There is too much [sic] talk in the world anyhow.
SS Cap Ascona,
Atlantic Ocean
June 12, 1934
Dear Dr Jung:
Since my friend Ortega y Gasset published The Psychology of the Unconscious and since I read the English translation of Psychological Types I have been wanting to meet you, to know you.
Your books have been a great help to me.
I admire them and I am grateful to them, to you, for all I have found in them.
I feel I owe you half of my actual serenity … perhaps more than half! And I shall always be indebted to you for it.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, this serenity is not complete, nor continuous!
But I suppose few human beings know such uninterrupted and unimpaired bliss … Few or none?
We will talk about that when we meet. Because I hope we will meet, soon. I am South American (Argentine).
We have common friends, I believe, and maybe you heard my name, maybe not.
I am quite certain you never saw my review, SUR. South America is so terribly far from
you, Europeans … though we, Americans, are so terribly near and suffer so much of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean is like a mental disease in some of us. DISTANCE. Exile!
We are always exiled. Exiled in America! Exiled in Europe!
We can’t do without Europe, but neither can we do without America.
We stifle in America, and we stifle – for other reasons – in Europe. Perhaps, sometime, something will be born of it.
In the meantime our anguish is intense.3 SUR has been publishing some English books translated in Spanish
(Huxley’s Point counterpoint, Lawrence’s Kangaroo, etc. Unfortunately the crisis is making everything rather difficult.
Nevertheless I hope the Spanish translation and publication of Psychological Types will be an affaire conclue when I get to Paris.
I wrote to my agent in Madrid about it. I am reading now Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
I should very much like to have that book translated too.
Before I started reading it, I wrote an article for LA NACION (Buenos Aires) on Huxley’s last book, Beyond the Bay of Mexique4 [sic].
I should like you to read that article (if you have some spare time) because it will help you to understand how deeply moved I must have been by Modern Man in Search of a Soul and how I must treasure those pages.
You don’t read Spanish, I suppose. Can I send you my article in French?
Can I write to you in French? I don’t feel quite at home in English but I do in French.
Are you staying in Zurich for a while? Where shall I go to see you?
Where will it be more convenient to you and when?
If some lectures could be arranged for you in Argentina, next year, would you feel tempted?
Please let me have an answer as quickly as possible, because all my other plans will wait till this most important business of having a talk with you is fixed. Can you, will you arrange it?
Anyhow I thank you for all you have already given to me.
Victoria Ocampo
27 avenue Malakaff
Paris
I shall be in Paris the 21 of June. ~Carl Jung, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 100-101
June 26, 19345
Mme Victoria Ocampo,
27 Avenue Malakoff,
Paris
Dear Madam,
Unfortunately I don’t read Spanish, but you can write to me in French, just as well if you don’t like the English.
If you want to meet me it ought to be in Zurich, because next week I shall begin my vacations which I usually spend not altogether too far from Zurich.
Not knowing your program I don’t know when an interview would suit you.
I could see you in July but I should prefer it to be between the first and the 18th of August.
As far as the 13th of July I’m coming down every Friday to my place at the above address, which is a sort of suburb of Zurich. Thus I could see you on any of those Fridays
if you let me know in time, i.e., about a week ahead.
I can’t say that I feel particularly tempted to lecture in Argentine [sic], because as a whole I don’t like lecturing.
There is too much [sic] talk in the world anyhow.
I have been surprised by your remark that Ortega y Gasset has published the Psychology of the Unconscious.
I had no idea that he had a hand in it.
It is nice to know that what one has written has meant something to somebody.
Sincerely yours,
C,G. Jung ~Carl Jung, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung, Page 101
Foreword to the Argentine Edition, Psychological Types.
No book that makes an essentially new contribution to knowledge enjoys the privilege of being thoroughly understood.
Perhaps it is most difficult of all for new psychological insights to make any headway.
A psychology that is grounded on experience always touches upon personal and intimate matters and thus arouses everything that is contradictory and unclarified in the human psyche.
If one is plunged, as I am for professional reasons, into the chaos of psychological opinions, prejudices, and susceptibilities, one gets a profound and indelible impression of the diversity of individual psychic dispositions, tendencies, and convictions, while on the other hand one increasingly feels the need for some kind of order among the chaotic multiplicity of points of view.
This need calls for a critical orientation and for general principles and criteria, not too specific in their formulation, which may serve as points de repere in sorting out the empirical material.
