Feelings about James Joyceâs Ulysses tend to fall roughly into one of two camps: the religiously reverent or the exasperated/bored/overwhelmed. As popular examples of the former, we have the many thousand celebrants of BloomsdayâJune 16th, the date on which the novel is set in 1904. These revelries approach the level of saints’ days, with re-enactments and pilgrimages to important Dublin sites. On the other side, we have the reactions of Virginia Woolf, say, or certain friends of mine who left wry comments on Bloomsday posts about picking up something more âreadableâ to celebrate. (A third category, the scandalized, has more or less died off, as scatology, blasphemy, and cuckoldry have become the stuff of sitcoms.) Another famous reader, Carl Jung, seems at first to damn the novel with some faint praise and much scathing criticism in a 1932 essay for Europäische Revue, but ends up, despite himself, writing about the book in the language of a true believer.
A great many readers of Jungâs essay may perhaps nod their heads at sentences like âYes, I admit I feel I have been made a fool ofâ and âone should never rub the readerâs nose into his own stupidity, but that is just what Ulysses does.â To illustrate his boredom with the novel, he quotes âan old uncle,â who says ââDo you know how the devil tortures souls in hell? [â¦] He keeps them waiting.ââ This remark, Jung writes, âoccurred to me when I was plowing through Ulysses for the first time. Every sentence raises an expectation which is not fulfilled; finally, out of sheer resignation, you come to expect nothing any longer.â But while Jungâs critique may validate certain hasty readersâ hatred of Joyceâs nearly unavoidable 20th century masterwork, it also probes deeply into why the novel resonates.
For all of his frustration with the book—his sense that it âalways gives the reader an irritating sense of inferiorityâ—Jung nonetheless bestows upon it the highest praise, comparing Joyce to other prophetic European writers of earlier ages like Goethe and Nietzsche. âIt seems to me now,” he writes, “that all that is negative in Joyceâs work, all that is cold-blooded, bizarre and banal, grotesque and devilish, is a positive virtue for which it deserves praise.” Ulysses is âa devotional book for the object-besotted white man,â a âspiritual exercise, an aesthetic discipline, an agonizing ritual, an arcane procedure, eighteen alchemical alembics piled on top of one another [â¦] a world has passed away, and is made new.â He ends the essay by quoting the novelâs entire final paragraph. (Find longer excerpts of Jungâs essay here and here.)
Jung not only wrote what may be the most critically honest yet also glowing response to the novel, but he also took it upon himself in September of 1932 to send a copy of the essay to the author along with the letter below. Letters of Note tells us that Joyce âwas both annoyed and proud,â a fittingly divided response to such an ambivalent review.
Dear Sir,
Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.
Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist). Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I’m profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn’t.
Well, I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.
With the expression of my deepest appreciation, I remain, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
C. G. Jung
With this letter of introduction, Jung was âa perfect strangerâ to Joyce no longer. In fact, two years later, Joyce would call on the psychologist to treat his daughter Lucia, who suffered from schizophrenia, a tragic story told in Carol Loeb Schlossâs biography of the novelistâs famously troubled child. For his care of Lucia and his careful attention to Ulysses, Joyce would inscribe Jungâs copy of the book: âTo Dr. C.G. Jung, with grateful appreciation of his aid and counsel. James Joyce. Xmas 1934, Zurich.â
via Letters of Note
Related Content:
Everything You Need to Enjoy Reading James Joyceâs Ulysses on Bloomsday
The Very First Reviews of James Joyceâs Ulysses: âA Work of High Geniusâ (1922)
Virginia Woolf Writes About Joyceâs Ulysses, âNever Did Any Book So Bore Me,â and Quits at Page 200
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.
The post Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932) appeared first on Open Culture.
Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyceâs Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)
No comments:
Post a Comment