The Glass Bees
Encyclopedia
The Glass Bees is a 1957 science fiction
novel
written by German author Ernst Jünger
. The novel follows two days in the life of Captain Richard, an unemployed ex-cavalryman who feels lost in a world that has become more technologically advanced and impersonal. Richard accepts a job interview at Zapparoni Works, a company that designs and manufactures robots including the eponymous glass bees. Richard's first-person narrative
blends depiction of his unusual job interview, autobiographical flashbacks
from his childhood and his days as a soldier, and reflection on the themes of technology, war, historical change, and morality.
In recent years, Jünger's prognostications on the future of technology, variously interpreted as technophobic allegory or insightful critique into the altered relationship between technology, nature, and the human, have received renewed enthusiasm. American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling
composed an introduction for the New York Review Books
edition in 2000, saying that "its speculations on technology and industry are so prescient as to be uncanny."
such as Storm of Steel
(1920), Jünger's autobiographical book about his war experience, and Der Arbeiter (The Worker, 1932). Jünger's ambiguous position vis-à-vis National Socialism has been the subject of much dispute, with various critics emphasizing both his affinity to fascism, totalitarianism, and Nazism and his criticism of the Nazi dictatorship in later works such as On the Marble Cliffs
(1939), The Peace (1948), and his war diaries Strahlungen (1949). The Glass Bees, with its simultaneous nostalgia for militaristic order and deep suspicion of technocratic modernity, is exemplary of this ambiguity in Jünger's work.
The Glass Bees, like another of Jünger's novels, Heliopolis
, thematizes the altered relationship between technology, society, and nature which was central to many of Jünger's contemporaries such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin
; set in a futuristic world in which the distinction between war and peace has been largely effaced, The novel's setting has been variously characterized as "an unspecified future" and a "dystopia." While some aspects of the novel's geography (like Treptow
) and history (the mechanization of warfare, for example) have real-world referents, others, such as the "Asturian civil war," do not. Jünger uses dystopian settings "to show that by heroic exertion humankind can live on the dreadful terms technology shall dictate". Jünger's radical conservative conceptualization of technology is markedly different from that of his Marxist
contemporaries. As Thomas Nevin explains, "Marxists preached that technological advances entail ideological changes. For Jünger technology is its own ideology, superseding all others." However, despite the pointed differences between Jünger and the theorists of the Frankfurt School
, at least one critic has pointed out commonalities the The Glass Bees critique of technological modernity shares with both the enlightenment critique of Adorno and Horkheimer
, and Benjamin's critique in "Theories of German Fascism" (1930) of Jünger's earlier work.
The Glass Bees contains numerous instances of intertextuality
, such as the frequent allusions to E.T.A. Hoffmann
's tale The Sandman, a work which also explores the themes of automation and vision.
Two days later, while nervously awaiting Zapparoni, Richard notices how Zapparoni's modest house appears strangely old-fashioned for a man who made his vast fortune in robotics. This tension between new and old prompts Richard to nostalgically reflect upon the historic demise of cavalry, supplanted by mechanized modern warfare. The suicide of his comrade Lorenz, who refused to adapt to the vertiginous pace of technological, social change, figures prominently in his reflection; for Richard, Lorenz's death exemplifies the fate of those who cannot “find firm ground under [their] feet in the present.” Richard's ruminations then turn inward, as he narrates his own lack of worldly success and his negative evaluations by superiors as an "outsider with defeatist inclinations."
When the elderly Zapparoni finally makes his entrance, Richard senses his latent power, remarking that there is more to him than his intelligence. In a narrative aside prompted by a question from Zapparoni, Richard contrasts his former comrades Fillmor, Lorenz, and Twinnings. Unlike either Lorenz and Twinnings, Fillmor, now a successful high officer, is driven entirely by ambition, yet totally lacks imagination. So when Zapparoni asks Richard for his opinion on Fillmor’s memoir, Richard is unsure how to respond. Over the course of a tactical conversation, Zapparoni begins with familiar territory for Richard, namely war, yet is quickly able to master the discussion, forcing Richard into contortions and self-contradictions. Zapparoni then announces that he has other matters to attend to, and asks Richard to wait for him in the garden, warning him to beware of the bees.