What I have attempted in this book is essentially a critical psychology.
This fundamental tendency in my work has often been overlooked, and far too many readers have succumbed to the error of thinking that Chapter X (“General Descriptions of the Types”) represents the essential content and purpose of the book, in the sense that it provides a system of classification and a practical guide to a good judgment of human character.
Indeed, even in medical circles the opinion has got about that my method of treatment
consists in fitting patients into this system and giving them corresponding “advice”.
This regrettable misunderstanding completely ignores the fact that this kind of classification is nothing but a childish parlour game, every bit as futile as the division of mankind into brachycephalics and dolichocephalics.
My typology is far rather a critical apparatus serving to sort out and organize the welter of empirical material, but not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight.
It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.
For this reason I have placed the general typology and the definitions at the end of the book, after having described, in Chapters I to IX, the processes in question with the help of various examples.
I would therefore recommend the reader who really wants to understand my book to immerse himself first of all in Chapters II and V.
He will gain more from them than from any typological terminology superficially
picked up, since this serves no other purpose than a totally useless desire to stick on labels.
It is now my pleasant duty to express my sincerest thanks to Madame Victoria Ocampo for her great help in securing the publication of this book, and to Senor Ramon de la Serna for his work of translation.
Kusnacht Zurich October 1934
- G. Jung ~Carl Jung, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 104-105
27 Avenue Malakoff6
Passy 25-93
28 June 1934
Dear Dr Jung:
Everything that has something to do with the “Revista de Occidente” has something to do with Ortega.
And I doubt if he had not a hand in the publication of your book.
Of course there is too much talk in the world, but your kind of talk is not quite the same as everyone else’s, I believe.
Sorry you are not tempted. I shall try to go to Zurich in August, as you prefer it.
Yes! Your books have meant and mean very much to me.
Sincerely yours,
Victoria Ocampo
Hotel Baur au Lac7
Zurich
16 October
Dr Jung,
I leave Zurich, where I came especially to see you, with the bitter regret that I could not really speak with you as I would have liked.
I needed very much to do so. But since you had no time to spare, I won’t insist.
Just imagine that I had almost given up coming to see you because of your letter!
That letter was like a bucket of cold water.
I had, thanks to that letter, the impression that you, who understand everything (at least
everything that, in my opinion, is essential in life) had not understood the tone of my letter.
That is to say, the degree to which I was sincere and the degree to which your books meant something deeply important in my life.
It would be necessary, Dr Jung, for me to go and consult you as a sick person, without really being sick.
Indeed, my moral sickness consists in being tormented by a variety of attitudes that are in appearance contradictory.
You could help me see more clearly (and I believe that only by speaking with you this miracle would come into effect), and I would be as grateful to you as if you had cured me of a torment, a physical ailment.
If you could only classify me in the same way you classify your
dogs, that would amount to the same thing as winning a battle against the enemy …
What do you think of this?
For my part, I believe that, at this moment, you are the only person whose help can be effective for me.
As l familiarize myself with your thinking, and l apologize if l appear presumptuous, it seems to me that I’ll arrive at a relative peace of mind.
This would allow me to work better than l do now, and especially to disperse myself less.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s the situation.
As for your lectures in Argentina, l want to repeat that this trip might be of some interest to you, and would be enormously interesting to us.
As soon as I arrive in Paris, l will send you the last issue of my magazine where your book is already announced, as well as two of the volumes published by us, so that you can see what they look like.
I hope (and if I didn’t hope this, I would feel truly despondent) that Psychological Types will find in all of Latin America (that cannot be accused of lacking vastness) as well as in Spain … at least ten readers!
You can see that I am neither very ambitious nor very optimistic. But I am stubborn.
If there is anyone in our Americas that this book should reach, then it’s necessary that that someone be indeed reached.
And I will make every effort to achieve this.
I’m leaving Zurich this evening. If I don’t call you, it’s because I’ve nothing more to say.
When you have time for a client who wishes to consult you, you’ll let me know.
With fondest memories, and with the assurance of my sincere admiration.
Victoria Ocampo
P.S.: I’m sending you a short commentary on the Commedia published twelve years ago in a Buenos Aires newspaper for the sixth centenary of Dante.
It has no value other than to reveal my thirst for order, an order that I admire in Dante … an order that l cannot enter except by my own means, or at least enter in the same way. The Catholic Church horrifies me. The church, you understand.
