2020 Winter Lecture Series C.G. Jung Society of Vancouver

Jung and Ravenna
The Red Book, Visioning, Rebirth
January 31st, 2020 at 7:30pm
Museum of Vancouver - 1100 Chestnut Street
www.jungvancouver.org

Tickets are sold at the door: $15 for Members / $20 for Non-Members



Jung traveled at least twice to Ravenna, and each time his encounters with Byzantine history, architecture and art made the deepest impression upon him. Through this talk we will explore the different ways in which Jung entered in communion with the images — inner and outer, visible and invisible — that he beheld in Ravenna: from the early years, when the memory of Byzantine mosaics informed his pictorial technique in The Red Book; to his middle years, when those same mosaics gifted him with the vision of a scene of the unseen they seemed subtly to enshrine; to his late years, when his memories of those journeys gathered in one of the most astonishing pages of Memories, Dreams, Reflections. At the core of all these creative experiences sits Jung's most precious insight: the power of visioning as initiatory path to rebirth, so mysteriously connected to the age-long, well-guarded secrets of Ravenna's enigmatic mosaics.

Daniela Boccassini is Professor of Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is preparing a monograph on Dante and Jung, some of whose chapters, presented at the Jung Society of Vancouver over the last few years, have now appeared in The Jung Journal and Harvest. In this lecture she addresses one of the themes central to that book project: rebirth as the foundation of both Dante's and Jung's visionary art and eminently healing work.