Out in the garden Richard, through a pair of sophisticated binoculars, discovers the glass bees. Watching them, he observes how these robotic bees are much more efficient at gathering nectar than real bees, and marvels at their construction. As he watches the bees, he notices a pond filled with severed ears. Richard briefly considers contacting the police but realizes that the powerful Zapparoni could easily frame him.
Richard's predicament spurs a childhood reminiscence about Atje Hanebut, "chief" of Richard's neighborhood gang. One day, Atje has them savagely beat a member of a rival gang. Richard tries to stop Atje, calling his attention to the boy's bleeding nose, for which Atje has the boys beat Richard, after which they flee. The rival gang then finds Richard, beating him further in retaliation. Finally at home, Richard is beaten once more, this time by his father.
Leaving the garden, Richard encounters Zapparoni, who reveals that the ears had been severed from humanoid robots, and were a test that Richard has unfortunately failed. Zapparoni then surprises Richard by offering him a different job requiring sharp moral discrimination, which Richard accepts. On the way home, Richard buys Teresa a red dress, they go out for dinner, and Richard begins to forget the events in Zapparoni’s garden.
Giacomo Zapparoni- An incredibly wealthy and powerful owner of a company that makes miniature robots. Zapparoni Works is a name that is seen everywhere throughout the society in the novel, from movies to household appliances. Unlike his company, Zapparoni remains a largely unseen and cryptic figure.
Twinnings- A former cavalryman who served with Richard. Unlike Richard, Twinnings is well adjusted to present times and makes a living by connecting friends, often cavalry veterans, to employers who need specific talents.
Monteron- Monteron was a major in the army and the instructor of Captain Richard's unit at the military academy. In the past, Monteron was a youthful, neat, and well behaved individual who tried to carve his men to be the same way. His genuine character has left a permanent mark on all of his men.
Lorenz- Lorenz is another one of Richard’s ex-cavalry friends. In one of Richard's flashbacks, Lorenz realizes that the morals and lifestyle he "strive[s] for [are] impossible" and leaps out of a window and kills himself.
Wittegrewe- Wittegrewe was a former model cavalryman and horse-riding instructor of Richard. Unlike Richard, Wittegrewe looks back on his riding days as inferior and unimportant, and chooses to assimilate into society by becoming a streetcar conductor.
Fillmor- Fillmor is one of the high commanders in the army, known for his superior intellect. He looks down upon his fellow comrades and is characterized by his lack of imagination. Fillmor and Richard start off in a similar position — Fillmor goes on to represent success while Richard represents failure.
Atje Hanebut- Richard’s childhood mentor who taught him the ways of the outdoors. He is the leader of a group of teenage boys who look up to him as their teacher and guide to the outside world. Richard looked up to him as a source of inspiration and followed his every order just to impress him, as did every other child in their group of 'Pathfinders.'
Teresa- Teresa is Captain Richard's depressed wife who feels at fault for Richard's desperate situation in the present. Richard makes every decision mindful of the effect it will have on Teresa.
, sees the novel as a reversal of Jünger's earlier technological optimism, exemplified in a text like The Worker (1932) which speculates "on the potential of industrial technology to transform human society into an absolute expression of collective organization and total power." The novel's portrayal of technology is closely tied to a nostalgic lament for the perceived loss of a natural, idyllic past, contrasted to a mechanistic, technologically-determined present. He often directly states that the past - when horses were used in battle and men saw who they were fighting - is better than the present, where one cannot see one's opponents. He sees happiness and technology as directly opposed: “Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other,” and sees human dignity as highly compromised by technology and machines: “They were hired to do piecework, which was beneath a man’s dignity...what for millenniums had been man’s vocation, joy, and pleasure - to ride a horse, to plow in the morning the steaming field...all this...was now past and gone. Joy in labor had disappeared". For Richard, the extent of mechanization in the novel's world undermines the autonomy of the individual and threatens to place all social relations within an "instrumental order of identity" based upon "a hierarchy of efficiency." The theme of the “connection between the eternal, technological present and the ideas and hopes of the ancient historical past” is one used by Jünger in more than one work. Scenes in The Glass Bees such as the discovery of the severed ears prompt reflection on the fragmenting effect of modern technologies, which serve to undermine nature, experience, and the human body as organic, meaningful integral totalities. Furthermore, the novel's focus on the nanoscale throws the very distinction between the organic and the mechanical into question, threatening to render it obsolete.
