Carl Jung on Languages
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Languages
September 19) 1958
The last time Kurt Wolff and I visited Bollingen together, C. G. Jung defended his use of Latin and Greek expressions) which the publisher
was reluctant to include in view of the North American readership.
You can only understand the Middle Ages if you understand Latin.
I would not have understood anything about psychology if I had not been able to read the old Latin texts in the original.
It is incredibly important to feel part of that, to know about this period of European history and to be connected with this part of our past.
One can see from American history how rootless the Americans are, how unconnected to something historical.
If awareness of history is lacking, then an overemphasis on science and technology all too easily arises, which in some respects can be fatal.
As professor of internal medicine, my scientifically educated grandfather published the announcements for his students in Latin, it was without question.
Knowledge of both Latin and Greek is a prerequisite for understanding alchemy.
I read hundreds of manuscripts that had not been translated and that are still not translated today.
I also preferred to read the original Latin when those texts had been translated; I found them easier to understand.
Original German texts or original editions of documents from the Middle Ages are on the whole much more confusing than the Latin
manuscripts because the German language of the baroque period was not so suited to crystallizing and clearly expressing thoughts as the
pure structure of Latin.
Whereas Latin has a rigid syntax, German is more random and freer in its structure.
I also read Greek alchemical manuscripts in the original, of course.
Many of them had been translated into French by Marcellin Berthelot.
But the translations are not reliable, the translator did not understand the meaning of alchemy.
The last language I learned was Swahili. I first learned it from a grammar book.
But when I arrived in East Africa I had to relearn much of it because they speak a Swahili pidgin there.
Classic Swahili is no longer understood.
My headman had been an officer de liaison in Tanganyika in the First World War, but his English was totally incomprehensible of the language: once I was getting changed for dinner and I could not find my tie. I asked my boy, a native of Mozambique: “Wapi necktie?”
- “Where is the tie?” He answered: “Ndanya mtoto.” I stopped short, as the literal translation is: “Inside the child.”
With a questioning tone I replied: “Mtoto?” – “Child?” to which he answered: “Ndio. Ndanya mtoto ya mesa” – “Yes, in the child of the table.”
This image referred to the drawer in the table. ~Carl Jung, Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung, Page48-49
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