Vladimir Nabokov

Jung's Synchronicity (1952)

By William Dane, 26 April, 2025
Jung has come up a few times on the listserve of late--during the 150th anniversary year of his birth, no less. Synchronicity is an interesting text through a Nabokovian lens, notably in terms of Fate, where a number of VN protagonists have fictively created all or part of their text, so that the question Who is Fate is straightforward to answer in reality (VN) but less so fictively. Of course in any novel's content nothing happens by chance; which Jung argues is somehow also the case with apparently coincidental occurences in reality. Related are the "synchronizations" Nabokov points out in Joyce's Ulysses in his Lecture on same. It's one of Jung's shorter texts, readable in a day or two.

Alexey Sklyarenko

3 weeks 4 days ago

I notice that in Synchronicity C. G. Jung quotes Goethe's words to Eckermann: 

 

“We all have certain electric and magnetic powers within us and ourselves exercise an attractive and repelling force, according as we come into touch with something like or unlike.”

 

In a letter of Feb. 6, 1891, to Suvorin Chekhov mentions Goethe and Eckermann (whose "Conversations" Chekhov wanted to use in his novella The Duel):

 

Гёте и Эккерман легки на помине. Я недавно упоминал об их разговорах в своей великой повести. Называю ее великою, потому что она в самом деле выходит великою, т. е. большою и длинною, так что даже мне надоело писать ее. Пишу громоздко и неуклюже, а главное -- без плана. Ну, да всё равно. Пусть Буренин получит еще новое доказательство, что молодые писатели ни к чёрту не годятся.

 

In Chekhov's tale Tri goda ("Three Years", 1895) Panaurov says that love is an example of the action of electricity:

 

"Panaurov expounded didactically what being in love was, and what it was due to:

'We have in it an example of the action of electricity,' he said in French addressing the lady. 'Every man has in his skin microscopic glands which contain currents of electricity. If you meet a person whose currents are parallel with your own, then you get love'. (Chapter IV)

MARYROSS

3 weeks 3 days ago

Right! "Synchronicity," a now-common term was coined by Jung.  It deals primarily with acausal coincidences that cannot be explained, yet seem meaningful.  This included his belief in astrology and other paranormal events such as mediumship. He claimed that synchronicities increased as one progressed through the path of psycho-spiritual "Individuation."VN's (and Van Veen's) ideas on Time share significantly with Jung's. VN frequently used the word "synchronization" to denote this idea, such as "cosmic synchronization."

Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine….That summer I was still far too young [Jung] to evolve any wealth of “cosmic synchronization

(VN, SM, p.28)  

i.e. He was too young (Jung) to have experienced the phenomenon of synchronicity.

“…trillions of other trifles occur-all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at Ithaca NY) is the nucleus” (VN, SM, p218)

The "poet" sitting in the chair is himself part of everything that is happening in the moment, and therefore just a point of centrality in the "transparent organism" where every point is a center in the matrix.

Just another commonality between the two men....