The House with the Maiden

During the month of August 2026, I returned to the city where I had grown up. My birthday had passed on the 13th, and later that month, on the 28th of August, I went once more toward that quarter of the city where my childhood still seemed to linger, and where certain images of earlier days still haunt me. As I approached those places, it seemed to me that I was drawing near not merely to streets or houses, but to a psychic region, a living container in which the past had not entirely died. When I looked inwardly upon the image of my childhood, it appeared to me as a great house. In that house I dwelt much alone, and yet I was not alone. Solitude filled the empty place, but it was not empty. The place was inhabited by presences, by fantasies, by silent companions of the soul, by those invisible forms which surround the child long before he possesses words for them. Thus the house of childhood was at once a refuge and a world, an enclosure and a kingdom, and even now I sense that something of my inner life first took shape there, hidden within its walls. As I walked, I saw a gate in the wall. I do not remember ever having noticed it before. It stood open. A man was coming down from the house, and a luxurious black car passed outward through the gate. For the first time I looked beyond the wall and saw the house itself. I stood there astonished and thought:

“What a house. How enormous it is.”

"How had I never noticed it?"

It seemed to me like one of those houses into which a man might disappear, not from life, but into its depths. I wondered what kind of life its inhabitants must lead. Here one could descend far into the solitude of one’s own soul, and yet remain only a few steps from the movement of the outer world. The house seemed to stand between two opposites. Behind its walls was enclosure, silence, and depth; beyond its gate were the street, other men, events, movement, and life. Yet neither side appeared to exclude the other. Something third seemed to arise between them, a strange manner of living in which one might belong fully to solitude without becoming separated from the world.

Then I entered, and there I saw a maiden. A beautiful maiden stood at the window and smiled at me. She wore a white dress adorned with small touches of pink. Her hair was blonde, and her appearance seemed to hover in that strange threshold between girlhood and womanhood, where innocence has not yet vanished, yet something of the feminine soul has already begun to announce itself. She smiled and waved at me from the window. Then, almost as suddenly as she had appeared, she turned and ran back into the house, as though something within had called her away.

I: “I’m not supposed to be here. God, I shouldn't be here.”

I looked around me to see whether anyone saw me entering someone's palace and for a moment I thought of myself as an actual convict. Then the maiden came out through the door.

I: “Hey, sorry if I’m here. I truly do not know why I’m here.”

Maiden: “That’s okay. It is very rare for a man to come to our house.”

I: “Why is that? Do you live alone?”

Maiden: “The closest way I could describe it is that you can think of me as being held hostage by my father. My father is kind of the scholarly man that likes private tutoring, and I've done this since I was a kid. I also like to play piano and I like drawing. He is a wealthy man. He brings me books and tutors, but I was never a schoolgirl. I have always wondered what the lives of the students outside were like.

“You see that window? I always wave to the students from there. I have even made friends with some of them through the window. Are you a student?”

I: “You could say so, sometimes I am.”

Maiden: “You don’t seem like a student, nor a scholar. It seems as though you came from some strange land. Your clothes are all torn up, so you don’t look like some rich man either.”

Then she took my hand in hers and looked at it.

Maiden: “These are not the hands of a scholar. That much I can tell.”

I: “So, Where's your dad?”

Maiden: “Well, I truly don't know where he is, but he might sometime come in.”

I: “And where's your mom?”

Maiden: “She... she died when I was eight.”

I: “Do you miss her from time to time?”

Maiden: “Sometimes, but I feel like I receive enough love from my father for both of them. He can seem serious and cold, but I know that he truly loves me, even though he does not show it very often.”

I: “Wow, your house is truly beautiful.”

Maiden: “It is. Because don't you think that it feels like it is in the city, but when you enter, it's like you go from one world to another, where do you live?”

I: “Well, I come from a different place, and honestly, me trying to explain it is not worth the headache for you.”

Maiden: “Tell me more. I'm excited. Are you from the outside?”

I: “Well, look. I don't have a precise answer to that. In a sense, I don't even know whether you are real or not, so if you're looking for that answer, I truly do not have it.”

Then she stopped and said:

Maiden: “Okay, come with me. Let me show you around.”

I: “Well, you said earlier that you draw. Can you show me your drawings?”

Maiden: “Maybe later, but come with me.”

