This is a portrait of Izdubar
This is a portrait of Izdubar. Izdubar was an early name given the figure now known as Gilgamesh, based on a mistranscription. It resembles an illustration of him in Wilhelm Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie. Jung discussed the Gilgamesh epic in 1912 in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, using the corrected form. His use of the older form here indicates that the figure is related to, but not identical to the figure in the epic. Jung encounters Izdubar in a fantasy.
Jung says that he comes from the West, and tells Izdubar about the setting of the sun, the roundness of the earth, and the emptiness of space. Izdubar wants to know where he gets his knowledge from, and whether there is an immortal land where the sun goes for rebirth.
Jung says he comes from a world where this is science. Izdubar is aghast to learn that we can never reach the sun and that he can never attain immortality, and collapses, poisoned by this science. Izdubar wonders if there are two kinds of truth. Jung says that their truth comes from outer things, whilst the truth of Izdubar’s priests comes from inner things. Jung makes a fire with a match and shows him his clock. Izdubar is astonished.
However, Jung tells him that Western science has not found a means against death. Izdubar wonders how Jung lives with this poisonous science. Jung says that they have got used to it, and have had to swallow the poison of science. Izdubar asks if they have Gods. Jung says, no, just the words. Izdubar says that they also do not see the Gods. Jung says that science has taken faith from them. Jung says he can’t bare this well, which is why he has gone to the East, to seek the light that they lack. Jung longs for Izdubar’s truth. Izdubar tells him to be careful, as he could be blinded.
On this way, no one walks behind me, and I cross no one’s path. I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man enough, I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto myself And so I wander to the far East. Not that I know anything about what my distant goal might be. I see blue horizons before me: they suffice as a goal. I hurry toward the East and my rising-I will my rising. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
Image legend: “This image was printed on Christmas 1915.” The depiction of Izdubar strongly resembles an illustration of him in Wilhelm Roscher’s Auifuhrliches
Lexikon der Griechischen und Romischen Mythologie, of which Jung possessed a copy ([Leipzig: Teubner, 1884-1937], vol. 2, p. 775). Izdubar was an early name given the figure now known as Gilgamesh. This was based on a mistranscription. In 1906 Peter Jensen noted: “It has now been established that Gilgamesch is the chief protagonist of the epic, and not Gistchubar or Izdubar as assumed previously” (Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der weltliteratur [Strassburg: Karl Triibner, I906], p. 2). Jung had discussed the Gilgamesh epic in 19I2 in Traniformations and Symbols of the Libido, using the corrected form, and cited Jensen’s work several times. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Footnote 96.
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At night, when everything calmed down, I put my hand into my pocket and retrieved the egg. It was a real egg with a white hard shell.
I placed it on the rug in the middle of the room and carefully opened it.
Something resembling smoke rises up from it to the ceiling of the room and suddenly Izdubar’s frame is standing before me, enormous and complete.
His limbs are also whole and I find no trace of lameness on him.
It’s as if he had awoken from a deep sleep.
Izdubar: Where am I? How narrow it is here and how dark and how cool? Am I in the grave?
Where was I?-It seemed to me as if I had been outside in the universe over and under me was a black an endlessly black star-glittering sky-and I was in a passion of unspeakable yearning-streams of fire broke from my radiating body-I surged through blazing flames –
I swam in a sea that wrapped me in the living fires-full of light,- full of longing- full of eternity-I was ancient and perpetually renewing myself- swirling down from the heights to the depths, and whirled glowing from the depths to the heights hovering around myself amidst fiery glowing clouds-as raining embers beating down like the foam of the surf, engulfing myself in stifling heat- suddenly, once again, blazing up glowing white-embracing and rejecting myself in an enormous game.
Where was I?-I was completely sun.
Jung: Oh Izdubar. Divine one, how wonderful! You are healed!
Izdubar: Healed? Was I ever sider Who speaks of sickness?
I was sun- completely sun. I am the sun.
An inexpressible light breaks from his entire body, a light that my eyes cannot grasp.
I must cover my face so as not to turn blind-I cast my face to the ground as the cover does not protect my eyes.
“You are the sun, the eternal light-most powerful one, forgive me for carrying you- ~The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 131
Roscher notes, “As a God, Izdubar is associated with the Sun-God” (Ausjahrliches Lexikon der Griecliischen und Romischen Mythologie vol. 2 , p. 774).
The incubation and rebirth of Izdubar follows the classic pattern of solar myths.
In Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, Leo Frobenius pointed out the widespread motif of a woman becoming pregnant through Immaculate Conception and giving birth to the sun god, who develops in a remarkably short period of time. In some forms, he incubates in an egg. Frobenius related this to the setting and rising of the sun in the sea (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1904, pp. 223- 63) .
Jung cited this work on a number of occasions in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido.
He got to know Frobenius at Count Keyserling’s School of Wisdom in the 1920s (MP, p. 18). ~The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 131, fn 124