Although Creighton translated two other important and highly praised German war books - Paul Alverdes T he Whistlers Room (1929) and Changed Men (1933), as well as Jünger's Copse 1925 (1930) - Hoffman writes that ’his knowledge of German was patchy’. It was fortunate to have even 'survived' his predecessor's attentions Hofmann believes. Hofmann is coruscating in his criticism of Creighton's original translation.
Creighton's translation was based on the ’literary’ 1924 version, surprisingly the so called ’quiet’ 1934 version, was that which became a virtual textbook for Nazi youth. The ’most substantive different texts were those of 1924, 19.
In his valuable introduction to his new translation, Hoffman indicates the existence of as many as eight different published versions in German. Thomas Nevin's 1997 biography of Jünger, Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss 1914 -1945, showed the amazing extent of the author's revisions to the original text of Storm of Steel after its first publication in 1920. Seebald, perceptively described Jünger as a writer ’who had emerged from the Hitler era, which he had helped to usher in, as a distinguished isolationist and defender of humanistic values'.
By his death in 1998, at 102, he had been overloaded with literary honours and praised as a quiet but defiant opponent of Hitler. Storm of Steel has been universally praised as an important work of literature and yet condemned as the personification militarism, its author both prototypical Nazi and writer of rare ability. While many have found Jünger's philosophy disturbing, few have doubted the power or the skill of his writing. It was a book dubbed by military historian Cyril Falls, a book of ’extraordinary zest and power’, adding, ’One feels that Jünger is a danger to society, but one cannot resist liking him or admiring him’. ISBN 0 71399 594 7.Īlthough Basil Creighton's 1929 translation of Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel has been frequently republished, this 1993 Penguin offers the first new English version of the text since its original English publication over seventy years ago.
Translated by Michael Hofmann, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2003, £ 14.99, 289pp.
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