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Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past
This lively, intimate, sometimes disrespectful, but always knowledgeable history of the Bollingen Foundation confirms its pervasive influence on American intellectual life. Conceived by Paul and Mary Mellon as a means of publishing in English the collected works of C. G. Jung, the Foundation broadened to encompass scholarship and publication in a remarkable number of fields. Here are wonderful portraits of the central figures, including the Mellons, Jung himself, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, D. T. Suzuki, Natacha Rambova, Vladimir Nabokov, Gershom Scholem, Herbert Read, and Kurt and Helen Wolff. "Because we know so little about the role of foundations in American intellectual life, we welcome . . . William McGuire's delightful chronicle of the Bollingen Foundation. Mr. McGuire . . . writes as a participant, not as an outside historian. But he makes the most of his particular perspective. . . And he tempers his sympathetic attachment with a winning sense of irony, even irreverence."--Thomas Bender, The New York Times Book Review
364 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1982
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November 5, 2024
Bollingen, An Adventure in the Collecting the Past" by William McGuire, printed in 1989, can still be had as a 8.5" x 5.5" book on Amazon or try Abes Books. Given the book is a head spinner, packed with a dizzying amount of details you'll appreciate the extra space given to this slightly oversized paperback. It's also available on Archive.org but the amount of information imparted might make it a bit overwhelming to read it from there. The book is 361 pages, 292 of text with 29 pages of photos, till you get to the appendixes. One of which includes complete list of the Bollingen Books and another that list the Bollingen Fellows before exploring the well listed sources and very useful index.
My interest in reading the book is from wanting to know more about Natacha Rambova, particularly her connections to Egyptology, and I was rewarded with many new accounts of her already fascinating life. Some of which I'll try to include here. From there I was introduced to an equally fascinating woman, being Mary Elizebeth Conover Mellon (Brown). She is the woman who helped set up and run the Bollingen Foundation with her husband and pretty much made it hers while her husband was off to war.
Mary married into the then 5th richest family in the United States and Bollingen was a philanthropic organization set up at first as the Old Dominion and a month later in January 1942, as the Bollingen Foundation to enable them to run the foundation out of New York. It's stated focus "to stimulate, encourage and develop scholarship and research in the liberal arts and sciences and other fields of cultural endeavor generally" Of Mary there is this quote, "Keep alive imaginative books about man and the history of his soul" and as Board President that is precisely what Mary set out to do.
The Foundation was not a shabby affair, it was professionally staffed with a board of trustees, an overseeing agent in Washington DC, an editorial board of researchers, business persons and lawyers, the author of this book being among them making this book an insiders account and history on the affairs of Bollingen. Mary's intent, worked through her people, was to help guide and educate the conscious of Americans and English readers worldwide.
Mary would accomplish this in two ways. One being in identifying old books worthy of needing an English translation or a fresh and boosted English translation. Example the "I Ching Book of Changes" or Plato's "Timmaeus" and "Critias". The former suggested to Mary by Carl G. Jung, the later by Natacha Rambova for which she wrote the jacket cover for the book. The second, by providing modest grants to existing and promising new authors that would enable them to concentrate their efforts on their writings while securing a promise to print with Bollingen.
It's fair to say that near half of Bollingen's efforts were targeted toward getting C.G. Jung's books printed in English as well as the many authors that were being influenced by him. In total Bollingen printed 99 series of books, many series containing multiple books. It also had arrangements with approximately 332 authors or potential authors noted as Fellows. Not all of these were University trained like Natacha Rambova and Maude Oakes the self taught ethnologists studying the Navaho Indians and who not only introduced Natacha to Mary Mellon but also assisted Natacha for a short time in her Egyptian Expedition. Of special note, during WWII, Mary Mellon had direct access to Allan W Dulles head of the Swiss branch of the OSS during WWII and 1st and longest serving CIA director and called to vouch-safe her European and Asian Fellows like D.T. Suziki, and especially for C.G. Jung, who were coming under scrutiny of the Un American Committee in Congress. For what it's worth it should be fair to note that Mary's husband Paul was also a member of the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, during WWII and his father Andrew Mellon was the longest serving Secretary of the Treasury.
There is so much going on with this book that I need to narrow it down to Mary, Natacha and Egyptology or it won't fit on Good Reads at this point.
