Journal

Early this morning I was reading this book I have found, edited by William Mc Guire and R.F.C. Hull from Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press. On page 47, Americans must say "No". We are in January 1931, and Jung is invited to lecture by the Vienna Kulturebund.

"What America needs in the face of the tremendous urge toward uniformity, desire of things, the desire for complication in life, for being like one's neighbors, for making records, success, is one great healthy ability to say "No." To rest a minute and realize that many of the things being sought are unnecessary to a happy life, and that trying to live exactly like one's successful neighbor is not following the essentially different dictates, possibly, of a widely different underlying personality which a person may possess and yet consciously try to rid himself of, the conflict always resulting in some form, sooner or later, of a neurosis, sickness, or insanity.

We are awakening a little to the feeling that something is wrong in the world, that our modern prejudice of over-estimating the importance of the intellect and the conscious mind might be false. We want simplicity. We are suffering, in our cities, from a need of simple things. We would like to see our great railroad terminals deserted, the streets deserted, a great peace descend upon us.[...]

When whole communities avoid these warnings, and fill their asylums, become uniformly neurotic, we are in great danger. The last war, I thought, had taught us something. Seemingly not. Our unconscious wish for deserted places, quiet, inactivity, which now and then is being expressed in the heart of our great cities by a lyrical outbreak of some poet or madman, may project us, against our conscious wills, into another catastrophe from which we may never recover. We may gas our lives out, and then will we have deserted refuges and none of us left to sit, and dream, in the sun."

While coding at night, I often listen to a playlist of quiet songs. Among these, there is Ich und die Stadt by Public Service Broadcasting. In this song, German actress Nina Hoss reads Augen in der Großstadt, a poem by Kurt Tucholsky, from 1930.

Wenn du zur Arbeit gehst
am frühen Morgen,
wenn du am Bahnhof stehst
mit deinen Sorgen:
da zeigt die Stadt
dir asphaltglatt
im Menschentrichter
Millionen Gesichter:
Zwei fremde Augen, ein kurzer Blick,
die Braue, Pupillen, die Lider -
Was war das? vielleicht dein Lebensglück...
vorbei, verweht, nie wieder.

Du gehst dein Leben lang
auf tausend Straßen;
du siehst auf deinem Gang,
die dich vergaßen.
Ein Auge winkt,
die Seele klingt;
du hasts gefunden,
nur für Sekunden...
Zwei fremde Augen, ein kurzer Blick,
die Braue, Pupillen, die Lider;
Was war das? kein Mensch dreht die Zeit zurück...
Vorbei, verweht, nie wieder.

Du mußt auf deinem Gang
durch Städte wandern;
siehst einen Pulsschlag lang
den fremden Andern.
Es kann ein Feind sein,
es kann ein Freund sein,
es kann im Kampfe dein
Genosse sein.
Es sieht hinüber
und zieht vorüber...
Zwei fremde Augen, ein kurzer Blick,
die Braue, Pupillen, die Lider.
Was war das?
Von der großen Menschheit ein Stück!
Vorbei, verweht, nie wieder.

In English

Eyes in the Big City by Kurt Tucholsky

When you go to work early in the morning when you stand in the station with all your troubles: the city shows you asphalt-smooth in a funnel of people a million faces: Two strange eyes, a quick glance, the brows, the pupils, the lids – What was that? Your happiness, perhaps… gone, passed, never again.

All your life you walk on a thousand streets; you see on your way, those who forgot you. An eye winks, the soul rings; you found it, only seconds long… Two strange eyes, a quick glance, the brows, the pupils, the lids – What was that? No one turns back the time… gone, passed, never again.

You’re obliged on your way to wander through cities; you see for a pulsebeat the unknown other. It could be a ennemy, it could be a friend, or could in the struggle offer a hand. A looking over then passing by… Two strange eyes, a quick glance, the brows, the pupils, the lids – What was that? A piece of grand humanity! Gone, passed, never again.