The glass bees are not Zapparoni’s only tiny creations: in making toys “he created a lilliputian realm, a pygmy world.” In constructing small and intricate creations rather than titanic beings, Zapparoni acknowledges the fact that it is only through the subtle and seemingly insignificant that lives are influenced. Besides the example of the physically small machines in the novel, the lasting consequences of the infinitesimal are reflected in the narrative structure of the novel as well. Focusing mainly on the events of only a few hours in the present, the novel explores not only the impact such a small amount of time can have, rather how the minutia of the past construct the present. Expressed through numerous flashbacks, it becomes clear how Richard’s past actions and interactions have shaped him. Kim Goudreau commented, “despite his visceral association with war and changing regimes, Jünger places little to no emphasis upon the institution of government." It is not the world-shattering events, the wars, the societal decay, or the collapse of governments that Richard focuses on as his formative experiences, rather the small and overlooked moments: single nights and instants from military school and childhood.
Devin Fore has read the prevalence of the nanoscale in the novel as a prescient shift of emphasis from an anthropocentric mesoscale to the a-human, microscopic scale of the insect, constituting a meditation upon "the cultural and anthropological challenges that would attend this process of technical recalibration."
. On the other hand, others said his style since Heliopolis
had improved and he showed more warmth and vitality. All in all, according to Neaman, "the general impression remains ... that the book just 'didn't have much to say'".
John K. Cooley
had a more positive view of the book, putting it into context of Jünger's earlier works in an Autumn 1958 issue of Books Abroad. Cooley points out that Jünger seems to have found a modus vivendi
between the prevalent forces of old and new. On a similar note, much like Neaman, he mentions that Jünger seems to be on a warmer level with the fact that the individual's necessary compliance with the new dehumanized worlds of technology. Neaman disagrees with this point, calling the book "a synthesis of Gehlen's cultural pessimism and the anarchist assault on the machine".
In the Summer 1958 issue of Books Abroad, Gerhard Loose praises The Glass Bees for its "astonishing continuity of thought". He praises Jünger's ability to cover many significant creative ideas of the past thirty years, "skillfully fashioned into a tight web of motive and symbol". On the other hand, he finds fault in the apparent change in the protagonist
from a cliché
"true soldier" figure with colloquial syntax to one with superb stylistic prose, which he finds to be artificial. Later, in his biography of Ernst Jünger, published in 1974, Loose comments that The Glass Bees is "essentially a philosophical novel" of technology. He notes how the history of Zapparoni not fully explained, and that Zapparoni is hard to believe as a character, somehow both good and evil. He mentions that both Richard and Zapparoni are "burdened, perhaps overburdened, with ideas -- those of the author".
Later criticism was more receptive of the novel's philosophical value and explored the tough questions Jünger tackled. In "Ethics, Automation, and the Ear", Kochhar-Lindgren sees Jünger's metaphysical conception of human existence as threatened by the impending domination of technology. While technology ensures that destruction continues, as Jünger had seen in World War I
, pain and death, the only true measures of humanity, will not for these technological creations. Thus, the "Dasien" or human existence will cease to exist. Kochhar-Lindgren goes on to deal with the metaphysical questions Jünger addresses.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by German author Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...
. The novel follows two days in the life of Captain Richard, an unemployed ex-cavalryman who feels lost in a world that has become more technologically advanced and impersonal. Richard accepts a job interview at Zapparoni Works, a company that designs and manufactures robots including the eponymous glass bees. Richard's first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
blends depiction of his unusual job interview, autobiographical flashbacks
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
from his childhood and his days as a soldier, and reflection on the themes of technology, war, historical change, and morality.
In recent years, Jünger's prognostications on the future of technology, variously interpreted as technophobic allegory or insightful critique into the altered relationship between technology, nature, and the human, have received renewed enthusiasm. American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
composed an introduction for the New York Review Books
New York Review Books
New York Review Books is the publishing house of The New York Review of Books. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, and The New York Review Children's Collection....
edition in 2000, saying that "its speculations on technology and industry are so prescient as to be uncanny."
