Work
Zimmer's method was to examine religious images using their sacred significance as a key to their psychic transformation. His use of (Indian) philosophy and religious history to interpret art was at odds with traditional scholarship. His vast knowledge of Hindu mythology and philosophy (particularly Puranic and Tantric works) gave him insights into the art, insights that were appreciated by Joseph Campbell among others. Campbell edited many of Zimmer's writings after his death. The psychiatrist Carl Jung also developed a long-standing relationship with Zimmer, and incidentally edited a volume of Zimmer's entitled Der Weg zum Selbst (The Way to the Self). The two men first met in 1932, after which Zimmer, along with Richard Wilhelm, became one of the few male friends of Jung.
Zimmer is credited by many for the popularizing of South Asian art in the West, as he was the first to identify the radical difference between Western classical and Indian art.
Read more about this topic: Heinrich Zimmer
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Read the Bible. Work hard and honestly. And don’t complain.”
—Billy Graham (b. 1918)
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)