Jung and Ulysses

In 1932 Jung wrote a long essay on Joyce's novel "Ulysses" which had been published 10 years earlier. This critical essay shows certain neurotic--even schizophrenic--traits as, at least in the first part, Jung is clearly struggling against his own dislike of the novel; in the second part, he appears to find a way of looking at "Ulysses" that reconciles his strong antipathies with an appreciation of--what he takes to be--the unique quality of the novel. Certainly, this critical examination of one of the seminal works of literary modernism helps us to understand the ways in which Analytical Psychology might examine and criticise important and contemporary artistic works.

Jung begins his essay by informing us that: "...I read to page 135 with despair in my heart, falling asleep twice on the way. The incredible versatility of Joyce's style has a monotonous and hypnotic effect. Nothing comes to meet the reader, everything turns away from him, leaving him gaping after it. The book is always up and away, dissatisfied with itself, ironic, sardonic, virulent, contemptuous, sad, desparing, and bitter."

The contradictory nature of Jung's criticism is apparent from the very beginning. The book is so boring that Jung falls asleep twice! And yet it also has an "incredible versatility of...style". In this first part of the essay, however, Jung finds far more to criticise than to warm to.

"...The whole work has the character of a worm cut in half, that can grow a new head or a new tail as required...This singular and uncanny characteristic of the Joycean mind shows that his work pertains to the class of cold-blooded animals and specifically to the worm family. If worms were gifted with literary powers they would write with the sympathetic nervous system for lack of a brain. I suspect that something of this kind has happened to Joyce, that here we have a case of visceral thinking with severe restrictions of cerebral activity and its confinement to the perceptual processes."

Jung admits that it is difficult for him to make head or tail of "Ulysses" and that he even tried reading it backwards without in any way altering his level of appreciation and insight (which in any case, presumably, was already fixed at zero!). Jung states that the nature and organisation of "Ulysses" would make him think its author schizophrenic if not for the absence of repetition which is so "typical of the schizophrenic mind". Eventually Jung throws his hands up in the air (metaphorically speaking) and openly declares his dislike.

"Yes, I admit I feel have been made a fool of. The book would not meet me half way, nothing in it made the least attempt to be agreeable, and that always gives the reader an irritating sense of inferiority. Obviously, I have so much of the Philistine in my blood that I am naive enough to suppose that a book wants to tell me something, to be understood--a sad case of mythological anthropomorphism projected on to the book!...One should never rub the reader's nose into his own stupidity, but that is just what "Ulysses" does...All those ungovernable forces that welled up in Nietzsche's Dionysian exuberance and flooded his intellect have burst forth in undiluted form in modern man. Even the darkest passages in the second part of "Faust", even "Zarathustra" and, indeed, "Ecce Homo", try in one way or another to recommend themselves to the public. But it is only modern man who has succeeded in creating an art in reverse, a backside of art that makes no attempt to be ingratiating, that tells us just where we get off, speaking with the same rebellious contrariness that had made itself disturbingly felt in those precursors of the moderns (not forgetting Holderlin) who had already started to topple the old ideals".

Oddly, this admission of dislike seems to give Jung a new approach to the novel. Perhaps Joyce is the Arch- destroyer of outmoded values which cannot be tinkered with, but only blasted away with seismic intensity?

"From the causal point of view Joyce is a victim of Roman Catholic authoritarianism, but considered teleologically he is a reformer who for the present is satisfied with negation, a Protestant nourished by his own protests. Atrophy of feeling is a characteristic of modern man and always shows itself as a reaction when there is too much feeling around, and in particular too much false feeling. From the lack of feeling in "Ulysses" we may infer a hideous sentimentality in the age that produced it. But are we really so sentimental today?...there is a good deal of evidence to show that we actually are involved in a sentimentality hoax of gigantic proportions. Think of the lamentable role of popular sentiment in wartime! Think of our so-called humanitarianism! The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality...It is therefore quite comprehensible that a prophet should arise to teach our culture a compensatory lack of feeling. Prophets are always disagreeable and usually have bad manners, but it is said they occasionally hit the nail on the head. There are, as we know, major and minor prophets, and history will decide to which of them Joyce belongs. Like every true prophet, the artist is the unwitting mouthpiece of the psychic secrets of his time, and is often as unconscious as a sleep walker...'Ulysses' is a 'document humain' of our time and, what is more, it harbours a secret. It can release the spiritually bound, and its coldness can freeze all sentimentality--and even normal feeling--to the marrow. But these salutary effects do not exhaust its powers...There is life in it, and life is never exclusively evil and destructive...it wants to be an eye of the moon, a consciousness detached from the object, in thrall neither to the gods nor to sensuality, and bound neither by love nor hate, neither by conviction nor by prejudice 'Ulysses' does not preach this but practices it--detachment of consciousness is the goal that shimmers through the fog of this book. This, surely, is its real secret, the secret of a new cosmic consciousness..."

