In this episode, we embark on a captivating exploration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless classic, The Great Gatsby. We analyze the novel's prophetic qualities, its commentary on the cyclical nature of history, and its profound insights into the human psyche. Through the lens of Jungian psychology, we examine the anima and animus archetypes embodied by Fitzgerald and his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, and how their works reflect the eternal struggle between the intuitive and the assertive. We also discuss how The Great Gatsby serves as a powerful warning about the pitfalls of the American Dream and the dangers of becoming trapped in the past. Join us for this illuminating discussion on one of the most influential novels of the 20th century.
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The Expansive Decadent Ego of the Animus and the Introspective Bust and Decline of the Anima as Parts of Empire
Cultures wax and wane. Empires that seem like part of the cosmos itself fall like gunshot victims into a pool or lines on a bar chart. It is the rare work that can speak to both the sparkle of spectacle and the timeless inevitable real it distracts us from.
The Great Gatsby was an immediate success and then forgotten and then rediscovered. It was forgotten because the Jazz age was a, beautiful maybe, but still nearsighted dalliance. Fitzgerald was lumped in with all of the other out of date out of style gaucheness the book was mistaken as a celebration of. It was rediscovered because critics realized the book was like one of those sweetly scented break up notes that is written so beautifully that the dumped sod misreads it as a love letter and puts it with the other love notes unawares.
The Great Gatsby was a warning; and you can only hear the warning after the fall.
Perhaps half love letter and half kiss off, some part of Fitzgerald knew that his world was ending. The Jazz age was the parodos, or fun act of the ancient Greek tragedy where characters expound humorously against the chorus on the character faults that will undue them against the grinding unwinding of time.
Ancient Greece and Rome look the same in the periphery and quite different in focus. Greeks sought to be ideal through archetype where Romans sought reality through realism.
Greece, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, dealt in the realm of the anima - the passive, intuitive, and emotional aspects of the psyche. They were comfortable with beauty through vulnerability and had a poetic culture that celebrated poetic introspection. The Greeks were fascinated with the introspective world of the psyche, and their ability to express complex emotions and ideas through symbolic and mythological language. To them archetypes were like platonic forms, or perfect ideals, removed from time.
[caption id="attachment_4983" align="aligncenter" width="225"]Ancient Greek Beauty[/caption]
Rome, like Fitzgerald's contemporary Ernest Hemingway, was more closely associated with the qualities of the animus - the masculine, assertive, and imperialistic, aspects of the psyche. Roman culture was characterized by its emphasis on law, order, and external appearances of military might. It gave rise to some of the most impressive feats of engineering, architecture, and political organization in the ancient world. The Romans were known for their practicality, their discipline, and their ability to translate ideas into concrete realities. To Rome the aspirational and ideological only mattered in hindsight.
[caption id="attachment_4984" align="aligncenter" width="300"]Ancient Roman Beauty[/caption]
To a Greek one noticed the archetype or one failed to. To a Roman on created the archetype. Humans made things real or we didn't. Romans got credit for ideas in a way that Greeks didn't. To a Greek we were glimpsing the inevitable realms of the possible. Time was cyclical. Ideas were external. You didn't have ideas, they had you. For Romans a man came up with the ideas. This is an interesting dichotomy because both ideas are true but paradoxical ways of studying the psyche.
All of the early modernists engaged with this dialectic differently. Fitzgerald leaned Greek animistic, Hemingway leaned into the Roman Animus and other contemporaries like Gertrude Stein tried to bridge the divide. There was no way around as literature progressed.
Greece and Rome were also deeply interconnected and mut...
12 сен 2024
