THE WOMAN MOST LIKELY TO OPERATE BEHIND THE SCENES

Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis by Catrine Clay - Harper (2016)

Writing about those who lived their lives in the spotlight is generally a straightforward pursuit. Their movements are relatively well-documented in letters and newspaper clippings, their accomplishments are recorded in official documents and placards, and some are even immortalized in paintings, poems, and songs. The ambitious scholar can usually dredge up quite a bit of material—albeit murky and decomposed—from various historical archives. There is, after all, a collective understanding that the details of certain lives are worth preserving. These are the lead characters in the drama of human existence. But how does one write about members of the supporting cast? How do we isolate and appreciate those who are seen most clearly in the reflected glow of their spouses, relatives, and acquaintances? It is a daunting task and one that most biographers would never choose to undertake. Catrine Clay gives it a valiant effort in her stunning biography, Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis. Although she is not entirely successful in her attempt, allowing her focus to drift at times to the more obvious subject, she does at least strive to pay due homage to a woman whose steadfast determination was just as vital to the legacy of Carl Jung as was his beautiful mind. 

Catrine Clay is no stranger to obscure subject matter. Her 2010 biography of Manchester United goalkeeper Bert Trautmann won a British Sports Book Award for Biography of the Year and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Award. Unless you are an avid football fan, Bert Trautmann would probably not be considered a household name. On the other hand, Clay’s 2006 book, King, Kaiser, Tsar, is about King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II—three of the most recognizable (and ridiculed) men of their time. Clay’s genius in this case is deployed in illuminating the overlooked connections between the three rulers, thereby bringing perspective and clarity to wider international machinations. In Labyrinths Clay makes the most of both approaches: she chooses an obscure woman to focus on, and uses her subject to reveal the hidden influences behind the great figure of Carl Jung. This is a book about an unrecognized woman and her vicarious contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. The argument Clay puts forth is that Carl Jung would never have accomplished all that he accomplished without the steady, calming force of Emma Jung keeping him upright. 

Emma Jung was born to one of the wealthiest families in Sweden. She was loved by her parents and afforded every opportunity for happiness and success. When she met and married Carl Jung, the son of an impoverished pastor and a mentally-unstable mother, the circumstances of her life were dramatically altered. While working at a mental hospital in Zurich, Carl was required to live with his new wife among the troubled men and women he aimed to treat. Writes Clay, 

So began Emma’s new life as the wife of an Irrenarzt, living amongst hysterics, schizophrenics, catatonics, alcoholics, addicts, chronic neurotics and suicidal depressives—people who had lost their minds for one reason or another, and who spat and screamed and paced the wards, up and down, shouting obscenities, tearing at their hair, breaking the furniture.The contrast with her former life was complete. 

Everyone who met Emma Jung, including the many men and women who went on to define the field of psychoanalysis, were impressed by the graceful manner in which she endured. She stood by her charismatic, volatile husband as he travelled to meet intellectuals across the globe, uprooted their growing family multiple times, and carried on a number of hurtful extramarital affairs with analysts and patients alike. A modern woman might wonder why Emma Jung didn’t abandon her restless spouse the minute he tried to convince her that a longterm ménage à trois would be ‘healthy’ for their relationship. It can be easy to think of her as weak—another wife whose selfish complacency stands in the way of gender equality. But, as Catrine Clay makes clear, things were not so simple in the case of Emma Jung. To say that Emma allowed her husband to overrule and disrespect her is to ignore the unconventional aspects of her own character. As Clay suggests, 

Carl’s intuition told him that beneath her reticent, formal manner Emma was yearning for something less conventional, more intellectually satisfying, more adventurous—an outlet for her cleverness which she could not have if she married her haut-bourgeois beau. So he embarked on his campaign, bombarding her with letters filled with fascinating ideas about his favorite writers and philosophers, his love of mythology, his work, and he confided in her about his ambitions, his hopes and his fears. And he gave her lists of books to read for discussion next time they met. A seduction by intellect. 

