Bollingen Series (General)

From the celebrated cultural historian and bestselling author, a provocative history of the evolution of our ideas about art since the early nineteenth century In this witty, provocative, and learned book, acclaimed cultural historian and writer Jacques Barzun traces our changing attitudes to the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that we are living in a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance. He challenges our conceptions and misconceptions about art “in order to reach a conclusion about its value and its drawbacks for life at the present time.”

A landmark one-volume edition of the complete Plato in classic modern translations All the writings of Plato generally considered to be authentic are here presented in the only complete one-volume Plato available in English. The editors set out to choose the contents of this collected edition from the work of the best modern British and American translators. The volume contains prefatory notes to each dialogue, by Edith Hamilton; an introductory essay on Plato's philosophy and writings, by Huntington Cairns; and a comprehensive index with cross references to assist the reader with the philosophical vocabulary of the different translators.

Carl Gustav Jung, the great Swiss psychologist, who died in 1961 in his eighty-sixth year, was a profound thinker of extraordinary creativity. In the course of his medical practice he reflected deeply on human nature and human problems, and his prolific writings bear witness to his great wisdom and insight. For this completely revised edition, selections from publications of the years 1945-1961, the last fruitful years of Jung's life, have been added, and the book has been reset in a new compact format. The selections are arranged thematically under four main headings: The Nature and Activity of the Psyche, Man in His Relation to Others, The World of Values, and On Ultimate Things. Jung's reflections frequently have a penetrating relevance to today's (and tomorrow's) problems. On prejudice: "Our unwillingness to see our own faults and the projection of them is the beginning of most quarrels, and is the strongest guarantee that injustice, animosity, and persecution are not ready to die out." On sex: "We are not yet far enough advanced to distinguish between moral and immoral behavior in the realm of free sexual activity." On religion: "No one can know what the ultimate things are. We must therefore take them as we experience them. And if such experience helps to make life healthier, more beautiful, more complete, and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: 'This was the grace of God.'"

From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book—against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”—Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars,” from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns. Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority. From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

George Chapman's translations of Homer are among the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." Swinburne praised the translations for their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of the Odyssey (1614-15), making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction, textual notes, a glossary, and a commentary. Garry Wills's preface to the Odyssey explores how Chapman's less strained meter lets him achieve more delicate poetic effects as compared to the Iliad. Wills also examines Chapman's "fine touch" in translating "the warm and human sense of comedy" in the Odyssey. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. --John Keats

Beginning with Jung's earliest correspondence to associates of the psychoanalytic period and ending shortly before his death, the 935 letters selected for these two volumes offer a running commentary on his creativity. The recipients of the letters include Mircea Eliade, Sigmund Freud, Esther Harding, James Joyce, Karl Kernyi, Erich Neumann, Maud Oakes, Herbert Read, Upton Sinclair, and Father Victor White.

Abridged from the four-volume The Passion of al-Hallaj, one of the major works of Western orientalism, this book explores the life and teaching of a famous tenth-century Sufi mystic and martyr, and in so doing describes not only his experience but also the whole milieu of early Islamic civilization. Louis Massignon (1883-1962), France's most celebrated Islamic specialist in this century and a leading Catholic intellectual, wrote of a man who was for him a personal inspiration. From reviews of the four-volume translation:

This book provides a very accessible general introduction to the Jungian concept of ego development and Jung's theory of personality structure--the collective unconscious, anima, animus, shadow, archetypes.

Written reputedly by an Egyptian magus, Horapollo Niliacus, in the fourth century C.E., The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo is an anthology of nearly two hundred "hieroglyphics," or allegorical emblems, said to have been used by the Pharaonic scribes in describing natural and moral aspects of the world. Translated into Greek in 1505, it informed much of Western iconography from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. This work not only tells how various types of natural phenomena, emotions, virtues, philosophical concepts, and human character-types were symbolized, but also explains why, for example, the universe is represented by a serpent swallowing its tail, filial affection by a stork, education by the heavens dropping dew, and a horoscopist by a person eating an hourglass. In his introduction Boas explores the influence of The Hieroglyphics and the causes behind the rebirth of interest in symbolism in the sixteenth century. The illustrations to this edition were drawn by Albrecht Dürer on the verso pages of his copy of a Latin translation.

Modern American poets writing in the face of death In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.

The gods of Olympus died with the advent of Christianity--or so we have been taught to believe. But how are we to account for their tremendous popularity during the Renaissance? This illustrated book, now reprinted in a new, larger paperback format, offers the general reader first a discussion of mythology in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and then a multifaceted look at the far-reaching role played by mythology in Renaissance intellectual and emotional life.

