I just started a book called Individuation in Fairy Tales, by Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Jung. Good stuff — clear, readable, filled with wisdom. I’ve read several of her books, and discussed them in previous issues; she’s a favorite of mine.
Individuation in Fairy Tales begins with a discussion of “The White Parrot”, a Spanish fairy tale. Interpreting this fairy tale leads von Franz into a host of other topics, including the archetype of The Child (or, The Divine Child). According to von Franz, the child symbolizes spontaneity, wholeness, the Self. The child within us can save us in difficult situations.
| That is why there are so many myths where the divine child walks among tigers and lions. Tigers and lions are negative, destructive emotions. Generally, when destructive human situations come up, it is because destructive emotion is piled up, and then nobody can move out of them. But then there is the myth of the child who puts his hand on the lion, or strokes a snake. That is because something is not caught in the negative emotion. Something is still genuine and spontaneous, and therefore can act in a saving way.1 |
Von Franz tells the story of British soldiers in a Japanese prison camp. The soldiers were in a quarrel with the guards, a test of wills; it seemed that many soldiers were going to be executed. Suddenly one prisoner had an idea for breaking the logjam: when all the prisoners were assembled, he stepped out of line, walked up to the chief guard, and kissed him.
| The man paid for it with his life but he had saved the whole situation, and the Japanese officer later saved a lock of the man’s hair to offer it to the shrine of his own ancestors at home, showing the deep respect he felt for someone who had had the genius to do such a foolish, or childish, or crazy but saving thing in a crucial moment. That was such an inspiration of the divine child. It was something you could never have figured out.2 |
The story of the Japanese prison comes from a book by Laurens van der Post called The Seed and the Sower (this book was the basis for a movie called, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence). I had heard of van der Post, but I didn’t know that he had been in a Japanese prison; I decided to look at Wikipedia’s article on van der Post. Van der Post was a major writer in his day, read around the world, but one doesn’t hear his name much now.
Van der Post was born in South Africa in 1906, the thirteenth of fifteen children. When he was 20, he co-edited a student magazine that advocated greater racial integration in South Africa; the magazine was soon shut down by the government. So van der Post and one of his literary friends hitched a ride to Tokyo on a Japanese freighter — an adventure that van der Post discussed many years later in his autobiographical work, Yet Being Someone Other.
Returning to South Africa, van der Post married, had a child, and began working as a journalist in Cape Town. He was critical of racial separation. Just as Lincoln predicted that, in the U.S., blacks and whites would eventually be amalgamated into one race, so van der Post predicted, “the process of leveling up and inter-mixture must accelerate continually... the future civilization of South Africa is, I believe, neither black or white but brown.”
In the early 1930’s, van der Post lived in England, and became acquainted with The Bloomsbury Group — John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, etc. Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, published van der Post’s first novel, In a Province, through their publishing company, Hogarth Press; this novel dealt with race relations in South Africa.
When World War II broke out, van der Post volunteered for the British army (ironically, his father had fought against the British in the Boer War). He served first in East Africa, where his unit led 11,000 camels through difficult terrain, as part of an effort to restore Haile Selassie to the Ethiopian throne, a throne from which Mussolini’s troops had expelled him. In early 1942, he was sent to Indonesia, where he was taken prisoner by the Japanese; he remained imprisoned until the end of the war. According to Wikipedia, “He played a legendary role in keeping up the morale of troops from many different nationalities. Along with other compatriots he organized a ‘camp university’ with courses from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and he also organized a camp farm to supplement nutritional needs.”
After the war, colonial authorities twice commissioned van der Post to explore remote areas of South Africa. His first expedition resulted in a bestselling book called Venture to the Interior; the second resulted in van der Post’s most famous book, The Lost World of the Kalahari (and later a book about the Bushmen called The Heart of the Hunter). Van der Post’s experiences with the Bushmen became the subject of a BBC documentary. Van der Post was now internationally famous as an author and as a TV personality.
In the late 1940’s, van der Post had divorced and remarried. His new wife introduced him to Jung, who “was to have probably a greater influence upon him than anybody else, and he later said that he had never met anyone of Jung’s stature.” The BBC made a documentary about van der Post’s long friendship with Jung, and van der Post published a book called Jung and the Story of Our Time. Late in his life, van der Post helped establish a center for Jungian studies in Cape Town.
In 1964, van der Post published a book about his travels in the Soviet Union, A Journey Into Russia. He also wrote fiction, publishing two novels about his war experiences.
In the 1970’s, van der Post lived in England, and met Prince Charles, with whom he went on a safari in Kenya. Van der Post became the godparent of Charles’ first child, William. Van der Post died in ’96, at the age of 90.
