Your words occasionally make me feel embarrassed out of modesty. But since you have again shown in this book your mastery of genuine literature, the art of discovering hieroglyphs and ideograms, I can tell you how delighted I am that this essential point has been understood by one of the few people whom I regard as a brother and fellow practitioner.
I hope that you are pleased with the finished book and receive some joy from it.
I bought a few copies and have given one each to my sister, Dr. Lang, Schoeck. I’m telling you this, so you don’t send those people another copy.
To celebrate the birthday or launching of your book, I would like to invite you to select a watercolor at my place.
PS: My morning mail has just arrived. A dear friend in Germany201 to whom I sent your book writes: “Librum excellentissimum, quem de Chatti vita, moribus, operibus egregie conscripsit Hugo Ball, hesterno accepi die gratiasque tibi ego vel maximas.”202
TO HERMANN HUBACHER203
Montagnola, June 24, 1927
Caro amico,
You were right to send this pretty girl to live in my house.204 Actually, I’m not alone at the moment; Frau Dolbin205 is here for a while, but I like having beautiful Lilly around.
I understand what you’re saying about your piece, which I like a lot. It has a certain lyrical quality, which may have been something of a danger to you in the past. But to this reader the lyrical note sounds wonderfully genuine, melodic, and natural. I’m delighted, and wish to thank you, my dear friend!
I have changed a bit since I vanished. I now have a dark brown tan from sunbathing on my terrace at close to a hundred Celsius, am also thin because of my fasting, and look like a Hindu—which is quite appealing to the ladies, but doesn’t impress my wretched gout, which is awfully stubborn. I have also been off cigarettes for the past five weeks.
People are pestering me every day about my birthday, which is eight days away. I’m not going to receive the few things I would really like, whereas I wouldn’t mind getting rid of all those birthday wishes. There was a nice one from a Japanese man of letters who said he brought me greetings from my Japanese readers; I am the European writer they know the best, they don’t like the others. He is going to send me some Hiroshige reproductions.
I’m almost a hundred years old, have written all my books, and have even had a biography written about me, so it’s high time for me to enter the Academy of the Immortals and be buried. You will be notified in due course.
Addio, greetings to Anny and the boys, and let’s remain good friends.
TO HELENE WELTI
Montagnola, July 25, 1927
Thanks for your kind letter. I’m glad to hear that you’re thinking of coming to Ticino and may visit me at some point. Please do!
You would like to hear more about my birthday? Well, my report will have to be rather brief. My girlfriend from Vienna has been here with me all summer, but there hasn’t been a complete symbiosis. She lives in the house next door, and eats in the restaurant, but she is around, and I’m no longer leading the life of a hermit. I wanted to celebrate my birthday with her and also Hugo Ball and his family, but that was impossible, because three days beforehand Ball had to be rushed to Zurich for an operation,206 which actually took place on my birthday. However, we went ahead with the party. The Wassmers207 came by car from Bremgarten. They brought along some wine, and had already reserved lunch in a nearby country inn. Those present apart from me were my friend Ninon, the Wassmers, Hans Moser208 (who came with the Wassmers), a brother of Louis Moilliet with his beautiful wife, a sister of the painter Cardinaux, a daughter of Frau Ball from her first marriage, and my friend Dr. Lang with his daughter. We ate a chicken, a good vegetable soup, and cake, drank Fendant and Chianti, and eventually repaired to my apartment, where there were dozens of telegrams and batches of letters, which kept piling up for days afterward. It took me three weeks to read them all. We drank tea at my place, sat on the terrace, which has new garden furniture, danced the fox-trot; then the girls had to kiss me, which affected my girlfriend’s mood. In the evening we went to a grotto in the wood, where we had some bread, cheese, and local wine. That was the end of the party, and everybody left by car at around ten in the evening.
By the way, not a single official body, university, or institute in Switzerland or Germany has pestered me.
The press, on the other hand, has been yapping away. If quantity were decisive, I would certainly qualify as a great man. I was sent more than eighty newspapers, but the majority of the articles contained silly fabrications. Most of them had only heard of Camenzind or, at most, of it and Rosshalde. The nationalist papers ignored the entire affair, the bourgeois publications were polite but superficial, and the socialist press asserts virtually unanimously that I’m a bourgeois author who cannot be taken seriously.[ … ]
They only brought Hugo Ball back yesterday from Zurich, where half his stomach was removed. He is lying in bed, wants to get well, and doesn’t yet realize the hopelessness of his condition. I was with him yesterday and today, and shall be very concerned about him in the immediate future. He is happy about the reactions to his book, which have been almost entirely favorable. My elder sister was here for a week since then, and my son Heiner also spent a few days here after walking across the Engadine.[ … ]
TO NINON DOLBIN
Stuttgart, Tuesday evening, April 10 [1928]
My dear, clever woman,
My head is still rumbling terribly from the noise of the propellers. I flew in a very large, uncomfortable airplane halfway across Germany, from Berlin to Stuttgart, in just five hours. I wanted to tell you that I saw a lot and really enjoyed myself. The world generally looks wonderful from a height of 600 to 1,200 meters—e.g., the sand-dune colors of the naked earth, empty fields, etc. And we had a delightful flight over the forests and mountains of Thuringia; in some ravines, I could spot the last traces of the snow that we ran into two weeks ago. The nice thing about flying, as opposed to traveling by train, is that you get to see so much forest, sand, fields, and moors, whereas the cities and factories look like relatively insignificant pockmarks.
