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nicklloydnow · 1 year ago

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“HERVIER: Your piece of fiction that preceded A Dangerous Encounter was titled Aladdin's Problem. What precisely is this problem? And why Aladdin?

JÜNGER: That is what I would term a classical question. Personally, I fnd the problem quite simple. But it frequently happens that an author finds his own ideas simple because he feels at home, while others are unable to get their bearings. In fact, Aladdin's problem is twofold. First of all, culture is declining. How was culture born? It was born with the cult of the dead, with the religious worship of ancestors; that began with the pyramids and with the tumuli built by prehistoric men, with their caves and grottoes. All these things are vanishing and are even extinct. I focused on these burial issues because I regard the disappearance of ancestor worship as a characteristic of present-day decadence. When I stroll through a cemetery, I am struck by the sadness, which is aroused not by the unfortunate deceased, but by the dreadfully uniform way in which people think about them.

Thus the original idea for Aladdin probably came to me when I visited a totally abandoned cemetery in New York. Everything was impeccably clean and well kept, but I sensed that noboby ever came there. Only the florist delivery men still show up on fixed dates to deliver bouquets. Incidentally, there is a frightful story by Maugham or an author of that ilk [Evelyn Waugh-Translator's note]: The Loved One. It describes the way in which people now embellish the dead while trying to get rid of them as fast as possible. For instance, one can have the deceased's pipe inserted into his mouth, or put makeup on his face. This description is both fascinating and consternating at once.

When a man is dead, people believe that he is gone forever. According to that logic, there can be no art. For art offers more than pure presence, it offers transcendence. If the cult of the dead were to reappear, it would be a sign that culture can take root again. That is the idea of the narrator who accidentally comes into contact with that universe because his uncle owns a funeral home.

HERVIER: But it's a huge establishment. Isn't that a mere business rather than a real worship of the dead.

JUNGER: It's always like that. Transcendence also implies the banality of immanence. That, entre nous, is the great concern of priests. It was already so in Egypt: all the people who embalmed mummies and who worked in quarries to build the pyramids. Those are two faces of one and the same thing. And in our civilization, it has to be manifested in the same way. Or rather, it ought to, because now it is a fiction.

In the second place, we are in the situation of possessing a formidable power. We extract things from the earth non-stop; oil, uranium, etc. Our situation resembles that of Aladdin. He is a young man who has received an instrument from a magician - a miraculous lamp with an enormous power. All he has to do is rub it, and a powerful genie appears, who gets him anything he wants. He can ask for a harem or construct a palace in a single night. We have the same capability. Aladdin's lamp is made of terracotta or copper. Our lamp also comes from the earth, but it is made of uranium. If we rub it, we don't get light, we get more than light: we get monstrous forces. And what does Aladdin draw from his lamp? He has palaces built, he does everything that a child's mind could wish for. That, incidentally, is the charm of the tale. But ultimately, he leads a mediocre life, the kind every mediocre man dreams about: he leads the life of a little despot, whereas he could have gained mastery of the whole world, from Mauritania to China. And then, he does a lot of stupid things; one day he loses his lamp, and the magician regains his power.

The parallel strikes me as highly fruitful, for we are in exactly the same situation. Monstrous energies come to us, and what do we do with them? Instead of building a magnificent world and great utopias where, for instance, no one would have to work - we don't even consider it, we use our lamp to stockpile nuclear bombs. The genies we conjure up are not good ones: we go east and west, and we may be dashing towards our doom.

Thus the problem would be as follows: 1. transcendence; 2. the ability to intelligently administer the power that breaks in on us.”

#junger #jünger #ernst junger #ernst jünger #culture #civilisation #art #cult #dead #aladdin’s lamp #books #bookshelf

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 2 months ago

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Lotura Week 2024: Day 1, Fairytales and Mythology

The Jinni in the Bottle

Rated: T

Lotor sits upon the beach, the waves crashing over his bare calves as he holds the strange bottle in his trembling hands. Behind him, makeshift living quarters out of his prison pod gleam in the three suns. “Come on,” he breathes desperately.

His lavender skin is darkened from many days of little shade, his skin scarred from grappling with the sharp bark of the planet’s trees and the fanged sharks of the waters.

