To R.F.C. Hull
Dear Hull, 27 December 1958
Your suggestion to translate the subtitle of the Mysterium Coniunctionis as “An Inquiry into the Fission and Fusion of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy” is indeed very clever.
It is audacious and in a way profoundly right.
This idea is so creative that I cannot assume responsibility for it.
So I should make the further suggestion that in a translator’s note you explain your translation of my bland terminology “Trennung und Zusammensetzung.”
I congratulate you on this very successful interpretation of my understatement.
I myself am deeply convinced of the basic analogy between physical and psychological discoveries.
I have often discussed this problem with the late Prof. Pauli, who was also fascinated by what he called the mirror-reflection, causing the existence of two worlds which are really united in the speculum, the mirror, that is lying in the middle.
As Prof. Fierz in his speech at Pauli’s funeral has mentioned: Speculation comes from speculum.
Thus “speculation,” a very typical form of consciousness, becomes the real centre of the world, the basis of the Unus Mundus.
On this ground your translation is warrantable.
It has my full approval on condition that you write a translator’s preface in which you defend your interpretative translation.
You have to submit your innovation probably also to the editorial Olympos, I don’t feel quite competent,!
The idea of a fourth part of the Mysterium Coniunctionis is not at all a bad one, but I am afraid it has been already anticipated by the bulk of Freudian psychology.
He was fascinated by the dark side of man, i.e., by all those things that make up the contents of the “Mysterium Iniquitatis,” the mystery of the shadow.
Without his emphasis on the dark side of man and the chaos of his chthonic desires, I could not have found access to the “Mysterium Coniunctionis.”
The “Mysterium Iniquitatis” is represented in modem literature
by a whole library of Psychopathologia Sexualis, criminology, detective stories, etc. and on top the whole Freudian literature.
It needs no further elucidation.
The only trouble with this literary production is that nobody seems aware of a mysterium.
My chance was that I saw it was a mysterium.
On this occasion let me express to you all my good wishes for Christmas and a happy New Year and also my gratitude for the immense work you have put into your translations.
Your brilliant suggestion has shown me once more that your participation in your work is more than professional.
It is alive.
Yours cordially,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 469-471
