Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  Afterward the “circle of friends” (i.e., the sisters, the Ludwigsburgers,216 Molt, and several classmates, also Hartmann and Hammelehle) went to the inn. I hadn’t eaten anything all evening and was also dead tired. They all ordered themselves wine, beer, schnitzel, salad, ham; I just sat there quietly for a half an hour between ravenous eaters (Rosenfeld217 was sitting right next to me with an enormous omelette). Nobody even offered me a glass of wine, and since I wasn’t very pushy, I never managed to catch hold of the busy waitress. So I just sat there for a half an hour watching them, then slipped out, put on my coat, and went home; nobody even looked up.

  It wasn’t as bad as Tübingen, if only because I was hardly in any pain. My kidney has been pretty much settled ever since I took the opium. But, come to think of it, Stuttgart was even worse, very disappointing. After you have read your poems with great concentration, somebody claps you on the back, then you sit there like an unwelcome guest and watch everybody else eating schnitzel and sausages; it’s a chilling feeling.[ … ]

  All the best wishes for your work, for Vienna, and the other matters.

  TO FRITZ MARTI218

  Zurich, December 12, 1929

  Thanks for the greetings and also for the well-meant verses of that dilettante. Of course, you couldn’t publish them.

  I’m enclosing a short piece of prose, which you may wish to publish at some point.219 I very much missed not seeing you in Bern. There aren’t many colleagues in Switzerland worth taking seriously.

  I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to come, and even though I knew you were ill, I thought I would drop by in any case.

  That didn’t work out; I was simply too tired and dejected after the reading (that always happens when I have any direct contact with readers and the outside world). It’s true that the audience usually responds very warmly, that the halls are full, and that some people are extremely friendly. But no matter how well disposed the public, this kind of encounter can never satisfy intense obsessive types such as ourselves. The response to lectures about taxation or how to bring up children may be positive or negative, but it is always direct and lively. Pianists and singers can reasonably expect audiences to appreciate their abilities, technique, etc., and even offer an informed critique. A poet is convinced that his calling is supremely important, but the world he evokes is strange, and the world to which he speaks is no less so. All he will ever get in return is a number of well-meant pats on the back; he won’t find three readers, not even among his best, prepared to allow the impulses they receive from him to affect their lives. Well, this you already know. I just wanted to say I was sorry I couldn’t show up, and also explain why.

  TO HIS SON HEINER

  Chantarella, January 31, 1930

  [ … ] I’m sorry that you had a conflict with your employers and feel disappointed by the outcome. But you aren’t a socialist; they’re a different breed altogether.

  I would like to explain what I mean, since this is a matter of principle and since you bring my friend into it.

  I have good reasons for being neither “bourgeois” nor socialist, even though I believe that, politically speaking, socialism is the only decent attitude. Yet I haven’t become a socialist, since the intellectual foundations of socialism (i.e., the teachings of Karl Marx) aren’t altogether unimpeachable, and besides, the social democrats everywhere rejected their most worthwhile principles long ago. I was particularly disappointed with the German socialists, who joined the chorus of warmongers in 1914 and went on to betray the revolution in 1918.

  But it is not the quality of a person’s convictions that determines his worth as an individual. I myself judge people by their character rather than their convictions. In any case, most people espouse the beliefs of their caste. Ninety-nine percent of capitalists and socialists would be incapable of justifying their beliefs in intellectual terms.

  My friend [ … ] is certainly a capitalist, a businessman; his utterly bourgeois ideals focus on outward success and the accumulation of wealth. His attitude is typical of the majority of businessmen and industrialists in his country, and most lawyers, doctors, etc., also subscribe to these shabby convictions. I couldn’t care a dime about the political and commercial credo of Herr [ … ], and I feel the same way about the so-called convictions of the sort of socialist who behaves just like the bourgeoisie and is only looking for better food and greater political clout.

  Herr [ … ] is always finding fresh evidence in the newspapers for his “convictions,” which have been drummed into him since early childhood, but those ideas have absolutely no bearing on his personality and character. Although he is a tough-minded businessman, he is as hard on himself as on others and demands an awful lot of himself. I got to know him first in India in 1911, and even though I often felt that his commercial projects and goals were rather ridiculous—and frequently told him so—I always had a lot of respect for his character. He was one of the very few people who came to my aid during the period from 1919 to 1925, when I was virtually starving and crippled by worries about your mother and you children. For my sake, he pretended not to notice some of the things you were up to. He also talked about you in glowing terms, even though he disapproved strongly of your attitude toward work.

  I have often learned to respect and admire people who subscribed to convictions that I found strange, repulsive, or silly. Some of the people I got to know during the war who held views similar to mine—i.e., opposition to the war—were extremely untrustworthy, whereas some of my virulent opponents seemed like decent, worthwhile people.

