The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

by Hermann Hesse

  No one was concerned about Albert. At that time he lived in a small city in a foreign country, and one morning he took a walk down a street, and as he looked between the trees, he saw a small lazy river, a steep yellow clay bank, and bushes and thorny weeds that spread their dusty branches over landslides and bleak stones. All at once something sounded within him. He stood still. He felt an old song from legendary times strike up again in his soul. The yellow clay and dusty green, or the lazy river and steep parts of the bank, some combination of the colors or lines, some kind of sound, a uniqueness in the random picture was beautiful, was incredibly beautiful, moving, and upsetting, spoke to him, was related to him. And he felt vibrations and the most fervent connection between forest and river, between river and himself, between sky, earth, and plants. All things seemed to be set there unique and alone so that they could be reflected just at this moment, coming together as one in his eye and heart, so they could meet and greet each other. His heart was the place where river and grass, tree and air could unite, become one, enhance one another, and celebrate the festivals of love.

  When this thrilling experience had repeated itself a few times, the painter found himself enveloped by a glorious feeling of happiness, thick and full, like a golden evening or a garden fragrance. He tasted it. It was sweet and thick, and he could no longer bear it. It was too rich. It became ripe and was filled with tension. It aroused him and made him almost anxious and furious. It was stronger than he was, tore him away. He was afraid that it would drag him down with it. And he did not want that. He wanted to live, to live an eternity! Never, never had he wished to live as intensely as he did now.

  One day he was silent and alone in his room as though he had just been intoxicated. He had a box of paints standing in front of him and had laid out a piece of cardboard. Now, for the first time in years, he was sitting and painting again.

  And it stayed that way. The thought—“Why am I doing this?”—did not return. He painted. He did nothing more except see and paint. Either he went outside and became lost in the pictures of the world, or he sat in his room and let the fullness stream away again. He composed picture after picture on cardboard, a rainbow sky with meadows, a garden wall, a bench in the woods, a country road, also people and animals, and things that he had never seen before, perhaps heroes or angels, who, however, became alive like wall and forest.

  When he started circulating among people again, it became known that he had resumed painting. People found him quite crazy, but they were curious to see his paintings. He did not want to show them to anyone. Yet they did not leave him in peace. People pestered and forced him until he gave an acquaintance the key to his room. He himself departed on a journey. He did not want to be there when others saw the paintings.

  People came, and soon there was a great hue and cry. They had discovered a spectacular genius, to be sure, an eccentric, but one who was blessed by God, and they began using sayings to describe him that are used by experts and speakers.

  In the meantime Albert had arrived in a village, rented a room from farmers, and unpacked his paints and brush. Once again he went happily through valleys and mountains and later reflected all that he experienced and felt in his paintings.

  One day he learned from a newspaper that many people had seen his paintings back home. In a tavern while drinking a glass of wine, he read a long, glowing report in the newspaper of the major city. His name was printed in big letters in the heading, and there were numerous fat words of praise throughout the article. But the more he read, the stranger he felt.

  “How splendid the yellow of the background shines in the picture with the blue lady—a new, incredibly daring and enchanting harmony!”

  “The art of the expressions in the still life with roses is also wonderful. Not to mention the series of self-portraits! We may place them alongside the great masterpieces of psychological portrait art.”

  Strange, strange! He could not recall having ever painted a still life with roses, or a blue lady, and as far as he knew, he had never made a self-portrait. On the other hand, the article did not mention the clay bank or the angels, the rainbow sky or the other pictures that he loved so much.

  Albert returned to the city. He went to his apartment dressed in his traveling clothes. People were going in and out. A man sat by the door, and Albert had to show a ticket in order to enter. Of course, he recognized his paintings. Someone had, however, hung placards on them, unknown to Albert. “Self-portrait” could be read on many of them, and other titles. He stood contemplatively awhile before the paintings and their unfamiliar names. He saw it was possible to give these paintings completely different names than he had done. He saw that he had revealed something in the garden wall that seemed to be a cloud to some, and that the chasms of his rocky landscape could be the face of a person for others.

  Ultimately, it was not all so important. But Albert desired most of all to leave again quietly and to travel and never return to this city. He continued to paint many pictures and gave them many names, and he was happy with whatever he did. But he did not show his paintings to anyone.

  THE

  FAIRY TALE

  ABOUT THE WICKER

  CHAIR

  A young man sat in his solitary attic. His greatest desire was to become a painter, but first he had to overcome quite a few obstacles. To begin with, he lived peacefully in his attic, grew somewhat older, and became accustomed to sitting for hours in front of a small mirror and experimenting with painting self-portraits. He had already filled an entire notebook with such sketches, and he was very satisfied with some of them.

  “Considering that I never went to art school,” he said to himself, “this sketch has turned out rather well. And that is an interesting wrinkle there next to the nose. You can see that I’m something of a thinker or something similar. I need only to lower the corner of the mouth a little. Then I’d have my own special expression, quite melancholy.”

