To Frances G. Wickes
Dear Mrs. Wickes, 14 December 1956
I am sorry to hear that you have been laid up for a long time.
Age is indeed a pleasure with a double face.
The decreasing of physical forces is a problem one is not quite adjusted to, and one only painfully learns to settle down to an ever-increasing restriction.
I got the picture you sent me and I thank you very much for it.
It is indeed very interesting and not at all orthodox, since the figure of the Anthropos is rising from the water and the earth and denotes its corporeality by the definitely fleshly aspect of the upper part of the body.
It is also noteworthy that the head is cut off by the frame.
Thus the emphasis is on the body.
It is, though, quite understandable as the spiritus Mercurialis, the Anthropos of the alchemists.
This spirit adds the chthonic reality of the creation to a purely spiritual conception in a way that would shake the very foundations of our medieval Christianity if people only would think about what they do.
The picture could have been painted by someone who knew about the secret developments in our unconscious mind in the last 1000 years.
Dali’s genius translates the spiritual background of the concrete symbol of transmutation into visibility.
This also explains the somewhat shocking and unorthodox representation of Christ as the blond Hero Thank you very much for sending me this tell-tale picture.
It is quite on the line.
Hoping your condition, whatever it is, will improve and that you will enjoy better health in the coming New Year, I remain,
Yours cordially,
C.G. Jung
P.S. I a m reasonably well and I complain only of the increasing unreliability of my memory. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 338-341