The Wikipedia article on van der Post led me to another Wikipedia article, an article on Arthur Waley, who was also a Bloomsbury. I knew that Waley was a well-known translator and commentator on Chinese literature, especially Chinese poetry. I didn’t realize, however, that he was English (Jewish-English), I assumed he was Chinese — indeed, the name “Waley” sounds like the Chinese “wei li”.
After graduating from Cambridge in 1910, Waley was given a job at the British Museum. He taught himself Chinese and Japanese in order to catalog the Museum’s collection of Oriental prints. He later translated Oriental poems, novels, philosophical works, and plays, sometimes including commentary with his translations. Of particular interest to me are his biographical studies, such as Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet, The Poetry and Career of Li Po, and The Life and Times of Po Chü-i. Oddly enough, Waley never traveled to the Far East.
I recently exchanged e-mail with a visitor to my website, John Achterhof. John began with a “Q and A”:
| Achterhof | Q. Do you know why Nietzsche was ignored by his contemporaries?
A. It was a form of revenge against him for making them feel, next to his embarrassment of riches, insignificant. |
| Hammond | I think you’re partly right, John, there is an element of envy in the reception of any original thinker. This envy ceases when the thinker dies; as Bacon says, death “openeth the gate to good fame and extinguisheth envy.” (Of Death)
I’m not sure I agree that Nietzsche possessed an “embarrassment of riches”. Rich in some respects, yes, but poor in others, no? His contemporaries didn’t ignore him entirely. Actually, he was world-famous in his lifetime, when he had gone insane. His contemporaries only ignored him before he went insane, not after. If they were motivated partly by envy, I think other motives were at work, too. It’s hard to grasp what is new, even if we don’t envy it. |
| Achterhof | I wonder what you think of Jungian synchronicity. I think that it is the biggest, boldest idea in a very long time, as it implies the existence of a transcendent will, a Creator. |
| Hammond | I agree that it’s a most interesting idea, but are you sure it implies a Creator? I never thought of it that way, and I don’t think Jung did, either. If, for example, an emperor dies at the same time that an earthquake occurs, it doesn’t mean that a Creator arranged that, it simply means that there’s a connection there, an occult connection, a connection that we can’t grasp rationally. |
| Achterhof | [Quoting Jung’s Aion:] “If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of the opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; it’s real existence will have to be recognized. This problem can be solved neither by philosophy, nor by economics, nor by politics, but only by the individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit...” That Jung perceives there to be such a grand design to life on Earth, a profound orientation of aeons with constellations, I think implies a belief in a transcendental will or creator. |
| Hammond | Why? I don’t think it implies that. I think the “intelligence” is in the universe itself, not the Creator of the universe. The intelligence is in all living things — indeed, in all matter. Quantum physics reveals a strange, mysterious intelligence even in sub-atomic particles. You’re right, there’s something “grand” in the universe, something awesome and beyond our comprehension. But a Creator? An Architect? I think not. We must step out of our rational mind-set, which drives us to put a Rational Mind at the origin of the universe, a puppeteer behind the stage. |
| Achterhof | I don’t imagine a “transcendental, creative will,” as I termed it, to be an entity occupying discrete space, but rather as a field. (That conception seems more elegant to me.) But distinguished from the force fields of conventional science in exhibiting, subtly, by way of synchronicity for example, a will — an intention to bring about one outcome in preference to another.
The collective unconscious as conceived by Jung is a transcendental will. It transcends, potentially, such as in times of great collective psychic distress or indignation, the wills of individual beings. This I think can be considered a god-free notion. Yet this conception of transcendental will emerging from life cannot account for the uncannyness of emergence of life. I favor the notion that a transcendental will (that’s “God” to Christians, “G_d” to Jews, the “Superunknown” to grunge rockers, “uncanniness” to philosophers...) pre-existed life (has always existed), recurrently brings about the emergence of life in infinite time, suffuses life and refines it. |
| Hammond | A field of transcendental will? That’s a concept that means nothing to my simple mind.