  But when he reexamined the sketches sometime later, most of them no longer pleased him. That was irritating, but he concluded from this that he had made progress and was now placing greater demands on himself.

  The young man did not live in the most desirable attic, nor did he have a very agreeable relationship with the things lying and standing around this attic. However, it was not a bad relationship. He did them no more or less harm than most people do. He hardly noticed the objects and was not very familiar with them.

  Whenever he failed to paint a good self-portrait, he read for a while from books and learned what had happened to other people who, like him, had begun as modest and completely unknown painters and then had become very famous. He liked to read such books and read his own future in them.

  So one day he was again somewhat sullen and depressed and sat at home reading about a very famous Dutch painter. He read that this painter had been possessed by a true passion. Indeed, he was frenetic and completely governed by a drive to become a good painter. The young man found that he had many traits in common with this Dutch painter. As he read further, he also discovered many that did not exactly fit him. Among other things he read that whenever the Dutchman had not been able to paint outside due to bad weather, he had painted everything inside, even the tiniest object that met his eyes, unflinchingly and passionately. One time he had painted a pair of old wooden shoes, and another time an old crooked chair—a coarse, rough kitchen and peasant chair made out of ordinary wood, with a seat woven out of straw, quite tattered. The painter had painted this chair, which nobody certainly would have considered worth a glance, with so much love and dedication and with so much passion and devotion that it became one of his most beautiful pictures. The painter’s biographer found many wonderful and appropriately touching words to say about this painted straw chair.

  Here the reader stopped and contemplated. That was something new that he had to try. He decided immediately—for he was a young man who made very rash decisions—to imitate the example of this great master and to try this way to
greatness.

  He looked around in his attic and realized that he had actually not paid much attention to the things among which he lived. He did not find a crooked chair with a seat woven out of straw anywhere; nor were there any wooden shoes. Therefore he was momentarily dejected and despondent, and he almost felt discouraged, as he had often felt whenever he read about the lives of great men. At those times he realized that all the little indicators and remarkable coincidences that had played roles in the lives of the others had not become apparent in his life, and he would wait in vain for them to appear. However, he soon pulled himself together and realized that it was now his task to be persistent and pursue his difficult path to fame. He examined all the objects in his little room and discovered a wicker chair that could serve him very well as a model.

  He pulled the chair closer with his foot, sharpened his art pencil, took his sketch pad on his knee, and began to draw. After a couple of light first strokes, he seemed to have captured the form sufficiently, and now he inked in the thick outlines with a few firm and powerful strokes. A deep triangular shadow in a corner attracted him, and he painted it full of strength, and so he continued until something began to disturb him.

  He worked a little while longer. Then he held the sketch pad away from himself and examined his sketch carefully. His very first glance told him that he had completely failed to capture the wicker chair.

  Angrily he drew a new line into the sketch and fixed his eyes grimly on the chair. The sketch was still not right. It made him mad,

  “You demonic wicker chair!” he screamed violently. “I’ve never seen a beast as moody as you are!”

  The chair cracked a little and said with equanimity, “Yes, take a look at me! I am as I am, and I won’t change myself anymore.”

  The painter kicked it with his toe. The chair swerved backward to avoid the kick and now looked completely different.

  “You dumb chair!” the young man exclaimed. “Everything is crooked and wrong about you.”

  The wicker chair smiled a little and said softly, “That’s what’s called perspective, young man.”

  The painter jumped up. “Perspective!” he yelled furiously. “Now this clown of a chair comes and wants to play schoolteacher. Perspective is my affair, not yours. Remember that!”

  The chair said nothing more. The painter stomped loudly back and forth a few times until someone began pounding beneath the floor with a cane. An elderly man, a scholar, lived under him, and he could not bear the noise.

  The young man sat down and looked at his last self-portrait. But it did not please him. He found that he looked more handsome and interesting in reality, and that was the truth.

  Now he wanted to read his book again, but there was more in the book about the Dutch straw chair, which irritated him. He now felt that the writer had really made much too much of it, and after all …

  The young man looked for his artist’s hat and decided to go out. He remembered that he had long ago been struck by the fact that painting was not very fulfilling. One had nothing but bother and disappointments, and in the end even the best painter in the world could portray only the simple surface of objects. For a man who loved the profound aspects of life, it was no profession for him in the long run. And once more he seriously thought, as he had done many times, about following an even earlier inclination and becoming a writer instead of a painter. The wicker chair remained behind in the attic. It was sorry that its young master had gone. It had hoped that a decent relationship could finally develop between the two of them. It would have liked at times to speak a word, and it knew that it certainly had many valuable things to teach a young man. But unfortunately nothing ever came of this.

