The French writer Banine met Ernst Jünger in occupied Paris and fell madly in love with him. Jünger, too, was drawn to her, but since he had a wife and two sons, he kept his distance. Banine kept a diary about this largely unrequited love, which haunted her throughout her life, and it has only now been made public. In these writings, she describes Ernst Jünger up close and brings to light many of his idiosyncrasies that have remained hidden until now. She reveals Jünger’s relationship to the French Resistance as well as to the controversial author Louis-Ferdinand Céline; she sheds light on his critical stance toward the Nazis and offers insight into the life from which Jünger’s literature sprang: Thus, Banine’s detailed account of the days they spent together on the Côte d’Azur serves as the biographical backdrop against which Jünger’s travel essay A Morning in Antibes must be read. Yet Love Is Forbidden to You is not only an invaluable document for Jünger scholarship – it also opens up the rich emotional world of an author who has yet to be truly discovered.
“What a wonderful idea to write the story of my love – a detailed, truthful account. Poor Ernst, how frightened he would be if he knew what disparaging things I might say. Poor, dear Ernst, so great in some ways and so small in others.”
Sample translation
French original text available
Banine, born Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff in 1905 in Baku, Azerbaijan, emigrated to Paris in 1923, where, as a central figure in Bohemian circles, she gathered around her writers such as Ivan Bunin, Nikos Kazantzakis, André Malraux, and Ernst Jünger. She became known for her autobiographical works Days in the Caucasus and I Chose Opium. In France, Banine was regarded as “Ernst Jünger’s ambassador”, about whom she wrote three books. She died in Paris in 1992.
