Appropriately there were many references to paths and journeys at the opening of the Rubin Museum's exhibition featuring The Red Book, Carl Jung's long unpublished journal of inner exploration that has just been released in a remarkable edition by Norton ($195, 9780393065671/0393065677).
Sonu Shamdasani, editor and one of the translators of The Red Book and a Jung scholar, said that "on the human level, the book can be read as the story of how one man, a leading figure of our time, lost his way in the middle of life's journey, such as Dante faced at the beginning of the Commedia, and what he did to find his way."
After decades of being "governed by rational directed thinking," Shamdasani continued, Jung began writing The Red Book in 1914 as a way "to explore his fantasies and to think mystically." For 16 years, Jung wrote in the book regularly, then stopped. "He spent the next 30 years trying to come out of it and describe it rationally."
The Red Book helped Jung found a new cosmology and find meaning in his own life. "It will transform the reading of Jung's work," Shamdasani said. "And secondary interpretations of Jung during this period, including biographies, will have to be rewritten." Asked if the book would lead to different interpretations of Jung's work, Shamdasani said that instead, The Red Book will lead to "more understanding of his work."
Noting Jung's well-known ambivalence about publishing the book, Shamdasani said his goal in editing it was "quite simple: to produce a work that would be in a form Jung would have approved."
The huge, elaborate, leather-bound book that resembles a medieval illustrated manuscript was painstakingly scanned and reproduced by DigitalFusion and printed by Mondadori. See DigitalFusion's trailer on the making of the book. Shamdasani stated that a book so true to the original was technically not possible as recently as 10 years ago.
Don't miss the ur-book (above), which has spent almost all of its existence either in the Jung family home or a safe deposit box in Zurich. It and related material will be on display at the Rubin Museum at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street in New York City until January 25. As part of the exhibition, the Museum is putting on a series of conversations, pairing a psychoanalyst with people like Alice Walker, David Byrne, Adam Gopnik and Cornel West, among many others, who will respond to some of the dreamscapes in The Red Book.
This really is worth a visit. Seeing the original The Red Book feels like looking at the original Declaration of Independence or the MS of any classic novel or perhaps the Ten Commandments themselves.--John Mutter