“I sense the power within,” he says. His voice carries an unsteady edge as he struggles to open the bottle. “Perhaps you are a lost belonging of other previously stranded souls on this gods-forsaken planet. A civilization like mine that knew quintessence.”

He has grown fond of speaking to inanimate objects. The nearby rock structure is now named Varzax, and the bottle itself is quickly cruising toward a name of its own.

(But if he cannot open the bottle, he may end up naming it Annoying.)

With his Galran strength, he crunches the metal top and wrenches it away, tossing it into the tide. But as he peers into the bottle, instead of seeing a Balmeran crystal or other quintessence-based artifact, all that flies in his face is pink smoke.

Lotor coughs, then his eyes widen as the smoke storms out more intentionally.

The next thing he knows, a warm and hard body slams him down into the tide, lithe figures crunching in on his throat.

His claws protract.

He swings to attack his strange new opponent—only for another hand to slam his arm down above his head, splashing the water hard.

Lotor stares up into purple and blue eyes from a beautiful, feminine face as soft thighs press against his hips.

His cracked lips drop open as his cheeks flame.

(Surely, he has lost his mind.)

The woman’s white curls tumble down her shoulders, her flowing shirt and pants glittering with royal finery. “A Galran,” she hisses, alto voice twisted in fear and hatred. “With the eyes of Zarkon. You must be of his blood.” She looks up in paranoia. “Are there more of you?”

Lotor struggles for words as the magical woman holds him down, the tide washing over them. “Ah,” he says in mild disbelief. “Apologies, I’ve only had conversation with rocks as of late. I thought you’d be a stone, a fragment of quintessence.” With a wily move and twist of his unnatural joints, he slips his wrist away from her sharp grip, only to pat her face. “And you are far too tangible to be a hallucination.”

She sputters against his fingers, jerking her face away.

With a huff, she grabs for his hand and forces it back down. “I am no hallucination,” she declares haughtily. “Emperor Zarkon imprisoned me in that cursed bottle after overrunning my planet, and I have sworn to annihilate his blood for it.”

A little at a time, Lotor’s sun-addled mind catches up with the blush across his face. “A jinni,” he whispers. “That is what you are. A demon who must grants wishes for the one who releases you.”

The magical being holding him down tilts her head, her eyes swirling with the power of entire universes.

Her lips quiver. “And you are blood of Zarkon.”

Lotor huffs at her, half-amused. “Are you to kill me then, or will you grant me a wish as the one who has freed you?” He searches her eyes. “Admittedly, a death by your hand would be far lovelier compared to life on this planet.”

Water crashes against her, spinning her white curls as she sits in the water beside him. “Is that a wish, then?”

Lotor sits up, rubbing his abused throat. His face remains flushed by the memory of her heat upon him. “No. I wish only to know your name.”

The word wish revs up the power that emanates from her, of its own accord.

She hesitates before whispering, “Allura.”

He leans his elbows on his knees, not quite caring that he sits in his underclothes before her, having long lost his shame. “Why did my father also abandon you here to die forgotten, Allura? I wish to know it.”

Allura grows more apprehensive the more he uses the word wish. “I was a princess once,” she says, voice halted. “When he—when he invaded, I…gave up my mortal life in exchange for great power. But it came at great cost and with unusual weaknesses.”

Lotor searches her face again. “Yes, jinnis are easily captured and manipulated, according to legend.” His head tilts. “And yet also devious and wily."

She scoots away from him, as if suddenly realizing he is a man. “You will not wish for me to perform any sordid acts for you, son of Zarkon,” she demands in fear. "For the legends are true that jinnis make many regret their wishes."

He quirks an eyebrow at her.

And then tiredly, he leans his long arms on his knees and says, “Allura of the Djinn, I release you of the conditions that bind you to me. Your presence alone has given me my heart’s desire, which is simply to hear a voice besides my own.”

In that moment, the universe resettles around her, markings upon her face and arms lighting a bright pink before softening once more. She closes her eyes, her throat tightening with deep emotion. “You would release me so easily? Am I not some…some asset that your father wanted you to find?"

