Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
One holds the pen ready like a needle in a seismic observatory, and in reality it is
not we who write; rather we are written.
55
—Max Frisch (1950)
After the earthquake one lashes out at the seismograph. Yet one cannot blame the
barometer for the typhoon, unless one wants to be classed a savage.
56
—Ernst Jünger (1949)
The 'storm of steel” [by Ernst Jünger] demonstrates the course of events most pow-
erfully, with the full force of the years on the front; without any pathos it depicts
the dogged heroism of the soldier, recorded by a man who, like a seismograph,
detects all the oscillations of the battle.
57
—Erich Maria Remarque (1928)
The pen is only a seismographic pencil for the heart. it will register earthquakes,
but can't predict them.
58
—Franz Kafka (1920-23)
i . . . think of the publisher—how shall i put it—somewhat like a seismograph,
who should aim to register earthquakes objectively. i want to record statements of
the day that i hear, and, as far as they seem to me valuable to be heard, set them
before the public for discussion. ( To be a seismograph not a seismologist.)
59
—Kurt Wolff to Karl Kraus (1913)
[The poet] is like the seismograph, which each quake, even thousands of miles
away, sets vibrating. it is not that he thinks constantly of all the affairs of the world.
Rather, they think of him. They rule him to such an extent that they are in him.
Even his dull hours, his depressions, his confusions are impersonal states, they are
like the twitches of the seismograph, and a gaze that reached deep enough could
read something more mysterious in them than in his poems.
60
—Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1906)
The poet appears as an indicator, as a seismograph, from which the moral state
[
Gewissenszustand
] of his surroundings can be read off.
61
—Hermann Hesse (1937)
Perhaps the emblematic literary seismograph was Ernst Jünger. A storm
trooper in the First World War, Jünger famously portrayed a cyborg-like