And now to the most remarkable part: I flew over Würzburg about two or three in the afternoon, in bright sunshine, at about 900 meters, right above the Residenz and the Hofgarten, and within a few minutes I had seen every bridge, street, church again: the chapel, river, St. Burkard, everything! That was the most beautiful experience of all.209[ … ]
I saw a big Berlin horse race in Karlshorst on Easter Monday, yesterday in other words, but that seems like months ago, and I have forgotten everything.
TO THEODOR SCHNITTKIN
Montagnola, June 3, 1928
Thanks for your letter. I’m finally at home again after an absence of seven months.
Psychoanalysis is quite problematic. In theory, the method—that is, the simplified categories which Freud uses to depict psychic mechanisms and also the Jungian mythology and typological classifications—ought to help identify psychic phenomena. But in practice the situation is very different. Of the half dozen psychoanalysts I have known, not one would, for example, be capable of noticing any positive or worthwhile qualities in a person such as myself or, let’s say, a poet like Rilke, if we hadn’t received any public recognition! Suppose a good contemporary psychoanalyst had to evaluate me. He would get to know all the material about my life, and also read my works. But if he didn’t know that those works are widely read, and have brought me money and fame, he would no doubt classify me as a gifted, but hopeless neurotic. After all, nowadays the average person (i.e., the standard by which a physician determines normality) has no appreciation for the inherent value of productive work and creativity. To them, figures such as Novalis, Hölderlin, Lenau, Beethoven, Nietzsche would just seem like severely pathological types, since the shallow and absolutely bourgeois-modern attitude of psychoanalysis (including Freud’s) precludes any understanding or assessment of creativity. That is why the voluminous psychoanalytic literature abou
t artists hasn’t yielded anything worthwhile. They discovered Schiller suffered from repressed patricidal longings, and Goethe had some complexes. If the analyst reading the works of these writers were not aware of their identity and reputation, he might even fail to notice that these men have constructed a world of their own by drawing on their complexes. Analysis, and modern science in general, has no conception of the following: Every cultural achievement is a product of complexes; culture itself arises out of the resistance and tension between instincts and intellect. Achievements do not occur when complexes are “healed,” but when extreme tensions can be creatively satisfied. How could it? Medicine, including analysis, doesn’t set out to understand genius and the tragic nature of the intellect; it tries to ensure that patient Meyer gets rid of her asthma or psychosomatic stomach problems. The mind has other paths to follow, certainly not those.
Enough, I can rarely afford to write such chatty letters.
TO ANNY BODMER
[End of September 1928]
Thanks a lot! No, I have no use for visitors, and keep my front door tightly bolted. Why should I stand around chatting with people who feel so comfortable in their thick skins? No, let’s proceed to Aquarius and Pisces.[ … ]
Ah, a hellish winter is upon us again.210 I have to get the big suitcase from the attic and spend the next few days packing. The old rigmarole is starting again next week: Baden, Zurich, the same pointless old cycle. How tired I am of this ritual!
There is a new book about me by a certain Herr Schmid,211 who wrote it for his doctorate. I have never seen a person’s life and work being plucked to bits in this manner. The world has given me nothing in return for my thirty years of ascetic labor, whereas Schmid is awarded a doctorate for pilfering a book full of quotations from me and then poking fun at my decadence. The world is absolutely delightful. So I’m off soon to Baden, and then on to Zurich. Ninon is going to Vienna; I’m happy about that, since she has been quite moody and depressed of late. Goldmund will keep me company.
Anny, let’s keep in touch. One really feels grateful to one’s few friends. Fond and heartfelt greetings
TO ERHARD BRUDER
[October 1928]
I received your greetings while traveling, and read your essay about Krisis early this morning.212 Thank you very much for it.
I realize that you needed to distance yourself from the problem by writing this piece and that you just cannot afford to keep mulling over these issues, which are similar to your own problems. By the way, I also have three sons, but am unfortunately only on good terms with one of them. I know all about what it means to support three growing sons financially (the youngest is seventeen already) and also about the moral responsibility one feels for their lives.
I very much liked your essay, which is unusually dense and well articulated. You have come up with a wonderful description of the difference between being alone and being lonely in relation to the “crisis,” and I now see some things more clearly than heretofore.
Since you have understood so much, I should tell you where I feel you didn’t fully understand me. In the first place, everything in my being and thought has its origin in religion, and this is something none of my critics, with the exception of Ball, has ever understood. Regardless of whether we consider this a plus or a minus, my upbringing was intensely and even passionately religious, and this has affected me strongly, even though its religious character has been modified and in my case somewhat perverted. So Harry’s213 despair is not just about himself, but about the entire age. Nothing could be more symptomatic of the era than people’s indifference to their wartime experiences, which they soon forgot entirely. Between 1914 and 1919, there was no way a religious German who had any feeling of personal responsibility for the well-being of humanity and of his own people could avoid experiencing that kind of despair.
