Pages 160-272

“I would do better to start with the night, for my day is merely a reflection.”

So the author begins the lyric phase of his story. Such a novel, if written to merely entertain, would begin here, consigning the teachers and scholarship to footnotes.

“The ancient primitive interpreters of dreams were more reliable than the modern ones.”

Manuel is a sober barkeep acting as an historian. His work late into the night helps him resist the bondage of society. He believes that there was a time when gods shared meals with men and that, “The gods must be recalled.”

“One error of the anarchist is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians (“Good is goodness”) castrate the Good Lord. This is a Saturnian trait.”

“It is not only the fit who survive, but the honest. The fact that these two survivals do not coincide within time goes back once more to Genesis, to the separation of the Tree of Life from the Tree of Knowledge.”

Section 28 spins out as a muse on theology, citing Xenophanes and Democritus on God.

Theology gives way to musings on sanity and drug use, then to government engineered shortages and monopolies on basic needs. Poverty is discussed, then back to the tyrant, whose nature is not yet explained. The nature of the ruler is beginning to emerge as unimportant.

Manuel’s daily and nightly dealings with the dutiful Chinese Kung, Nebek, a violent Lebanese subordinate and a disturbingly nihilistic Norwegian named Knut Dalin, begin to complicate his prepper planning as these men begin to follow their nature along courses hard for him to deflect.

An exploration of evil in the person of Dalin occupies a long section, dovetailing with the revelation that “dear old dad,” wanted him flushed down the toilet as an abortion. Then an extensive section on early modern witch hunting rises in Manuel’s mind as he seeks to forsake ideology and society in favor of peace and harmony.

A discussion of, and proof of, Christ’s resurrection are discussed, wandering into wondering on forgotten truths marooned by social progress: “…the dreamlike elements have increased and are weakening reality.”

His brother Georg’s work on the Perfection of Technology are represented in comments on vast drilling and excavating projects as demonic acts of “plutonian might” and which have left behind “catacombs,” which remain unexplained, and are possibly abandoned fallout shelters. This includes the noting of a great achievement just before the writing of Eumeswil, which Junger knew would not be repeated, and has not, these 40 years!

“After the first lunar landings, there were few if any problems that could not be solved by technology, so long as money was no object. Those space flights had left behind a disenchantment, that in turn, gave latitude to romantic fantasies.”

Musings on myth, magic and realism become dominated by Attila, the ambassador of the Yellow Khan, who is old and tells tales of exploring the arctic and living with the doomed Inuit: that among those people hunting made the man. Then, with the advent of the whalers and explorers, gambling, even over wives, took that pride of place. From “Frost is a harsh master,” down to emasculation through the financial aspects of modern divorce, the conversations descend into philosophy.

Manuel emerges as seeker of authority who thence reserves the right to examine it. This he extols as the core of being an “anarch.”

A conservative man is revealed as practicing “necrophilia,” and the technological attack on nature is mused, “We can exterminate the animals, but not annihilate them; they withdraw from manifestation to the primal images, perhaps to the stars. The men who explored the moon could not tell that there was life on it, for they brought wasteland along.”

He does opine that the Templars, like the Hashishans of Alamut were not unjustly wiped out. The frustrated political functionary now begins to conduct high order social observations from the prison of his function.

“With the spread of atheism, death grows more horrible. Death is overrated, both by the person suffering it and by the person inflicting it. Repentance, too, is secularized. It no longer relates to the evildoer’s salvation before he passes away into the cosmic order; now it signifies his obeisance to society and its legislation.”

“Instead, one sees eunuchs convening in order to disempower the populace in whose name they presume to speak. This is logical, since the eunuch’s most heartfelt goal is to castrate the free man. The results are laws demanding that “you should run to the district attorney while your mother is being raped.”

This is the society that Americans have lived in since Junger wrote this in 1977.

“The populace consists of individuals and free men, while the state is made up of numbers. Servitude began with the shepherds; in the river valleys it attained perfection with canals and dykes. Its model was slavery in mines and mills. Since then, the ruses for concealing chains have been refined.”

Here Ernst reveals the basic mechanics of conspiracy down through time, as having their beginning with herding, as we still are shepherded, its intensification in surplus farming, and its cruel perfection in slavery/mining/money, just as David Astle postulated in 1974. Did Junger read Astle? Astle, Junger? Was their agreement inspired separately? If so, in either case, this presents our Steward.

The fictive jurist Carnex serves as the arc of this continued line of thought in the light of Eumeswil. This brings the protagonist to a consideration of capital punishment. Even here, Carnex, newly introduced, is far more fleshed out than the shadowy Condor, the tyrant, a mere political object, even less then the functionaries that surround him. Even Pedro, the headsman, is more of a character than the tyrant, revealed as a pane of social glass disguised as a door knob, but in no way human.

From page 199 through 239 Manuel’s musings focus on law and order and work, reintroducing and amplifying the characters of his dreary day-to-day, Attila rising above them all as an actual authentic human agent, in such a way as to suggest a rising narrative tide. As the final section is brief, and I do not wish to give away the ending, the remainder of A Day in The Casbah will be addressed in Eumeswil 5.