C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
the owner of this book: Dr. Jurg Fierz
Writing a prefatory note to these diversa gives me a peculiar feeling.
A collection of my essays from various times and situations of life is rather like a grasshopper with type on its feet jumping through
the world of ideas, leaving occasional traces behind it; and it requires a considerable effort of imagination to reconstruct from the zigzag track of these footprints the nature of the animal that produced them.
I envy no one this task, as I myself have a distaste for autobiography.
The immense expanse of vaguely recognizable objects in the world has lured me forth to those twilit border zones where the figure I have meanwhile become steps towards me.
The long path I have traversed is littered with husks sloughed off, witnesses of countless moultings, those relicta one calls books.
They conceal as much as they reveal.
Every step is a symbol of those to follow.
He who mounts a flight of steps does not linger on them, nor look back at them, even though age invites him to linger or slow his pace.
The great wind of the peaks roars ever more loudly in his ears.
His gaze sweeps distances that flee away into the infinite.
The last steps are the loveliest and most precious, for they lead to that fullness to reach which the innermost essence of man is born.
Kiisnacht, 21 December 1945 C.G. Jung. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 404-405.
A dedication which Jung wrote for a bound volume of his own offprints prepared by F., literary editor of the Weltwoche ( cf. Fierz, 10 Apr. 42, n. O ).
Although, strictly speaking, not a letter it is included here for the sake of its personal expression and human interest.