  Of course, the issue goes far beyond Herr [ … ]; it’s quite fundamental. Moreover, there is one thing I’m quite convinced about: Let’s suppose that Herr [ … ] had been born just yesterday rather than fifty years ago. Assuming that his personality remains identical and that he is born into the same, rather impoverished rural milieu in Toggenburg, I’m confident he would adopt socialist ideas before long, and perhaps even join the party eventually. But that wouldn’t by any means affect his personality. He would remain as strong, loyal, stubborn, and industrious as ever, with all the same virtues and flaws.

  You have never said very much about your own convictions: I would have liked to discuss such matters with you. In any case, I was somewhat astonished to hear what you said about an acquaintance of yours with a keen interest in politics, since his convictions seemed so utterly bourgeois, indeed almost fascist. I had imagined that you might wholeheartedly embrace the socialist ideology, and I certainly wouldn’t be upset if, for example, you ended up as a single-minded revolutionary, not just in your words but also in your deeds. However, being a revolutionary requires not only conviction and enthusiasm but also a willingness to make the greatest self-sacrifice imaginable. I would be extremely delighted if each of my sons embraced some “conviction” or ideal and were willing to give up his material comforts and, if necessary, lay down his life for that cause. While the nature of the conviction or party he selected wouldn’t be altogether indifferent to me, I wouldn’t attach all that much importance to that. I consider a person who is willing to sacrifice himself for the most naïve ideals in the world to be far preferable to somebody who can speak articulately about all kinds of ideals yet isn’t prepared to make any sacrifices on their behalf.

  You will have to fight your own battles on the job at [ … ], and I understand fully why you don’t get on at all with my friend Herr [ … ]. All I can do for you is show my love by following the matter very closely. However, I should like to correct a mistaken assumption in your letter.

  You think it’s only a question of sticking it out as an apprentice; then the whole situation will change, and you will be your own man. That will never happen. Even as an employee—or perhaps a boss—as opposed to an apprentice, you will still be serving the interests of a class that you basically cannot abide. It would be far better if you tried to get to know the enemy—i.e., capitalist society—by embarking on a serious study of socialism. That should get you out of this rut.
I’m not a socialist, and believe that socialism is as open to refutation as any other ideology. But nowadays it’s the only creed that openly criticizes the kind of lives we are leading in this inauthentic society. My current studies have rekindled my interest in such questions. I’m reading the memoirs of Trotsky.

  Addio, dear Heiner, I wish you all the very best. As regards your job, etc., we were not any better off in the old days. As an apprentice, I had to live for years on a hundred francs a month, and had to work very hard for that. Some of the things you can do weren’t possible back then; there was, for instance, no question of moving in with a girlfriend. In some respects life is tougher for you young people, but some things are easier and a lot nicer.

  Addio, my dear, we shall be seeing each other again, and there will be time to talk things over; I’m looking forward to that. Fond greetings from your father

  TO GEORG REINHART

  June/July 1930

  Thanks for your letter. I was delighted to hear from the horse’s mouth. So somebody has told you about our plans to build a house? Hubacher, I suppose; I mentioned it to him and some others. We haven’t started construction yet; indeed the builder-owner and I haven’t drawn up the contract, which will give me a legal right to live there. But we have discussed everything and finished the plans. My patron Herr H. C. Bodmer-Stünzi220 had originally wanted to give me the house as a gift, but that would have put me in an awkward position in many respects, and so I asked him to let me build the house and live in it, on the understanding that it will remain his property and merely be on loan to me. In the case of my death or if I ever give up the house, it will revert to him. Please don’t tell anybody about this. I think I should let you know about it, but there is no reason why other people have to find out about it.

  I had a wonderful time talking about Asia while my Japanese cousin (the person to whom I dedicated the second part of Siddhartha) was here. He has been living in the Orient for over twenty-five years and was spending a brief vacation in Europe. He has much of the wisdom that I admired in Richard Wilhelm, and their careers were also quite similar. He went there first as a Christian missionary, and is now trying to foster intellectual dialogue and exchange between the two cultures.

  Prinzhorn221 has written once again after a longish silence; he recently translated some André Gide, has become friends with him, thinks I should get to know him and start a correspondence, which is all right by me, but I’ll have to put that on hold for now.

  TO HIS SISTER MARULLA

  [ca. mid-November 1930]

  So this is what it means to grow old: a touch of rheumatism in the legs, a stiff back, graying hair. Yet, deep down, I feel I’m not all that old: it doesn’t seem so long ago that I was a schoolboy going to Dölker’s school and buying fruit, etc., from Frau Haas at the market. That sort of thing would be going through my head, and there was another crazy notion that helped me delude myself about my age: “Even if I’m no longer a spring chicken, my little sister must still be a youngster, since she has only just sat for her teacher’s certificate.” Then, all of a sudden, I discovered that this little sister of mine has become old on the sly, and is about to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. It’s hard to believe. I just shook my head, and sat down to write my little sister a birthday letter.

  I only found the short piece entitled “Johannes” by Monika Hunnius222 recently, even though the almanac put out by Salzer, the publisher, has been lying around here for over a year. I dislike Salzer223 and his devoutly Christian business acumen, and am not particularly fond of Monika as a writer. She believes that having a temperament suffices, and rides roughshod over every nuance. She also seems to believe that the Baltic region is some sort of paradise on earth. But I did read her essay, since I felt that I might find something. I was delighted to discover the nice sketch of Father and the reminiscences about you.