Lotor turns to glance out at the horizon, placing a hand over his eyes to block out the sun. “My father marooned me here after I turned against him. I suspect after his many years of pillaging planets, he forgot that he also left you here.”

Allura stares back at the crashed prison pod and clothes hanging to dry from a makeshift wooden structure. She swallows hard and repeats, “You turned against him?”

His wide mouth splits, revealing fangs, but humor does not light his eyes. “I tried to kill him. But I am not sure who is the weakest between us—my father for not killing me, or myself for not successfully completing my mission.”

It falls silent between them.

The demon princess eventually stands, the silver and gold strands on her pink clothes flashing in the light. “The Galra still reign, then.”

“Yes.”

She places a hand on her hips, pressing her full lips together as she paces in the water beside him. “You are a strange Galran man for returning my freewill to me,” she says. There is a sudden, demonic darkness in her eyes. “Now, I will decimate your father’s empire with the power of ages.”

Lotor quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, Allura,” he says in delight. “I’m afraid he’s still protected by his favorite little witch, who no doubt was the one to imprison you. If you are captured again, who will be there to reopen your bottle and free you from a lifetime of granting wishes?”

The woman steps back, face tight.

Lotor stands from the waters, his own white hair a tangled straggle. “Allura of the Djinn, I propose an alliance to take down my father once and for all,” he says. “So long as no one but me sees you, we could corrode his authority from the inside out—obtain the revenge we both desire.”

She eyes him now with genuine, wary curiosity. “In what way, son of Zarkon?”

There is a wildness and slight insanity in Lotor after a year of solitude. “Make me a prince once more,” he pleads. “With your infinite power, you can manipulate quintessence in ways that not even the witch can. You can build spaceships with a snap of your fingers and change my very appearance so that my father does not recognize me. Through me, you could wage war once more, without fear of your weaknesses being used against you.”

She is actively considering him now, softening. “What is your name, strange man who desires to be my marionette?”

“Lotor of the Galra.”

Her eyes lower to the tides, and then she glances back up, the power of the stars swirling in her gaze. “Very well,” she says, voice echoing. “I will raise you a throne, Lotor of the Galra, and I will provide you the weaponry to kill your father when he least expects it.”

She reaches out, her fingers kind as they press against his cheek.

The instant they touch, his lavender skin bleeds a soft brown, his white hair darkens to an inky black, and from his broad shoulders streams the clothes of a rich and powerful Altean prince.

“Just like this,” Allura whispers, before pulling away in admiration of her work.

Power fades from Lotor as he stares down at his brown hands, his sharp wrists lined with gold. For one brief tick, an aching revelry lights within him, for his entire life, he had been denied finery.

And then he makes a strangled noise as Allura grabs onto his collar and pulls him out of the tide. “Come along, marionette,” she says merrily. “Let us take down an empire and break a few hearts with your new face. We’ll have to think of a new name for you, of course. I once had a mouse named Chulatt, but I do not think that is the name of a prince.”

Water sloshes against his royal boots, his golden robes streaming behind him. “It is not,” he agrees, voice strained.

Allura’s grip is strong, even beyond that of a Galran’s.

And then just as quickly as she had conjured his new clothes, she waves her hand, and in the distance of the beach, a sharp-looking golden spaceship builds itself before Allura’s form itself wavers out.

Before he knows it, a little pink bird settles upon his broad shoulder, chirping at him merrily and preening his dark hair.

Lotor scratches at the golden circlet upon his forehead, his fingers blunt without claws. “Do you not think it is rather ostentatious for all things to be gold?”

The little bird chirps at him petulantly, and Allura’s alto voice echoes in his mind.

Oh, son of Zarkon.

If we are going to kill an emperor who also happens to be your father, then we are going to do so in style.

@loturaweek2024

#Voltron #Lotura #Lotor #Allura #Loturaweek2024 #umm I guess this is some version of Aladdin and the Genie's Lamp lol #idk I just let my fingers run with whatever for the last half-hour #there's just something about an Altean looking Lotor with a pink lil birdy on his shoulder going on a revenge scheme and looking fine #Catch me still preferring to write in present tense ever since my car accident #it's like it's my default now ahhhh #but excited for lotura week!#VLD AU

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