The boar hunt

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The boar hunt is a short story by Ernst Jünger . It first appeared in 1952 in the magazine "Story" and was published again in 1978 in the edition of the complete works.

content

The youthful Richard stands with his older comrade Breyer on a hunt in a clearing while Drivers try to scare off a boar. He is disappointed because he is not yet allowed to own a rifle, which is his greatest wish. The boar flees past them and when he has already disappeared back into the forest, Breyer still manages to kill him with a lucky hit. The hunting party rushes over, the forester Moosbrugger grazes the boar and Breyer is extensively praised. It is said of Richard: The hunters' cries depressed him. And again it seemed to him that the boar was far superior to them. (P. 361) The last sentence of the story reads: That was the first evening Richard fell asleep without thinking of the gun; Instead the boar stepped into his dream. (P. 362)

Language and form

Jünger uses a number of expressions of the hunter's language like front hammers , he had seen them clearly drawn , or the boar had made ninety more escapes . The form is a classic short story with an expansive beginning and a decisive break for the hero. Richard feels a distance from the hunting party and his longing for the rifle disappears, as indicated in the last sentence of the story.

Interpretation and reception

The boar hunt describes an initiation experience in which a young person changes and matures through a corresponding event. However, this topic is varied in that there is no straightforward acceptance into a community (the hunters), but rather a distance to it arises with the experience.

Due to the rather remote publication in a magazine, the story did not experience any greater reception at first. Even after its republication in all of the works, attention for this by far shortest “story” (8 pages) remained far behind that for more well-known ones such as the visit to Godenholm or the Transparent Bees .

expenditure

  • Ernst Jünger: The boar hunt . In: Wolfgang Cordan (Ed.): Story. the world tells. The monthly journal of the modern story , vol. 7 (1952), issue 1.
  • Ernst Jünger: The boar hunt . In: Ders .: Complete Works. Volume 15: Stories . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-608-93485-5 , pp. 353-361.
  • Ernst Jünger: The boar hunt . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): German storytellers of the 20th century. From Joseph Roth to Hermann Burger . Manesse Verlag, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-7175-1856-9 , pp. 256-265 (unchanged reprint of the Zurich 1994 edition).

literature

  • Claus-Michael Ort: Gullin Bursti and the dream of myth. On the relationship between mythologization and denial of meaning in Ernst Jünger's story “Die Eberjagd” (1952/1960) . In: Lutz Hagestedt (Ed.): Ernst Jünger. Politics, myth, art . DeGruyter, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-11-018093-6 , pp. 321–338.