Historical and literary context
The Glass Bees, first published in 1957 and translated into English in 1961, is classified as one of Jünger's later works, published long after his better-known works from the Weimar periodWeimar culture
Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic...
such as Storm of Steel
Storm of Steel
Storm of Steel is the memoir of German officer Ernst Jünger's experiences on the Western Front during the First World War. It was originally printed privately in 1920, making it one of the first personal accounts to be published. The book is a graphic account of trench warfare...
(1920), Jünger's autobiographical book about his war experience, and Der Arbeiter (The Worker, 1932). Jünger's ambiguous position vis-à-vis National Socialism has been the subject of much dispute, with various critics emphasizing both his affinity to fascism, totalitarianism, and Nazism and his criticism of the Nazi dictatorship in later works such as On the Marble Cliffs
On the Marble Cliffs
On the Marble Cliffs is a novella by Ernst Jünger published in 1939 describing the upheaval and ruin of a serene agricultural society...
(1939), The Peace (1948), and his war diaries Strahlungen (1949). The Glass Bees, with its simultaneous nostalgia for militaristic order and deep suspicion of technocratic modernity, is exemplary of this ambiguity in Jünger's work.
The Glass Bees, like another of Jünger's novels, Heliopolis
Heliopolis (novel)
Heliopolis is an utopistic or dystopian novel by Ernst Jünger published in 1949. In the fictional city of Heliopolis the henchmen of a Proconsul and a Landvogt fight each other. Commander Lucius de Geer belongs to the staff of the Proconsul, but he stands more and more aloof these inner fights....
, thematizes the altered relationship between technology, society, and nature which was central to many of Jünger's contemporaries such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
; set in a futuristic world in which the distinction between war and peace has been largely effaced, The novel's setting has been variously characterized as "an unspecified future" and a "dystopia." While some aspects of the novel's geography (like Treptow
Treptow
Treptow is a former borough in the southeast of Berlin. It merged with Köpenick to form Treptow-Köpenick in 2001.-Geography:The district was composed by the localities of Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald, Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, Johannisthal, Adlershof, Altglienicke and Bohnsdorf....
) and history (the mechanization of warfare, for example) have real-world referents, others, such as the "Asturian civil war," do not. Jünger uses dystopian settings "to show that by heroic exertion humankind can live on the dreadful terms technology shall dictate". Jünger's radical conservative conceptualization of technology is markedly different from that of his Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
contemporaries. As Thomas Nevin explains, "Marxists preached that technological advances entail ideological changes. For Jünger technology is its own ideology, superseding all others." However, despite the pointed differences between Jünger and the theorists of the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, at least one critic has pointed out commonalities the The Glass Bees critique of technological modernity shares with both the enlightenment critique of Adorno and Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
, and Benjamin's critique in "Theories of German Fascism" (1930) of Jünger's earlier work.
The Glass Bees contains numerous instances of intertextuality
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
, such as the frequent allusions to E.T.A. Hoffmann
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
's tale The Sandman, a work which also explores the themes of automation and vision.
Plot summary
Out-of-work former cavalryman and tank inspector Captain Richard is offered a job interview with a "catch" by a former comrade, Twinnings: namely, he suggests a morally questionable position with Giacomo Zapparoni, whose firm builds advanced robots; occasionally one of his engineers deserts, and he needs a man to "take care of" the problem to protect company secrets. At this point a reluctant Richard offers the first of many essayistic narrative asides, as he outlines the social magnitude of Zapparoni's creations, and the first of many autobiographical flashbacks, recounting his days in Military Academy under the guidance of his strict yet caring instructor, Monteron.Two days later, while nervously awaiting Zapparoni, Richard notices how Zapparoni's modest house appears strangely old-fashioned for a man who made his vast fortune in robotics. This tension between new and old prompts Richard to nostalgically reflect upon the historic demise of cavalry, supplanted by mechanized modern warfare. The suicide of his comrade Lorenz, who refused to adapt to the vertiginous pace of technological, social change, figures prominently in his reflection; for Richard, Lorenz's death exemplifies the fate of those who cannot “find firm ground under [their] feet in the present.” Richard's ruminations then turn inward, as he narrates his own lack of worldly success and his negative evaluations by superiors as an "outsider with defeatist inclinations."
