To Count Hermann Keyserling
Dear Count, 12 May 1928
Now that my assistant has succeeded in deciphering your cryptogram to the point where I can think of an answer, I hasten to give you the information you want.
My lecture tour in London was arranged by the New Educational Movement.
Mrs. Beatrix Ensor in particular.
So far as I remember, we shared the profits.
I think it was Mortimer Halls where I lectured.
My expression "resentment" was perhaps unhappily chosen-the slovenly idiom of medical psychology-one could also say: the feeling of alienation caused by your collision with the world.
This is aptly characterized by your dream arrival in the cosmic stillness and your role as the last man.
One doesn't leave what one loves, so you probably have little love for earth and man.
This is called, or can be called, an indirect expression of resentment.
This is the resentment I mean.
By the way, the Neue Schweizer Rundschau has urged me to write an article on your Spektrum, which I have done, with the title "The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum."
I shall not fail to send you an offprint as soon as it is out. In it I have said much more than in my letter.
I don't believe the "last man" laughs "heartily," nor "like a homeric
hero," but, if I may say so, rather like Nietzsche.
No doubt tremendously comic-no longer even a tailor to sew the last button on the last pair of trousers, sliding down the slope of the Beyond on the
last Saturday evening, breakfastless and dinnerless-a gorgeous sight never to be beheld, marvellously absurd as a fantasy.
The "humour" of your book sounds like the laughter in your dream, which explains to me what you understand by humour.
I was never forced to laugh when I read your book, or only once over the "ha-ha-hairy" clergy otherwise never.
Nor can one laugh when reading Nietzsche.
The laughter of alienation is not infectious.
Always sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 50-51
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