What emerges in Labyrinths is not so much the unequal relationship between a dominant male personality and a submissive female one, but more the vacillating interactions between two expressions of the same personality. Emma Jung’s quiet, contemplative self is difficult to spy in the shadow cast by Carl’s exuberant, arrogant frame, but their private letters reveal a striking compatibility founded upon shared interests and desires. It is almost as though—to use the lens of psychoanalysis—Carl and Emma embodied a single mind of which Carl was the conscious, visible expression and Emma the hidden subconscious one. In fact, it was her role as an open receptacle for feelings and reflections that Clay considers to be…

…Emma’s strength: to be simple and honest in her approach, emphatic but not directive, helping people to find their own way, as she had hers. Or, to use the Jungian term: to individuate. 

Perhaps this is the greatest measure of Emma Jung’s particular strength—that she managed to keep her own interests in sight despite the domineering presence of her husband, that she never let his energy or volume make her feel like less of a person for being quiet and reserved. Emma’s confidence in her abilities as a psychoanalyst grew slowly over the course of their marriage, but she never evolved into the female version of her extroverted spouse. She managed to mature into an entirely different kind of doctor, with an entirely different method of treatment. In fact, many of the men and women who visited the Jung’s for treatment actually preferred Emma’s calm consistency to Carl’s eccentric fits of brilliance. In the end, they could choose the approach that suited them best. Clay writes of Emma’s transformation in the same manner with which Emma herself might describe it—as the kind of uneventful apotheosis that appears naturally at the end of a long period of hard work and perseverance:

She had taken her decisive step: to work as an analyst in her own right…as the years passed and she became increasingly involved in Carl’s work, she found she knew more about it than she realized…she was acquainted with many of the leading lights of psychoanalysis, including Professor Freud of Vienna, and she had met some forward-thinking women too—Hedwig Bleuler and Beatrice Hinkle among them—who had introduced her to new and challenging ideas about women in society. Encouraged by Carl, Emma had become the first president of the Psychological Club of Zurich, where she discovered she could hold her own and rise above the jealousies and rivalries which somehow always surrounded her husband.

Carl Jung was never a perfect husband. His desire to probe and stretch the limits of the mind, as well as the conventions of marriage, often had harmful consequences for Emma. He repeatedly ignored the feelings of his wife and children for the sake of scientific discovery. But Emma Jung’s story is by no means another narrative of female suffering and exploitation. Whether or not he was capable of respecting their marriage, Carl Jung certainly respected his wife’s intellect. If Clay’s account can be trusted, this mattered more to Emma Jung than the sanctity of her marital bed. Her mind was just as lofty and immortal as her husband’s, and her greatest achievement was becoming a respected analyst in her own right. In Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis, Catrine Clay presents a strangely harmonious relationship between two very different individuals. Although she may have been a member of the supporting cast, Emma Jung radiated with her own subtle glow—a light which both softened and enhanced the sputtering firecracker at her side.

Catrine Clay author profile

NYT book review

Guardian book review

THE PEASANT MOST LIKELY TO EVOLVE INTO A MANICHAEAN MESSIAH

Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith - Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2016)

*This post is dedicated to Karen, whose morbid fascination mirrors my own*

Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith is just under seven-hundred pages long. It is a veritable weapon. While I was reading this fantastically dark examination of the man blamed for the fall of the Romanovs, a single sentence kept rising to the surface of my subconscious: it was Kathryn, on the couch, with the biography…