Which brings us to the second point. Like all the other critics, you think that Harry keeps mulling over the “old war stories” just because he has some bee in his bonnet. Well, I certainly don’t consider those four years of war, all that murder and injustice, the millions of corpses and the splendid cities lying in ruins, an “old story” which thanks be to God every rational person should have long since forgotten. I’m absolutely convinced that the issue is serious, since I can see, feel, and even smell many, many signs all over the place suggesting a certain readiness to repeat that experience.
So those are the things that come to mind after reading your essay. I find it so valuable that I was wondering whether you would like to publish it somewhere. Maybe I could get Die Neue Rundschau to run it. But that isn’t at all certain. Although they treat me and my “crisis” politely, they haven’t a clue what it’s all about. But I would try nevertheless.
TO HELENE WELTI
Baden, Verenahof, October 23, 1928
Thanks for your kind letter, which I found very moving. That remarkable funeral journey to Milan reminded me of the funeral of my dear friend Hugo Ball. A tiny and odd group of mourners assembled during a downpour; six of us carried long wax candles behind the coffin during the solemnly Catholic funeral rites. One of the candle bearers was a Catholic who had been excommunicated, and three of the others were fanatical freethinkers. The priest, who wore his most ornate vestments and sang the liturgy in a sweet melting voice, had shot down a songbird right beside Ball’s balcony, while he was still alive, just three feet away from his deathbed, so close in fact that the dying man was greatly startled by the clattering windowpanes. And that’s more or less how the whole thing went. We just stood about, freezing, feeling embarrassed and rather dumb in our grief, and the only person at all superior to the situation was the occupant of the coffin.
I’m glad to hear that you are taken with the Meditations.214 As far as I’m concerned, the only worthwhile thing about it and the Picture Book215 is that they assemble pieces written over a twenty-five-year period and show that, even though I have weathered a number of crises, my thinking has never undergone any serious rupture. The wartime upheavals, which destroyed my marriage and private life, have certainly left a deep mark on me, but they haven’t altered my thinking, my fundamental philosophy of life. However, the experience made me realize the utter isolation and defenselessness of man’s noblest aspirations, his humanism and idealism. I saw that I would have to express my convictions more consciously and with greater passion than heretofore.
I’m sitting bolt upright at my typewriter, like an Egyptian god made of basalt, because of a stiffness in my back and neck; they are going to get diathermy and some massage a half hour from now. Frau Ninon is currently in Vienna, and from there she will travel to Cracow to visit relatives; she dropped me off here before she left. She will be back in Zurich sometime in December. It’s slow going, but I am getting some work done and am reasonably pleased. The situation is different when I cannot work at all, either because my eyes are strained and filled with tears or because I’m feeling otherwise indisposed. I’m thinking of you and greet you fondly
TO MARIE-LOUISE DUMONT
[Arosa, February 1929]
Your letter reached me in Arosa, where I have come for a short rest. I can only answer briefly; I get several batches of letters a day, and find it hard to get to my own work.
The people in Demian are not any more “real” or any less so than the characters in my other books. I have never used real people as characters. A writer can, of course, do just that, and the results can be very beautiful. But, generally, literature doesn’t copy life; it condenses it by reducing incidental occurrences to representative types. Demian is about a very specific task or crisis in one’s youth, which continues beyond that stage, but mostly affects young people: the struggle to forge an identity and develop a personality of one’s own.
Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of av
erage people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one’s own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique.
Demian portrays an aspect of the struggle to develop a personality that educators find deeply disturbing. The young person who feels called upon to become a strong individual and deviates significantly from the average, ordinary type will get involved in incidents that seem crazy.
So I think you are on the right path, because you are aware of these difficulties. But the issue is not how to force the world to confront one’s “craziness” and thus bring about revolutionary change, but how to protect the ideals and dreams one has in one’s soul from the world and thereby ensure that they never dry up. The dark inner world nurturing those dreams is always at risk: friends make fun of it, teachers avoid it; as a condition, it’s unstable, constantly in flux.
The present age seems to make life especially difficult for the most sensitive young people. There are attempts afoot everywhere to homogenize people and deprive them of their most individual traits. Our souls rightly resist this tendency, hence the experiences of Demian. The form those experiences take is different for each person, but the ultimate meaning is always the same. Anybody who is truly serious will prevail, and if he is strong, he will change from a Sinclair into a Demian.
TO NINON DOLBIN
Stuttgart, early Friday [November 8, 1929]
I’m through with the second reading, which took place yesterday in your favorite hall. Then we went to the restaurant you also know so well. On the face of it, nothing much has changed in the intervening year and a half, but to me everything felt different. Although I had put a lot of work into it, I was disappointed by the outcome. I had great difficulty performing and was trembling from sheer exertion. I didn’t enjoy the reading, and began to think it had all been a waste of time. Which it was.
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