In 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, C. G. Jung delivered a lecture in Zurich on the French Romantic poet Gerard de Nerval. The lecture focused on Nerval's visionary memoir, Aurelia, which the poet wrote in an ambivalent attempt to emerge from madness. Published here for the first time, Jung's lecture is both a cautionary psychological tale and a validation of Nerval's visionary experience as a genuine encounter. Nerval explored the irrational with lucidity and exquisite craft. He privileged the subjective imagination as a way of fathoming the divine to reconnect with what the Romantics called the life principle. During the years of his greatest creativity, he suffered from madness and was institutionalized eight times. Contrasting an orthodox psychoanalytic interpretation with his own synthetic approach to the unconscious, Jung explains why Nerval was unable to make use of his visionary experiences in his own life. At the same time, Jung emphasizes the validity of Nerval's visions, differentiating the psychology of a work of art from the psychology of the artist. The lecture suggests how Jung's own experiments with active imagination influenced his reading of Nerval's Aurelia as a parallel text to his own Red Book. With Craig Stephenson's authoritative introduction, Richard Sieburth's award-winning translation of Aurelia, and Alfred Kubin's haunting illustrations to the text, and featuring Jung's reading marginalia, preliminary notes, and revisions to a 1942 lecture, On Psychological and Visionary Art documents the stages of Jung's creative process as he responds to an essential Romantic text.
Show moreIn 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, C. G. Jung delivered a lecture in Zurich on the French Romantic poet Gerard de Nerval. The lecture focused on Nerval's visionary memoir, Aurelia, which the poet wrote in an ambivalent attempt to emerge from madness. Published here for the first time, Jung's lecture is both a cautionary psychological tale and a validation of Nerval's visionary experience as a genuine encounter. Nerval explored the irrational with lucidity and exquisite craft. He privileged the subjective imagination as a way of fathoming the divine to reconnect with what the Romantics called the life principle. During the years of his greatest creativity, he suffered from madness and was institutionalized eight times. Contrasting an orthodox psychoanalytic interpretation with his own synthetic approach to the unconscious, Jung explains why Nerval was unable to make use of his visionary experiences in his own life. At the same time, Jung emphasizes the validity of Nerval's visions, differentiating the psychology of a work of art from the psychology of the artist. The lecture suggests how Jung's own experiments with active imagination influenced his reading of Nerval's Aurelia as a parallel text to his own Red Book. With Craig Stephenson's authoritative introduction, Richard Sieburth's award-winning translation of Aurelia, and Alfred Kubin's haunting illustrations to the text, and featuring Jung's reading marginalia, preliminary notes, and revisions to a 1942 lecture, On Psychological and Visionary Art documents the stages of Jung's creative process as he responds to an essential Romantic text.
Show moreIllustrations vii Acknowledgments xi Permissions xiii One Introduction 1 Craig E. Stephenson Two Jung's Abstract on Nerval from The Symbolic Life 49 (Collected Works, Volume 18) Three Jung's Lecture on Gerard de Nerval at the Psychology Club, 1945 51 Four Minutes of the Discussion Following the 1945 Lecture 79 Five Jung's Notes to the 1942 Lecture 89 Six Jung's First Notes on Nerval's Aurelia, 1942 107 Seven Nerval's Aurelia (1855) 119 Translated by Richard Sieburth (1999); illustrations by Alfred Kubin (1910) References 197 Index 201
Craig E. Stephenson is a Jungian analyst in private practice. His books include Anteros: A Forgotten Myth and Possession: Jung's Comparative Anatomy of the Psyche.
"Both Nerval's Aurélia and Jung's commentary on it are of great
interest not only to analytical psychology and literary studies but
more widely to anyone interested in the central mythical pattern of
modern times, the creative descent journey. The organization of
this edition in the form of a creative descent from editor's
introduction to commentaries to Aurélia itself makes it wonderfully
useful to a reader wishing to fathom Nerval's enigmatic
text."—Michael Dolzani, coeditor of the Unpublished Notebooks of
Northrop Frye
"On Psychological and Visionary Art brings to publication a
significant lecture by Jung, and provides readers with the context
to understand Jung's argument and its importance. The lecture is
rich in cultural reference and allusion. Jung himself described the
memoir under discussion as being of extraordinary magnitude, and
the interpretation he offers at this late stage in his intellectual
development represents his mature system at work."—Paul Bishop,
author of Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics
"Scholars of Jung's thought will be grateful to have Jung's lecture
available, to see the fascinating parallels between Nerval's
experiences and those Jung documents in The Red Book, and to study
the distinctions between psychological and visionary modes as well
as Jung's further reflections on art. This book is a valuable
contribution to Jungian studies."—Beth Darlington, Vassar College
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