Don’t let the considerable heft of this book intimidate you. The length of Smith’s narrative underscores the inexplicable nature of Rasputin, a man whose cultural immortality seems to feed upon prevailing anxieties. The arch of Rasputin’s life does not make sense, but that is exactly why he became the catalyst of revolution. It was his frustrating intangibility that undermined the authority of the last tsar. The people of Russia—peasants and nobles alike—simply could not understand why Nicholas and Alexandra clung to this filthy, hollow-eyed pilgrim while their empire crumbled around them. Why did the tsarina sacrifice her family and the respect of her people for such an odious creature? Over and over Smith describes deputations sent to the empress to beg her to abandon her ‘friend.’ Even when pornographic cartoons depicting Rasputin and the empress began to circulate, she refused to part with him. This narrative pattern makes for a slow and excruciating read, and leads the reader to the inevitable conclusion that this could have been avoided. This painful cycle of frustration also indicates that the length of Smith’s book was a deliberate (and intelligent) choice. Only by dragging his readers through seven-hundred pages of infuriating behavior and stubborn loyalty on the part of the Russian royals can Smith replicate in his readers the confusion and estrangement felt by the Russian people during the first two decades of the twentieth-century. We are aggravated and exhausted by the countless episodes of senseless obstinance, which could not be fully appreciated in a shorter text. Whether intentionally or not, Rasputin created a gulf between the tsar and his subjects; he became a symbol of imperial folly and a vicarious target at which to vent slanderous revolutionary sentiments. By choosing this mysterious figure over the people of Russia, Nicholas and Alexandra surrendered their power and allowed their reputations to plummet to earth and be dragged through the mud. Rasputin, by his proximity to the throne, revealed the Tzar to be a flawed and ordinary man, capable of sin and foolishness—a man who might be deposed without the certainty of divine punishment. 

Rasputin has always been an enigmatic figure. What many modern readers don’t realize is that he was as elusive during his life as he is today. He carried about him the stench of a corrupt immortality, a supernatural charge that distinguished him from the fleshy mortal beings of the earth. His enemies referred to him as the ‘Holy Devil’—an accurate summation of his conflicting characteristics. He was both irresistible and repulsive, and the people he came into contact with were either instantly intoxicated, or mystified by his power over their friends and family. Rasputin was a magnet, and his reputation changed dramatically depending on the ‘charge’ of each individual he encountered. Writes Smith, 

It was said that this man belonged to a bizarre religious sect that embraced the most wicked forms of sexual perversion, that he was a phony holy man who had duped the emperor and empress into embracing him as their spiritual leader, that he had taken over the Russian Orthodox Church and was bending it to his own immoral designs, that he was a filthy peasant who managed not only to worm his way into the palace, but through deceit and cunning was quickly becoming the true power behind the throne. This man, many were beginning to believe, presented a real danger to the church, to the monarchy, and even to Russia itself. 

Anyone who has ever fallen in love with the world constructed by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Blok will understand the draw of imperial Russia. The heady imagery that defines these narratives cannot be found in any other canon. Part of this has to do with climate—the harsh desolation of Siberia calls for a distinct vocabulary and tone. While previous monarchies (here I am thinking of France before 1789) may have exacerbated public grievances with extravagant displays of wealth, the sheer size of the Russian peasantry and the immeasurable material distance between the wealthy and the poor elevated the drama of the Russian experience to an unprecedented degree. St. Petersburg was an endless tapestry of juxtaposed images—beggars shuffling along in front of colossal palaces, rampant starvation alongside sumptuous feasts—each image so vivid and intense as to appear almost technicolor. The mass hysteria and paranoia saturating Russia at this time embellished ordinary men with mythic, quasi-religious attributes. Writes Smith, 

The life of Rasputin is one of the most remarkable in modern history. It reads like a dark fairy tale. An obscure, uneducated peasant from the wilds of Siberia receives a calling from God and sets out in search of the true faith, a journey that leads him across the vast expanse of Russia for many years before finally bringing him to the palace of the tsar. The royal family takes him in and is bewitched by his piety, his unerring insights into the human soul, and his simple peasant ways. Miraculously, he saves the life of the heir to the throne, but the presence of this outsider, and the influence he wields with the tsar and tsaritsa angers the great men of the realm and they lure him into a trap and kill him. Many believed that the holy peasant had foreseen his death and prophesied that should anything happen to him, the tsar would lose his throne. And so he does, and the kingdom he once ruled is plunged into unspeakable bloodletting and misery for years. 

