Auction Ends Friday, March 3, 2023 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 3/3/2023
Excellent Carl Jung autograph letter signed, spanning over three pages on his personal 8'' x 11.5'' stationery. Jung writes to his mentee, psychoanalyst Dr. Rivkah Scharf Kluger, on 20 May 1957 regarding work, personal responsibility, religion and dreams, connecting them all to UFOs, jesting at one point, ''As you can see, one is slightly mad, just like the UFOs''. Composed in German, letter translates in full,
''Dear Doctor! / Finally I am managing to write you. That this seemed to be so difficult was mostly due to the fact that I did not want to simply write a superficially well intentioned - in other words, poor - answer to your letter, but rather a thorough one. Now - it just so happened that, soon after your departure, I had a conversation with my son-in-law Walter Niehus, the architect, concerning the curious topic of the 'Flying Saucers' or rather, the 'UFOs' (Unidentified Flying Objects). This is how it happened: In late January a painter brought me a painting. It depicted the 'skyline' of a very realistic city during the last moments of dusk. Above it, a high night sky with a fiery globe hovering in it. It is the detached head of an equally fiery figure located below it that, while striding through the city and stepping out into the wider field, with the gesture of a king is sowing fire: 'a sower who went forth to sow.' The city does not know of him and he does not pay heed to the city. He vaguely understood the similarity of the head to an UFO. He is not a saucer-addict, he only heard about them. I explained the painting to my son-in-law, and he urged me to write down what I had told him. I started doing this in April, during my so-called vacation, and I have been at it ever since. It have been captured by it, and it would certainly have made me ill, as 'Job' did at the time, had I not used all of my available time to pursue the problem raised to every single corner.
Then there was the serious illness of my secretary who had taken so much off my shoulders. At 82 years, you are decidedly less capable than at 70. I cannot do anything in the evening anymore. At the most, I am able to work for two hours in the morning. Whenever I do not work on writing my paper or when I do too much of it, I am not able to sleep, and consequently I am more exhausted than ever.
Please excuse this egoistic discussion and dissertation about my conditions, but your husband's dream confirms to me that his unconscious mind had perceived my hard pressed circumstances correctly. It is not at all laughable. On the other hand, I really must mention that at times my work gives me immense pleasure. However, I am enlaced in it as though inside a cocoon. (Dream of a woman I do not know: A round spider that contains voices appears in the sky!) As you can see, one is slightly mad, just like the UFOs.
Now you know everything important about me, and I am able to thank you in person for all the marvelous things that you bestowed on me, like the wealthy aunt (not the uncle this time) from America, and for all substantive other news from the land of unlimited and - oh - so limited possibilities. Not ex profundo, but ex deserto clamavi ad te Domine! But you are fortunate to have people such as the Klopfers within shouting distance. To find the loneliness of the desert, I did not need to be transferred to America. It already begins in Zurich, in fact, I even have found it within myself, where sand, heat, and thirst suffocated me and forced me to discover the fountain of living water: Deus est centrum quod ubique...The desert is an immense and never-ending adventure. Where nothing green will grow, nothing green will grow within me either, and nobody will find water for me unless I set out to find it myself. Therefore, I put my nose into the wind and smelled the scent of the water that makes the mulberry tree grow.
Things may be progressing for you slowly, but they certainly are progressing. You are already a Training Analyst. Nothing, or almost nothing, will fall from the sky, other than rain and snow, but least of all human beings who are not mere hints and fragments. These are the raw material that still needs to be shaped. Never forget that all the people around me have been spoiled and do not know what clearing a jungle or irrigating a desert would be like. (See your dream of Mid-March for comparison.)
Belatedly, I am sending you my best wishes and congratulations on the occasion of the notable 11th of February, when you reached your 50th year. Premonitions of the coming eternity are beginning. ('Greetings to you, you cooler winds of the afternoon').
Please relate my best greetings to your husband and thank him for his kind letter!
'You should become friends of the next things again,' says Nietzsche and did not do so himself. He was carried off by the great wind, intoxicated by his own words. Even the material things, by virtue of their inherent spirit, answer us in the same way that we address them. They are socially minded and keep us lovely company during days and hours of loneliness. The tower in Bollingen, for instance, is inexhaustible in entertaining ideas, and nature in the larger sense is truly full of surprises. Recently, the evening clouds conjured up a proper 'Saucer' for me, excellently shaped from wafts of mist above a rainbow that radiated light like an apocalypsis.
The end of my long letter is near. I wanted to write it in order to blend a cooler breeze from Niflheim into California's balmy airs. / All my best wishes and greetings! / Your faithful / C.G. Jung''.
Four page letter on two sheets of stationery measures 8'' x 11.625''. Folds and light toning, else near fine. Accompanied by original envelope, handwritten by Jung.
Very Lengthy Carl Jung Autograph Letter Signed Regarding Dreams, Work & UFOs -- ''...my work gives me immense pleasure. However, I am enlaced in it as though inside a cocoon...''
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