Excerpt from Jimmy Raskin’s contribution to PROVENCE Unconscious, a publication exploring the influence of C.G. Jung and post-Jungian thought across contemporary art, fashion, and psychoanalysis.
This brief reflection on Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche’s relationship to the poetic arose from a request to reprint diagrams from Raskin’s 2005 book, THE PROLOGUE THE POLTERGEIST AND THE HOLLOW TREE, a meditation on the prologue of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Prepared for an issue centered on Jung, the following text developed from that invitation.
God is nothing.
God is everything.
And somewhere in there God died.
—The Poet
I wrote a book on Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’ published in a bright red hardcover with silver inlays, featuring diagrams and renderings exploring “where the poet lives in a world without God.” Carl Jung’s Red Book is also red—the ultimate outsider artist. Is that enough to “connect?” Two red books and Zarathustra walk into a bar …
“God is dead!” left a spiritual void—one that Carl Jung filled with archetypes and the collective unconscious, while Friedrich Nietzsche saw it as a call for radical self-creation. For both, harnessing the poetic—the sensation of transformation—became essential in the aftermath.
“Becoming Poet(ic)” serves as a key for those emerging from The Eternal Return, where the depths of personal transformation in a world without truth requires an inverted, positive force to cheat gravity—to shift from nihilistic paralysis and embrace and ride with the openness of all things. The final act of The Eternal Return is the liberation of seeing the present as “always already passing.” By breaking free from the grip of the past (guilt) and releasing the pull of the future (expectation), one fully enters a perpetually renewing present. Let us praise the eternal “now” that is neither here nor there. In Zarathustra, his animal friends say, “The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.” In this liminal kind of place, “spirit” is freed up, igniting a poetic charge that recalls the mysteries of existence.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Jung, both attuned to the power of the poetic charge, represent two distinct paths of transformation. Nietzsche’s vision of a New Being rejected traditional values, advocating for self-overcoming and the creation of personal meaning through radical, outward transformation. In contrast, Jung viewed self-realization as an inward journey—an integration of the conscious and unconscious mind, aiming for a harmonious and balanced whole rather than radical external change.
Carl Gustav Jung
Mandala 86
Illumination Page 86, Liber Novus (The Red Book)
1917
To review:
Jung’s Red Book is a marvel of creative exploration, blending artistry with psychological healing. It captures his harmonic transformation, using “poetry” as a tool to navigate the unconscious and engage with inner visions. Whether through text or image, Jung poeticizes the process of individuation—a creative dive into self-understanding through blended renderings of portals and vectors and prose-like musings.
He posited that creativity facilitates this process by enabling individuals to confront and then harmonize inner conflicts for themselves, fostering personal growth. He observed, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” (Psychological Types).
I remind us of Jung’s hesitance to publish The Red Book while alive. This reflects the vulnerability inherent in “divine creativity,” pointing to a profound innocence and otherworldly intelligence at work in something sacred.
On the other hand, Thus Spoke Zarathustra was a blunt-force manifesto—a red-alert declaration where “God is dead!” is uttered in the opening moments of the prologue. For Nietzsche, the mark is his word, a power that permeates. On lighter days, Zarathustra also says, “I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart; his heart drives him to go under.” The path to self-realization is fueled by a desire for UNDERSTANDING while submitting to the forces of indeterminism itself—the cycles simultaneously within us and without, requiring a new dexterity of Being. Where is the new meaning? Nietzsche calls on individuals to create their own values and live with renewed raw-authenticity. The “poetic act” becomes a “spirited force,” replacing the religiosity of God with the play of change and chance.
Becoming POET. Embodying POET. The charge of the POETIC IMPULSE. As POET myself—or steward of the poetic impulse—I bring us here. “Poet” is the figure of paradox: simultaneously praised and sought, while critiqued and distanced from. The art of knowing when and how to be “Poet” is part of the riddle of the new world of expression (after God).
For both Jung and Nietzsche, THE POET was essential as an idea, practice, and embodiment. While Jung fully embraced the poet-figure in The Red Book, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra more boldly critiqued the naïve poets who preceded him—a prerequisite. Zarathustra had to do this to embody the new Philosopher-Poet, so that critical thinking leads the way in the new playground of meaning and language.
JIMMY RASKIN
2025
