Carl Jung on Carrying the Torch
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
To H. Oswald
Dear Frau Oswald, 11 November 1954
I would gladly accept your invitation to devote myself to Holderlin’s work if I still felt up to this task.
Unfortunately I am no longer energetic enough and am too old-in my 8oth year-to do it justice.
I know the lines you quote from Holderlin only too well.
But I have worked so hard in these last decades that I must be wary of even relatively minor mental Exertions.
It is now up to the younger generation to open a few locked doors, perhaps with the help of the keys I have wrought.
In any case I see no one at present who could tackle Holderlin.
Such a work is reserved for a distant future.
A person carries the torch only a stretch of the way and must then lay it down, not because he has reached a goal but because his strength is at an end.
It would be most unseemly to grab Holderlin by the hair in senile impatience.
I cannot deny that all sorts of thoughts run through my head, but that traitor the body leaves me in the lurch.
Nevertheless I thank you for your pious wish, for which there is every justification.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 192-193.
Those are the people who will carry on my work.
The following is from the introduction to a book on Jung’s Aion lectures by Marie-Louise von Franz
“Two celebrations were held in his honor on his eightieth birthday. For the first occasion, invitations were sent to a carefully selected list of guests, all of whom were official representatives of his psychology. This was a rather stiff event, which tired him. To the evening party, however, anyone who wanted to see the great man was admitted: students, patients, Jung’s gardener, neighbors from Bollingen.
In short, a great variety of “important” and “unimportant” people came to offer their congratulations at this second party. The atmosphere was warmly human and animated, and Jung stayed longer than had been anticipated.
On the way home he said, ”Yes, those are the people who will carry on my work, single individuals who are suffering and seeking, and who try to take my ideas seriously in their own lives, not the ones who satisfy their vanity by preaching them to others.” ~Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, Page 6.
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