The hero's journey by Joseph Campbell

Author:Joseph Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Campbell, Joseph, 1904- -- Interviews, Mythologists -- United States -- Interviews, Mythology, Heroes, Myth
ISBN: 006250102X
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
Published: 1991-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Indologist Heinrich Zimmer (right) and Paul Mellon, cofounder (with his wife Mary)of the Bollingen Institute. Mary Mellon wrote of Zimmer, "When he is excited or hashad a glass of Italian wine, he spouts vocabulary like a geyser or like fames Joyce. Tohear him is like watching Shankar dance. It is mythology orchestrated."

Celtic scholars of the generation before, and Heinrich was a majorIndologist who left Germany when Hitler came in. He couldn'tstand what it all stood for. He came over here with his family andthen he couldn't get a job. There were very few oriental depart-ments in the United States universities at that time. You know howthe faculty who's there want to stay there and they don't want anycompetition. And so finally the ladies of the Jung Foundation gothim a room in Columbia University up on the top of the library.And there he was giving his lectures.

I attended the first lecture and there were four people forHeinrich Zimmer's lecture. He lectured as though he were lecturingto an auditorium. He was a magnificent deliverer of a lecture. Iremember him saying to me, "I'm glad you're getting this stuff."One of the other people present was the little librarian who was aperson of the Jung Foundation who had arranged for him to bethere. Another was a Polish female sculptor who, when she cameinto the room, emitted a perfume that would have sent all the godsto Amida's paradise.

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That was it.

The next semester Zimmer had to have a larger room andthe next semester after that he had an enormous room. And sud-denly the man died. He caught a cold and was in pneumonia.Nobody diagnosed it correctly; it was absurd. Suddenly Zimmerwas gone. I owe everything to Zimmer. His widow gave me hisstatue of a Bodhidharma from Japan when she asked me if I couldedit his American lectures. So I spent, God, almost twelve yearsediting Zimmer's material and brought out four magnificent worksout of his notes.

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Zimmer continuedquietly to bring prom-ising Bollingen pros-pects to Mary's atten-tion. One was JosephCampbell, "a cleverand intuitive Irish-man, energetic, soundand full of life, whoknows a lot aboutIndian stuff."

William McGuire,Bollingen

CAMPBELL: And in doing so I became associated with theBollingen Foundation. The Bollingen people and that wholejung-ian world. When I finally wrote my Hero it was refused by two

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