Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
Dear Frau Loos, 7 September 1954
It was unexpectedly kind of you to remember my birthday.
I am not surprised you forgot it at first, but I am astonished that you remembered.
.
With regard to the lack of appreciation of writers in Switzerland, one must never forget that Switzerland is a very small country and has never trusted its own taste in spite of cultural philistinism and the vogue for art, and anyway you can’t expect publishers to be idealists.
Rascher for instance wastes his money on idiotic picture-books, but only because this is his hobby and not a well-founded artistic judgment.
As you wish, I am sending you a copy of my book Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins.
The petition for “daily bread” is appropriate under all circumstances, although in Matthew 6:11 it reads:
“Panem nostrum supersubstantialis da nobis hodie” (Give us this day our super-substantial bread).
At least that is how St. Jerome translated the Greek word, which occurs only in Matthew and has undergone various interpretations, banal or otherwise.
But Jerome will have known what he was doing, especially when you see what is said in the ensuing verses, where Christ admonishes his disciples not to worry about their daily needs, which is naturally very much easier in a warm country than in our climate, of which Zola rightly said: “Mais notre misere a froid.”
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 182.
