Károly Kerényi  

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Károly (Carl, Karl) Kerényi (January 19, 1897 – April 14, 1973) was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology.

Education

At the University of Budapest he followed a program in classical philology with a doctorate on Plato and Longinus and aesthetic theory in Antiquity, and read widely. In the following years he taught in Hungary at the secondary school level, travelled in Greece and Italy, and followed courses at Greifswald, Heidelberg and the University of Berlin. His first book Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung ("The Greek-Oriental Romances in the Light of the history of Religions"), dedicated to Franz Boll, was published in 1927 and earned him an appointment as Privatdozent at Budapest. He became professor of classical philology and ancient history at Pécs (1934), a visiting professor in Classical Antiquities at the University of Budapest and at Szeged (1941), until he moved finally to exile in Switzerland (1943). There he remained for the rest of his life, marginal to any Academic engagement and enrollment (a difficulty that became, too, his freedom from any scientific compromise). He explored consecutively and in detail, throughout his life, every classical site, known or unknown, of the entire Mediterranean. In Greece in 1929 he met W. F. Otto, who influenced him to combine the studies of comparative religions and social history, while his friendship with Carl Jung induced him to take the findings of modern psychology into consideration as well, at least for a while. Kerényi's long correspondence with Thomas Mann was published in English in 1975 (a first part, in German, was published in 1946 under the title Romandichtung und Mythologie and a second part in 1960 under the title Gespräch in Briefen: Zweiter Teil (1945-1955)). Also known is his correspondence with Hermann Hesse, Hermann Hesse - Karl Kerényi. Briefwechsel aus der Nähe, published in 1972 by his wife Magda. Both of these publications testify to how modern literature had an important role in the development of his methodological approach to ancient mythology.

Career

His distinguished career took place during decades when far-right ideologies became more and more influential. "The distinguished scientist and thinker Károly Kerényi once said that the spirit of abstraction opened doors to national socialism when Jews as personalities were substituted by the impersonal category of "Jewry" - "to kill Jews" sounds dreadfully; "to liquidate Jewry" resembles a description of some logical operation" (Averintsev). In the post-war turmoil, Kerényi, living in Switzerland since 1943, was doubly tainted as a prominent member of the former Hungarian intellectual Establishment and the bearer of an aristocratic name, unable to find work in the Stalinist regime of Mátyás Rákosi after the philosopher-potentate György Lukács, condemned him as "the cart pusher of fascism", Kerényi was forced to emigrate permanently, and became a citizen of Switzerland in the late 1940s. From 1940 onwards, Carl Jung had started to invite him to participate in the Eranos famous annual conferences about religion, mysticism and theological subjects (the Swiss society, located in a Villa of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn in Ascona). Fascinated by the beauty of the region, Kerényi decided to remain there renting the famous «Villa Sogno», his first house in the land that was destined to became his second homeland. It was through Joland Jacobi, a collaborator of Carl Jung, that he got in touch with the psychologist with whom he became a close friend and, in some way, a collaborator. Carl Jung described him as having "supplied such a wealth of connections [of psychology] with Greek mythology that the cross-fertilization of the two branches of science can no longer be doubted." In 1949 Jung and Kerényi published together Essays on the Science of Mythology: the Myths of the Divine Child and the Divine Maiden. Kerényi and Jung both furnished commentaries to Paul Radin's The Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology, where Kerényi saw the Trickster figure as the "enemy of boundaries."

In 1961 he was inducted into the Royal Norwegian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Uppsala and the gold medal of the Humboldt Society.

As a historian of myth as it was embedded in the details of Hellenic culture, its "characteristic social existence" as he put it, Kerényi opposed his "differentiated thinking about the concrete realities of human life" with the "summary thinking" that represented for him the influence of Sir James Frazer on the study of the peoples of antiquity and Greek religion especially (Preface to Dionysus p xxvii).