  Whenever I think about Father, a funny experience comes to mind. It has to do with certain theories of heredity. I never doubted that I had inherited my artistic talent and temperament more from Mother than from Father. Yet I have always seen myself more as Father’s son than as Mother’s, and I also feel that my various psychic oddities and assorted nervous complaints stem more from Father than from Mother: sleeplessness, headaches, eye problems, etc.

  But on several occasions recently some relatives on the Gundert side have said that we Gunderts have a hard time because we inherited a temperament that makes life difficult for us and predisposes us to conditions such as melancholia, etc., which are difficult to cope with. To put it briefly, those people (not related in any way to Father, of course) attributed all their nervous complaints and psychological problems to the Gundert legacy, whereas I had always felt I had inherited those very problems from my father’s side! I learned something from this, and also found it amusing.

  And in the course of time my attitude has changed in other respects as well. I can no longer distinguish some traits of Father from those of Grandpa Gundert: a very gentle intellect, a refined diffidence in the making of judgments, a genuine fondness for the customs and intellectual traditions of India, which is quite apparent underneath all his Christian scruples. At times, the two figures almost merge in my mind. Anyhow, I’m discovering that some of my intellectual qualities, the ones I consider anachronistic, non-German or non-European (in other words, the best), were also attributes of our father, or of Grandfather Gundert.[ … ]

  I don’t yet know what to make of my new house, even though we often have sessions with the architect, which are mostly handled by Ninon. The house already has four walls and a roof, but won’t be ready for us to move into until July. At the moment, I can only see the drawbacks: the difficulty getting servants, the big increase in our cost of living. I’m very reluctant to leave the old apartment, which was so beautiful (even if only in the summer), and also my pied-à-terre in Zurich, which I have to give up in the spring. But everything will eventually sort itself out.[ … ]

  Farewell, Marulla. I have to say goodbye to my little sister; you were a schoolgirl at old Ansel’s not so long ago. I find it difficult to accept that my sister is now an older lady, and that, between the two of us, we have racked up over a hundred years. With fondest wishes

  TO WILHELM KUNZE

  [November 1930]

  I haven’t been able to work for the past few weeks due to constant pain, but I have read your book with interest.224

  I don’t really have a newspaper I could review it for. I just wrote a few lines about it, and shall send them off today to the National-Zeitung in Basel, which may publish the piece. I’m enclosing a carbon copy.

  You won’t be very pleased with the piece. But reading your book has reminded me once again of a postwar phenomenon, which I have often noticed before: the indifference of young people to moral issues. I felt that I needed to criticize this attitude, which your book conveys all too clearly, because you yourself have not done so. One feels pity for these young people, who are often very likable but have a basic flaw. They have no sense of responsibility, fail to uphold any values of their own, and go around accusing other people of guilt and baseness, which they detect in everybody but themselves. Seducing girls or boys is the only contribution they have to offer. They’re annoyed at the mess their fathers, government ministers, etc., have made, but they themselves just sit around twiddling their thumbs. They don’t feel any responsibility toward a world they did not create. Yet they’re surprised by the lack of change. They’re now getting older and are beginning to burden themselves with an ever-increasing sense of guilt, the guilt they used to reserve exclusively for the older generation.

  Dear Herr Kunze, please share the following ancient wisdom with your generation: Acting morally is only justified and worthwhile if one is prepared to accept one’s own responsibility, not just for the wretched state we call life but also for death and all one’s sins, original sin in other words, and this means one can no longer attempt to pin all of the guilt on others. In refusing to admit any guil
t and blaming everything on your fathers, you young people are actually imitating their wartime behavior, since they blamed everything on the Russians, the Italians, the Kaiser, or the Jews. You haven’t learned anything at all and don’t intend to either—Latin, geography, or math would be such a chore.

  I had to say this to somebody of your generation. It was in 1914—i.e., the time of my awakening—that I first realized how abominable a state the world was in and how virtually universal the tendency was to pin all responsibility for this state of affairs on other nations, classes, or political parties. I have been preaching the following message ever since: “Before any progress can take place, a person, class, or people must first try to discover its own guilt and put its own house in order.” This applies just as much to the youth of the postwar era as it did to previous generations. If young people aren’t willing to chip in, if they insist on adopting a superior attitude from the outset and expect others to take care of everything, they are thereby crossing out their own names in the Book of Life. I can no longer blame the decent, if rather stupid soldiers of 1914, or their fathers, for all the problems of our age, and to me the mental and physical lethargy of the younger generation represents a greater evil.

  But I have also tried to suggest the beauty of your book.

  Please use the piece any way you wish, either the whole thing or just excerpts. You have my permission. As I said, I hope it appears in Basel, but I cannot be sure, and if not, your publisher can quote those lines, if he finds them useful. It would be a pleasure to be of some use to you and your book.

  TO WILHELM SCHÄFER225