Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past – Quotations
Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past by William McGuire
Alexis Leger had no partiality for any system of psychology and, indeed, no patience with psychoanalysis, Jungian or otherwise. There has been scarcely a glimmer of interest in his poetry from critics of a Jungian leaning. Yet, throughout almost the entire career of the Bollingen program, the work of St.-J ohn Perse was given a preeminence. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 191
Hillyer’s attempt to link the Foundation with fascist sympathies was dealt with in a letter written in July by Broch, Kahler, and Kracauer, all refugees from Nazism. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 214
If Hillyer had looked into the Foundation’s activities, the three stated, “he would have discovered that the list of its fellows and authors includes persons of the most diverse background and extraction, Jews as well as gentiles, refugees as well as Americans, . . . names like Paul Radin, Huntington, Cairns, Herbert Read, R. P. Blackmur, Benedetto Croce, Max Raphael, Joseph Campbell, Charles de Tolnay … none of whom could be suspected of Fascist or authoritarian leanings. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 214-215
Malcolm Cowley, appeared in the New Republic on October 3. Cowley wound up: “The little American republic of letters is under attack by pretty much the same forces as those to which the Russian writers have already yielded; that is, by the people who prefer slogans to poetry and national self-flattery to honest writing. Hillyer has gone over to the enemy, like Pound in another war. Worsted in a struggle among his colleagues and compatriots, he has appealed over their heads and under false colors to the great hostile empire of the Philistines.” ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 216
In 1968, she [Kathleen Raine] lectured at the Eranos Conference, the first woman invited to the lectern since 1938. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 235
But of course Academe is a very strong party in power … and can easily discredit me in a world which shares their basic assumptions (positivist) and hates mine ( the philosophia perennis) . ~Kathleen Raine, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 235
Kauffer’s design for the Collected Jung-a jacket of glossy black with touches of blue and white and a black binding with a gold-stamped monogram “J”-has been admired by all but Jung, who observed that it seemed to put him in a coffin. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 267
Jung’s judgment was of real help to me in gauging the political situation. His deep antipathy to what Nazism and Fascism stood for was clearly evidenced in these conversations. ~John Foster Dulles, Bollingen: An Adventure, Pages 57-58
Jung spoke of the functions, how thinking’s not wise. How feeling may be but the ego’s disguise, Intuition and sense but a parcel of lies. They got what they needed to know! ~Eleanor Bertine (Tongue in Cheek Verse), Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 12
…Marie-Louise von Franz was the youngest of the inner circle, and the most scholarly. She had earned a doctorate in classical philology before beginning to work with Jung. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 16
He [Otto Gross] mostly frequented artists, litterateurs, political fanatics, degenerates of all descriptions, and in the swamps of Ascona carried on miserable and disgusting orgies. ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 22
The Eranos speakers and audience, who in the beginning were chiefly German, became more international, and Olga Froebe liked to say that the conferences, founded in the year the Nazis came to power, gradually became a counterforce to Nazism. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 24
I had a long talk with him about what was going on in Germany and Italy, and I do not recall the slightest trace of anything Jung said which indicated other than a deep anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist sentiment. ~Allen W. Dulles, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 26
Jung, Mary [Mellon], and I all had a definite life work, submitted to each of us by the same Force. Each of us was independent, ruthless, isolated, yet bound together. . . . I remember Mary Mellon saying: ‘Bollingen is my Eranos!’ . . . . She too was dedicated to Jung’s work and then to Eranos. She, Jung, and I were in the identical pattern, energized by the same Power and thereby bound up with each other. ~Olga Froebe, William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 27
A huge green Round Table found its place on the terrace, and became the true meeting place for the scholars. It was a concretized mandala, with all the qualities of that symbol reflected in it. The most important talks were held there, and gradually it became apparent that this Table was a creative circle. ~Olga Froebe, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 28
If a German invasion had forced Jung to leave Switzerland during the war-and he was indeed on a Gestapo blacklist-he would have found a goodly part of his own library duplicated at the Mellons’ house, Oak Spring. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 33-34
I think the night has descended upon Europe. Heaven knows if and when and under which conditions we shall meet again. There is only one certainty-nothing can put out the light within. ~Carl Jung to Mary Mellon, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 34
“I feel that my epitaph will bear the sad legend: Killed by the Book of Changes.” ~Cary Baynes, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 35
On top of all I felt very tired and deeply depressed by the senselessness of this war. It is mere destruction. Why in hell is Man unable to grow up? The Lord of this world is surely the Devil. ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 36
You hardly can imagine the thickness of the black cloud suspended over Europe, and one wishes to escape from the soundless pressure of evil and dull idiocy. ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 37
I wish you could [Mary Mellon] come again to Ascona. But the world-wide darkness is still on the increase. I am grateful to fate that you have such dreams, otherwise the world would be rather empty in the Western Hemisphere. ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 37
Living here without a car becomes a primitive problem. Yesterday we had to tramp for one hour and a half in order to get two sausages for our dinner. The misery in the occupied countries is indescribable. The air vibrates with lies and rumors and it is almost impossible to discern between true and false information. ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 49
[James]Joyce had also been a Catholic and found a way out without losing his symbols. ~Joseph Campbell, ~Carl Jung, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 65
On February 11, 1944, he [Carl Jung] had slipped in the snow, and the fibula of his right leg snapped. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 106
Stay as well as you can during this hard winter to come. I am sending you [Carl Jung] eleven pounds a week made up of butter, fats, and sugar. ~Mary Mellon, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 107
… a text that was inscribed on Mary’s [Mellon’s] ring and was a favorite of Jung’s: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 114
“My mission is completed and I no longer wish to continue. I’m glad to be on my way!” Hull’s “mission” encompassed the translation or recycling of about four million words of Jung’s. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 132
Of the Jungians who were published-seven in all-the one whose influence was most emphatic was Jolande Jacobi, one of the rare extraverts in the Jungian fold. In Zurich she was nicknamed “The Locomotive” for her organizational talent. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 133
Jolande Jacobi was not universally liked among the Jungians; such is the fate of the extravert among introverts. Jung valued her, however, and she took the lead in founding the C. G. Jung Institute in 1948, taught there, and was on its Curatorium for twenty years. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 134
He [Neumann] had to leave Nazi Germany in 1934 without finishing his M.D., and after analyzing with Jung, he established an analytical practice in Tel Aviv. ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 135
Erich Neumann was considered to be the most original and creative of Jung’s followers, in Adler’s words “the only one who seemed destined to build on Jung’s work and to continue it.” ~William McGuire, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 135
Sympathy for other viewpoints or for other people she does not possess. She is a hard, calculating egoist. Some people are never appreciative of those who rescue them and are frequently inclined to believe that God created the rescuers for the sole purpose of coming to their particular rescue. I am afraid contact with Jungian psychology hasn’t done Olga [Froebe] any good. ~Paul Radin, Bollingen: An Adventure, Page 169
With Johann Jakob Bachofen I learned to read mythology as expressing in its symbols the rise and decline of social and religious orders. It proved to be a most inspiring lesson for interpreting Hindu mythological tradition.” Since Bachofen was dead, “the major task, to decipher mythology as the everlasting romance of the soul, as ‘le drame interieur,’ as the play staged in the playhouse of the psyche-this task was left for Dr. Jung. ~Heinrich Zimmer, Bollingen: An Adventure, Pages 173-174