Bibliography

Kerényi brought to the Greek myths the art of hermeneutics, interpreted by C. Moustakas (Phenomenological Research Methods 1994) as "the art of reading a text so that the intention and meaning behind appearances are fully understood". Central to his work was his series of book-length essays on archetypes of Greek mythology. Five were translated into English and published as Bollingen Series LXV:

Works and publications

First Editions:

• Apollon. Studien über antike Religion und Humanität (Apollo: The Wind, the Spirit, and the God) (1937)
• Das ägäische Fest. Die Meergötterszene in Goethes Faust II (1941)
• Der Mythos der Hellenen in Meisterwerken der Münzkunst (1941)
• Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie (C. G. Jung/Károly Kerényi) (1942)
• Hermes, der Seelenführer (Hermes: Guide of Souls) (1943)
• Mysterien der Kabiren (1944)
• Töchter der Sonne, Betrachtungen über griechische Gottheiten (Goddesses of Sun and Moon) (1944)
• Bachofen und die Zukunft des Humanismus. Mit einem Intermezzo über Nietzsche und Ariadne (1945)
• Die Geburt der Helena samt humanistischen Schriften aus den Jahren 1943–45 (1945)
• Prometheus. Das griechische Mythologem von der menschlichen Existenz (Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence) (1946)
• Der Göttliche Arzt. Studien über Asklepius und seine Kultstätte (Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician's Existence) (1948')
• Niobe. Neue Studien über Antike Religion und Humanität (1949)
• Mensch und Maske (1949)
• Pythagoras und Orpheus. Präludien zu einer zukünftigen Geschichte der Orphik und des Pythagoreismus (1950)
• Labyrinth-Studien (1950)
• Die Mythologie der Griechen (The Mythology of the Greeks)
  • Volume 1: Die Götter- und Menschheitsgeschichten (Gods of the Greeks) (1951)
  • Volume 2: Die Heroen der Griechen (The Heroes of the Greeks) [later also published as Heroengeschichten or Heroen-Geschichten] (1958)
• Die Jungfrau und Mutter der griechischen Religion. Eine Studie über Pallas Athene (Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion) (1952)
• Stunden in Griechenland, Horai Hellenikai (1952)
• Unwillkürliche Kunstreisen. Fahrten im alten Europa 1952 (1954)
• Geistiger Weg Europas: Fünf Vorträge über Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Thomas Mann, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Homer und Hölderlin, Zürich (1955)
• Umgang mit Göttlichem (1955)
• Griechische Miniaturen (1957)
• Gespräch in Briefen (Mythology and Humanism: The Correspondence of Thomas Mann and Karl Kerényi) (Thomas Mann/Károly Kerényi) (1960)
• Streifzüge eines Hellenisten, Von Homer zu Kazantzakis (1960)
• Prometheus – Die menschliche Existenz in griechischer Deutung (1962)
• Die Mysterien von Eleusis (Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter) (1962)
• Tessiner Schreibtisch (1963)
• Die Religion der Griechen und Römer (The Religion of the Greeks and Romans) (1963)
• Die Eröffnung des Zugangs zum Mythos (1967)
• Der antike Roman (1971)
• Briefwechsel aus der Nähe (Hermann Hesse/Károly Kerényi) (1972)
• Zeus und Hera. Urbild des Vaters, des Gatten und der Frau (Zeus and Hera: Archetypal Image of Father, Husband and Wife) (1972)
• Oedipus Variations: Studies in Literature and Psychoanalysis (James Hillman/Károly Kerényi) (1991)

Complete Works:

• Complete Works in Individual Volumes, Magda Kerényi (ed.). Eight parts in nine volumes. Langen-Müller, Munich 1966–1988
  • Volume 1: Humanistische Seelenforschung (1966)
  • Volume 2: Auf Spuren des Mythos (1967)
  • Volume 3: Tage- und Wanderbücher 1953–1960 (1969)
  • Volume 4: Apollon und Niobe (1980)
  • Volume 5: Wege und Weggenossen (2 Bde., 1985 u. 1988)
  • Volume 6: (not published)
  • Volume 7: Antike Religion (1971)
  • Volume 8: Dionysos : Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens (1976)

• Complete Works in Individual Volumes, Magda Kerényi (ed.). Five volumes. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1994–1998
  • Volume 1: Dionysos : Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens (1994)
  • Volume 2: Antike Religion (1995)
  • Volume 3: Humanistische Seelenforschung (1996)
  • Volume 4: Die Mythologie der Griechen (Two volumes, 1997)
  • Volume 5: Urbilder der griechischen Religion: Asklepios. Prometheus. Hermes. Und die Mysterien der Kabiren (1998)