A collection of journalistic interviews which span Jung's lifetime. This book captures his personality and spirit in more than 50 accounts of talks and meetings with him. They range from transcripts of interviews for radio, television, and film to memoirs written by notable personalities.

A brilliant brief account of romanticism and its influence from one of the most important philosophers and intellectual historians of the twentieth century In The Roots of Romanticism, one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers dissects and assesses a movement that changed the course of history. Brilliant, fresh, immediate, and eloquent, these celebrated Mellon Lectures are a bravura intellectual performance. Isaiah Berlin surveys the many attempts to define romanticism, distills its essence, traces its developments from its first stirrings to its apotheosis, and shows how it still permeates our outlook. He ranges over a cast of some of the greatest thinkers and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, the Schlegels, Novalis, Goethe, Blake, Byron, and Beethoven. The ideas and attitudes of these and other figures, Berlin argues, helped to shape twentieth-century nationalism, existentialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and our ideas about heroic individuals, self-fulfillment, and the exalted place of art. This new edition, illustrated for the first time, also features a new foreword by philosopher John Gray, in which he discusses Berlin's belief that the influence of romanticism has been unpredictable and contradictory in the extreme, fuelling anti-liberal political movements but also reinvigorating liberalism; a revised text; and a new appendix that includes some of Berlin's correspondence about the lectures and the reactions to them.

As an associate of C. G. Jung for many years, Jolande Jacobi is in a unique position to provide an interpretation of his work. In this volume, Dr. Jacobi presents a study of three central, interrelated concepts in analytical psychology: the individual complex, the universal archetype, and the dynamic symbol.

Continuing the paperback edition of Charles S. Singleton's translation of The Divine Comedy, this work provides the English-speaking reader with everything he needs to read and understand the Paradiso. This volume consists of the prose translation of Giorgio Petrocchi's Italian text (which faces the translation on each page); its companion volume of commentary is a masterpiece of erudition, offering a wide range of information on such subjects as Dante's vocabulary, his characters, and the historical sources of incidents in the poem. Professor Singleton provides a clear and profound analysis of the poem's basic allegory, and the illustrations, diagrams, and map clarify points that have previously confused readers of The Divine Comedy.

Beginning with Jung's earliest correspondence to associates of the psychoanalytic period and ending shortly before his death, the 935 letters selected for these two volumes offer a running commentary on his creativity. The recipients of the letters include Mircea Eliade, Sigmund Freud, Esther Harding, James Joyce, Karl Kernyi, Erich Neumann, Maud Oakes, Herbert Read, Upton Sinclair, and Father Victor White.

A study of the primitive and unconscious aspects of man's nature and the processes by which their energies may contribute to the integration of personality. New edition, comprehensively revised and enlarged, with many new illustrations.

George Chapman's translations of Homer--immortalized by Keats's sonnet-- are the most famous in the English language. Swinburne praised their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." And the great critic George Saintsbury wrote, "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what the Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of the Homeric hymns. The hymns, believed to have been written not by Homer himself but by followers who emulated his style, are poems written to the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon. The collection, originally titled by Chapman "The Crowne of all Homers Workes," also includes epigrams and poems attributed to Homer and known as "The Lesser Homerica," as well as his famous "The Battle of Frogs and Mice."

The archetypes of human experience which derive from the deepest unconscious mind and reveal themselves in the universal symbols of art and religion as well as in the individual symbolic creations of particular people are, for C. G. Jung, the key to the cure of souls, the cornerstone of his therapeutic work. This volume explains the function and origin of these symbols. Here the reader will find not only a general orientation to Jung's point of view but extensive studies of the symbolic process and its integrating function in human psychology as it is reflected in the characteristic spiritual productions of Europe and Asia. Violet de Laszlo has selected for inclusion in Psyche and Symbol five selections from Aion: "The Ego," "The Shadow," "The Syzygy: Anima and Animus," "The Self," and "Christ, A Symbol of the Self." The book continues with "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales," "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," and "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass." Also included are the foreword to the Cary Banes translation of the I Ching, two chapters from Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead," and "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower."