Other than this Bollingen book, there seems to be so little given about Mary. As best I can tell everything in this book sums up our knowledge about her. Her husband wrote a book about his life. Something about him being born with a Silver Spoon, in the title. Maybe something is there. It might serve to know how many languages she was fluent in but it seems she was able to converse with a good many Europeans directly so I assume she was conversant in more than one language. Anyway by 1934 Mary had somehow found an interest in Egyptology and the Pyramid Text (PT) in particular. The PT is still considered to be the first Religious writing in the world and to this day it's still not fully understood but part of that IMO is deliberate obfuscation. A simple side by side comparison of the PT with the myth on The Destruction of Man (DM) also known as The Book of Heavenly Cow would go far and revealing it's real importance. It's possible she read something by Masepro (Fr) who was involved in both, or got so tired of waiting on Sethe (Gr) to print something but in that year she met William Breasted on the Nile River. When one thinks of meetings on the Nile in that period one should think of an Elizabeth Peters novel with Amilea Peabody and one of those private barges where the meeting is surly hours and could be days. Anyway a deal was struck for him to produce a translation of the Pyramid Text in English. That didn’t happen however. He died a year later. His son offered it to Bollingen many years later but Mary was dissuaded with the claim Breasted's information would be too stale. This remained an unfulfilled wish for Mary. She'd die in 1946 at early age of 42 from complications resulting from a horseback riding accident on her estate while with her husband and not having her asthma inhaler handy.
There was another trip on the Nile in 1934 worth mention. It occurred with Natasha while married to her second husband, a Spanish count after her marriage with Rudolph Valentino. Natacha is said to have spent her first days in tears when arriving in Egypt as she claimed memories of past lives came flooding back to her having lived there in the past. That she'd finally returned home. That's not the important part though. She met Howard Carter on that trip and became his acquaintance. There's little doubt that this was the reason Piankoff was allowed access to the shrine of Tut-Ankh- Amon's shrine box allowing him to translate it for the public for first time since it's discovery 33 years earlier. The box was a four piece affair set up like a Chinese puzzle box. The outer most one gilded in gold, the inner ones fine wood, and the surfaces of the box on all sides contained among other things the full Myth of DM.
I see from McGuire's list of Bollingen fellows that Samuel A.B. Mercer is listed. He'd be the first to produce an English translation of the PT in 1952, but he went elsewhere to publish. Likely because he knew Natacha had been awarded her grant in 1949 for the same purpose. Mary knew of her from Maude Oaks who attended Natacha's apartment classes on Mythology, Theosophy, Astrology, and World Symbology. Mary kept Natacha on retainer as a future writer. After Mary's death in 1946, Natacha tooled around on the Nile River for two years before one day she walked into the museum of the French Institute of Archeology and Oriental Studies in Cairo, Egypt and walked out with an Egyptologist having absconded with one Professor Alexandre Piankoff. Of course it wasn't that clear cut. Mary first took a trip back to NY, made a proposal to Bollingen and was awarded with a 2yr fully outfitted expedition that would later be extended for an additional 3yrs. Along with paying Piankoff who would be credited for the 6 books the expedition produced, Bollingen gave her an additional school trained Egyptologist who left early not seeing eye to eye with Natacha who ran the expedition while in the field, bringing Piankoff what he needed to his Cairo offices. Natacha was also given a photographer and a graphic artist that would stay with Natacha right up to her own tragic death in 1966. Her death involved a prolonged disease, one she had no heredity disposition for, a psychotic episode, and electro shock therapy from which family had to be called in from California to rescue her from the doctors. This strangely enough would be followed by Piankoff's sudden death 6 weeks later while succumbing to a heart attack while strolling on the streets of Brussels where he'd gone to meet family. It's said Piankoff was unaware of Natacha's current plight.
Of the 6 books printed between 1954-1974 in this Bollingen series on Egyptian Religious Representation, Natacha is credited with editing 3. It should be 4 though as within the pages of "The Pyramid of Unas" she is credited as assisting in the book and it certainly reads as if she had been the editor but the book was still in manuscript form when both passed and Bollingen published it almost 2 years later in 1968. Ultimately Mary's wish had been fulfilled. The end product was the PT and the Myth of DM laid out side by side in not 2 but 3 separate books. Since then the world has done a deliberately lousy job of over lapping them in my opinion, as they deal with the Divine Right of Kings to Rule, which would leave Unas as it's poster child and since it's still an active endeavor, he'd make for a poor example but that's a subject of another several book reviews yet written.