When the elderly Zapparoni finally makes his entrance, Richard senses his latent power, remarking that there is more to him than his intelligence. In a narrative aside prompted by a question from Zapparoni, Richard contrasts his former comrades Fillmor, Lorenz, and Twinnings. Unlike either Lorenz and Twinnings, Fillmor, now a successful high officer, is driven entirely by ambition, yet totally lacks imagination. So when Zapparoni asks Richard for his opinion on Fillmor’s memoir, Richard is unsure how to respond. Over the course of a tactical conversation, Zapparoni begins with familiar territory for Richard, namely war, yet is quickly able to master the discussion, forcing Richard into contortions and self-contradictions. Zapparoni then announces that he has other matters to attend to, and asks Richard to wait for him in the garden, warning him to beware of the bees.
Out in the garden Richard, through a pair of sophisticated binoculars, discovers the glass bees. Watching them, he observes how these robotic bees are much more efficient at gathering nectar than real bees, and marvels at their construction. As he watches the bees, he notices a pond filled with severed ears. Richard briefly considers contacting the police but realizes that the powerful Zapparoni could easily frame him.
Richard's predicament spurs a childhood reminiscence about Atje Hanebut, "chief" of Richard's neighborhood gang. One day, Atje has them savagely beat a member of a rival gang. Richard tries to stop Atje, calling his attention to the boy's bleeding nose, for which Atje has the boys beat Richard, after which they flee. The rival gang then finds Richard, beating him further in retaliation. Finally at home, Richard is beaten once more, this time by his father.
Leaving the garden, Richard encounters Zapparoni, who reveals that the ears had been severed from humanoid robots, and were a test that Richard has unfortunately failed. Zapparoni then surprises Richard by offering him a different job requiring sharp moral discrimination, which Richard accepts. On the way home, Richard buys Teresa a red dress, they go out for dinner, and Richard begins to forget the events in Zapparoni’s garden.
Characters
Captain Richard- A washed up ex-soldier and the narrator of the novel. While in the military, he was first a cavalryman and then a tank inspector and teacher. In the present, Richard is poor, currently unemployed, and searching for a job and a stable salary to support his wife, Teresa.Giacomo Zapparoni- An incredibly wealthy and powerful owner of a company that makes miniature robots. Zapparoni Works is a name that is seen everywhere throughout the society in the novel, from movies to household appliances. Unlike his company, Zapparoni remains a largely unseen and cryptic figure.
Twinnings- A former cavalryman who served with Richard. Unlike Richard, Twinnings is well adjusted to present times and makes a living by connecting friends, often cavalry veterans, to employers who need specific talents.
Monteron- Monteron was a major in the army and the instructor of Captain Richard's unit at the military academy. In the past, Monteron was a youthful, neat, and well behaved individual who tried to carve his men to be the same way. His genuine character has left a permanent mark on all of his men.
Lorenz- Lorenz is another one of Richard’s ex-cavalry friends. In one of Richard's flashbacks, Lorenz realizes that the morals and lifestyle he "strive[s] for [are] impossible" and leaps out of a window and kills himself.
Wittegrewe- Wittegrewe was a former model cavalryman and horse-riding instructor of Richard. Unlike Richard, Wittegrewe looks back on his riding days as inferior and unimportant, and chooses to assimilate into society by becoming a streetcar conductor.
Fillmor- Fillmor is one of the high commanders in the army, known for his superior intellect. He looks down upon his fellow comrades and is characterized by his lack of imagination. Fillmor and Richard start off in a similar position — Fillmor goes on to represent success while Richard represents failure.
Atje Hanebut- Richard’s childhood mentor who taught him the ways of the outdoors. He is the leader of a group of teenage boys who look up to him as their teacher and guide to the outside world. Richard looked up to him as a source of inspiration and followed his every order just to impress him, as did every other child in their group of 'Pathfinders.'
Teresa- Teresa is Captain Richard's depressed wife who feels at fault for Richard's desperate situation in the present. Richard makes every decision mindful of the effect it will have on Teresa.
