Karl Kerényi - Zeit im Gespräch
Intellectual Deep Web
1,229 views
Read along with the transcript, chapters and related recordings on the Intellectual Deep Web site: https://intellectualdeepweb.com/w/X-g...
Karl Kerényi looks back on the people, languages and landscapes that shaped his work. Beginning with his early aphorisms, he argues that scholarship needs the expressive resources of living language: the humanities cannot reduce their subjects to terminology. His Hungarian origins, his use of German, and his encounters with Greek and Italian landscapes lead to a portrait of intellectual life as an inward expansion.
From his home above Lake Maggiore, Kerényi recalls Eranos as a wartime oasis of European culture, while questioning the rigidity institutions acquire. He discusses Greek light, mystical experience and Walter F. Otto’s willingness to take the ancient gods seriously. His collaboration with C. G. Jung becomes a defense of independent methods: mythology should be faithfully retold before it is explained, and psychology can learn from myths rather than reduce them to psychological categories.
The closing exchanges recall Leo Frobenius, the scholarly meetings at Wilhelm II’s residence in Doorn, and Thomas Mann’s influence on Kerényi’s narrative approach. The conversation ends with a gently ironic image of memory: gathering one’s own bones, already a little gilded.
0:00 Aphorisms and a scholarly life
1:26 Art, criticism and the form of scholarship
3:38 An unusual education in classical philology
6:47 A Hungarian writing in German
9:11 Bilingualism and the renewal of language
14:13 New words and existential originality
17:15 The philologist as a lover of language
19:29 Wilamowitz, Nietzsche and divided classical scholarship
22:39 Interpretation beyond terminology
25:25 The stages of a career and Apollo
29:06 Travel, landscape and a home above Ascona
31:10 Mind as inner expansion
34:27 Frobenius and the first invitation to Eranos
37:56 Eranos, landscape and institutional rigidity
41:08 A wartime oasis of European culture
41:35 Suzuki, Schrödinger, van der Leeuw and Scholem
45:54 Italy, Etruria and the return to Greece
51:23 Reconstructing the Eleusinian mysteries
52:03 Greek light and mystical experience
57:38 Walter F. Otto and the reality of the gods
1:01:48 Jung and the reality of the soul
1:04:35 Collaboration with Jung without becoming his pupil
1:09:50 Mythology and psychology: independent methods
1:11:36 Mythology as faithful retelling
1:13:59 Frobenius and the collection of mythological motifs
1:17:30 The public and private Frobenius
1:19:49 Wilhelm II’s scholarly circle at Doorn
1:28:08 Thomas Mann and the art of retelling
1:34:27 Reciprocal influence and intellectual freedom
1:38:12 Memory, the river and gilded bones
1:25:56 Wilamowitz declines the Kaiser’s invitation
Karl Kerényi was a Hungarian classical philologist and scholar of religion whose work explored Greek myth, the gods and the mysteries. His encounters with Walter F. Otto, C. G. Jung and Thomas Mann brought classical scholarship into conversation with religious experience, psychology and literary art. Here he insists on the integrity of mythology itself: its stories must be heard and faithfully retold before they are explained.
2 Comments
Karl Kerényi - Zeit im Gespräch
Intellectual Deep Web
1,229 views
Read along with the transcript, chapters and related recordings on the Intellectual Deep Web site: https://intellectualdeepweb.com/w/X-g...
Karl Kerényi looks back on the people, languages and landscapes that shaped his work. Beginning with his early aphorisms, he argues that scholarship needs the expressive resources of living language: the humanities cannot reduce their subjects to terminology. His Hungarian origins, his use of German, and his encounters with Greek and Italian landscapes lead to a portrait of intellectual life as an inward expansion.
From his home above Lake Maggiore, Kerényi recalls Eranos as a wartime oasis of European culture, while questioning the rigidity institutions acquire. He discusses Greek light, mystical experience and Walter F. Otto’s willingness to take the ancient gods seriously. His collaboration with C. G. Jung becomes a defense of independent methods: mythology should be faithfully retold before it is explained, and psychology can learn from myths rather than reduce them to psychological categories.
The closing exchanges recall Leo Frobenius, the scholarly meetings at Wilhelm II’s residence in Doorn, and Thomas Mann’s influence on Kerényi’s narrative approach. The conversation ends with a gently ironic image of memory: gathering one’s own bones, already a little gilded.
0:00 Aphorisms and a scholarly life
1:26 Art, criticism and the form of scholarship
3:38 An unusual education in classical philology
6:47 A Hungarian writing in German
9:11 Bilingualism and the renewal of language
14:13 New words and existential originality
17:15 The philologist as a lover of language
19:29 Wilamowitz, Nietzsche and divided classical scholarship
22:39 Interpretation beyond terminology
25:25 The stages of a career and Apollo
29:06 Travel, landscape and a home above Ascona
31:10 Mind as inner expansion
34:27 Frobenius and the first invitation to Eranos
37:56 Eranos, landscape and institutional rigidity
41:08 A wartime oasis of European culture
41:35 Suzuki, Schrödinger, van der Leeuw and Scholem
45:54 Italy, Etruria and the return to Greece
51:23 Reconstructing the Eleusinian mysteries
52:03 Greek light and mystical experience
57:38 Walter F. Otto and the reality of the gods
1:01:48 Jung and the reality of the soul
1:04:35 Collaboration with Jung without becoming his pupil
1:09:50 Mythology and psychology: independent methods
1:11:36 Mythology as faithful retelling
1:13:59 Frobenius and the collection of mythological motifs
1:17:30 The public and private Frobenius
1:19:49 Wilhelm II’s scholarly circle at Doorn
1:28:08 Thomas Mann and the art of retelling
1:34:27 Reciprocal influence and intellectual freedom
1:38:12 Memory, the river and gilded bones
1:25:56 Wilamowitz declines the Kaiser’s invitation
Karl Kerényi was a Hungarian classical philologist and scholar of religion whose work explored Greek myth, the gods and the mysteries. His encounters with Walter F. Otto, C. G. Jung and Thomas Mann brought classical scholarship into conversation with religious experience, psychology and literary art. Here he insists on the integrity of mythology itself: its stories must be heard and faithfully retold before they are explained.