This McGuire book says Mary donated a 1000 page manuscript to Yale University, but it turns out it is 2 manuscripts. They are part of the Natacha Rambova Archive. Only serious researchers are allowed access. It contains “The Cosmic Circuit, Religious Origins of the Zodiac” and “The Mystery Pattern in Ancient Symbolism A Philosophic Interpretation.” There are also over 10,000 additional items, including photographs, drawings, notes, and letters. These are in addition to other Rambova collections in two other museums that are open to the public.
There is so much more in that book on Natacha and many others not touched upon, mostly of C.J. Jung but many others as well. Thank You Mr McGuire.
A last thing not in the book. An image search shows Mary has an ominous tomb stone marker over her very modest grave at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville, Virginia where a hissing snake is found squeezing a bundle of reeds.
My interest in reading the book is from wanting to know more about Natacha Rambova, particularly her connections to Egyptology, and I was rewarded with many new accounts of her already fascinating life. Some of which I'll try to include here. From there I was introduced to an equally fascinating woman, being Mary Elizebeth Conover Mellon (Brown). She is the woman who helped set up and run the Bollingen Foundation with her husband and pretty much made it hers while her husband was off to war.
Mary married into the then 5th richest family in the United States and Bollingen was a philanthropic organization set up at first as the Old Dominion and a month later in January 1942, as the Bollingen Foundation to enable them to run the foundation out of New York. It's stated focus "to stimulate, encourage and develop scholarship and research in the liberal arts and sciences and other fields of cultural endeavor generally" Of Mary there is this quote, "Keep alive imaginative books about man and the history of his soul" and as Board President that is precisely what Mary set out to do.
The Foundation was not a shabby affair, it was professionally staffed with a board of trustees, an overseeing agent in Washington DC, an editorial board of researchers, business persons and lawyers, the author of this book being among them making this book an insiders account and history on the affairs of Bollingen. Mary's intent, worked through her people, was to help guide and educate the conscious of Americans and English readers worldwide.
Mary would accomplish this in two ways. One being in identifying old books worthy of needing an English translation or a fresh and boosted English translation. Example the "I Ching Book of Changes" or Plato's "Timmaeus" and "Critias". The former suggested to Mary by Carl G. Jung, the later by Natacha Rambova for which she wrote the jacket cover for the book. The second, by providing modest grants to existing and promising new authors that would enable them to concentrate their efforts on their writings while securing a promise to print with Bollingen.
It's fair to say that near half of Bollingen's efforts were targeted toward getting C.G. Jung's books printed in English as well as the many authors that were being influenced by him. In total Bollingen printed 99 series of books, many series containing multiple books. It also had arrangements with approximately 332 authors or potential authors noted as Fellows. Not all of these were University trained like Natacha Rambova and Maude Oakes the self taught ethnologists studying the Navaho Indians and who not only introduced Natacha to Mary Mellon but also assisted Natacha for a short time in her Egyptian Expedition. Of special note, during WWII, Mary Mellon had direct access to Allan W Dulles head of the Swiss branch of the OSS during WWII and 1st and longest serving CIA director and called to vouch-safe her European and Asian Fellows like D.T. Suziki, and especially for C.G. Jung, who were coming under scrutiny of the Un American Committee in Congress. For what it's worth it should be fair to note that Mary's husband Paul was also a member of the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, during WWII and his father Andrew Mellon was the longest serving Secretary of the Treasury.
There is so much going on with this book that I need to narrow it down to Mary, Natacha and Egyptology or it won't fit on Good Reads at this point.
Other than this Bollingen book, there seems to be so little given about Mary. As best I can tell everything in this book sums up our knowledge about her. Her husband wrote a book about his life. Something about him being born with a Silver Spoon, in the title. Maybe something is there. It might serve to know how many languages she was fluent in but it seems she was able to converse with a good many Europeans directly so I assume she was conversant in more than one language. Anyway by 1934 Mary had somehow found an interest in Egyptology and the Pyramid Text (PT) in particular. The PT is still considered to be the first Religious writing in the world and to this day it's still not fully understood but part of that IMO is deliberate obfuscation. A simple side by side comparison of the PT with the myth on The Destruction of Man (DM) also known as The Book of Heavenly Cow would go far and revealing it's real importance. It's possible she read something by Masepro (Fr) who was involved in both, or got so tired of waiting on Sethe (Gr) to print something but in that year she met William Breasted on the Nile River. When one thinks of meetings on the Nile in that period one should think of an Elizabeth Peters novel with Amilea Peabody and one of those private barges where the meeting is surly hours and could be days. Anyway a deal was struck for him to produce a translation of the Pyramid Text in English. That didn’t happen however. He died a year later. His son offered it to Bollingen many years later but Mary was dissuaded with the claim Breasted's information would be too stale. This remained an unfulfilled wish for Mary. She'd die in 1946 at early age of 42 from complications resulting from a horseback riding accident on her estate while with her husband and not having her asthma inhaler handy.
