The Glass Bees - Critical Reception

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 allegory. 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 "Dasein" or human existence will cease to exist. Kochhar-Lindgren goes on to deal with the metaphysical questions Jünger addresses.