Chinese philosophers try to just see reality, but Western philosophers try to grasp reality with a concept, with polysyllables. The collective unconscious as conceived by Jung is a transcendental will. It transcends, potentially, such as in times of great collective psychic distress or indignation, the wills of individual beings. True, there is a kind of will there, a kind of intelligence, a kind of consciousness — just as there is in sub-atomic particles. But I prefer to regard this as occult rather than as divine. Occult means “we don’t completely grasp it, and can’t explain it.” Divine, on the other hand, makes it seem anthropomorphic — as if we’re trying to put our own will/intelligence/consciousness into some external entity. Yet this conception of transcendental will emerging from life cannot account for the uncannyness of emergence of life. Why not just say that the emergence of life is uncanny, mysterious, wonderful, etc.? Why ascribe it to an entity — an entity that inevitably is modeled after ourselves, our best self, etc.? I favor the notion that a transcendental will (that’s “God” to Christians, “G_d” to Jews, the “Superunknown” to grunge rockers, “uncanniness” to philosophers...) pre-existed life (has always existed), recurrently brings about the emergence of life in infinite time, suffuses life and refines it. But reality as we know it isn’t refined, is it? And that’s always been a problem for monotheism: reality is dirtier, uglier, crueler than what we would expect if it were created by an intelligent being. But this problem doesn’t exist for thinkers like me, we just take things as they are. Can we summarize our debate as Occult vs. God? Just a dispute over words? I think not, I think it’s more than just a dispute over words. Perhaps we can call it The Eastern Approach vs. The Western Approach. |
As you read Huck Finn, you repeatedly encounter the theme of conscience, guilt. For example, when the two rapscallions (the “king” and the “duke”) finally receive their comeuppance, and get tarred and feathered, Huck’s conscience blames him for not doing something to save the rapscallions. Huck says,
| So we poked along back home, and I warn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow — though I hadn’t done nothing. But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same. |
Huck has ample reason to hate the rapscallions, and to welcome their defeat, so it’s difficult to see why his conscience would upbraid him for not coming to their aid. Likewise, it’s difficult to see why his conscience would upbraid him for helping Jim to reach his freedom. Huck’s conscience seems to be blind, unreasonable. Twain himself described Huck Finn as “a book of mine where a sound heart & a deformed conscience come into collision & conscience suffers a defeat.”3 As Twain’s admiration for the aristocracy reminds one of Nietzsche, so too his contempt for conscience reminds one of Nietzsche. One critic said that “Huck’s spontaneously good heart has dictated his actions, but his conscience has remained depraved, for it represents the community.”4 In Twain’s world, virtue is a matter of the heart, not the head. “In a crucial moral emergency,” Twain wrote, “a sound heart is a safer guide than an ill-trained conscience.”5 Twain’s view of morality resembles that of the Philosophy of Today, which also prefers spontaneity to reasoning.
Twain’s preoccupation with the feeling of guilt reminds one of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, which discusses the feeling of guilt at length. Freud said that his intention was “to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.”6 One wonders why Huck, an uncivilized child of nature, would so often fall prey to the feeling of guilt. Perhaps this feeling of guilt fits better with Huck’s creator (Twain) than with Huck himself; it seems somewhat out of place with Huck.
“In the course of our analytic work,” Freud wrote, “we have discovered to our surprise that perhaps every neurosis conceals a quota of unconscious sense of guilt.”7 In short, Freud is as preoccupied with guilt as Twain is.
One can divide Huck Finn into three parts:
For most readers, the middle part is doubtless the heart of the book, and the last part is a letdown. But it can’t be denied that Twain’s humor sparkles as brightly in this last part as in anything he ever wrote. When Tom Sawyer plays his game of prisoner, I’m reminded of bin Laden, who gives his henchmen titles like “Caliph of Baghdad”. Like Tom Sawyer, al Qaeda has a romantic conception of the past.
When my daughter and I finished Huck Finn, we started Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. One might say that Treasure Island is the last pirate novel, as Don Quixote is the last chivalric novel. But while Cervantes takes a satirical look at chivalry, Stevenson takes a nostalgic look at the pirate world. Unlike Huck Finn and Don Quixote, Treasure Island was written specifically for young people, and adults will find the story somewhat thin, and the characters somewhat two-dimensional and stereotypical. Furthermore, Treasure Island is completely lacking in the humor that makes Huck Finn so pleasurable to read. The prose is full of nautical phrases and colloquialisms, making it difficult for a child.
It must be admitted, though, that Treasure Island is well-organized and highly readable; here is an author in complete control of his material. A disciple of Zen, like myself, can’t lightly dismiss Stevenson, because one of the chief writers on Zen, R. H. Blyth, has taught us to see Stevenson as a profound writer; Stevenson’s high spirits and playful attitude should not cause us to take him lightly — rather, they should make us respect him all the more. Furthermore, a student of Campbell and Jung will find a mythic dimension in Treasure Island, as in Huck Finn (in an earlier issue, we discussed the mythic dimension of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness).
© L. James Hammond 2007
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| Footnotes | |
| 1. | Ch. 1, p. 23 back |
| 2. | Ibid, p. 22 back |
| 3. | See “Society and Conscience in Huckleberry Finn”, Leo B. Levy, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Mar., 1964), pp. 383-391 back |
| 4. | ibid back |
| 5. | See Kaufman, Will, “Mark Twain’s Deformed Conscience,” American Imago - Volume 63, Number 4, Winter 2006, pp. 463-478. back |
| 6. | Ch. 8 back |
| 7. | Ibid back |