I’m sorry I can’t send you my more recent writings (that are of greater value, a fact that pleases me) but they have only been published in Spanish.
October 25, 19348
Madame Victoria Ocampo
Banque Espagnole du Rio de la Plata
8 Av de l’Opera
Paris
Dear Madam,
You will find here the preface for the Spanish edition of Psychologische Typen.
I very much regretted, on telephoning you the other day, not to find you at your hotel, and I would like to rethank you again for your efforts to publish this translation.
I would be obliged if you would also convey my thanks to Monsieur de la Serna.
Yours faithfully,
- G. Jung
March 17, 1943
Mar del Plata,
San Martin 689
Buenos Aires
Dear Dr Jung:
I don’t know if you still remember my visit, on a very rainy day.
Through me your Tipos psichologicos were translated in Spanish.
I should very much like to publish in my revue SUR (a monthly magazine) something lately written by you (and if possible, written for us).
Will you please let me know if you get this letter?
Letters travel with some difficulty nowadays.
Yours sincerely,
Victoria Ocampo Page 105
Kusnacht-Zurich
July 3rd 1943
Mrs. Victoria Ocampo
San Martin, 689
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Dear Mrs. Ocampo,
Your letter of March 17th reached me a few days ago.
I certainly remember your visit to Zurich and your proposition to get my book about types published.
I should like to live up to your expectations as to have an article of my pen for your magazine.
Unfortunately we have to be content if letters go through in these times.
I’m afraid that it would be absolutely useless to try to send manuscripts.
Hoping you are always in good health, I remain
Yours sincerely
- G. Jung Page 106
Prinz Christianweg 4, Darmstadt
22 July 1936
I’ve read your colloquium on Victoria with great interest.
The general situation you depict is admirably sketched and much of its minutiae –
features and details – are proof of very fine observations and a keen judgment.
But what interests me most is what is purely Argentine in said colloquium.
There’s much in it of traditional macana [sham], much of the je m ‘en fiche [l don’t care] of Buenos Aires, much, very much of the extraordinary feeling of inferiority that all Argentinians – without any reason – suffer from.
All in all, your judgment is sound.
But there lack – in my opinion the characteristics that define the citizen of the world that, as you yourself say, your compatriot is so earnestly.
Perhaps I can render you a service if I complete somewhat your dialogue.
Because of her personal knowledge of most of the important writers of our time, Victoria truly belongs more to the world than to Argentina.
And I believe that she has opened herself more to several European writers than to those closest to her in the southernmost part of the world.
(This is another indication of her essential shyness that you define so well.)
And because of all this, I believe that what will remain of Victoria is something much more important than what South American friends and admirers believe.
Of the great initiators of movements – political, social, and religious – it is known that their true graceful influence is utterly different from what they intend and from what their contemporaries see.
The same is true with women of great import.
In the end, it does not matter what they are or believe themselves to be or what they seem or even do – what matters is their evocative power.
And I believe that there does not exist, in this moment of History, a more evocative woman than Victoria.
She is not inspiring she can’t be that because she is too self-absorbed.
But there is no doubt that this woman has evoked more – without the majority of her objects being aware of it – than almost all of the women that are spoken of.
That is because Victoria is the most powerfully telluric woman alive.
Because what matters in her is the telluric root that looks or pulls towards the earth – and that is also true of her very keen intelligence.
Her spontaneity – also genuine – is in service of her tellurism.
I believe that it is precisely for that reason that she has evoked in others so many spiritual forces.
I don’t believe there exists a single man of genius who has heard her and is not indebted to her in this sense.
Without her, I would never have found the truths and visions that would result in South-American ~Meditations; without her, I would neither have been able to write Of the Art of Life, because Victoria (contrary to what you say) is the one who least masters this art; when all is said and done, she is a grande gacheuse Ucilljoy] as are all independent women with great telluric force.
Without her, I would not have arrived to the final synthesis of myself.
I believe that this fact alone is more important than everything that Victoria has written and expressed in Argentina.
But this concerns not only myself: Ortega also owes much to her, and Drieu la Rochelle, and many, many others she met in Paris.
Few realize this, and it is possible that Victoria herself does not know this or does not want to admit it, because this influence has nothing to do with her conscious aspirations and whatever can satisfy her superficial vanity – but there is no doubt that in this and in nothing else lies Victoria Ocampo’s immortal value.
And that is much.
