ZOE ET L'HOMME DE VERRE:
IN CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUL
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I-59
Zoe et l'homme de verre is a film about life reclaiming one of its own. The everyman protagonist, l'homme de verre (the man of glass), is trapped and isolated in an exhausting, soul-denying hamster wheel life full of screens and routines yet devoid of a deeper sense of meaning and relatedness. A remarkable, numinous dream bears a compensatory, paradoxical message from the psyche: in order to truly live, l'homme de verre must turn towards that which he fears and risk, as it were, being shattered.
The symbolic content of Zoe draws largely upon my own proliferating Indra's net of personally meaningful images, dreams, and synchronicities, as well as what Joseph Campbell, citing James Joyce, referred to as "aesthetic arrests." (Campbell, 1997) Delving into the significance of the various elements of this symbolic system is largely beyond the scope of this paper, and perhaps it is best that this aspect of the work is expanded upon only minimally lest in attempting to explain certain symbols I merely explain them away. The creative process of developing the film, however, was both influenced and is illumined by many of the thinkers and artists encountered in Creativity and Aesthetic Sensibility. In particular, creating the film was, in the words of art educator Howard McConeghy, a "correspondence with soul." In this paper, we will use McConeghy's term as our starting point to reflect upon the role of the artist in contemporary society, branching into the work of C.G. Jung, Susan Rowland, Cormac McCarthy, Erich Neumann and others while referring Zoe et L'homme de Verre as a case study.
Correspondence with Soul
Two years ago, I had a synchronistic experience that has firmly rooted itself in my imagination. On a trip to California, I visited my friend Brian from university. There is a beautiful grand piano in his living room, and I sat down to play one of the very few songs I know how to play by heart, Comptine d'un Autre Ètè by Yann Tiersen from the movie Amelie (perhaps the only film I have seen literally dozens of times). Brian's daughter Zoe, who was two-years-old at the time, was in the room. I heard Brian say, "Do you want to show Uncle Charles your favorite toy?" I stopped playing the piano, and Zoe brought over a box the size and color of the reader's edition of C.G. Jung's Red Book. She and Brian opened the box revealing twenty or so square puzzle pieces that had what looked to be an impressionist painting on them. I was stunned when I recognize that the painting was Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party, the very painting that is at the heart of the symbolic arc of Amelie. At first I thought Brian must have known the connection between the music and the painting, but when questioned he told me he had never seen the film.
Zoe is a Greek name with roots whose etymology refers to life or life force, and the fact that this synchronicity was literally delivered to me in a box by a little girl named "life" had a great impression on me.
The arts educator Howard McConeghy writes "Those who are interested in the service of psyche--both the personal psyche and the anima mundi--see art as a correspondence with soul." (2003, p. 11) I am increasingly of the belief that the correspondence of which McConeghey writes, which he closely associates with the term aesthetic perception, is essential to our individual and collective health and perhaps even our physical survival, for the lack of our conscious participation in this correspondence is a principle factor in becoming out of step with life. C.G. Jung cautioned that the overreliance on intellect and conscious will had led humanity into an dangerously unbalanced position. "It is as if," Jung wrote, "our consciousness had somehow slipped from its natural foundations and no longer knew how to get along on nature's timing." (CW 8, par. 802)
To correspond ("respond with") is active, relational and it requires a shared language. As Cormac McCarthy convincingly opines in his essay The Kekulè Problem, image is the language of the unconscious, the only language that homo sapiens have known for most of our 2-million-year history. (McCarthy, 2017) Spoken and written language are a relatively recent overlay on this original, ancestral language. Our unconscious speaks in "the old tongue," of image. The shaman, the poet, and the artist are still conversant in this language: they take seriously and engage with the images received from their unconscious (through dreams, consciousness-altering substances or practices, synchronicity, active imagination) and they respond through imagistic expression. We tend to think that the artist is principally communicating with her audience, those that will view, or read, or listen to her work, and perhaps for some or even many artists this is this case. What McConeghey suggests, as has increasingly been the case in my own experience of creative work, is that the artist is perhaps primarily in dialog with her own psyche in a sort of imagistic call and response.
