Although this topic is not strictly fitness related, I’m glad to share that, after 10 years, my book, Jung’s Nietzsche: Zarathustra, The Red Book, and “Visionary” Works, is finally out. The story of this book is as complex and controversial, just as much as the argument treated. I started working on Jung’s (mis)understanding of Nietzsche in 2009, and decided to write the book straight after my MA, in 2011, while I was applying for a PhD position. The goal was to get it published within a couple of years.
However, my PhD research was on the same subject, and the more I dug into it, the more unexpected findings I ran into, the more I realised my book should have waited a little longer. In fact, whereas the starting point of my book draft was Jung’s psychological analysis of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, as it was delivered in a specific seminar in the years 1934-1939, I shortly realised that the key to contextualising (and possibly understanding?) Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche lied in Jung’s enigmatic The Red Book, which was the focus of my PhD. I therefore realised that I could have never published my book, without fully steeping in The Red Book first. During my archival researches at Jung’s library in Küsnacht (Zürich, CH), scrutinising Jung’s underlinings and annotations in his personal copies of Nietzsche’s writings, I found interesting references to Jung’s own The Red Book. This led me to the hypothesis that the reason why Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in his seminar appears to be a misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy, is simply because Jung read Zarathustra as if it was Nietzsche’s Red Book. Indeed both works are categorised by Jung as “visionary” experiences, alongside many other, more or less popular, literary works (e.g. Goethe’s Faust, II; Hölderlin’s poem “Song of Hyperion”; F. T. Vischer Auch Einer; Carl Spitteler Olympian Spring and Prometheus and Epimetheus; Dante’s Comedy; William Blake’s poems and paintings; Wagner’s Parsifal, etc.).
My research was completed in 2015, when I was awarded my PhD, but I felt drained and exhausted, and did not want to deal with that subject any longer. However, I felt it was my duty to let the world know about my findings, at least for the sake of research. So I took a break, got married, and found myself a part-time job. Meanwhile, I started re-elaborating my thesis to turn it into a book. It took me some 3 years to find a suitable publisher for my creature, but I could have never been happier with my choice: the publication process ran smoothly and fast; communication was excellent on both sides; distribution is just amazing.
10 years is a decade. Many things have changed in this lapse of time, and I have grown a lot as a scholar and as a person. I feel I have totally accomplished my first mission, and I can now put an end to this chapter of my life. I have proven myself to be a skilled researcher, to be able to deal with historical data, archival material, literature review, and academic writing. Now I can finally focus on what really matters to me, namely the actual content and practicality of my theories: the meaning and process of Self-becoming.
It’s now officially time for me to move on. Farewell, Jung’s confrontation with Nietzsche. Welcome, philosophy of fitness and bodybuilding! 🙂
Order here your copy of Jung’s Nietzsche
This book explores C.G. Jung’s complex relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche through the lens of the so-called ‘visionary’ literary tradition. The book connects Jung’s experience of the posthumously published Liber Novus (The Red Book) with his own (mis)understanding of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and formulates the hypothesis of Jung considering Zarathustra as Nietzsche’s Liber Novus –– both works being regarded by Jung as ‘visionary’ experiences. After exploring some ‘visionary’ authors often compared by Jung to Nietzsche (Goethe, Hölderlin, Spitteler, F. T. Vischer), the book focuses upon Nietzsche and Jung exclusively. It analyses stylistic similarities, as well as explicit references to Nietzsche and Zarathustra in Liber Novus, drawing on Jung’s annotations in his own copy of Zarathustra. The book then uses Liber Novus as a prism to contextualize and understand Jung’s five-year seminar on Zarathustra: all the nuances of Jung’s interpretation of Zarathustra can be fully explained, only when compared with Liber Novus and its symbology. One of the main topics of the book concerns the figure of ‘Christ’ and Nietzsche’s and Jung’s understandings of the ‘death of God.’