Having learned from psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard about the text, Fellini used it for divination in a very personal way.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 2 of 2. Read article 1.
In the first article of this series, we explored the relationship of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini with German psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard, who introduced him to the “I Ching,” the Chinese Book of Changes, and the different accounts of how they first met in 1961.
Be it as it may be, it was a momentous meeting. At a time when he was exploring esoteric masters, including a few charlatans, Fellini as he reported “was fortunate to meet a wise and good man. Without disappointing me in my anxiety to see the landscapes of the magical world in a fantastic way, he accepted my point of view. The thing later did not lose its charm but acquired a less vague and distressing one: to look at these things not as an unknown world outside you, but as a world within you. In a way, I understood that this world is not magical, but psychological.”
When Bernhard died in 1965, Fellini expressed his debt to him: “I owe you so much of my life. I owe you the possibility of continuing to live with moments of joy. I owe you the discovery of a new dimension of a new sense of everything, of a new religiosity… Thank you, forever brotherly friend, my true father. Help me from where you are now, blissful spirit. Peace to your good soul. Remember us, we all love you dearly in our souls. Farewell, farewell, friend of the heart, a true holy man.”
What Fellini owed most to Bernhard was his introduction to the “I Ching.” After Bernhard’s death, Fellini reported that “When I visited him, I saw that every now and then, across the table, he would cast an eye down, to the right. I thought it was an uncontrollable tic. Then, once, maybe because there was not enough light, he lifted up a book. And it was indeed the ‘I Ching,’ whose personal copy was given to me by his wife [Dora, 1896–1998] after his death.”
Fellini understood the sacred nature of the “I Ching.” A visitor was shown Bernhard’s copy of the book inherited by the filmmaker. “Fellini gets up. He opens a cabinet and pulls it out. Bound in leather, it is stored in a black silk cloth, raised well off the floor. As tradition dictates. ‘It is a bit like kneeling for Catholics [Fellini explained]; a ritual to follow, abandoning our snooty rationality.’”
When Fellini asked Bernhard about the “I Ching,” the psychoanalyst inquired whether he was familiar with Taoism. Fellini answered he was not, and Bernhard started lecturing him on the Tao, before explaining about the different interpretations of the “I Ching” and how to use it for divination.
There was, however, a problem. Bernhard insisted that genuine Chinese coins were needed for “I Ching” divination, and the real ones were rare. He would not give to Fellini his own set. At that time, China was not generally open to Western visitors. Luckily, Fellini was friend with a literary critic who was also a politician of the Italian Communist Party, Antonello Trombadori (1917–1993). When Trombadori went to China as part of an Italian Communist delegation, Fellini directed him to a Chinese admirer of his films, who managed to find “I Ching” coins certified as authentic by a Chinese master.
Fellini’s relationship with Bernhard was not always easy. The filmmaker interpreted his dreams and even the results of divination to the effect that a “master” other than Bernhard would soon appear in his life. He (or she) never did, although Fellini had some bad experiences with psychics who were mostly after his money. Bernhard tried to explain to him that he should find the “master” indicated by the “I Ching” inside himself.
Until the end of his life, Fellini kept in his wallet an old piece of paper with a response he once got from the “I Ching”: “You must seek the one who will enlighten you, he is not a guru nor a priest nor a sage. He does not intend to enlighten you and in fact he does not intend to do anything. He burns bright with passion and without intent. Without you, he is lost just as you are lost without him. His light dies if you do not reflect it. Your life is dark without his light.” Perhaps, he finally came to understand what it meant.
Once, Fellini was asked whether relying on the “I Ching” was not somewhat scary. “If it were so,” he answered, “we should avoid falling asleep at night. Because this book, in essence, dreams for us. It speaks the same symbolic, mysterious, and indecipherable language of dreams. Therefore, it gives me no disquiet, in fact it comforts me. Like knocking at the door of a castle…”
But wasn’t Fellini, as many Westerners were, tempted to “adjust” the divination so that it corresponded to its wishes? “It is inevitable,” he said, “that we tend to pull the ‘interpretation’ of the hexagrams in our favor.” And when the answer clearly runs contrary to what we would have preferred, “it triggers,” Fellini explained, “the same mechanism you have toward the bad dream; you think it was not aimed at you, but at the one who had slept in that bed before you. Or you end up saying: after all it is an archaic, obscure book…”
Sometimes, it happened to Fellini to rebel against an “I Ching” answer. As a movie professional, he was reminded of a line of actor Walter Matthau (1920–2000). His character did believe that maxims written on papers wrapping cookies in Chinese restaurants were generally significant. However, when he found a maxim advising him against a financial investment he believed was good, he exclaimed “But what the heck do these Chinese know?”
Fellini reported that “Confucius himself, on one occasion at least, expressed dissatisfaction with the vagueness of the answer” of the “I Ching.” But the Confucian wisdom also cautioned against rejecting the “I Ching” advice lightly. “I happened once not to accept it. And I tried again to consult it. Do you know what the new answer was? Hexagram four, ‘youthful foolishness,’ which says … ‘I do not seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me. Consulted the first time I give response. If somebody questions two, three times, that is importuning. If they become importunate, I give no response.’”
Fellini said he learned from Bernhard that the key to a successful life is to make the “I Ching” your friend—although he joked that for Bernhard “it was more as if the book were his wife.” “And indeed,” Fellini added, “the ‘I Ching’ for me is a friend, toward whom I feel esteem, respect, and sometimes genuine wonder. I might add that what I have found is that his answers become all the more pertinent the more sincere the questions are, and the person asking them puts himself in a condition of humility, to receive help.”
The “I Ching” “is called for this reason ‘The Book of Changes,’” Fellini concluded, “which refers back to the Taoist idea of the door, which sees us placed neither on this side nor on the other, but on the threshold. Question and answer are just two adjacent steps in our Tao, in our path.” Westerners perhaps should not try to understand, he suggested. They should just stand “in surprise before the psychological and moral depth of a text capable of synthesizing in sixty-four hexagrams the whole human adventure. And capable above all of making you change perspective, point of view. Because beyond the flowery and seductive language of the verses, this is its great virtue. To make you realize that you are not the problem; that the problem can disappear if you try to approach it from a different angle.”
Fellini, after all, was Fellini. Perhaps his “I Ching” remained a somewhat Westernized version. But, he said, “I Ching” divination “worked” and greatly helped him. And he took it with a grain of humor. Perpetually fascinated with the spirit and folklore of Naples, towards the end of his life he had concluded that “a Neapolitan could have written the ‘I Ching.’ I mean it seriously… Only they have the same tolerance and understanding, in a genuinely Christian sense; the same wisdom and irony; the sense of drama and the need to endure it with jest. And they are similarly able to change your perspective, your point of view. Think of how they react when faced with a long, interminable speech. They raise their hand, rotating it. And they say only one word: Ebbé? [So what?].”