Wishing you much success,
Hermann von Keyserling, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung, Page 131-132
Darmstadt, 25 November 1929
Strictly confidential
My dear Doctor,
Today I would like to inform you in the strictest confidence about a case which concerns in the first place another person, in the second place me, but in which I see at the same time a possible object of research of the first rank and a possible task for you.
I believe to be entitled to do so in all respects, since the person in question – originally at my instigation – will in all probability get in touch with you in the course of this winter, and if anyone, you can help her.
But she must never know what I have told you.
I am talking about Victoria Ocampo who brought me to South America.
She has long had the reputation in Europe to be the most important woman of that continent (she is now 39 years old) and is undoubtedly one of the strongest and strangest personalities in our era.
In the summer of 1927, she suddenly fell in love with my work and literally leapt on me like a tiger.
She wrote me daily letters of the highest spiritual and emotional beauty.
But more and more they became real love letters, more and more the motive came to the fore that she had finally found the one who would understand her completely, love her
completely, just as she is.
And with wonderful perspicacity she immediately recognized the one insertion point at which she could grasp me: my concern for material survival, or in my usual image: my fear of starvation.
She was completely one with me, she would say, my work was her whole task, and she would take away all my worries of an uncertain future.
Thus, I, living predominantly a life of poetry, slowly weaved her into the poetry of my destiny, and even today, when everything is over, I can hardly imagine her as not belonging to me eternally.
She swore to me that she would now do everything for me, and in particular took over the preparation of my entire South American trip.
It was a novel in letters and telegrams, as I have never heard of, more beautiful and
intense than any fairy tale.
But I felt uneasy about bursting into such a fairy tale in a foreign country, and so I let her – c’est bien le mot [it’s the correct word] – come to Europe the previous winter so that we could get to know each other before the joint campaign in South America began.
So we spent a month together in France in January/February 1929.
She lived in Paris, I in Versailles, but she was with me at least 12 hours a day.
The personal encounter exceeded all my expectations.
Victoria was not only highly spiritual, she was very beautiful, and in her role of donna
umile [humble woman] she developed in me an inspirational power such as I thought impossible.
I was working all the time on America Set Free, which I completed in Versailles, and if the chapters “Predominant Women”, “Culture”, and “Spirituality” are certainly among the best I created, it is to her credit.
I felt as if I was living in a poem back then.
But at the same time, this woman somehow stirred me in the consciousness of an unattainable depth in her, as none before her had ever done.
I was never in love in the usual sense, it was always clear to me that as a “woman” she was not really my type, but her influence shook me so violently that I did not sleep a single night and yet I was fresh and inspired to the highest degree and, above all, most of the hitherto buried or repressed emotional primal energies in me were set free.
Later, all my friends found me rejuvenated by 10 years and completely relaxed inside. But the woman was at the same time in an incomprehensible way unhappy, even close to despair.
She could never tell me what was happening inside her, she only cried uncontrollably, declared that she was living in hell.
She gave me all the signs of love, except the last one, which I could have had at any time.
Today I thank all my guardian spirits that I did not force her.
I saw a terrible conflict in her – the unsolvable conflict between pure spirituality and the wild nature of the tiger or the serpent.
I was well aware that the latter bound me, but that V. 0. At the same time suffered from it and had come to me quite actually to be redeemed from it.
Of course, I believed she wanted to be redeemed and tried to give her clarity.
But her suffering became bigger and bigger only, as / became happier and freer, even if inwardly more agitated, I never took it seriously in the last instance. I left.
We were to meet again in South America, where she wanted to return before me to prepare everything.
As soon as I left, the letters became strangely different from before.
I was very worried and urged her to explain herself, that I was not a good guesser, that I could accept everything if she could only make me understand her.
Always only reassuring letters, I should not worry, it was completely useless, it would only make her sick, and I found such letters at every station until the encounter in Buenos Aires.
But when I arrived, I was suddenly confronted with a different person: no longer a donna umile in the least, but a violent queen, a Semiramis,3 of incredible strength and ruthlessness, sometimes a fury.
Outwardly she did everything for me, I was not allowed to do anything on my part that she did not prepare, but inwardly there was no longer any connection, the past was as if erased. This was
the strongest shock of my life.
It manifested itself, as always with me, above all physically – in one month I had more heart attacks (arhytmia (sic) perpetua) than in the previous 48 years.
For I could not give in.
