the
secret from which men are freed through sexual fulfillment? Why would
such newly achieved liberty set them free for their Death? And why
would freedom for Death be a necessary condition for the birth of new
life?
It is generally taken for granted that the proximity of Death enhances
the intensity of life. Authors refer to this experience as a fact that requires
no further explication: "Bullfighting-an object sometimes of scorn and
sometimes of hyperbolic praise that calls it a national attribute, like an
anthem or a flag-owes its reputation to emotion, because death is
present in it" (Blanco y Negro, 80). In Ernst junger's epic of trench
warfare, the same motif is rhetorically developed under the obvious
influence of Nietzsche's discourse on Dionysian intoxication: "Everybody
is drunk without wine, each living in a different, fabulous world.
All of the usual laws appear to have been lifted [aufgehoben], and we
find ourselves in a feverish dream of intensified reality-in another circle
of the law, in another circle of humanity, which is itself in another circle
of nature. Bundles of shadowy lines zoom through the air. The atmosphere,
which has been shattered by the powerful air pressure of an
explosion, makes the objects in our field of vision quiver and dance like
images in a flickering film" (Junger, 108). Adolf Hitler's description of
the same Great War battlefields goes beyond the Dionysian. He encounters
a situation in which the enhancement of life through Death becomes
fear, and fear of Death in turn becomes a supreme state of Sobriety: "But
the romance of battle had turned to horror. Enthusiasm gradually
waned, and exuberant joy was smothered by the fear of death. The time
came when everyone felt torn between the instinct for self-preservation
and the voice of duty ... This struggle had already been decided for me
during the winter of 1915-1916. My will had finally become master.
Whereas at the outset I had been able to join exuberantly and laughingly
in the storm, now I was quiet and determined" (Hitler, 181). [see Sobriety
vs. Exuberance]
Quiet determination may well be the ultimate level of enthusiasm. It
emerges from the encounter between life and Death, but it also distances