From Jung to Joyce

I don’t write about James Joyce enough here. I suppose I feel that the quote which floats above in the masthead, and has since the beginning of this blog, says it all. But I love Joyce, and I love to think about him, and puzzle over him, and marvel at him. Just as he predicted: “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality“, he proclaimed.

“Keep the professors busy for centuries…”

Carl Jung wrote a letter to Joyce about Ulysses, which I will print here in its entirety.

But first – a bit about Molly Bloom, about Nora Joyce, and about rhododendrons. Richard Ellmann, in his masterful biography of James Joyce, wrote:

Joyce had fixed upon June 16, 1904, as the date of Ulysses because it was the anniversary of his first walk with Nora Barnacle. He was able to obtain, perhaps on his last visit to Dublin, copies of the newspapers of that day. In his book, Bloom’s fondest memory is of a moment of affection plighted among the rhododendrons on Howth, and so is Mrs. Bloom’s; it is with her recollection of it that the book ends. In this sense Ulysses is an epithalamium; love is its cause of motion. The spirit is liberated from its bonds through a eucharistic occasion, an occasion characterized by the joy that, even as a young man, Joyce had praised as the emotion in comedy which makes it a higher form than tragedy. Though such occasions are as rare as miracles, they are permanently sustaining; and unlike miracles, they require no divine intercession. They arise in quintessential purity from the mottled life of everyday.

Leopold Bloom’s sensuous memories of Molly Bloom amongst the rhododendrons are reflected back to him, during Molly Bloom’s stream-of-consciousness monologue at the end of the book, 40 pages without a period or a comma. Nora Joyce apparently was quite cavalier with her punctuation, and Joyce, with his belief in the underlying meaning and sense of things, thought that that said something about the female mind. The deeper subconscious level, which is, of course, always a MESS.

And now, onto Carl Jung. Jung had analyzed (briefly) Joyce’s daughter, who was schizophrenic, but I suppose Jung eventually realized the truth of Sigmund Freud’s statement about the Irish and psychiatrists, because Lucia did not stay with Jung for long.

But anyway, upon reading Ulysses, Jung wrote this letter to James Joyce. Savor every word. Joyce did!

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

I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn’t.

Joyce was very proud of this letter, very proud that he had won Jung’s boredom and admiration, that he had made Jung curse him. Joyce read it out loud to a group of people, Nora included. Nora’s comment was typically brief. She turned to someone else and said, after hearing the quote about “the real psychology of a woman“, “Jim knows nothing at all about women.”

Just for fun – just so you can read and decide for yourself – here is the “rhododendron episode” which ends the entirety of Ulysses. But I’ll let Nora Joyce have the last word.

the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent 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 Gibraltar 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.

Nora’s unsentimental response to all of this was: “I guess the man’s a genius, but what a dirty mind he has, hasn’t he?”