If I broke away from South America, which everything urged me to do, it would have been an irreparable fiasco of my work.
On the other hand, I could not expose her – for she had affixed herself to me with all the
generosity of a good nature, and in all of South America we were more or less considered one, and all the world, beginning with her family, saw me that way.
So I had to overcome myself as never before.
That irritated her, she began to abuse me publicly (in private she never dared), I put up
with it smiling.
At the same time I tried for a long time in vain to achieve a clarification.
Finally she explained to me that she had never really loved me, that she had only played in Versailles for fear of losing me, that we were incompatible, except spiritually, accusing herself that her basic trait was nothing but moral cowardice.
I immediately addressed the situation, took all the blame, tried to re-found our friendship in vain.
The more I tried, the more unpleasant she became, albeit with constant relapses into tenderness and continued possessiveness.
One thing was clear to me: the turnaround meant the violent incursion of reality into 2 years of a dreamed-up life.
In particular, it was the revolt of the born and accustomed ruthless ruler to two years of donna umile, which was not acted, because it corresponded to the real need for admiration of her nature, but nevertheless constituted only a small part.
Above all, I was really physically unsympathetic to her – no matter what had been the case earlier.
I found in her, who had hardly been denied a wish from her second year of life, the desire of a woman to subjugate a man.
My ever-growing serenity irritated her more and more.
Whatever the outward appearance may have been (in fact, no one, even Victoria only to a
small extent, noticed what was really going on inside me)- I have never suffered anything even remotely similar.
The continuing bond routed through the unconsciousness, the necessity to hang on for the sake of my work, at the same time to overcome myself again and again for there were moments when I would have loved to knock this woman down publicly – created for the two months I spent in Buenos Aires a state of inner torment such as I wish only for a few of my enemies.
But I held out, and also forced – as I must admit, often with statesmanlike harshness – Victoria, who constantly, as a spoiled woman, wanted to break out, to keep her commitments once made.
But when I was finally able to travel to other countries and there gained the opportunity to reflect on my feelings, I realized that I had been so deeply hurt that I had to break with her for a time, precisely in order not to think badly of her all the time.
I did this from Chile and asked her to allow me not to see her again on the return trip. This was unexpected for the poor woman who had always lived her caprice.
She is said to have suffered terribly and admitted it to me in her farewell letter.
This letter was, by the way, the first explanation of what had really happened inside her no matter what the original truth was – this woman has little imagination, and only a few women can ever imagine that they ever felt differently than they did at a given point in time.
She declared in the bitterest, most hurting words possible, that I had always been as repugnant to her from the standpoint of sensibility as I was to her spiritually; that she had
prostituted herself at the time out of love for my spirit and work, but that I had poisoned all her devotion, her admiration, her enthusiasm, etc., by my attitude toward her (which was simply that of the uncomplicated lover, on the one hand, and of the poet, on the other, who sees his muse primarily as such).
She told me, she was guilty only of one thing: to have been too cowardly to show me the truth from the beginning.
I understand the complicated nature of women too poorly to be able to overlook what the ultimate truth may be.
But one thing is for sure: I am deeply in this woman’s debt and therefore I want to do everything that could help her.
In her debt not because of the many external things she did for me she made up for that abundantly by moral torment.
But because, in the final effect, she has done only good to me, and at her moral expense. It is one of the strangest coincidences that could really make me believe in Christian providence, that the difficulty in South America has done me more good than all expected luck could ever have done.
By some process of mysterious soul chemistry, which you will understand better than I do, the adversity has not embittered me, but, as far as I can see, has finally freed me.
This is not imagination, but proven fact.
Not only did I talk better than ever before – that is natural with a fighter nature like mine. But the energies rejected by the meant object became “universal”, objectless, free.
For the first time in my life I not only felt almost only positive myself – I triggered love in
all others, indeed in whole peoples, to an overwhelming degree.
I was carried by an ever higher and wider wave of sympathy.
I was praised as a human being, as el gran enamorado de la vida [the great lover of life], as a person of pure and rich humanity, as the “eternal child” of ultimate simplicity.
And this love, in turn, triggered in me a love for the entire South American continent such as I feel for no other soil.
Towards Victoria I have today no shadow of a negative feeling.
The moment I cut the thread, all bitterness in me ceased, I only think of her with deepest affection and have only one wish: to help her, which unfortunately I cannot do anymore.
This is the point for the sake of which I am writing to you.