The young heir Alexei suffered from hemophilia, a genetic disorder inherited from his maternal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria of England. Had he been born a century later, his mother and father might never have depended upon a dubious figure like Rasputin for help. However, at the time of Alexei’s birth, very little was known about the sinister disease plaguing the royal families of Europe—a disease kept alive by the accustomed practice of inbreeding. When the only son of the ruling tsar was diagnosed, panic descended upon the royal palace. Compounded with this was the sudden and disorienting spiritual crisis surging through Russia. Questions and insecurities abounded, and an equal number of prophets and messiahs appeared to provide answers and salvation. Smith contextualizes the bizarre faith of the Nicholas and Alexandra when he writes, 

The restless spiritual seeking of the fin de siècle was a pan-European phenomenon. Much of this can be explained by the declining influence of the church, and institutionalized religion in general, throughout the West, but there were other specific domestic factors that lent a greater urgency to this spiritual searching in Russia. Beginning with the end of serfdom in 1861 and stretching into the early years of the twentieth century, Russia, arguably more so than any of the countries of Europe, was experiencing rapid and profoundly unsettling change as a traditional, agricultural society tried to modernize practically overnight. Along with this enormous transformation, the shattering defeat in the Russo-Japanese War followed by the Revolution of 1905 that shook the old order to its foundations left Russians with an inescapable sense of alienation, foreboding, and imminent crisis. The old institutions, and the old beliefs that went with them, no longer seemed adequate to address the troubling questions of a new and, to many, uncertain and frightening world. 

Wealthy Russians and peasants alike were anxious for guidance in this strange and transient world. Many saviors presented themselves to the wandering masses, but it was their fate to be ridiculed as soon as they were admired. The Russian press, newly released from the oppressive fetters of censorship, dissected these hopeful apostles with vicious gossip and unrelenting scrutiny. The circle of notable Russians was relatively small, and the public took obsessive care to analyze and follow every outsider the nobility accepted into their exclusive ranks. Unfortunately, once the principal family in Russia embraced him as their own personal messiah, Rasputin stepped directly into the role of the despised ‘royal favorite.’ Describing a pattern that will be familiar to history buffs, Shakespeare enthusiasts, and Lord of the Rings fans everywhere, Smith defines the ‘favorite’ as:

The shadowy advisor with the ear of the ruler, often an outsider with no connections to the political-social elites and frequently with no official position, has been a reoccurring figure throughout history…Favorites were invariably perceived as cunning and manipulative, the wicked hidden hand behind the throne. Favorites were depicted as two-faced, deceitful, ambitious and obsequious in the self-abasing struggle for power…To insiders, their place alongside the ruler was seen as a usurpation of the proper state officials and institutions; to outsiders, the range of their power assumed fancifully grotesque proportions and every government mistake was laid at their feet.

By examining the root cause of anti-Rasputin hostility—the unconscious prejudices and jealousies fueling malicious gossip—Douglas Smith portrays his subject as a man demonized by those who thought a lowly peasant unworthy of acclaim, and harassed by a paranoid army of politicians, church fathers, and journalists determined to discredit him even if it meant fabricating evidence. The unfortunate truth is that we will never know whether Rasputin had one or two faces. He was, and continues to be, an enigmatic specter, crouching in the shadows behind the doomed throne of imperial Russia. Perhaps our continuing fascination is evidence that we too are guilty of heaping the sins of an entire establishment onto the back of a single man. Ambiguous in its conclusions, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, is an excellent investigation into the power of belief, and the danger of mass hysteria. 

Douglas Smith author website

Evening Standard Review

NYT book review

A BRIEF INTERMISSION

Dear readers, relatives, Mom...

I am taking a brief holiday from the blog this week--my first since embarking upon this rewarding project! It also seems like a wonderful opportunity to say thank you for the many stimulating conversations and words of encouragement and support, for which I am truly grateful. Next week, we will pick up once again with Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs by Douglas Smith. Rich in contrasting imagery--from the bleak planes of Siberia to the gilded extravagance of the Winter Palace--this colossal biography will satisfy anyone with an appetite for Imperial Russia and its accompanying themes of glamour, mysticism, tragedy and hysteria.

