Carl Jung: The theological side has readied me for a special compartment in hell.
To Margaret Sittler
Dear Frau Sittler, 29 March 1960
I was naturally overjoyed to have such interesting news from you.
As with every author, one does not live from air and bread alone but now and then needs a bit of moral encouragement.
Unfortunately I am not very well up in English belles letters, because I got the hang of English at a time when science had already taken possession of me.
In my youth French literature was much closer, and English far away and strange.
People from England came to us from across the sea and so were quite different from the French!
They consisted of nothing but Lords or eccentrics.
Faust and Nietzsche occupied me very much more than anything I knew of English literature.
I have never read Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound” in the original, but shall hasten to make good this omission at your behest.
Although I do not doubt that Job has become a burning question for other people too, it seems that in our own blessed day their numbers are pretty limited, judging by what I know of the reactions to my little book.
What I have heard from the theological side has readied me for a special compartment in hell.
Other people seem to have little interest in it.
You, dear lady, are an exception, and your letter is truly a red letter day for me.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung
-Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 547-548