I have to thank the woman regardless of whatever I have gone through at times.
But !fear that I have only harmed her.
And the thought that it will remain so is unbearable to me.
Since she is now sure to come to you, and you are the only person who in my opinion can help her, I would like to inform you in advance as to how I think her case lies.
She is really quite a good nature.
But she is completely torn between heaven and hell – it is not for nothing that she has written the most convincing text, to my knowledge, about hell in her book De Francesca a Beatrice.
She is essentially good and generous – but her soul is completely unintegrated – there is no possibility of unification between the femme fatale, which she is to the highest degree, the refined sexual being, the ruler, and the servant of pure spirituality, with which alone she identifies.
However, since she is 98°/c> a powerful earth-spirit, she is constantly disappointed by the fact that no one believes in the supremacy of the spiritual in her.
Since she is also completely undisciplined and ultimately inferior to her own nature, despite a very strong will, everything in her life goes badly for her so far she has lost every significant person, her marriage was a disaster (she is separated, they have not agreed on a divorce), and the only permanent thing in her life is a very insignificant but tolerating amant serieux [serious lover].
Her condition only got worse, since she suffers like all South Americans from an “inflation of the ego in its passive modality” in an almost improbable way.
In her mind everything is related to herself and the way it affects her.
This results in a hopeless permanent sadness, a real state of hell – for how is one to become free if one’s consciousness is always held in shackles?
Since she has been pampered and spoiled throughout her life, since the most unbelievable things have been let through and forgiven her, she cannot bear the slightest contradiction.
She holds a grudge for every bad word spoken against her, which she takes as “misunderstanding of her being”.
Finally, she is still ultimately shy, even to the point of cowardice; her regal demeanour is in part overcompensation.
The case is thus pathological in the deepest sense of the word.
Surely, she came to me to be redeemed – and I disappointed her.
She always claimed that she and I are the same, because she can’t stand to love someone she doesn’t identify with – in truth I am her exact opposite.
And when I now hear that she wants to visit you – I think you are likely to become her exclusive interest (she is only interested in one person or one thing at a time, other things meanwhile no longer exist for her), this is probably the same instinct.
Only this time it seems to me to be directed correctly. You can really help her.
That’s why I’m informing you here in advance, as best as I can.
I beg you from the bottom of my heart to help her. It is worth it.
She is really quite a good nature.
Only she must not know how much you have learned through me, indeed anything at all through me.
That is my basic conditfon. Surely she will blame me for everything.
May she let off some steam.
But perhaps after a while you can contribute to a conclusion where she does not remain
my enemy and her – certainly justified – personal resentment no longer stands as her last word.
For somehow she remains just as attached to me as I remain to her.
And one should probably hold dear troubling memories, but never ugly ones.
Another very important thing: a dream accompanies Victoria throughout her life: she sees someone she loves, who makes her completely happy, she rushes to him joyfully, and all of a sudden he changes, becomes indifferent or even a complete stranger.
This is what she has experienced in everyone so far, probably most strongly in me.
It would be nice if she did not experience the same in you – surely this can be achieved by psychosocial techniques.
- 0. will probably come to Europe in December and I suppose she will write to you then. But perhaps she is already corresponding with you.
If you wish to write to me about possible outcomes concerning me, which have aroused your interest, I would be very glad to hear from you.
By the way, we will probably see each other in January, since I have finally accepted the urgent invitation of the Zurich Schauspielhaus, which has already been repeated five times.
With best regards.
Yours faithfully,
Hermann Keyserling ~ The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page
20 December 1929
Dear Count,
I still haven’t heard anything from V. O.
It goes without saying that I will treat your letter as non-existent.
Your excellent description of the fateful intermezzo with her clearly shows that it is an encounter with an “earth woman”, fraught with meaning.
Concealed and revealed in it is one of the most beautiful animus-anima stories I have ever heard.
Unfortunately recognizes it but confuses it with the poor human creature who has functioned unconsciously as a symbol carrier. poetic stories usually end in disappointment because, when one meets one’s soul, one never
- O.’s longing for identification actually refers to the animus which she would like to possess in you, but she mixes it up with you personally and then of course is deeply disappointed.
This disappointment will be repeated, always and everywhere, until man has learnt to distinguish his soul from the other person.
Then his soul can return to him.
This lesson is a hellish torture for both, but extremely useful, the experience one would have wished for you, and assuredly the most fitting torture of all for V.O., who is still possessed by her earth demons.