Themes and motifs
The Glass Bees combines the semi-autobiographical narrative and reflections of the narrator, explicitly thematizing such topics as war, technological and historical change, morality, authenticity, and semantic change.War
Richard sees technological advancement as primarily responsible for undermining a chivalric martial code, making of war a more technocratic affair, and ultimately effacing the difference between war and peace, depriving war of the possibility for either meaning or heroism.Technology vs. nature; present vs. past
Critical reception of the novel has focused on the thematic centrality of technology, yet critics disagree on the novel's stance towards technology. The Glass Bees has variously been characterized as dystopic, technophobic, technologically prescient, and skeptical of technology. Marcus Bullock, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee is Wisconsin's premier public urban university. It is a coed public research university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States. It is also the largest university in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and a member of the University of Wisconsin System...
, sees the novel as a reversal of Jünger's earlier technological optimism, exemplified in a text like The Worker (1932) which speculates "on the potential of industrial technology to transform human society into an absolute expression of collective organization and total power." The novel's portrayal of technology is closely tied to a nostalgic lament for the perceived loss of a natural, idyllic past, contrasted to a mechanistic, technologically-determined present. He often directly states that the past - when horses were used in battle and men saw who they were fighting - is better than the present, where one cannot see one's opponents. He sees happiness and technology as directly opposed: “Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other,” and sees human dignity as highly compromised by technology and machines: “They were hired to do piecework, which was beneath a man’s dignity...what for millenniums had been man’s vocation, joy, and pleasure - to ride a horse, to plow in the morning the steaming field...all this...was now past and gone. Joy in labor had disappeared". For Richard, the extent of mechanization in the novel's world undermines the autonomy of the individual and threatens to place all social relations within an "instrumental order of identity" based upon "a hierarchy of efficiency." The theme of the “connection between the eternal, technological present and the ideas and hopes of the ancient historical past” is one used by Jünger in more than one work. Scenes in The Glass Bees such as the discovery of the severed ears prompt reflection on the fragmenting effect of modern technologies, which serve to undermine nature, experience, and the human body as organic, meaningful integral totalities. Furthermore, the novel's focus on the nanoscale throws the very distinction between the organic and the mechanical into question, threatening to render it obsolete.
The value of the minute
A key concept of The Glass Bees is illustrated through the novel’s focus on the minuscule. Demonstrated both by the structure of the narrative and through Zapparoni’s forays into nanotechnology, it is seen that it is the minute that has the most meaning and influence in life, not the grand or conspicuous. Zapparoni’s tiny creations are the first lens through which Jünger plays with the theme of miniaturization - the title itself refers to one such creation. The glass bees exemplify how it is the overlooked that often possesses the greatest meaning. At first an unappreciated aspect of Zapparoni’s garden, Richard eventually notices the intricacy and difficulty of creating something so small: “In the beginning, probably it was less difficult to create a whale than a hummingbird,” and comes to acknowledge that the true nature of the garden is “more significant than it had seemed to me in my first consternation.” As such, the garden acts as a microcosm of the novel’s world: only upon reflection does the true nature and relevance of the overlooked become apparent.The glass bees are not Zapparoni’s only tiny creations: in making toys “he created a lilliputian realm, a pygmy world.” In constructing small and intricate creations rather than titanic beings, Zapparoni acknowledges the fact that it is only through the subtle and seemingly insignificant that lives are influenced. Besides the example of the physically small machines in the novel, the lasting consequences of the infinitesimal are reflected in the narrative structure of the novel as well. Focusing mainly on the events of only a few hours in the present, the novel explores not only the impact such a small amount of time can have, rather how the minutia of the past construct the present. Expressed through numerous flashbacks, it becomes clear how Richard’s past actions and interactions have shaped him. Kim Goudreau commented, “despite his visceral association with war and changing regimes, Jünger places little to no emphasis upon the institution of government." It is not the world-shattering events, the wars, the societal decay, or the collapse of governments that Richard focuses on as his formative experiences, rather the small and overlooked moments: single nights and instants from military school and childhood.
Devin Fore has read the prevalence of the nanoscale in the novel as a prescient shift of emphasis from an anthropocentric mesoscale to the a-human, microscopic scale of the insect, constituting a meditation upon "the cultural and anthropological challenges that would attend this process of technical recalibration."
