CHAPTER VIII THE SACRIFICE (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav) and Hinkle, Beatrice M.
To the Rose.
“In the Mother-womb eternal,
Sweetest queen of every lea,
Still the living and supernal
Nature carries thee and me.
“Little rose, the storm’s fierce power
Strips our leaves and alters us;
Yet the deathless germ will tower
To new blooms, miraculous.”
The following comments may be made upon the parable of this poem: The rose is the symbol of the beloved woman (“Haidenröslein,” heather rose of Goethe). The rose blooms in the “rose-garden” of the maiden; therefore, it is also a direct symbol of the libido. When the poet dreams that he is with the rose in the mother-womb of nature, then, psychologically, the fact is that his libido is with the mother. Here is an eternal germination and renewal. We have come across this motive already in the Hierosgamos hymn (Iliad XIV): The nuptials in the blessed West; that is to say, the union in and with the mother. Plutarch shows us this motive in naïve form in his tradition of the Osiris myth; Osiris and Isis copulating in the mother’s womb. This is also perceived by Hölderlin as the enviable prerogative of the gods—to enjoy everlasting infancy. Thus, in Hyperion, he says:
“Fateless, like the sleeping nursling,
Breathe the Heavenly ones;
Chastely guarded in modest buds,
Their spirits blossom eternally,
And their quiet eyes
Gaze out in placid
Eternal serenity.”
This quotation shows the meaning of heavenly bliss. Hölderlin never was able to forget this first and greatest happiness, the dreamy picture of which estranged him from real life. Moreover, in this poem, the ancient motive of the twins in the mother’s womb is intimated. (Isis and Osiris in the mother’s womb.) The motive is archaic. There is a legend in Frobenius of how the great serpent (appearing from the little serpent in the hollow tree, through the so-called stretching out of the serpent) has finally devoured all men (devouring mother—death), and only a pregnant woman remains alive; she digs a ditch, covers it with a stone (grave—mother’s womb), and, living there, she gives birth to twins, the subsequent dragon-killers (the hero in double form, man and phallus, man and woman, man with his libido, the dying and rising sun).
This existence together in the mother is to be found also very beautifully expressed in an African myth (Frobenius):
“In the beginning, Obatala, the heaven, and Odudua, the earth, his wife, lay pressed firmly together in a calabas.”
The guarding “in a modest bud” is an idea which has appeared already in Plutarch, where it is said that the sun was born in the morning from a flower bud. Brahma, too, comes from the bud, which also gave birth in Assam to the first human pair.
Humanity.
(An unfinished poem.)
“Scarcely sprouted from the waters, O Earth,
Are thy old mountain tops and diffuse odors,
While the first green islands, full of young woods, breathe delight
Through the May air over the Ocean.
“And joyfully the eye of the Sun-god looked down
Upon the firstlings of the trees and flowers;
Laughing children of his youth, born from thee;
When on the fairest of the islands....
· · · · ·
Once lay thy most beautiful child under the grapes;
Lay after a mild night; in the dawn,
In the daybreak a child born to thee, O Earth!
And the boy looks up familiarly
To his Father, Helios,
And, tasting the sweet grapes,
He picked the sacred vine for his nurse,
And soon he is grown; the beasts