“It appears as if something has been achieved through this memorable event.
But it is incalculable where this will all lead.
I hardly dare say that Izdubar’s fate is grotesque and tragic, for that is what our most precious life is. It is the first attempt to elevate this truth to a system.
He rightly deserves a place among the immortal. What lies in the middle is the truth.
It has many faces; one is certainly comical, another sad, a third evil, a fourth tragic, a fifth funny; a sixth is a grimace, and so forth.
Should one of these faces become particularly obtrusive, we thus recognize that we have deviated from certain truth and approach an extreme that constitutes a definite impasse should we decide to pursue this route.
It is a murderous task to write the wisdom of real life, particularly if one has committed many years to serious scientific research.
What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness of life (the childish, so to speak).
All the manifold sides of life, the great, the beautiful, the serious, the black, the devilish, the good, the ridiculous, the grotesque are fields of application which each tend to wholly absorb the beholder or describer.
Our time requires something capable of regulating the mind.
Just as the concrete world has expanded from the limitedness of the ancient outlook to the immeasurable diversity of our modern outlook, the world of intellectual possibilities has developed to unfathomable diversity. Infinitely long paths, paved with thousands of thick volumes, lead from one specialization to another.
Soon no one will be able to walk down these paths anymore. And then only specialists will remain.
More than ever we require the living truth of the life of the mind, of something capable of providing firm guidance” ~Carl Jung; Red Book