The War Diaries of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Ernst Jünger

Abstract: This paper offers a philological and thematic comparison of the war diaries written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) and Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). Marinetti's notebooks were only published posthumously in an incomplete and censored version, whereas Jünger's text has been faithfully edited. Both authors registered in their diaries more or less daily war experiences in a highly literary style. Whereas Marinetti employed an extensive range of experimental linguistic devices, Jünger adopted a more detached, documentary style in his description of events. Both writers made use of their diaries for literary works of art. As examples of these, I shall discuss Marinetti's Come si seducono le donne (1917) and L'alcova d'acciaio (1921), and Jünger's In Stahlgewittern: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Stoßtruppführers (1920), Das Wäldchen 125: Eine Chronik aus den Grabenkämpfen 1918 (1925) and Feuer und Blut: Ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus einer großen Schlacht (1925). The literary reworkings of the original diaries show an analogous interpretation of the 'battle of materials' and the ways in which the soldiers confronted and transcended the daily horrors of war. Marinetti's hypertrophic 'self' celebrated the élite assault units (Arditi) as an embodiment of the New Man of the future. Jünger, on the other hand, made an interior division between soldier/warrior (action) and writer (observation), which heralded an aesthetic appropriation of war as a 'technical labour process' and projected it onto a higher metaphysical plane. Both diaries show similar ideological implications and share an aggressive, revolutionary nationalism which has a purist and intellectual character and dismisses the compromises of everyday politics.