PB July 2020 50 Prabuddha Bharata imaginations of various Sanskrit poets. It is akin to saying that The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) by Nikos Kazantzakis is a valid testimony of the life of the real Jesus just because this reviewer has fumbled upon it while searching for authentic sources for Christ's life. In chapter 7, Sarkar confuses literature, history, liturgy with dulia and hyperdulia with her gross hermeneutical error that Navaratri is only about symbols and metaphors. Reading this chapter, one senses that nobody really feels that good won over evil ever; even metaphorically. Sarkar loves metaphors and other literary tropes since she is in an ivory-tower of solipsism fuelled by misplaced religious scholarship. Again, to reach Sarkar's Anglophilic intellect swimming within Sanskrit and Hindu waters too deep for her; we must use a Christian analogy to show her intellectual confusion. If one reads the very erudite John P Meier's monumental 5 volumes' A Marginal Jew series (1991–2016), one feels that the Jesuit Meier's life's mission is to desacralise and reduce Christ to human levels that are historically comprehensible to finite beings. History, archaeology, and a vast array of linguistic jingoism have established Father Meier as a recent stalwart in the historical Jesus movement. But to what avail? Bihani Sarkar's book will be, through standard quid pro quos in high places, one day lauded as a great contribution to Hindu Studies. And perhaps, on the merit of her archival knowledge, her erotic descriptions of Devi Durga will even win her some coveted honorary Chair at the American Academy of Religion alongside Wendy Doniger and Sarah H Jacoby. This reviewer was ashamed to read and review Jacoby for this journal for Jacoby misrepresented the life of the Tibetan mystic, Sera Khandro. One foresees a great academic career for Bihani Sarkar precisely because she has neglected the living tradition(s) of Shakta tantra, which she has mapped wrongly in her despicable book. In short, Bihani Sarkar writes for academic kudos in the Western world. She is like a learned medical student who has only read of human anatomy but never seen a real corpse. Subhasis Chattopadhyay On Psychological and Visionary Art: Notes from C G Jung's Lecture Gérard de Nerval's 'Aurélia' C G Jung Edited by Craig E Stephenson Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, usa. Website: https://www. press.princeton.edu. 2015. 240 pp. $35. hb. isbn 9780691162478. Richard Sieburth annotates a beautiful quota-tion from Gérard de Nerval's Aurélia: 'Dream is a second life. ... The first few instants of sleep are the image of death; a drowsy numbness steals over our thoughts. ... Then ... a new clarity illuminates these bizarre apparitions and sets them in motion. ... [Emmanuel] Swedenborg called these visions his Memorabilia; they came to him more often in reverie than in sleep; Apuleius's Golden Ass and Dante's Divine Comedy are the poetic models of such studies of the human soul' (120). The book under review, published with the support of the Philemon Foundation, is a manifesto for Romanticism, albeit written in the twentieth century. R F C Hull and Gottwalt Pankow, the translators have done us a service through their cultural work of being loyal to Jung's German without losing Jung's nuances while translating Jung into English. In the first section of this review, we will engage with Stephenson's excellent introduction to de Nerval's Aurélia, posthumously published in 1855, and show how Stephenson interiorises and represents the Romantic agon. Then we shall move on to Jung's writings and notes on Aurélia to prove how modernist Jung (1875–1961) was and, as we will see in a moment, all modernism and postmodernism; that is, in short, all that came after the great Romantics, happen to be just dirges to Romanticism. Even in March 2020, this reviewer is convinced that we continue to live under the shadow of the Romantics and all that is written is written within the umbra and penumbra of Romanticism; at least within English letters. The writings may range from Haruki Murakami's (b. 1949) Norwegian Wood (1987), to Kazuo Ishiguro's 575PB July 2020 51Reviews (b. 1954) Remains of the Day (1989) or to Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan (b. 1948). Everything after the Romantic Age in English and European letters just normatively happen to be different from the first Romantic impulse in Western letters; but as we all know, quoting T S Eliot (1888–1965), that arch-modernist: the sirens sing each to each but they certainly do not sing anymore for you and I (adapted from Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock published in 1915). They sang for de Nerval, they sang last for W B Yeats (1865–1939), they sang for Jung, but they no longer sing for anyone else. All these observations are with the caveat that we have to remember that Carl Gustav Jung was a Nazi sympathiser and thus, Jung's observations have to be taken with great caution. For this observation, this reviewer is grateful to the neo-Kantian Susan Neiman (b. 1955) who, in an email pointed this out to me as early as 8 March 2017: 'Jung was very close to the Nazis.' Thus, we have to begin this review by reiterating that like Richard Wagner (1813– 83) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Jung was complicit with the Nazis in their malevolent genocidal anti-Semitic pogroms. Thus, respecting more the memories of countless gassed Jews and the greatest European intellectual of the last century, Edith Stein (1891–1942), we will focus more on the 'Introduction' (1–48) by Stephenson. Stephenson's analysis of Aurélia has now superseded Arthur Lovejoy's (1873–1962) and Mario Praz's (1896–1982) contributions to the definitions of Romanticism. It is evident from the quote at the beginning