There was another trip on the Nile in 1934 worth mention. It occurred with Natasha while married to her second husband, a Spanish count after her marriage with Rudolph Valentino. Natacha is said to have spent her first days in tears when arriving in Egypt as she claimed memories of past lives came flooding back to her having lived there in the past. That she'd finally returned home. That's not the important part though. She met Howard Carter on that trip and became his acquaintance. There's little doubt that this was the reason Piankoff was allowed access to the shrine of Tut-Ankh- Amon's shrine box allowing him to translate it for the public for first time since it's discovery 33 years earlier. The box was a four piece affair set up like a Chinese puzzle box. The outer most one gilded in gold, the inner ones fine wood, and the surfaces of the box on all sides contained among other things the full Myth of DM.
I see from McGuire's list of Bollingen fellows that Samuel A.B. Mercer is listed. He'd be the first to produce an English translation of the PT in 1952, but he went elsewhere to publish. Likely because he knew Natacha had been awarded her grant in 1949 for the same purpose. Mary knew of her from Maude Oaks who attended Natacha's apartment classes on Mythology, Theosophy, Astrology, and World Symbology. Mary kept Natacha on retainer as a future writer. After Mary's death in 1946, Natacha tooled around on the Nile River for two years before one day she walked into the museum of the French Institute of Archeology and Oriental Studies in Cairo, Egypt and walked out with an Egyptologist having absconded with one Professor Alexandre Piankoff. Of course it wasn't that clear cut. Mary first took a trip back to NY, made a proposal to Bollingen and was awarded with a 2yr fully outfitted expedition that would later be extended for an additional 3yrs. Along with paying Piankoff who would be credited for the 6 books the expedition produced, Bollingen gave her an additional school trained Egyptologist who left early not seeing eye to eye with Natacha who ran the expedition while in the field, bringing Piankoff what he needed to his Cairo offices. Natacha was also given a photographer and a graphic artist that would stay with Natacha right up to her own tragic death in 1966. Her death involved a prolonged disease, one she had no heredity disposition for, a psychotic episode, and electro shock therapy from which family had to be called in from California to rescue her from the doctors. This strangely enough would be followed by Piankoff's sudden death 6 weeks later while succumbing to a heart attack while strolling on the streets of Brussels where he'd gone to meet family. It's said Piankoff was unaware of Natacha's current plight.
Of the 6 books printed between 1954-1974 in this Bollingen series on Egyptian Religious Representation, Natacha is credited with editing 3. It should be 4 though as within the pages of "The Pyramid of Unas" she is credited as assisting in the book and it certainly reads as if she had been the editor but the book was still in manuscript form when both passed and Bollingen published it almost 2 years later in 1968. Ultimately Mary's wish had been fulfilled. The end product was the PT and the Myth of DM laid out side by side in not 2 but 3 separate books. Since then the world has done a deliberately lousy job of over lapping them in my opinion, as they deal with the Divine Right of Kings to Rule, which would leave Unas as it's poster child and since it's still an active endeavor, he'd make for a poor example but that's a subject of another several book reviews yet written.
This McGuire book says Mary donated a 1000 page manuscript to Yale University, but it turns out it is 2 manuscripts. They are part of the Natacha Rambova Archive. Only serious researchers are allowed access. It contains “The Cosmic Circuit, Religious Origins of the Zodiac” and “The Mystery Pattern in Ancient Symbolism A Philosophic Interpretation.” There are also over 10,000 additional items, including photographs, drawings, notes, and letters. These are in addition to other Rambova collections in two other museums that are open to the public.
There is so much more in that book on Natacha and many others not touched upon, mostly of C.J. Jung but many others as well. Thank You Mr McGuire.
A last thing not in the book. An image search shows Mary has an ominous tomb stone marker over her very modest grave at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville, Virginia where a hissing snake is found squeezing a bundle of reeds.
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