A sweeping look at Chinese art across the millennia that upends traditional perspectives and offers new pathways for art history Throughout Chinese history, dynastic time—the organization of history through the lens of successive dynasties—has been the dominant mode of narrating the story of Chinese art, even though there has been little examination of this concept in discourse and practice until now. Chinese Art and Dynastic Time uncovers how the development of Chinese art was described in its original cultural, sociopolitical, and artistic contexts, and how these narratives were interwoven with contemporaneous artistic creation. In doing so, leading art historian Wu Hung opens up new pathways for the consideration of not only Chinese art, but also the whole of art history. Wu Hung brings together ten case studies, ranging from the third millennium BCE to the early twentieth century CE, and spanning ritual and religious art, painting, sculpture, the built environment, and popular art in order to examine the deep-rooted patterns in the historical conceptualization of Chinese art. Elucidating the changing notions of dynastic time in various contexts, he also challenges the preoccupation with this concept as the default mode in art historical writing. This critical investigation of dynastic time thus constitutes an essential foundation to pursue new narrative and interpretative frameworks in thinking about art history. Remarkable for the sweep and scope of its arguments and lucid style, Chinese Art and Dynastic Time probes the roots of the collective imagination in Chinese art and frees us from long-held perspectives on how this art should be understood. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can’t make sense of contemporary art A classic of art criticism and philosophy, After the End of Art continues to generate heated debate for its radical and famous assertion that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, a philosopher who was also one of the leading art critics of his time, argues that traditional notions of aesthetics no longer apply to contemporary art and that we need a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of current art: that everything is possible. An insightful and entertaining exploration of art’s most important aesthetic and philosophical issues conducted by an acute observer of contemporary art, After the End of Art argues that, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, Danto makes the case for a new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. After the End of Art addresses art history, pop art, “people’s art,” the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg, whose aesthetics-based criticism helped a previous generation make sense of modernism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition (the idea that art was a progressively more adequate representation of reality) through the modern era of manifestos (when art was defined by the artist’s philosophy), Danto shows that it wasn’t until the invention of pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways in which art was produced, hinged on a narrative.

Appearing for the first time in paperback and illustrated with line drawings, diagrams, and 26 half-tone plates, this study of the iconographic aspect of Japanese Buddhist sculpture surveys the significance of eight principal and six secondary hand gestures (mudra), in addition to the postures (asana), such as the "lotus," and the symbolic attributes. A pictorial index helps the reader in identifying the gestures.

In exploring the manifestations of human spiritual experience both in the imaginative activities of the individual and in the formation of mythologies and of religious symbolism in various cultures, C. G. Jung laid the groundwork for a psychology of the spirit. The excerpts here illuminate the concept of the unconscious, the central pillar of his work, and display ample evidence of the spontaneous spiritual and religious activities of the human mind. This compact volume will serve as an ideal introduction to Jung's basic concepts. Part I of this book, "On the Nature and Functioning of the Psyche," contains material from four works: "Symbols of Transformation," "On the Nature of the Psyche," "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," and "Psychological Types." Also included in Part I are "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" and "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype." Part II, "On Pathology and Therapy," includes "On the Nature of Dreams," "On the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenia," and selections from "Psychology of the Transference." In Part III appear "Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy" and two sections of "Psychology and Religion." Part IV, called "On Human Development," consists of the essay "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship."

Charles S. Singleton's edition of the Divine Comedy, of which this is the first part, provides the English-speaking reader with everything he needs to read and understand Dante’s great masterpiece. The Italian text here is in the edition of Giorgio Petrocchi, the leading Italian editor of Dante. Professor Singleton’s prose translation, facing the Italian in a line-for-line arrangement on each page, is smooth and literate. The companion volume, the Commentary, marshals every point of information the reader may require: vocabulary; grammar; identification of Dante’s characters; historical sources of some of the incidents and, where pertinent, excerpts from those sources in their original languages and in translation; profound clear analysis of the Divine Comedy’s basic allegory. There is a complete bibliography of every aspect of Dante studies. This first part of the Divine Comedy which is illustrated with maps of Italy and the region Dante knew especially, diagrams of the circles of Hell, and plates showing some of the historic sites mentioned by Dante in his poem.

Originally published as Volume 2 of The Tao of Painting, this is the first English translation of the famous Chinese handbook, the "Chieh Tzu Yüan Hua Chuan" (original, 1679-1701). Mai-mai Sze has translated and annotated the texts of instructions, discussions of the fundamentals of painting, notes on the preparation of colors, and chief editorial prefaces.

