ART AND THE CREATIVE UNCONSCIOUS:
Four insightful essays on creativity
Erich Neumann
[Princeton University Press, 234 pages]
This is not a new, but rather a timeless book. Erich Neumann was a Jungian analyst who lived in Israel until his death in 1960. Iâm writing this review because I just completed my third âpilgrimageâ into its two main essays since the volume was first pointed out to meâby an intuitive fascinationâin a bookstore more than twenty years ago. Itâs by far the best thing Iâve ever read on the subject of creativity. In some ways, itâs the only prose Iâve come across that truly approaches a full understanding of this mystery. (Rilkeâs Letters to a Young Poet probably comes in second.) Artists, poets, and composers, and possibly chefs, flower-arrangers and anyone else who seeks to enter the temple of creativity has a good chance of finding transformative inspiration here.
When I say âinspiration,â I donât even mean âfertile food for thought.â Neumannâs discussion of the spiritual depths of the 20th century, in his essay, âArt and Time,â produced such a strong feeling in me during this latest reading that I had to get out a notebook and pen, and two hours later I had birthed one of the best poems that’s come out of me in recent memory.
Art and the Creative Unconscious actually consists of four separate but related essays. Of these, âArt and Timeâ and âCreative Man and Transformationâ are epochal. They are rounded out by âLeonardo and the Mother Archetypeâ and âA Note on Marc Chagall,â commentaries applying Neumannâs insights to the work of two specific artists.
âArt and Timeâ has to do mostly with the artistâs relation to the âpsychic fieldâ or external milieu in which he or she worksâthe social whole and the character of the particular age. It includes the aforementioned discussion of what we call the âmodernâ era, and Neumannâs original, somewhat iconoclastic take on the rise of the Renaissance.
âCreative Man and Transformationâ is about the individual psychology of what Neumann refers to as âthe creative person.â He convincingly presents a sense of the internal world of the artist, and elaborates on the factors which compel a painter to return to a blank canvas or a poet to a blank page, again and again and again. This seems like almost impossible subject matter, and as I mentioned earlier, Iâve never come across anything else in print that comes close to articulating it this well.
In my attempts to recommend this book to friends, I may have made one mistake: mentioning Neumannâs suggestion that âthe creative personâ is special and somehow different from âa normal personâ (his designations). âEveryone is special!â came the responses. Ever wary of âartistic egoâ and of any form of elitism, I agree by temperament. I wish Neumann was here to respond. But whatever the case, I also conveyed my appreciation of the book by saying, âAll my life I felt like an outsider, and never came upon any âmapâ that seemed to fully include me. While reading Art and the Creative Unconscious, I rejoiced to have finally found âa map that shows where I liveââa mirror of my âoddâ psyche!â
Neumann uses a smattering of Jungian terminologyââarchetype,” âshadow,â âcollective unconscious.â A few might find this a bit off-putting. I wonât pretend the material isnât dense. For me, however, these few Jungian terms donât impede my enjoyment of the book. Theyâre more of an appropriate shorthand that enables Neumann to develop his original contributions in a concise manner.
Someone also asked me, âWere you really so enthralled?â I could only reply with the truth: âWith every sentence, I sat on the edge of my seat in excitement.â
immagine: Penn State (Creative Commons BY-NC-NDâno changes)