Carl Jung “Indeed I have often thought: if only I could have opened my own father’s eyes!

 

C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950

To Erika Schlegel

Dear Erika, 31 July 1935

Your letter and the little picture of Tobias’s father’s miraculous cure! gave me great pleasure, for which I thank you with all my heart.

This picture must obviously come from a very old edition of the Bible.

The woodcut and type suggest a very early incunabulum.

Your brother will probably know what early printing it comes from.

I shall have the little picture framed tel quel, for it is of an unusual quality and has an inner connection with my own fate.

Indeed I have often thought: if only I could have opened my own father’s eyes!

But he died before I had caught the fish whose liver contains the wonder-working medicine.

I am particularly touched that your son Werner also sent me his congratulations.

Please give him mv best thanks.

I hope you can recuperate in Elmau in a congenial atmosphere.

With best wishes,

Your devoted

CARL ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 193-194.

Note: In the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, chs. 6 and 11, it is related how Tobias heals his father’s blindness with the liver and gall of a fish which he caught on a journey accompanied by the angel Raphael.- Jung discusses his own father’s religious doubts in Memories, pp. 91ff./96ff.

In connection with the “very old edition of the Bible” it is of interest to note Jung’s dreams concerning his father and the fish motif in ibid., pp. 213-19/203-8, esp. p. 217/207, where his father holds a Bible “bound in shiny fish skin.”