ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with C. G. Jung’s interest in Gustav Meyrink’s The Green Face, which even his publisher did not consider a very good book. Jung disagreed. His positive view may be egocentric insofar as the novel’s composition and content are a treasure trove of Jungian psychology and Jung’s scholarly interests. Key concepts include the visionary mode, the collective unconscious, the archetypes, the stages of eroticism, projection, and the hieros gamos. Jung must also have enjoyed the novel’s references and allusions to topics he deals with in The Collected Works: Elijah, the Koran, and the Wandering Jew. While it is true that The Green Face is about the encounter of the main character, Fortunatus Hauberrisser, with the anima in the person of Eva van Druysen, Jung overlooks Meyrink’s exploration of consciousness, which the novel calls “The Great Inwardness.” What characters experience resembles in some respects Jung’s own psychic journey as recorded in The Red Book and Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Of particular relevance in Hauberrisser’s experience is the difference between what Jung calls the Spirit of the Depths and the Spirit of the Age. In fact, if Jung had set out to fictionalize his psychological principles and his inner experiences, he might have written something very much like The Green Face.