Now, Jung seems pleased to have discovered a new and fertile line of investigation. "Ulysses" exists in order to rid man of his sentimentality and medieval superstition. From the wreckage of Joyce's destructive prose a new and modern "zeitgeist" will emerge that is appropriate for a new man with a new destiny. Joyce uses the power of the collective unconscious--as Goethe and Nietzsche did before him--to confront man with some necessary new truths: the new can only blossom when the old has been put to the sword! To this extent, Joyce in "Ulysses" is involved in a similar act of purification as Goethe in "Faust" and Nietzsche in "Thus Spake Zarathustra". He is the scatological prophet of a new age. He is John the Baptist come to prepare the way.

"'Ulysses' is the creator-god in Joyce, a true demiurge who has freed himself from entanglement in the physical and mental world and contemplates them with detached consciousness. He is for Joyce what Faust was for Goethe, or Zarathustra for Nietzsche. He is the higher self who returns to his divine home after blind entanglement in samsara. In the whole book no Ulysses appears; the book itself is Ulysses, a microcosm of James Joyce, the world of the self and the self of the world in one. Ulysses can return home only when he has turned his back on the world of mind and matter. This is surely the message underlying that sixteenth day of June, 1904, the everyday of everyman, on which persons of no importance restlessly do and say things without beginning or aim--a shadowy picture, dreamlike, infernal, sardonic, negative, ugly, devilish, but true. A picture that could give one bad dreams or induce the mood of a cosmic Ash Wednesday, such as the Creator might have felt on August 1, 1914. After the optimism of the seventh day of creation the demiurge must have found it pretty difficult in 1914 to identify himself with his handiwork...There is so little feeling in 'Ulysses' that it must be very pleasing to all aesthetes. But let us assume that the consciousness of 'Ulysses' is not a moon but an ego that possesses judgment, understanding, and a feeling heart. Then the long road through the 18 chapters would not only hold no delights but would be a road to Calvary; and the wanderer, overcome by so much suffering and folly, would sink down at nightfall into the arms of the Great Mother who signifies the beginning and end of life. Under the cynicism of 'Ulysses' there is hidden a great compassion; he knows the sufferings of a world that is neither beautiful nor good and, worse still, rolls on without hope through the eternally repeated everyday, dragging with it man's consciousness in an idiot dance through the hours, months, years. Ulysses has dared to take the step that leads to the detachment of consciousness from the object; he has freed himself from attachment, entanglement, and delusion, and can therefore turn homeward."

This is a purple passage of high flown appreciation indeed! By this time it appears that Jung's earlier scepticism and dislike have been entirely swept aside by new insights and ideas--and this is confirmed in the paragraph that follows:

"It seems to me now that all that is negative in Joyce's work, all that is cold-blooded, bizarre and banal, grotesque and devilish, is a positive virtue for which it deserves praise. Joyce's inexpressibly rich and myriad-faceted language unfolds itself in passages that creep along tapeworm fashion, terribly boring and monotonous, but the very boredom and monotony of it attain an epic grandeur that makes the book a 'Mahabharata' of the world's futility and squalour...the truth of Tertullian's dictum: 'anima naturaliter christiana'. Ulysses shows himself a conscientious Antichrist and thereby proves that his Catholicism still holds together. He is not only a Christian but--still higher title to fame--a Buddhist, Shivaist, and a Gnostic".

Jung finishes his essay by returning to the question he had posed earlier: "Who is Ulysses?"

"Doubtless he is a symbol of what makes up the totality, the oneness, of all the single appearances...Mr. Bloom, Stephen, Mrs. Bloom, and the rest, including Mr. Joyce. Try to imagine a being who is not a mere colourless conglomerate soul composed of an indefinite number of ill-assorted and antagonistic individual souls, but consists also of houses, street-processions, churches, the Liffey, several brothels, and a crumpled note on its way to the sea--and yet possesses a perceiving and registering consciousness!. Such a monstrosity drives one to speculation, especially as one can prove nothing anyway and has to fall back on conjecture. I must confess that I suspect Ulysses of being a more comprehensive self who is the subject of all the objects on the glass slide, a being who acts as if he were Mr. Bloom or a printing shop or a crumpled note, but actually is the 'dark hidden father' of his specimens".

As with Goethe before him (suggests Jung), Joyce finishes his personal oddysey by putting his faith in the 'Eternal Feminine' who can show the male animus the new path he must follow--and also, in the process, help him to give it meaning:

"O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibralter as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes"

Jung's essay finishes with the following panegyric:

"O Ulysses, you are truly a devotional book for the object-besotted, object-ridden white man! You are a spiritual exercise an ascetic discipline, an agonising ritual, an arcane procedure, eighteen alchemical alembics piled on top of one another, where amid acids, poisonous fumes, and fire and ice, the homunculus of a new, universal consciousness is distilled!...Penelope need no longer weave her never-ending garment; she now takes her ease in the gardens of the earth, for her husband is home again, all his wanderings over. A world has passed away, and is made new".

Later in 1932, Jung wrote a letter to Joyce about his earlier essay on "Ulysses".




James Joyce Esq.
Hotel Elite,
Zurich

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 3 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 in 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 who 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