David Raphael Israel
7 min readMay 7, 2020

SYNCHRONICITY POEMS & FILMS

Notes toward an Esthetic Rubric

Yesterday I joined a small private Facebook discussion group (“Meher Baba and Jungian Psychology”). That day I also happened to read a poem of Charles Simic’s (“The Pleasures of Reading”) that struck me as (what one might dub) a “synchronicity poem.” I stowed the poem in a new Facebook album — thinking perhaps to compile a few such poems from time to time. This morning I then also posted a mini-essay to said group reflecting on said poem. Along with the poem, my ruminations cite two feature films as other examples of narrative works that, like Simic’s terse & fascinating poem, I feel serve to foreground & illuminate Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity.

Thinking to share these reflections more widely, I’ll copy below (in this, my debut Medium mini-essay) the noted FB post along with images giving the Simic poem & showing where & how I encountered it.

from: Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell (1994)

[The mini-essay follows. I do not, therein, adequately describe or elaborate on what I simply call “Meher Baba’s inner work,” so perhaps that is a lacuna in my cursory sketch — but (with apology) I’ll leave that as an undeveloped aspect of the topic under consideration, at present.]

I subscribe to tweets of Ardra Manasi, who, from NYC, has been selecting & tweeting a daily "quarantine poem" for the past month & a half (I believe coinciding with the pandemic lockdown in her city) -- poems drawn by her from various sources, mostly modern / contemporary. Yesterday’s item was a poem by Charles Simic -- whom I’ve long liked & whose work I hadn’t read from in a good while.

Charles Simic

It struck me as a "synchronicity poem” -- i.e., I noted how a strong imagination of synchronicity (in Jung’s sense — but here experienced as an intimate psychological & esthetic event in the form of an irrational & improbable, dream-like observation) emerges as the poem’s central, peculiar notion, its audacious metaphysical conceit.

This drew me to open a FB "album" in which I might assemble occasionally-encountered poems (& perhaps other texts) dealing with / relating to this Jungian theme or topic. So here's that new album -- with this initial entry (documented in 3 screenshots -- clicked on my ubiquitous mobile phone).

Any thoughts / responses to Simic's poem? Do you concur in my characterization of it as a "synchronicity poem"? Or at least, do you read it as a poem arguably embodying that specific experiential idea?

Also to consider: can synchronicity be understood or approached (as I’d opine it seems to be seen or conceived in this poem) as an "esthetic" experience per se? In this regard, note the poem’s title: “The Pleasures of Reading.”

Still from THE SACRIFICE — the part-time Postman, Otto (a friend of the protagonist Alexander) delivering a birthday card via bicycle near Alexander’s seaside house in rural Sweden, early in the film. Otto asks Alexander about his relationship with God. Over dinner, Otto remarks that collecting (documenting?) “inexplicable but true incidences” (synchronicity events) is a hobby of his. As the story develops further, Alexander (a middle-aged intellectual) attempts to strike a bargain with God to avert what seems an impending nuclear holocaust. Having vowed to sacrifice all he holds dear, he burns down his house.

Besides this compact poem (from Simic’s A Wedding in Hell (1994)), another 20th century work that I would submit as a synchronicity narrative artwork is Andre Tarkovsky’s film THE SACRIFICE (1986). The filmmaker, early on in the movie, announces Jungian synchronicity as a key topic in the film (according to me) by having the character of the Postman, Otto, describe his hobby of "collecting inexplicable but true incidences" having a specific characteristic. He then proceeds to give an example of what characteristic he keeps his eyes peeled for, in an event story. The story he tells to illustrate his idea is in fact told by Carl Jung in one of his principal synchronicity essays. [story, in Jung’s version to be inserted here — in forthcoming revision]

By my reading, through this narrative device — by telling a story speficially told by Jung in a foundational essay — Tarkovsky strongly signals or alerts the thoughtful viewer to the notion or inkling that synchronicity will sit front & center as a theme pondered in the film that is unfolding.

While Tarkovsky signals this early on in his perhaps 2-hour film, Simic draws attention to synchronicity as his poem’s subject or central idea only in the short poem’s concluding three lines:

Every time she turns a page,
I can hear my father turn one too,
As if they are reading the same book.

The poem seems especially interesting & affecting in the context of a quarantine poetry sequence — where the miniature event described by the narrator carries fresh resonance & suggestion. The act of reading is simultaneously deeply solitary & strangely shared, as Simic’s poem hauntingly portrays. That portrayal — as is typical of Simic’s distinctive & peculiar poetic sensibility — blossoms (one might say) into a species of magical realism. Does it strain the bounds of credibility, veering into a realm of imagination akin to an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare, except more delighting, satisfying & subtly thrilling rather than daunting, frightening & terrifying? In the most economical means possible [hinging a world of meaning on the sturdy though tentative & understated hinge phrase “as if”], the poet suddenly & deftly transports his reader into a lofty world of synchronized reading — rendering the quiet, private act of reading as a surreally contextualized & (if one may so phrase it) mystically socialized occurrence.

Since this is a Jung & Meher Baba discussion group [as originally posted], I should draw some line of connection to Meher Baba’s work. In my estimation, or from one point of view, much of Meher Baba’s "inner work" per se can be said to relate (in some manner) to inner-world connections between ostensibly separate persons & places & events. I’ve an overall notion that aspects or glimmers of a significant "feeling of connection" (related to mechanisms of such spiritual work) are oftentimes signalled for us by specific or general perceptions of the phenomena of synchronicity (or at times, somewhat relatedly, by deja vu experiences).

Synchronicity was a phenomenon that interested & drew the avid attention of Carl Jung, and that -- as a "scientist" -- he felt he had to explain. He does so by constructing a theoretical framework involving what he terms "acausal connections" between events. I find Jung’s theoretics in this regard a bit forced or hokey -- or maybe I just never fully or adequately grasped his idea re: "acausal connections." So perhaps I’ll need to revisit his synchronicity essay(s) & reconsider his theorizing. In any case, I feel Jung displayed acute insight in observing & drawing attention to synchronicity phenomena regardless whether I fully buy his effort to explain or justify (through an elaborate, so to speak quasi-scientific theory) the phenomena in question.

As a second example of a synchronicity film, I would submit for consideration THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991) directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski -- whose theme seems to involve an inner (sanskaric [as per Meher Baba’s Discourses] / i.e. presumably past-life) connection between two different womwn in distant cities (one in France, the other in Poland) who never actually meet in the film (though they almost meet at one point), both of whom are named Veronique, and both of whom seem somewhat / somehow aware of their inward connection. I’ve not seen the film in maybe 25 years. But when I saw it I was (like with Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice -- which was his 7th & final feature film) struck with the thought that it was (in part) "about" or illustrative of Jungian synchronicity.

d.i.

🐒🌸🐒🌸🐒

January 2, 2023:

I will append this anecdote poem.

[rispetto]
On January 2nd, news of my alleged double surfaces from Walnut Creek

(for Max & Barbara)

I’ve been told my surprise Mexican double
has been spotted 300 miles north
God forbid this forebode strange trouble
may instead cosmic laughter spring forth!

but tell me does he versify in Spanish?
& if we meet will we instantly both vanish?
alike the Double Life of Veronique perchance
our very existence hints at questions glimpsed askance

🙏🌸🐒

[Meher Baba / Carl Jung]

No responses yet