The Tower at Bollingen, 1923

Gradually, through my scientific work, I was able to put my fantasies and the contents of the unconscious on a solid footing.

Words and paper did not seem real enough to me.

To put my fantasies on solid footing, something more was needed.I had to achieve a kind of representation in stone of my innermost thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired.

Put another way, I had to make a confession of faith in stone. 

That was the beginning of the “Tower,” the house I built for myself at Bollingen.

 I wanted a room in this tower where I could exist for myself alone.

It was settled from the start that I would build near the water.

I had always been curiously drawn by the scenic charm of the upper lake of Zurich, and so in 1922 I bought some land in Bollingen.

It is situated in the area of St. Meinrad and is old church land, having formerly belonged to the monastery of St. Gall.

At first I did not plan a proper house, but merely a kind of primitive one-story dwelling. It was to be a round structure with a hearth in the center and bunks along the walls.

I more or less had in mind an African hut where the fire, ringed by a few stones, burns in the middle, and the whole life of the family revolves around this center.

Primitive huts concretize an idea of wholeness, a familial wholeness in which al sorts of smal domestic animals likewise participate.

But I altered the plan even during the first stages of building, for I felt it was too primitive.

I realized it would have to be a regular two-story house, not a mere hut crouched on the ground.

So in 1923 the first round house was built, and when it was finished I saw that it had become a suitable dwelling tower.

The feeling of repose and renewal that I had in this tower was intense from the start.

It represented for me the maternal hearth.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections,

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