of this review, that Aurélia's textual world echoes, anticipates, and radiates out the great English Romantics' works, including William Wordsworth's-for instance, The Idiot Boy, 1798-Samuel Taylor Coleridge's-for example, Frost at Midnight, 1798-John Keats's (see his Odes, 1819 and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819) and Thomas De Quincey's-for instance, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821-works among others. Wordsworth's (1770–1850) epic The Prelude's (1850) 'spots of time' are de Nerval's 'new clarities' quoted above. To carry on with the connection of Jung and the English Romantics with the latter's poetic preoccupations and the former's psychological reflections would be amiss in this review and should be expanded elsewhere. It suffices to point out here that Aurélia is germane to any reading of High European and English Romanticisms. So what is so Romantic about de Nerval and therefore, what is so Romantic about this aggrieved disciple of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)? Craig E Stephenson begins his 'Introduction' to the book under review thus: Gérard de Nerval explored the irrational with lucidity and exquisite craft, and Carl Gustav Jung regarded those explorations as a work of 'extraordinary magnitude'. Like the German poet-philosophers Novalis [1772–1801, see Peter Gay's 2015 book Why the Romantics Matter for understanding Novalis's pivotal role within Romanticism] and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749–1832], Nerval rejected the rationalist universalism of the Enlightenment [see Susan Neiman's Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, 2008, for understanding the Enlightenment] and privileged instead the individual subjective imagination as a way of fathoming the divine to reconnect with what the Romantics called the 'life principle'. ... The documents presented here [in the book under review] offer a unique window into the stages of Jung's creative process as he responds to an essential Romantic text. ... Romanticism was a revolt against both an old Christian cosmology and the mechanistic metaphysics that for a time, replaced it. ... As Northrop Frye [in The Drunken Boat: The Revolutionary Element in Romanticism, 198] astutely observed, the Romantics turned this Christian cosmos on its head. They argued that Reason had seated an imaginary divinity in an empty Heaven and that the true divine force lay in the previously condemned 'infernal' world, closely linked to nature ... the demonic world, to which humans must have access to reconnect with the life principle. (1–2, 13). In short, this reviewer cannot emphasise enough that Stephenson, a Jungian therapist, has written a tour de force on Romanticism in his 'Introduction', without intending to write on Romanticism per se. Two examples of Stephenson's meticulous scholarship need to be shown to prove Stephenson's credentials as a literary critic; though he avows no literary credentials: in 576 PB July 2020 52 Prabuddha Bharata footnote 3 in page 16, Stephenson connects Nerval's 'black sun' to Julia Kristeva's (b. 1941) Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1989). In footnote 5 in the same page, Stephenson quotes at length Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) to show a contrapuntal view of de Nerval's poetry. Yes, Gérard de Nerval was a poet too. And, in the best Romantic fashion, de Nerval was influenced and translated E T A Hoffman (1802–22); thus Nerval's works, again in the best Romantic fashion, had, 'another, darker Romantic theme ... [that of ] the tragic double or doppelgänger' (17). Peter Gay's book, Hoffman's sensibilities, and de Nerval's phantasmagoria will later give rise to various new or modernist movements in the visual arts. These last will go on to influence the likes of Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and D H Lawrence (1885–1930). The gloomy chiaroscuro in John Fowles' (1926–2005) iconic novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), for instance, can be traced back through Woolf and Lawrence to de Nerval, Hoffman, and Novalis. As for the Nazi-sympathiser Jung's notes, here are three samples which the seeker after the esoteric can make of what she or he wills: a) The daemon's 'rosy hues' indicate a fiery quality. The wings of a thousand colors evoke the alchemical idea of cauda pavonis. ... This being, with its thousand colours, with its obviously lavish play of colors, represents complete unfolding, because the Self wishes to realize itself, namely, in the abundance of its qualities and colors (55). [This is a reworking of Hindu thoughts, see for instance, Utpaladeva: Philosophy of Recognition by Raffaele Torella and Bettina Bäumer, 2010, to give a lesser known example. More accessible are works on Vedanta. In Jung's stress on a multiplicity of colours, or, pastiches, we find the later James Joyce (1882–1941) in Joyce's esotericism in Finnegan's Wake (1939).] b) What has happened here is an act of foreseeing that is unlikely to be doubted. Such things are apt to happen when one approaches the unconscious, or when the unconscious itself draws near. For on such occasions time becomes uncertain, and then something can be seen that does not yet exist but that lies just around the corner (61). [The unconscious is the subject of the Romantic sailor, the proto-modernist, Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) short stories and novels. Thus while analysing Aurélia, Jung identifies and invents what I have called the dirge to Romanticism.] c) In the course of the dream vision, the old man transforms into a youth (Hermes, Senex, and Juvenis) (100). [The page has symbols of the moon etc. and is an exact copy of the actual facsimile lecture notes of Jung. Again we need only to study James Joyce's works to understand how these symbols are all Romantic and Joyce's works are just laments for that neo-Platonic Age. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798 is a poem much absorbed with the phases of the moon.] This book is an essential reading for not only Jungians but also for literature scholars since Stephenson's ingenuous editing renders Jung's symbolic readings meaningful and important for annotating literary texts. This is a welcome book both within the psychoanalytic canon, as well as within the Romantic canon. And, one also gets the full text of Aurélia as a supplement. Now we add some comments regarding why this reviewer used the phrase 'psychoanalytic canon' here. This is so because mainstream psychoanalysts like Horacio Etchegoyen (1919–2016), the author of the indispensable and monumental The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique (1991) would not agree about Jung being related in any nonpejorative way to classical psychoanalysis. Lest we ignore the foundational similarities between Freud and Jung, one need only first read A Dangerous Method (1993) by John Kerr (1950– 2016), which went on to be a movie of the same name (in 2011) directed by David Cronenberg (b. 1943). Apart from these, one must read the analytic works on Freud and Jung's common patient, who went on to be a talk-therapist in her own right: Sabina Spielrein (1885–1942). Spielrein's own clinical work integrates Freud's and Jung's clinical exegesis. Thus, Jungian analysis is after all, psychoanalytic work. 577PB July 2020 53Reviews This book is a treat of a read. Thank you Carl Jung and Craig E Stephenson. Subhasis Chattopadhyay Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love Simon Blackburn Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, usa. Website: https://www. press.princeton.edu. 2014. 224 pp. $19.95. pb. isbn 9780691169118. Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940) has done for litera-ture and philosophy what much earlier Plato (ca 424/423–348/347 bce) fumbled to do for these two discourses. Then, in the West, we had the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905– 88 CE), enact for literature and theology what John Milton (1608–74 CE) did in his Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671). Earlier Edmund Spenser (1552–99 AD) yoked literature and theo-philosophy together. Nearer to us, Iris Murdoch (1919–99 CE), as it were, brought together von Balthasar's and JeanLuc Nancy's projects of proceeding with Plato's burden of unifying literature with philosophy as being contingent to our times in Murdoch's own corpus. It is within this realm of High Art that we have Simon Blackburn (b. 1944) commenting on that eternal verity: self-love. Other than Jean-Luc Nancy, Blackburn comments on all the writers mentioned so far. Blackburn's opening chapter (12–34) on Iris Murdoch is one of the best critiques till date of Murdoch's oeuvre. Blackburn, like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jean-Luc Nancy, successfully erases the false distinction between literature and philosophy. This is no easy task since more often than not, literature and philosophy are conflated and confused as one by indiscrete readers. One is afraid, we shall soon see a rise in apocalyptic fiction and modes of philosophising which will see in the rise of covid-19, all sorts of fatalistic philosophies deriving from Stoicism. To convey to future generations that literature and philosophy are both abstractions and should have little to do with the temporary, howsoever disconcerting, we must turn to Blackburn's excellent book since we need again the consolations and therapies that philosophy provides. One can read Boethius's (ca 477–524 CE) De Consolatione Philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy probably written in 524 CE) and Martha Nussbaum's (b. 1947) The Therapy of Desire (1994) in this new world, where we need to look at ourselves as a species in the mirrors of the humanities. Otherwise, the automata of life amid social distancing mediated by the inhuman will obscure the humanities once for all. We will be informed that we need economics more than art. Before Corona, if this book were reviewed, as it has been by other critics, then one would follow the old methods of seeing this book as a chastisement to humanity. Now, reviewing within the ongoing covid-19 crisis, sitting in his sanitised room in the heart of Kolkata, Simon Blackburn's book reveals a different truth to this reviewer. Blackburn's insights should not be covered, though our eyes dazzle (see The Duchess of Malfi, 1612–3 CE). Blackburn's chapter titled 'Temptation' (132– 62) details the archaeology of beliefs, which are now certainly shaken by the current pandemic. Thus, Blackburn's observations are of greater relevance today, probably more poignant than he could have imagined when he wrote this book: Since many people find it difficult to conceive of religion without ontotheology, or in other words, doctrines about the extra entity or entities inhabiting the universe, it is perhaps necessary to pause to explain the alternative. Most people know of religions, such as the purer forms of Buddhism, or Jainism in India, that exist without the doctrine of a personal guiding deity or deities. But they may find it puzzling to know what sets these apart as genuine religions, if this element of belief is lacking. So let us think about this a little. The firebreathing atheists about whom we have heard so much recently-the celebrated quartet of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Dan Dennett-think of religious commitments in terms of mistaken or at least hopelessly improbable and therefore irrational ontology. Believers think that something exists, but the overwhelmingly probable truth is that it does not. This is their take-home message. Yet this