Theatre and Alchemy , by Bettina L. Knapp. Detroit: Wayne State U. Press, 1980* (283 + xiii, ind. 9-p. index, 5-p. bibl., 3-p. foreword by Mircea Eliade).
Basing her approach on the relationship Jung suggested between psychology and alchemy, Knapp states that any play may be interpreted alchemically, that is to say, that it can be shown to pass through the alchemical phases of nigredo (blackening), albedo (whitening), and rubedo (reddening) that occur in the union of disparate parts into a harmony of opposites.
As examples of the first stage (chaos, or experience of the collective unconscious), she interprets Strindberg's A Dream Play and de Ghelderode's Escurial .
The second stage (washing, or consciousness) is represented by Claudel's Break of Noon , Yeats's The Only Jealousy of Emer , and Witkiericz's The Water Hen , and the third (union of opposites) by de l'Isle-Adam's Axël and Ansky's The Dybbuk .
As examples of the world/spiritual/soul concept of alchemy, she analyzes a fourteenth-century Noh drama (Matsukaze) and a second- century B.C. Sanskrit play, Shakuntala , which is drawn from the Mahabharata .
She concludes that the theatre may be viewed as operational alchemy in that the play allows one to reach beyond one's limited vision toward the Infinite, an instinctive activity within the psyche which cannot be explained rationally any more than can genius or talent.
Joyce between Freud and Jung , by Sheldon R. Brivic. Port Washington, N.Y. and London: Kennikat Press, 1980* (National University Publications/Literary Criticism Series) (226, incl. 4-p. index, 6-p. ref. notes).
Brivic believes that Joyce and Jung had much in common as thinkers: both admired religious values without subscribing to a particular religion, and both were preoccupied by mythology and self- realization and the unconscious.
Using depth psychology to trace Joyce's career as a "relentless spiral of transformation," Brivic begins by showing the origins of Joyce's obsessions from a Freudian perspective. He then attempts to connect the unconscious aspects of Joyce's personality to the meanings and values in consciousness, devoting a chapter to Joyce's system and Jung's psychological types.
He concludes with an exploration of the value that Joyce found in life through his mythology.
Melville's Moby-Dick: A Jungian Commentary; An American Nekyia, by Edward F. Edinger. New York: New Directions Books, 1978 +p* (150, incl. 3-p. bibl., 4-p. gloss.).
Seeking not so much to understand Melville the man as to understand the psyche (especially the collective psyche) as exemplified by the genius of Melville's imagination, Edinger elucidates the psychological significance of the novel Moby Dick and thereby demonstrates analytical psychology's methods of dealing with symbolic forms and the basic orientation underlying its therapeutic approach.
He interprets the classic adventure story of the wild pursuit of the white whale as a kind of negative dialogue with the Self, describing symbolically the stormy process of Melville's own experience of spiritual transition that led to the underworld of the unconscious and the corrective experience of the "defeat of the ego" by the redeeming encounter with the Self.
He analyzes in detail the symbolism involved in Ishmael, Queequeg, Captain Ahab, the whale, and Fedallah.
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