In occupied Paris, Ernst Jiinger was on friendly terms with Marcel Jouhandeau, admired his esprit and garden and was alienated by his wife. Jouhandeau, born in 1888, was a devout Catholic and struggled with his homosexuality. However, the celebrated writer (“poet”) had not shamed himself into publishing a nasty anti-Semitic pamphlet in 1937.
With encrypted authorship and 110 exquisitely designed copies, a short novel by him was published in 1949, which can now be read in German for the first time: “The Secret Journey”. It is about a male self who – married – is struggling with his homosexual desire for the younger tour guide X. on a study trip, in a constant back and forth between revelation and concealment, love and hate, approach and distance. Enthusiastic enthusiasm and defensive reflections alternate. The torment of unrequited passions dominates the journey. The first-person narrator returns home hungover: “I offered him the spectacle of friendship and he showed me its parody.”
Jouhandeau’s diary, which forms the basis of the novel and is contained in the same volume, provides the key to the enigmatic, making it an ambiguous document of shame and its camouflage. The “guilt” of homosexuality overwrites the guilt of collaboration with the Germans.
Jouhandeau belonged to an exquisite group of French writers who, at Goebbels’ invitation, traveled through the Reich in 1941 to Aachen, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Berlin – and Weimar. A number of the novel’s mystifying formulations can also be found here, along with vague sentences: “A people that sings will not perish.” He likes that so much that he repeats it. However, he experiences in Vienna how it really is. When the group sings French, they are instructed: “In Germany they sing German.” Then platitudes that mysticism triumphs deep in the German soul, that “the German” does not play with words, but acts.
Jouhandeau admiringly certifies Goebbels’ intelligence, will, and ingenuity, but also notes indignantly that the Berlin hotel treats high-ranking guests quite roughly. He convinces himself of the “renewal” of culture after the time of its decline by the Nazis: “As soon as the war is over, and even now (and even our trip would fit with this omen) an epoch is being prepared in which ‘ the spiritual’ will triumph.” Of course, he also has doubts, which he immediately contains: “Sometimes I think about the distant consequences of this journey. But even if they did prove tragic, they wouldn’t scare me for a second. I know why I chose this path, and if I was wrong, the generosity of my intentions would save me the slightest reproach.”
In the diary, more than the collaboration, his crush on the German travel companion troubles him, who is recognizable here – and through the excellent, knowledgeable and sensitive epilogue. It was about Gerhard Heller, who was responsible for controlling the literature as a ‘Sonderfuhrer’, who was closely acquainted with Ernst Jiinger in Paris and after 1945 did a great job as a translator of French literature. What fascinates Jouhandeau about him is the sheer power he represents.
The fascination with evil, which is supposedly redeemed from the banality and heightens the “spirit”, the lustful submission to sheer power, the wrestling with feelings of guilt, the shame of transgression and at the same time the masochistic satisfaction in it – the novel concentrates all of this to homosexual desire; Apparently, because for the in-the-know contemporaries and especially through the diary, the torment of greater guilt penetrates everywhere, which of course – and this is what characterizes literature that it differs from treatise-like confessions – at the same time sublimates itself into stylish enjoyment.
Marcel Jouhandeau: The Secret Journey. Travel diary from 1941. Ed. the French by Oliver Lubrich. DVB, 254 pages, 24 euros