See you next week!


Kathryn

THE WOMAN MOST LIKELY TO TURN 'ONE MAN'S TRASH' INTO THE NEXT BIG THING

Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern by Francine Prose - Yale University Press (2015)

I absorb history like a parched sponge absorbs water. I spend roughly twenty hours per-week reading non-fiction accounts of historical events, jumping from Ancient Rome to Imperial Russia with minimal motion sickness. In my free time I watch sensationalized reenactments of past dynasties and social movements on tv. Even the most *liberal* interpretations (i.e. my personal favorite,The Borgias, starring Jeremy Irons) usually manage to toss some factual information in with all the bodice-ripping and bubonic plague. The truth of the matter is that even the most ‘boring’ and uneventful period in human history—take the Great Depression for example—can be rendered fascinating by a skilled and artful historian. When you read as much as I do, you tend to arrive at new texts with a fair amount of accumulated knowledge. Thus, most of the biographies I’ve read have embellished what I already know. This is endlessly rewarding for me, but I sometimes wonder whether the opinion of a less knowledgable critic would be more beneficial for my readers. Several of my favorite biographies would overwhelm and repel a reader who lacks a substantial foundation. It can sometimes be hard for me to distinguish the information contained within the pages of a single book, from all the scraps I’ve collected throughout my many years of scavenging. 

This week I decided to read about a subject I know very little about: modern art. I know even less about Peggy Guggenheim and her incredible collection of paintings and sculptures housed in Venice’s Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. Francine Prose’s concise, intimate peek into the life of a passionate, erratic collector, Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern, was really my first foray into the world behind the canvas. Best known for her novels, The Glorious Ones, Household Saints, and Blue Angel, Prose writes with the tender sincerity of a fiction writer conceiving of a new character. Perhaps it is her humanity and compassion that led Prose to serve as the 2007 president of the PEN American Center—an organization dedicated to literary expression and the defense of free speech. 

If there is one thing to be said about modern art in general, it’s that it relies much more on context and an awareness of contemporary events than allegorical or religious depictions do. It is, of course, very easy to dismiss a canvas by Jackson Pollock as so many droplets and drizzles. But once you take the time to read about Pollock himself, the social climate that fertilized his particular brand of genius, and the challenges he faced as an artist and an individual, you begin to develop a soft spot for the gloopy chaos that defines his aesthetic. Understanding modern art is hard work and it takes much more than a trip to the museum and an extended staring contest with a canvas to appreciate its worth. Perhaps the highest praise I can bestow upon Prose’s charming portrait is that it makes me want to do the hard work. I want to walk into the MOMA or the Tate Modern armed with the knowledge I need to really read the stories condensed and simplified within the cryptic forms of the modern. It seems to me that modern art is, in many ways, a hieroglyphic mode of expression. Once you figure out a way to interpret the various symbols and motifs, a new world of emotions and revelations is available to you—much like what the Rosetta Stone did for our understanding of ancient Egypt. I don’t want to be just another complacent observer who would rather dismiss than discover. I want to learn the language. 

Peggy Guggenheim deserves to be remembered for her uncanny foresight. Writes Prose,

Among the artists represented in the collection that she began to assemble long before the significance and value of their work was widely or fully recognized are Picasso, Pollock, Brancusi, Arp, Braque, Calder, de Kooning, Rothko, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Magritte, Miró, Mondrian, Man Ray, Henry Moore, and Francis Bacon.

