Showing posts with label Goethe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goethe. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Carl Jung: "All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe.



"All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe.

But this "inside," which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from "outside," has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience.

It is quite impossible to conceive how "experience" in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world.

The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism.

Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever "originated" at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable.

The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case.

And this is the mother, the matrix—the form into which all experience is poured. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Pages 101-102

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Carl Jung: "All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe.



"All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe.

But this "inside," which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from "outside," has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience.

It is quite impossible to conceive how "experience" in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world.

The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism.

Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever "originated" at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable.

The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case.

And this is the mother, the matrix—the form into which all experience is poured. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Pages 101-102

Monday, June 26, 2017

Carl Jung on "Goethe" - Anthology




The problem of my destiny goes back a hundred and fifty years. Indeed it appeared as early as the twelfth century, as I have now discovered. Formerly I believed it only went back to Goethe's Faust. (Jung now told the dream of his ancestors in which the last was only able to move his little finger.) The problem that appeared as a question in the twelfth century became my extremely personal destiny. Already Goethe had found an answer a hundred and fifty years ago. My father was so tormented by it that he died at the age of fifty-four. ~ Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 67.

Biographies should show people in their undershirts. Goethe had his weaknesses, and Calvin was often cruel. Considerations of this kind reveal the true greatness of a man. This way of looking at things is better than false hero worship! ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 165.

Beyond that I have had experiences which are, so to speak, "ineffable," "secret" because they can never be told properly and because nobody can understand them (I don't know whether I have even approximately understood them myself), "dangerous" because 99% of humanity would declare l was mad if they heard such things from me, "catastrophic" because the prejudices aroused by their telling might block other people's way to a living and wondrous mystery, "taboo'' because they are “Holy” protected by “Fear of the Gods” as faithfully described by Goethe:
Shelter gives deep cave.
Lions around us stray,
Silent and tame they rove, And sacred honors pay To the holy shrine of love. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 140-142.

Faust II has been my companion all my life but it was only 20 years ago that certain things began to dawn on me, especially when I read Christian Rosencreutz's Chymical Wedding, which Goethe also knew but, interestingly enough, did not mention among the alchemical literature of his Leipzig days. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 246-247.

So far as we know, Goethe used only the relatively late alchemical literature, and it was the study of the classical and early medieval texts which first convinced me that Faust I and II is an opus alchymicum in the best sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 246-247.

As in Goethe's Faust, here too it is the feminine element (Eve) that knows about the secret which can work against the total destruction of mankind, or man's despair in the face of such a development. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387

Goethe's Faust almost reached the goal of classical alchemy, but unfortunately the ultimate coniunctio did not come off, so that Faust and Mephistopheles could not attain their oneness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 453-454.

We must not forget that even Goethe is not the absolute authority but a human being who, as far as his unconscious is concerned, is just as small and impotent as any other insignificant person. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the “superman” Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to “create a god for yourself out of your seven devils.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 163.

It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the “superman” Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to “create a god for yourself out of your seven devils.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 163.

I would give the earth to know whether Goethe himself knew why he called the two old people "Philemon" and "Baucis." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 309-310

Goethe's Faust aptly says: “in the beginning was the deed”." "Deeds" were never invented, they were done; thoughts, on the other hand, are a relatively late discovery of man. First he was moved to deeds by unconscious factors; it was only a long time afterward that he began to reflect upon the causes that had moved him; and it took it him a very long time indeed to arrive at the preposterous idea that he must have moved himself . . . his mind being unable to identify any other motivating force than his own. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 70.

"All that is outside, also is inside," we could say with Goethe. But this "inside," which modern rationalism is so eager to derive from "outside," has an a priori structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience. It is quite impossible to conceive how "experience" in the widest sense, or, for that matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world. The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar structure and form like every other organism. Whether this psychic structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever "originated" at all is a metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case. And this is the mother, the matrix—the form into which all experience is poured. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Pages 101-102

Medieval alchemy prepared the way for the greatest intervention in the divine world order that man has ever attempted alchemy was the dawn of the scientific age, when the daemon of the scientific spirit compelled the forces of nature to serve man to an extent that had never been known before. It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the "superman" Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche's Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, to "create a god for yourself out of your seven devils." Here we find the true roots, the preparatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 163

The creative process has a feminine quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths—we might truly say from the realm of the Mothers. Whenever the creative force predominates, life is ruled and shaped by the unconscious rather than by the conscious will, and the ego is swept along on an underground current, becoming nothing more than a helpless observer of events. The progress of the work becomes the poet's fate and determines his psychology. It is not Goethe that creates Faust, but Faust that creates Goethe. And what is Faust} Faust is essentially a symbol. By this I do not mean that it is an allegory pointing to something all too familiar, but the expression of something profoundly alive in the soul of every German, which Goethe helped to bring to birth. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para159

Dante decks out his experience in all the imagery of heaven, purgatory, and hell; Goethe brings in the Blocksberg and the Greek underworld; Wagner needs the whole corpus of Nordic myth, including the Parsifal saga; Nietzsche resorts to the hieratic style of the bard and legendary seer; Blake presses into his service the phantasmagoric world of India, the Old Testament, and the Apocalypse; and Spitteler borrows old names for the new figures that pour in alarming profusion from his muse's cornucopia.

