Do not give away your daughter
I’m not sending you [Salome[ away.
You must not be far from me.
But give to me out of your fullness, not your longing. I cannot satisfy your poverty just as you cannot still my longing.
You possess nothing, so how can you give?
Insofar as you give, you demand. Elijah, old man, listen you are a patriarchal Jew, you have an old-fashioned gratitude.
Do not give away your daughter, but set her on her [Salome] own feet.
She might dance, sing or play the lute before people, and they might throw flashing coins at her feet and cannot still my longing. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 252
Carl Jung to his Daughter on the Death of his Wife Emma
To Marianne Niehus-Jung
Dear Marianne, Bollingen, 17 July 1956
Warmest thanks for your lovely letter, which was a great joy.
I am glad you weren’t bored with me.
It was also a joy to be together with you for a while.
It is true that one cannot fully realize something that is not yet there, for one does not know what the pattern is which a still living person fills out.
Mama’s death has left a gap for me that cannot be filled.
So it is good if you have something you want to carry out, and can turn to when the emptiness spreads about you too menacingly.
The stone I am working on (like the one I carved in the winter) gives me inner stability with its hardness and permanence, and its meaning governs my thoughts.
I will gladly read the MSS.
I hope there’s no hurry.
The building is to start tomorrow if the permit arrives.
But I still have no news.
Will you be coming to Bollingen sometime?
Ruth sends best greetings,
Affectionately,
Your Father ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 316-317.
Notes:
- This was a stone in memory of his wife; it was set up at Bollingen.
The stone he carved in the winter of 195 5/56 consisted of three stone tablets with the names of his ancestors.
They were placed in the courtyard of the Tower (Memories, p. 232/220).
- In Memories (p. 225/213) Jung reports how after his wife’s death he felt compelled to add an upper story to the central section of the Tower, as a representation of his ego-personality: “Now it signified an extension of consciousness achieved in old age. With that the building was complete.”