The archetype of the artist has always been a conduit between the daylight world of appearances and the obscure, symbolic world of the soul, and yet, as Erich Neumann explains, the role of the artist in contemporary society has taken on even greater import as the great religious traditions and their attendant constellations of numinous symbols (and established, canalized practices designed to harness and control numinous experience) become less dominant. Neumann writes, "The creative principle has its home no longer in the symbolism of a cultural canon, but in the individual. It has almost ceased to live in favored holy places, in sites or at times dedicated to it, or in men consecrated to it; but may live everywhere, anywhere, in any way and any time, that is to say, anonymously." (1955/1959 , p.11)
Like a tree that has had its top lopped off, instigating a riot of branches that emerge around the cut and shoot skyward, we are living in a period in which the old systems of order and meaning are losing their hold. In such periods, the pendulum swings away from institutional, bureaucratic role of the priestly cast to the individual who has direct, unmediated contact with what might variously be referred to as the godhead, Spirit, the unconscious, the divine, the psychoid, etc. As Michael Tucker explains, in modern times many artists (particularly the musician, in his estimation) have stepped into a role analogous to that of the shaman, diving deep into unconscious realms to keep the correspondence fresh. "Is it only a matter of coincidence that the period in which the art of the prehistoric caves was being unearthed witnessed an unprecedented, cataclysmic change in the imagery and intent of Western art? Painters and poets, sculptors and composers, dancers and dramatists alike felt the need to abandon previous conceptions of form, and to create work in the light of highly-charged visionary imperatives." (1992, p. xxii)
It was in this spirit of correspondence that I began working on Zoe et L'homme de Verre. The work of the philosopher John Dewey sheds light upon why it may take many years, as it did for me, or even decades to respond to psyche through an act of creative expression. True expression, Dewey argues, is a transformational act; the raw materials that are received through life experience must undergo a qualitative shift. "Even in the most mechanical modes of expression there is interaction and a consequent transformation of the primitive material which stands as raw material for a product of art, in relation to what is actually pressed out." (1934/2007, p. 6) Although Dewey uses slightly more mechanical metaphors, such as juice being expressed in a wine press through great pressure or oil being rendered through the heating and pressurizing of fats, his thinking on the subject bears a striking resemblance to that C.G. Jung, who eventually landed upon the work of the medieval alchemists as the most precisely elaborated metaphor of psychological transformation and expression. In either case, expression is the culmination of typically unseen and even unconscious ferment within the psyche of the creator. And in either case, the raw or "primitive" materials need to time to interact and react with one another. As Dewey languages it, "The real work of art is the building up of an integral experience out of the interaction of organic and environmental conditions and energies." (p. 67)
Thus, my initial synchronistic experience needed two years of alchemizing before I had anything integral to express in this particular correspondence with soul. Time, and more raw material (in Dewey's terminology, or prima materia in Jung's) were needed for the foment/ferment to reach a stage sufficient maturity for meaningful expression to occur. Like catalysts that hasten the speed of a chemical reaction, several recent prima materia experiences have interacted with the original synchronicity in such a way that something felt not just ready but necessary to express in order to fulfill my end of the correspondence (i.e. coming from ego-consciousness). In reading Susan Rowland's essay Jung's "Living Mystery" of Creativity, Symbols, and the Unconscious in Writing, I again encountered zoe, "our long lost... life force," as an agent intimately involved "revivifying, bringing to life, making new." (pp. 51, 69) Days later, I listened to an audio program that mentioned, in passing, the strange case of King Charles VI of France (1368 - 1422), who became convinced that he was made of glass. (Stewart, Lee, & Marchiano, 2019) Charles was not alone in this psychological affliction: thousands of people in Europe from the 15th through 17th centuries suffered from what became known as the glass delusion. Charles, terrified that he would shatter should he come into contact with other people, reportedly had iron bars sewn into his clothing to protect himself. Monsieur Dufayel, l'homme de verre of Amelie, is similarly terrified of shattering, and he lives as a recluse as a result. This defensive, brittle posture towards life recalls what Erich Neumann described as the "axis of rigidity and chaos," an orientation peculiar to human beings and antithetical to being, as Jung would put it, "on nature's timing." Neumann writes:
"Rigidity and chaos, these two forms of the negative, are directly opposed to the creative principle, which encompasses transformation, hence not only life but also death. Across the diabolical axis of rigidity and chaos cuts the transformative axis of life and death. In the unconscious life of nature these two axes seem to coincide, and what in the extreme case is rigidity appears subsequently as firmness rooted in life. Similarly, what in the extreme is chaos appears normally linked with the principle of death. It is only in man, with his development of consciousness and separation of the systems, that the axes move apart." (1955/57, p. 9)
In working with these images and material, McCarthy and McConeghey both make it clear that the desired result is not simply to receive clear answers or directives from the unconscious. As McCarthy playfully states, "The unconscious wants to give guidance to your life in general but it doesn't care what toothpaste you use. And while the path which it suggests for you may be broad it doesn't include going over a cliff." (2017) McConeghy writes, "The results of aesthetic perception are shadowy hints and intimations, but they enrich and deepen perception as we forego the bright light of reason and the certainty of proof." (2003, p. 12) The fact that the unconscious does not communicate in certainties and absolutes is not surprising, for quantum physics has revealed that certainties and absolutes are nowhere to be found in nature save within the abstract logic of human ego-consciousness. It is the task of the artist, the poet, and the shaman, therefore, not necessarily to bring back wisdom or revelation from realms unseen, but to be in direct and continual correspondence with psyche. The fruits of this correspondence are not to be measured in solutions and fixes, but in how well the artist and his community stay in step with zoe, the pulse of life. In closing, here are a few words from Howard McConeghey on the importance of this creative dance between consciousness and the unconscious.
Aesthetic perception demands participation in imaginal reality and the embodiment of psychic image in daily encounters. An art experience can be a first step in realizing the beauty of our daily lives. It is not enough to write down one's dreams or to paint inner images, one must also connect such images to daily life. Connecting psychic image to daily life is the essence of creativity. (2003, p. 12)
References
Campbell, J. (1997) The mythic dimension: selected essays 1959 - 1987. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Dewey, J. (2007) Art as experience. New York, NY: Penguin. (Original work published 1934)
Jung, C. G. (1969). The soul and death (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed., pp. 404-415). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1934)
McCarthy, C. (2017). The Kekulè problem: where did language come from? Nautilus. Retrieved from http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem.
Tucker, M. (1992) Dreaming with eyes open: the shamanic spirit in twentieth century art and culture. San Francisco, CA: Aquarian/Harper.
Stewart, D., Lee, J., and Marchiano, L. (2019) Empathy. This Jungian life podcast. Retrieved from http://www.thisjungianlife.com/heres-the-podcast/