Everything to do with the masses is hateful to me. Anything popularized becomes common. Above all I would not disseminate Goethe, rather cook books. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.

Apart from a few poems, the only thing of Goethe's that is alive for me is Faust. For me this was always a study-for relaxation I prefer English novels. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.

Everything else of Goethe's pales beside Faust, although something immortal glitters in the poems too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.
What one could "enjoy" of Goethe is, for me, too patriarchal, too much de l'epoque. What I value in Goethe I cannot "enjoy"; it is too big, too exciting, too profound. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.

It seems to me that one cannot meditate enough about Faust, for many of the mysteries of the second part are still unfathomed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.



Sunday, June 25, 2017

Carl Jung: Hence everything that to me is essential in Goethe is contained in Faust.



To Max Rychner

Dear Dr. Rychner 28 February 1932

Here are my answers to your questions about Goethe:

1. My mother drew my attention to Faust when I was about 15 years old.

2. Goethe was important to me because of Faust.

3. As a "poet," perhaps Holderlin.

4. In my circle Faust is an object of lively interest. I once knew a wholesaler who always carried a pocket edition of Faust around with him.

Young people today try to be unhistorical. Goethe does not seem to mean much to them because, for them, he is too close to the fishy ideals of the 19th century.

Everything to do with the masses is hateful to me. Anything popularized becomes common. Above all I would not disseminate Goethe, rather cook books.

Apart from a few poems, the only thing of Goethe's that is alive for me is Faust. For me this was always a study-for relaxation I prefer English novels.

Everything else of Goethe's pales beside Faust, although something immortal glitters in the poems too.

What one could "enjoy" of Goethe is, for me, too patriarchal, too much de l'epoque. What I value in Goethe I cannot "enjoy"; it is too big, too exciting, too profound.

Faust is the most recent pillar in that bridge of the spirit which spans the morass of world history, beginning with the Gilgamesh epic,1 the I Ching,2 the Upanishads, the Tao-te Ching, the fragments of Heraclitus, and continuing in the Gospel of St. John, the letters of St. Paul, in Meister Eckhart and in Dante.

It seems to me that one cannot meditate enough about Faust, for many of the mysteries of the second part are still unfathomed.

Faust is out of this world and therefore it transports you; it is as much the future as the past and therefore the most living present.

Hence everything that to me is essential in Goethe is contained in Faust.

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 88-89.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Carl Jung: This is the matrix of the mind, as the little great-grandfather correctly saw, I hope something good comes out of it.




Dear Professor Freud, 23 June 1911

Naturally the time after the Congress would suit me just as well, I only thought that if you came before you could stay here a bit longer.

I gather from your letter that you could come before the Congress, minus your wife, but we were so looking forward to having you both under our roof that I wish you would persuade your wife to come along after all if she possibly can.

Whether after or before the Congress is all the same to me. So please decide just as suits you best.

Have you seen Havelock Ellis's book on dreams?

Won't you do a critical review for the Jahrbuch?

What a watery brew Ellis has concocted!

Just what is needed to make everything unclear.

You are probably right about Honegger.

Although it may be true that the fantasy systems in D. pI. exhibit parallels with the daydreams of hysterical patients, it is certain from the start that by no means all cases possess such a system, or at least they do not have it at their disposal.

That it is not of great therapeutic importance to get patients to produce their latent fantasies seems to me a very dubious proposition.

The unconscious fantasies contain a whole lot of relevant material, and bring the inside to the outside as nothing else can, so that I see a faint hope of getting at even the "inaccessible" cases by this means.

These days my interest turns more and more to ucs. fantasy, and it is quite possible that I'm attaching too great hopes to these excavations,

Des. fantasy is an amazing witches' cauldron:

"Formation, transformation,
Eternal Mind's eternal recreation.
Thronged round with images of things to be,
They see you not, shadows are all they see."

This is the matrix of the mind, as the little great-grandfather correctly saw, I hope something good comes out of it.

Kindest regards,

JUNG ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Pages 430-431