Perhaps she prefers to be torn to pieces by the titans, as happens to many such anima figures.
Hence you should always remember, with reverence and devotion, what has been revealed to you in the human shell of V.O., so that your soul may remain inalienably with you, and your access to the earth may never be blocked.
Let us hope the same for her, that besides tigers and serpents and eternal spirit there is still a human being in her who can remember with gratitude the revelation of her own spirit in you.
But it is only too easy to make a personal tragedy out of what was ultimately a “Divine Commedia,” and then a spark of the eternal fire hisses out in a puddle.
With best regards,
Ever sincerely yours,
- G. Jung
P.S. Please excuse the spot of paraffin on the paper. My lamp suddenly seems to have got symptoms of incontinence. ~ The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 83-89
Darmstadt, 30th December 1929
My dear Doctor,
Your letter concerning V.O. did me a lot of good.
Especially since I know very well that it is indeed in your power to help V.O. – if she can be helped at all.
She is now definitely arriving in Paris in about a week.
I am curious to see if she will find her way to you.
The question of a meeting in Zurich on the 12th or 13th has in the meantime also been settled for my part, since I won’t get there at all.
Between the two of us: Mrs. von Martini wrote me an outlandish letter in the style of the “Berner Bund” in which she told me such indiscreet things about the Zurichers as a collective that I can’t see Mrs. Martini again for a long time and that I, therefore, had to cancel the Zurich Schauspielhaus for this time, since the connection was established by her.
Far be it from me, of course, to think that the Zurich audience is as bad as this lady makes it out to be, but for the moment the situation is nevertheless “generally”
muddled, for after all I have seen most of them at her place, and I cannot enter her house again.
would have been a pleasure for me to see you at Frau von Schnitzler’s.
But I am now invited to St. Moritz from January 15th to 20th by Spanish friends, who want to prepare with me my spring lecture tour on the Iberian Peninsula, and I can no longer change these dates.
I have asked Mrs. von Schnitzler to discuss verbally with you on the 16th whether a reunion will be possible on my way from St. Moritz to Les Diablerets, where I will spend roughly a month.
With best New Year wishes from house to house,
Yours,
Hermann Keyserling The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 89
Darmstadt, 14th June 1930
Confidential
My dear doctor,
Since it is still possible that Victoria Ocampo will someday come to you, which I hope so much, I am already sharing the following further material with you – if she really does appear at your house, perhaps you will have a cursory look through it first.
I had just disappeared from her sight the previous fall when VO. Transferred her enthusiasm to Waldo Frank; she has now followed him from Paris to New York.
In Paris, she had several adventures, which all ended badly.
But the strangest thing was that from there on she followed a movie star (Mann) to Berlin, where she stayed alone for four weeks – she never met the man in person but always dined at tables near him and wrote him glowing letters.
Mutual Argentinean friends who want to bring us back together, tried to persuade me that V.O. was still a 15-year-old girl, a crazy teenager.
I think what you said about her as being an “Anima-Nature” is true.
And one more thing is interesting: said friends deny that V.O. actually suffers at all.
From her 15th year on, she has always experienced the same thing, several times every year, and truth be told she just needed the sensation …
I’ve had a fabulous time in Portugal, Spain, and most recently even
Paris.
It must be that I am changed because I now meet the same kind
of generous sympathy everywhere.
In small towns in Spain, sometimes almost 10% of the population listened to
My lectures – I have never experienced that before.
And Paris was also very beautiful.
In Spain, I spoke mainly on the rebirth of the Hispanic spiritual kingdom.
In a few weeks, I will send you the next “Path to Perfection”: there you will find some things that may interest you: an essay of mine “On the Essence of Passion” and a short report on the last conference where I spoke about South America as a symbol.
Yours sincerely,
Hermann Keyserling The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page ~Page 90
9 September 1930
Dear Count,
Keyserling and Jung, 1929-1932
I still owe you many thanks for your new book on America.
However,
I have not got down to reading it yet as I myself have some writing to
do.
But I shall set about it soon.
When you write about South America, the continent of your inferior
function, and at the same time your body forces itself unpleasantly
upon your attention, this may well be because body and earth somehow
feel irritated by your writing.
Your nausea bears this out. Why don’t you
let your bowels say something too in your new book?
With best greetings and again heartiest thanks,
Jung ~Carl Jung, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 91
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