Even to one with as little knowledge as I possess, this strikes me as a veritable pantheon of modern artists. If one person—let alone a woman—managed to amass a comparable collection of Renaissance works, she would be lauded as something of a deity. Instead, because of the controversial subject matter she was drawn to, Guggenheim was ridiculed and scorned her entire life. Prose suggests that she, 

…seems to have been born with, or developed early, the urge to unnerve, and this impulse or compulsion would serve her well as she devoted her life to showing art that was truly new and sometimes disturbing. Her idiosyncratic combination of outspokenness and reserve, of shyness and a craving for attention helped her broker the match between the world of twentieth-century art and the world of glamour, gossip, and media publicity. For better or worse, for better and worse, her tendency to mythologize herself and the artists she represented helped shape the contemporary art world, to turn artists into celebrities and socialites into art collectors.

Perhaps people resented her privileged upbringing in one of the wealthiest Manhattan clans. Perhaps her very public and very messy relationships made it difficult for people to take her seriously as an art critic. Perhaps her indifferent attitude towards her two children cost her society’s respect. Whatever the underlying reason, Prose is anxious to emphasize that Peggy Guggenheim was always a controversial woman and rarely made excuses for herself. She was flippant, she was flighty, she changed her mind too often, and she hurt the people she should have cherished. But there is no denying the impact she had on the world of modern art and the broader cult of artistic snobbery and eccentricity she and her fashionable friends turned into an international obsession. For those granted admission to Guggenheim’s exclusive social circle, the ability to shock was its own form of cultural currency. As Prose describes the 1938 International Exposition of Surrealism in Paris to which Guggenheim was invited, 

In the courtyard of the Galerie was Salvador Dalí’s Rainy Taxi, a black hansom cab in which a female mannequin, covered with live snails, sprawled amid the junglelike vegetation that clogged the rain-soaked windows. Lining the entrance to the exposition were fifteen mannequins decorated by the artist to represent the objects of their desire; the head of André Masson’s mannequin was encased in a birdcage housing a school of celluloid goldfish. The ceiling of the main room was lined by Duchamp with twelve hundred coal sacks, while the floor was covered with dead leaves, banked toward the center, where a brazier glowed. The smell of roasting coffee filled the air, as did the sound of maniacal laughter, which had been recorded at a mental asylum.

It is hard to read about this kind of senseless psychedelic melting-pot and remember that many of the artists involved—Duchamp, Giacometti, Ernst, Dalí—went on to become some of the most recognizable and critically esteemed figures of modern art. It is in extended descriptions like this that Prose really highlights Guggenheim’s admirable gift for spying the transcendent kernel at the heart of the ephemeral spectacle. Had I been present at the 1938 International Exposition of Surrealism, I might have dismissed the participating artists as a bunch of nutters. Although Prose is at times harshly critical of her subject’s impulsive personality, she recognizes Guggenheim’s contribution to the history of art and the art of history. Writes Prose, 

Peggy was neither the first nor the only person to introduce Surrealism to the United States; there had already been shows at the Museum of Modern Art and at private galleries. But she was very good at making sure that it was talked about by critics and seen by younger artists. She encouraged and showed the work of a new generation of Americans, and it is partly thanks to Peggy that American artists shook off the influence of Europe. One can only speculate about how different the history of modern art would have been had Peggy not commissioned Jackson Pollock to paint a mural for the hallway of her East Side apartment—a work that helped change the ways in which Pollock and his peers thought about painting.

Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern is by no means a testament to the rewards of all-consuming research, as many of the other biographies I’ve reported on have been. It is sometimes painfully clear that Francine Prose hasn’t quite mastered the mechanics of non-fiction writing. I take issue, for example, with her decision to refer to Peggy Guggenheim by her first name throughout the manuscript while her male associates are all given surnames. This condescending habit doesn’t do much to combat the assumption that Peggy was a vain and brainless socialite who could only be seen in the reflected light of her lovers. Conventionally, it’s evident to me that Prose is still miles behind the likes of Stacey Schiff and David McCullough. But the passion is there, as well as the unquenchable desire to educate and convert. With a little polishing (and a little more time spent reading past Pulitzer-winners) I have no doubt that Francine Prose could evolve into an esteemed biographer of modern artists—a kind of vicarious collector herself. 

The Guardian review

HarperCollins author profile