title: Visit to Godenholm
text: # Visit to Godenholm
  
  Visit to Godenholm (German: Besuch auf Godenholm) is a 1952 novella by the German writer Ernst Jünger. It tells the story of a group of people who are invited to the island Godenholm in Scandinavia, where they take part in a mind-altering séance with strong surreal imagery.
  
  The book was published in English in 2015, translated by Annabel Moynihan.
  
  ## Reception
  
  Visit to Godenholm did not receive much attention when it was first published and was for a long time one of Jünger's less read works. In the 1990s it caught the interest of Jünger researchers as a veiled description of one of Jünger's early LSD trips together with Albert Hofmann. In the introduction, Elliot Neaman situates the book in a tradition of linking drug experiences with literary expression, with prominent examples from Romanticism and in the works of Charles Baudelaire.
  
  ## Legacy
  
  In the 1970 essay collection Annäherungen, a book focused entirely on drugs, Jünger has a chapter titled "Rückblick auf Godenholm", which means "Looking back at Godenholm". The French composer André Almuró made the 1971 opera Visite à Godenholm, which is based on Jünger's novel.
  
  