The King and the Corpse

Fülszöveg

This is a group of popular stories from Eastern and Western literatures, linked to one another bv their common coneern for the problem of man's eternal conflict with the forces of evil. In the retelling of the tales, Heinrich Zimmer's commentary diseloses the meanings within each apparently unrelated syrnbol and suggests the philosophical wholeness of this assortment of myth. Begínning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, the theme unfolds through legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian eyele, and early Hinduism (the tale which gives this volume its title), and culminates in a classie Hindu myth of superhuman love, given here for the first time in a Western language. "This handsome volume ... is the yield of what can be called an Indologian's holiday. Zimmer was not only a scholar versed in Sanskrit texts, but a profoundiy agitated mind living in the present as well as in the past. So he wandered to and fro between the ages, trying to decode the symbolic... Tovább

Fülszöveg

This is a group of popular stories from Eastern and Western literatures, linked to one another bv their common coneern for the problem of man's eternal conflict with the forces of evil. In the retelling of the tales, Heinrich Zimmer's commentary diseloses the meanings within each apparently unrelated syrnbol and suggests the philosophical wholeness of this assortment of myth. Begínning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, the theme unfolds through legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian eyele, and early Hinduism (the tale which gives this volume its title), and culminates in a classie Hindu myth of superhuman love, given here for the first time in a Western language. "This handsome volume ... is the yield of what can be called an Indologian's holiday. Zimmer was not only a scholar versed in Sanskrit texts, but a profoundiy agitated mind living in the present as well as in the past. So he wandered to and fro between the ages, trying to decode the symbolic language of old myths in terms of contemporary experience. Here is the result of his wanderings. Expertly edited by Joseph Campbell, these essays rest upon Zimmer's belief-a belief which he shares with Jung and others-that the spiritual heritage of archaic man still survives in 'the deeper unconscious layers of our souL' His meditations are a compound of psychology and mythology. They are ingratiating because they are not meant to be more than the musings of a learned dilettante.'1- Siegfried Kracauer, Saturday Revieto "With what modesty and what success Zimmer conceals the vast store of learning and immense apparatus of critical research which underlie his plain yarn-spinning!"-Victor White, O.P., The Commonweal "Dr. Zimmer . . . had a belief in the capacity of intellect and imagination to be informed, stimulated and enriched by the apparently innocent but morally reverberating symbols of ancient tales, without the need to conclude that such symbols could be caged by a convenient formula. He had what few investigators ever have-a freedom from inherited preconceptions and a susceptibility to the universal implications of his díscoveries."-Edwin Honig, Neiv Mexico Quarterly Review The King and the Corpse was prepared by Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton/Bollingen), from extensive notes left by the great Germán Indologist Heinrich Zimmer at his death in New York in 1943. It is one of three other volumes (alsó in Bollingen Series) reconstructed from materials that Zimmer left unfinished: Myti-is and Symbols in Indián Art and Civilization, Philosophies of India, afcd The Art of Indián Asia. Of these, the first two titles are alsó available in Princeton/ Bollingen Paperbacks. Vissza