  IRIS

  During the spring of his childhood, Anselm used to run joyfully in the green garden. One of his mother’s flowers was called the blue flag, and he was especially fond of it. He used to press his cheek against its tall bright green leaves, touch and feel its sharp points with his fingers, and smell and inhale its wonderful blossoms. Long rows of yellow fingers rose from the pale blue center and stood erect. Between them a light path ran deep down into the calyx and into the distant blue mystery of the blossom. He loved this flower very much and used to stare inside it for moments on end. At times he envisioned the delicate yellow members like a golden fence standing at a king’s garden, and at other times they looked like a double row of beautiful dream trees, and no wind could sway them. The mysterious path into the inner depths ran between them, interlaced with living veins that were as delicate as glass. The vault spread itself out enormously, and the path lost itself infinitely deep between the golden trees in the caverns. Above the path the violet vault bowed majestically and spread thin magic shadows over the silent miracle that was anticipated. Anselm knew that this was the mouth of the flower, that its heart and its thoughts lived behind the splendid yellow protrusions in the blue cavern, and that its breath and its dreams streamed in and out along this glorious bright path with its glassy veins.

  Next to the large blooming flowers stood small blossoms that had not yet opened. They were on firm ripe stems in small chalices with brownish-green skin. The young blossoms forced themselves quietly and vigorously from these chalices, tightly wrapped in light green and lilac. Then the young deep violet managed to peer forth erect and tender, rolled into fine points. Veins and hundreds of lines could already be seen on these tightly rolled young petals.

  In the morning, each time Anselm came out of the house, drawn from sleep and dreams and faraway places, the garden stood waiting for him. It was always there and always new. If yesterday there had been the hard blue point of a blossom tightly rolled and staring out of a green husk, there was now a young petal that hung thin and blue as the sky with a tongue and a lip, searching and feeling for its form and arch, about which it had been dreaming for a long time. And right at the bottom, where it was still engaged in a quiet struggle with its sheath, a delicate yellow plant with bright veins, one could sense, was preparing its path to a distant fragrant abyss of the soul. Perhaps it would open at noon, perhaps in the evening. A blue silk tent would arch over the golden dream forest, and its first dreams, thoughts, and songs would emanate silently out of the magical abyss.

  Then a day would come when the grass was filled with nothing but bluebells. Then a day would come when suddenly a new tone and fragrance enveloped the garden. The first tea rose would hang, soft and golden-red, over the scarlet leaves soaked in sun. Then a day would come when there were no more blue flags. They would be gone. There would be no more path with a golden fence that led gently down into the fragrant mysteries. Stiff leaves would stand sharp and cool like strangers. But red berries would ripen in the bushes, and new, incredible butterflies would fly freely and playfully over the star-shaped flowers, red-brown butterflies with mother-of-pearl backs and hawk moths with wings like glass.

  Anselm talked to the butterflies and the pebbles. The beetles and lizards were his friends. Birds told him bird stories. Ferns showed him secretly the brown seeds they had gathered and stored under the roof of the giant leaves. Pieces of green sparkling glass that caught the rays of the sun became for him palaces, gardens, and glistening treasure chambers. If the lilies were gone, then the nasturtiums bloomed. If the tea roses wilted, then the blackberries became brown. Everything fluctuated, was always there and always gone, disappeared and reappeared in its season. Even the scary strange days, when the cold wind clamored in the pine forest and the withered foliage clattered so pale and dead throughout the entire garden, even these days brought still another song, an experience, or a story with them until everything subsided again. Snow fell outside the windows and forests of palms grew on the panes. Angels with silver bells flew through the evening, and the hall and floor smelled from dried fruit. Friendship and trust were never extinguished in that good world, and when once snowdrops unexpectedly shone next to the black ivy leaves and the first early birds flew high through new blue heights, it was as if everything had been the
re all the time. Until one day, once again, the first bluish point of the bud peered out from the stem of the blue flag, never expected and yet always exactly the way it had to be and always equally desired.

  For Anselm, everything was beautiful. Everything was welcome, familiar, and friendly, but the most magical and blessed moment for the boy came each year when the first blue flag appeared. At one time in his earliest childhood dream, he had read the book of wonders for the first time in its chalice. Its fragrance and numerous undulating shades of blue had been for him the call and the key to the creation of the world. The blue flag accompanied him through all the years of his innocence. It had renewed itself with each new summer, had become richer in mystery and more moving. Other flowers had mouths, too. Other flowers also diffused fragrance and thoughts. Others also enticed bees and beetles into their small sweet chambers. But the boy adored the blue flag or iris more than any other flower, and it became most important for him. It was the symbol and example of everything worth contemplating and everything that was miraculous. When he looked into its chalice and, steeped in thought, followed that bright dreamlike path between the marvelous yellow shrubs toward the twilight deep inside the flower, then his soul looked through the gate where appearance becomes an enigma and seeing becomes a presentiment. Even at times during the night he would dream about the chalice of the flower and see it enormously opened in front of him like the gate of a heavenly palace, and he would enter riding on a horse or flying on swans, and the entire world would ride and fly and glide gently with him, drawn by magic down into the glorious abyss where every expectation had to be fulfilled and each presentiment had to become true.