These essays by the famous analytical psychologist and student of creativity Erich Neumann belong in the context of the depth psychology of culture and reveal a prescient concern about the one-sidedness of patriarchal Western civilization. Neumann recommended a "cultural therapy" that he thought would redress a "fundamental ignorance" about feminine and masculine psychology, and he looked for societal healing to a "matriarchal consciousness" that forms the bridge between the feminine and the creative. Brought together here for the first time, the essays in the book discuss the psychological stages of woman's development, the moon and matriarchal consciousness, Mozart's Magic Flute, the meaning of the earth archetype for modern times, and the fear of the feminine. In Mozart's fantastic world, Neumann saw a true Auseinandersetzung--the conflict and coming-to-terms with each other of the matriarchal and the patriarchal worlds. Developing such a synthesis of the feminine and the masculine in the psychic reality of the individual and of the collective was, he argued, one of the fundamental, future-oriented tasks of both the society and the individual.

No other god of the Greeks is as widely present in the monuments and nature of Greece and Italy, in the sensuous tradition of antiquity, as Dionysos. In myth and image, in visionary experience and ritual representation, the Greeks possessed a complete expression of indestructible life, the essence of Dionysos. In this work, the noted mythologist and historian of religion Carl Kerényi presents a historical account of the religion of Dionysos from its beginnings in the Minoan culture down to its transition to a cosmic and cosmopolitan religion of late antiquity under the Roman Empire. From the wealth of Greek literary, epigraphic, and monumental traditions, Kerényi constructs a picture of Dionysian worship, always underlining the constitutive element of myth. Included in this study are the secret cult scenes of the women's mysteries both within and beyond Attica, the mystic sacrificial rite at Delphi, and the great public Dionysian festivals at Athens. The way in which the Athenian people received and assimilated tragedy in its immanent connection with Dionysos is seen as the greatest miracle in all cultural history. Tragedy and New Comedy are seen as high spiritual forms of the Dionysian religion, and the Dionysian element itself is seen as a chapter in the religious history of Europe.

George Chapman's translations of Homer are the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." Swinburne praised the translations for their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original (1611) text of Chapman's translation of the Iliad, making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction and a glossary. Garry Wills contributes a preface, in which he explains how Chapman tapped into the poetic consonance between the semi-divine heroism of the Iliad's warriors and the cosmological symbols of Renaissance humanism.

"Kundalini yoga presented Jung with a model of something that was almost completely lacking in Western psychology--an account of the development phases of higher consciousness.... Jung's insistence on the psychogenic and symbolic significance of such states is even more timely now than then. As R. D. Laing stated... 'It was Jung who broke the ground here, but few followed him.'"--From the introduction by Sonu Shamdasani Jung's seminar on Kundalini yoga, presented to the Psychological Club in Zurich in 1932, has been widely regarded as a milestone in the psychological understanding of Eastern thought and of the symbolic transformations of inner experience. Kundalini yoga presented Jung with a model for the developmental phases of higher consciousness, and he interpreted its symbols in terms of the process of individuation. With sensitivity toward a new generation's interest in alternative religions and psychological exploration, Sonu Shamdasani has brought together the lectures and discussions from this seminar. In this volume, he re-creates for today's reader the fascination with which many intellectuals of prewar Europe regarded Eastern spirituality as they discovered more and more of its resources, from yoga to tantric texts. Reconstructing this seminar through new documentation, Shamdasani explains, in his introduction, why Jung thought that the comprehension of Eastern thought was essential if Western psychology was to develop. He goes on to orient today's audience toward an appreciation of some of the questions that stirred the minds of Jung and his seminar group: What is the relation between Eastern schools of liberation and Western psychotherapy? What connection is there between esoteric religious traditions and spontaneous individual experience? What light do the symbols of Kundalini yoga shed on conditions diagnosed as psychotic? Not only were these questions important to analysts in the 1930s but, as Shamdasani stresses, they continue to have psychological relevance for readers on the threshold of the twenty-first century. This volume also offers newly translated material from Jung's German language seminars, a seminar by the indologist Wilhelm Hauer presented in conjunction with that of Jung, illustrations of the cakras, and Sir John Woodroffe's classic translation of the tantric text, the Sat-cakra Nirupana. ?

The Sanctuary of Eleusis, near Athens, was the center of a religious cult that endured for nearly two thousand years and whose initiates came from all parts of the civilized world. Looking at the tendency to "see visions," C. Kerenyi examines the Mysteries of Eleusis from the standpoint not only of Greek myth but also of human nature. Kerenyi holds that the yearly autumnal "mysteries" were based on the ancient myth of Demeter's search for her ravished daughter Persephone--a search that he equates not only with woman's quest for completion but also with every person's pursuit of identity. As he explores what the content of the mysteries may have been for those who experienced them, he draws on the study of archaeology, objects of art, and religious history, and suggests rich parallels from other mythologies.