Jung’s Answer to Job: a modern myth for the times

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-180
Author(s):  
Christine Doran

ABSTRACTJung’sAnswer to Jobwas one of the most allusive, and yet elusive, texts he ever wrote. This article offers an interpretation of what Jung was intending to accomplish in writing this strange book. It places it in historical context in the aftermath of World War II, a time of widespread public shock at the Holocaust and fear of imminent global destruction. By outlining some notable theories about the nature of myth, the true significance of Jung’s achievement can be better understood. In this regard the insightful concepts of the Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico, are particularly helpful. The myth that almost immediately began to grow up surrounding the writing of the book and its controversial public reception is also discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-153
Author(s):  
Andrzej Tulej

A review of the chosen teachings of the Church concerning Jews and Judaism – both official and unofficial – showed that in the twentieth century, before the Second World War, the Church spoke especially in response to the errors of racism, statolatry and various forms of Antisemitism. The historical context were the Russian revolutions, World War I, the fascist movements. The Church's statements intensified when, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the National Socialist Party grew stronger, taking over power in Germany in 1933, leading to the tragedy of World War II and the drama of the Holocaust (Heb. Shoah). Although in its official teachings the Church has always been cautious in wording, in order to avoid direct involvement in political matters or become a party to any conflict, some statements of the popes referring to the broadly understood "Jewish question" can be considered as "milestones". This applies above all to the letter of Pope Benedict XV considered by some to be the most important act of opposition to Antisemitism, the encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge" by Pius XI, opposing the idolatrous relationship to race, nation, state or power and emphasizing the value of the religion of Israel and the Old Testament and the famous formula spoken during the meeting of Pope Pius XI with the Belgian pilgrims: "spiritually, we are all Semites".


Author(s):  
Marisa Escolar

Allied Encounters: The Gendered Redemption of World War II Italy is the first-ever monograph to analyze cultural representations of Allied-occupied Italy, one of the war’s most unstable spaces. While the U.S. military viewed itself as a redemptive force, competing narratives emerged in the Italian imaginary. Both national paradigms, however, are deeply entangled with the gendering of redemption long operative in Anglo-American and Italian discourse, emerging from a Dantean topos that depicts Italy as a whore in need of redemption. Tracing the formation of these gendered paradigms and pointing to their intersection with sexualized and racialized identities, this book examines literary, cinematic, and military representations of the soldier-civilian encounter, by Anglo-Americans and Italians, set in two major occupied cities, Naples and Rome. Informed by the historical context as well as their respective representational traditions, these texts—produced during and in the immediate aftermath—become more than mirrors of the intercultural encounter or generic allegories about U.S.–Italian relations. Instead, they are sites in which to explore other repressed traumas—including the Holocaust, the American Civil War, and European colonialism, as well as individual traumatic events like the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine and the mass civilian rape near Rome by colonial soldiers— that inform how the occupation unfolded and is remembered. In addition to challenging canonical interpretations of emblematic texts, this book introduces several little-known diaries, novels, and guidebooks.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.


Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Andrzej Wrobel ◽  
Malgorzata Korzeniowska ◽  
Agnieszka Polak ◽  
Marcin Szczygiel ◽  
Rafal Wrobel

AbstractThis is one of a series of articles about pharmacists in Lublin district, in the 19th and 20th c. The first recorded owner of the pharmacy in Adamów was Aleksander Biernacki (1851-1897), who passed it onto his son-in-law, Aleksander Rogoziński (1873-1941), and who, in turn, passed it onto his son, Stanisław Rogoziński (1913-1998), married to Tatiana (1918-1998). This family's history is an example of the history of Polish intelligentsia in the second half of 19th c., in the times of the Russian partition, World War I, 1918-1939, World War II and until contemporary times.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.


Author(s):  
Michaela Sibylová

The author has divided her article into two parts. The first part describes the status and research of aristocratic libraries in Slovakia. For a certain period of time, these libraries occupied an underappreciated place in the history of book culture in Slovakia. The socialist ideology of the ruling regime allowed their collections (with a few exceptions) to be merged with those of public libraries and archives. The author describes the events that affected these libraries during and particularly after the end of World War II and which had an adverse impact on the current disarrayed state and level of research. Over the past decades, there has been increased interest in the history of aristocratic libraries, as evidenced by multiple scientific conferences, exhibitions and publications. The second part of the article is devoted to a brief history of the best-known aristocratic libraries that were founded and operated in the territory of today’s Slovakia. From the times of humanism, there are the book collections of the Thurzó family and the Zay family, leading Austro-Hungarian noble families and the library of the bishop of Nitra, Zakariás Mossóczy. An example of a Baroque library is the Pálffy Library at Červený Kameň Castle. The Enlightenment period is represented by the Andrássy family libraries in the Betliar manor and the Apponyi family in Oponice. 


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Gary Evans

This manuscript investigates the facts of publication of the images of the Nanking Atrocity (December 1937–January 1938) in <em>LIFE </em>and <em>LOOK</em> magazines, two widely read United States publications, as well as the Nanking atrocity film clips that circulated to millions more in American and Canadian newsreels some years later. The publishers of these images were continuing the art of manipulation of public opinion through multimodal visual media, aiming them especially at the less educated mass public. The text attempts to describe these brutal images in their historical context. Viewing and understanding the underlying racial context and emotive impact of these images may be useful adjuncts to future students of World War II. If it is difficult to assert how much these severe images changed public opinion, one can appreciate how the emerging visual culture was transforming the way that modern societies communicate with and direct their citizens' thoughts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-229
Author(s):  
Ayelet Kohn ◽  
Rachel Weissbrod

This article deals with Kovner’s graphic narrative Ezekiel’s World (2015) as a case of remediation and hypermediacy. The term ‘remediation’ refers to adaptations which involve the transformation of the original work into another medium. While some adaptations strive to eliminate the marks of the previous medium, others highlight the interplay between different media, resulting in ‘hypermediacy’. The latter approach characterizes Ezekiel’s World due to its unique blend of artistic materials adapted from different media. The author, Michael Kovner, uses his paintings to depict the story of Ezekiel – an imaginary figure based on his father, the poet Abba Kovner who was one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance movement during World War II. While employing the conventions of comics and graphic narratives, the author also makes use of readymade objects such as maps and photos, simulates the works of famous artists and quotes Abba Kovner’s poems. These are indirect ways of confronting the traumas of Holocaust survivors and ‘the second generation’. Dealing with the Holocaust in comics and graphic narratives (as in Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 1986) is no longer an innovation, nor is their use as a means to deal with trauma; what makes this graphic narrative unique is the encounter between the works of the poet and the painter, which combine to create an exceptionally complex work integrating poetry, art and graphic narration.


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