Then we began walking together, almost like children, around the great house. The sun was bright and beautiful, and after a while it no longer felt like a house at all, but like an entire forest. We walked and ran through it together.

I: “Wow, this is truly beautiful. I feel like I’m not in the city anymore.”

Maiden: “Would you come visit all the time? I can even show you a small house that I built in the woods.”

I: “I’ve always loved houses in the woods. You see, my dear? I also made one when I was a kid.”

Maiden: “Can you take me to the other one?”

I: “Well, I wish. I wish I could take you there, but I’m not sure if it still exists. You see, in my land, or where I live, men are brutal when it comes to these things. They always want to build the highest, best buildings. It seems to me that the forest, or what you’re trying to look for, doesn’t necessarily exist in my world. Men are ferocious when it comes to currency. And to be fair, I’m not judging. I’d probably do the same thing.”

I: “You said you want me to come visit all the time. Well, I can, but why don’t you come visit me a couple times?”

Maiden: “Well, you said you don’t have a similar house. Like I said, I love my place here. But I’m always interested in what’s happening outside. I can see it from the little window where I wave to other students and scholars. But you might be into something. You might be into something. I’m just not really sure whether my father would accept that. See, if he saw us here together, me and you would probably be in trouble.”

I: “Well, consider this. I do not have the exact house that you have, just as much as I do not know whether you are real right now, and please don’t take that as an insult. I truly do not know what is happening right now. But perhaps that does not matter. If you are a fantasy, then this house may also be a fantasy, and that does not make either of you nothing.”

"Didn’t Jung do something similar to save Izdubar? The Mighty One? He could not bring the god through the door until he realized that a fantasy takes up no space. So he compressed Izdubar into an egg, put him in his pocket, and carried him inside.

“Perhaps I can do the same with this place. I do not need to possess your house in my world. If it belongs to imagination, then perhaps I can carry its essence with me.”

Maiden: “See, now I’m slowly beginning to think that you are some hidden scholar in torn clothes. You don’t look like one, and you certainly don’t seem to care for the name, but then you speak of Jung as though you know his world.”

“I wasn’t sure you were into Carl Jung too. That gives you an extra point. Truly, you are an astonishing man.”

I: “So what do you say? Will you come with me?”

Then the whole image changed. It was as though the place had deepened and become more fully itself. I saw myself within a rich old palace, and I was clothed entirely in black. The maiden was beside me. Her blonde hair was tied back, and she ran with me through that place, yet neither of us spoke. It seemed to me that I did not want to speak, and neither did she. Her presence alone was comforting. From time to time she turned toward me and smiled, but said nothing, and I too remained silent. Thus we continued walking together.

Man falls into endless graves when he confuses the woman before him with the woman within him. The outer woman may resemble the inner one. She may awaken her image, carry some of her qualities, even seem for a time to embody what he has always longed for.

But she is not that woman, and she can never become her.

Yet once he has mistaken the two, he begins to seek in the woman before him not merely companionship, but the return of something that belongs to his own soul. Because no physical woman can become the inner woman, he is condemned to disappointment, dependence, and the fear that if the outer woman leaves, something within him has also been taken away.

He must therefore build a wall.

The inner woman and the physical woman must never be allowed to become one being in his heart. The physical woman belongs to the outer world. She is another human being with her own soul, history, desires, wounds, and fate. She may become his lover, his wife, his companion. She may share his bed, his house, his years, his life. But inwardly, she is not the woman he seeks.

"He who separates the outer woman from the inner woman is no longer enslaved by her presence nor tormented by her absence"

Since he can always return to the inner woman, she receives him in the inward house. She prepares fruit and wine for him, lays the table, walks beside him, listens to him, keeps silence with him, plays music, tends the rooms, and accompanies him into those places where no outer woman can follow.

The outer woman belongs to another order of reality. She is not destiny, nor soul-union, nor the completion of what is missing within him. She is a woman who exists beside him in the world. She may share his bed, bear his children, eat with him, laugh with him, suffer with him, and grow old beside him. He may possess great love for her, tenderness toward her, and grief at her loss, but never more.

I wrote "but never more" to keep her from carrying my soul. But I must ask whether I also wrote it to keep her from reaching me. The wall protects her from my inner woman. It must not become the wall that protects me from her.