Morality
Throughout the novel, Richard both pontificates on and must actively deal with morality. His first reaction to the job offer that starts off the plot is objection to its dubious moral standpoint - Zapparoni wants someone to do his dirty work for him in dealing with deserting engineers. His decision to work for Zapparoni, an incredibly powerful man, calls into question the relationship between power and morality: according to one interpretation, “We come to discover a world where the desperate struggle for survival and success leaves power unmitigated by any recognizable form of morality.” Richard himself suffers insecurity about his morals, wondering if he is being silly for sticking by them in such a world. Late in the novel, Richard proclaims “The moment has now come when I ought to speak of morality. This is one of my weak points: therefore I shall be brief. My unlucky star had destined me to be born when there was much talk about morality and, at the same time, more murders than in any other period...” While the novel doesn’t come to any grand conclusion about morality, it raises questions about whether individual morality is possible within a world determined by power and success, in which the meaning of conventional moral precepts has become as ambiguous as the distinction between natural and artificial.Critical reception
Ernst Jünger's The Glass Bees met mixed critical reception, particularly in its early years. In a 1999 biography of Jünger, A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature After Nazism, Elliot Yale Neaman points out criticisms from Günther Oliass, Wolfgang Schwerbrock, and Günther Block, all dated 1957. Oliass makes the argument that Jünger's argument is non-topical for the time period, claiming, "It doesn't appear that technology replaces nature of man the way that Jünger thinks. He dreams up romantic constructions". Schwerbrock called the story "artificial," and Block claimed Jünger failed to portray technology realistically and relied too much on allegoryAllegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
. On the other hand, others said his style since Heliopolis
Heliopolis
-Placenames:*Heliopolis , the ancient city in Egypt*Heliopolis , a suburb in modern Cairo, Egypt* Heliopolis of Phoenicia, modern Baalbek, Lebanon...
had improved and he showed more warmth and vitality. All in all, according to Neaman, "the general impression remains ... that the book just 'didn't have much to say'".
John K. Cooley
John K. Cooley
John Kent Cooley was an American journalist and author who specialized in terrorism and the Middle East. Based in Athens, he worked as a radio and off-air television correspondent for ABC News and was a long-time contributing editor to the Christian Science Monitor.Cooley was one of only a handful...
had a more positive view of the book, putting it into context of Jünger's earlier works in an Autumn 1958 issue of Books Abroad. Cooley points out that Jünger seems to have found a modus vivendi
Modus vivendi
Modus vivendi is a Latin phrase signifying an agreement between those whose opinions differ, such that they agree to disagree.Modus means mode, way. Vivendi means of living. Together, way of living, implies an accommodation between disputing parties to allow life to go on. It usually describes...
between the prevalent forces of old and new. On a similar note, much like Neaman, he mentions that Jünger seems to be on a warmer level with the fact that the individual's necessary compliance with the new dehumanized worlds of technology. Neaman disagrees with this point, calling the book "a synthesis of Gehlen's cultural pessimism and the anarchist assault on the machine".
In the Summer 1958 issue of Books Abroad, Gerhard Loose praises The Glass Bees for its "astonishing continuity of thought". He praises Jünger's ability to cover many significant creative ideas of the past thirty years, "skillfully fashioned into a tight web of motive and symbol". On the other hand, he finds fault in the apparent change in the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
from a cliché
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
"true soldier" figure with colloquial syntax to one with superb stylistic prose, which he finds to be artificial. Later, in his biography of Ernst Jünger, published in 1974, Loose comments that The Glass Bees is "essentially a philosophical novel" of technology. He notes how the history of Zapparoni not fully explained, and that Zapparoni is hard to believe as a character, somehow both good and evil. He mentions that both Richard and Zapparoni are "burdened, perhaps overburdened, with ideas -- those of the author".
Later criticism was more receptive of the novel's philosophical value and explored the tough questions Jünger tackled. In "Ethics, Automation, and the Ear", Kochhar-Lindgren sees Jünger's metaphysical conception of human existence as threatened by the impending domination of technology. While technology ensures that destruction continues, as Jünger had seen in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, pain and death, the only true measures of humanity, will not for these technological creations. Thus, the "Dasien" or human existence will cease to exist. Kochhar-Lindgren goes on to deal with the metaphysical questions Jünger addresses.
Further reading
- Adams, Phoebe (1961). "Potpourri". The Atlantic. 207 (5): 104.
- Mandel, Siegfried (1961). "Garden of Horrors". The New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book ReviewThe New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
. - Retica, Aaron (2001). "Marathon Man". Lingua Franca. 11 (1): 17.