Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  I don’t know much about the divisions developing now among Christians in Germany, but I have always felt that the Protestant tendency to conform and capitulate to the demands of the state was awfully repulsive. At first, after Germany silenced the Catholics and put them to sleep with a concordat,249 I felt the Protestant church movement was merely a brutal regression to barbaric, Teutonic customs. By now it is clear that, in addition to that marvelous Jew Buber, there is quite an impressive Protestant movement, which is waging war on stupidity and decadence and has some extremely courageous adherents. I received a letter recently from one of them, a Tübingen professor named Hauer,250 whom I have known for a long time.[ … ]

  TO GUNTER BÖHMER251

  Brief report from the garden, February 20, 1934

  Caro amico!

  We have been having warm weather for weeks, and except for some small spots near the woods, there is no trace left of the snow. Lorenzo has just finished cutting and binding the vines; there are some new, gleaming white posts, all properly aligned, and below that, amid the arid, almost colorless winter grasses, the cheerful smiles of countless tiny yellow primrose islands.

  I have mercilessly weeded out the vines on the flower terrace—it’s to the left of the path by the boccie field—where we had dahlias and azaleas last year, because they take sunlight away from the flowers. And I have been burning the leaves and branches continuously for the past ten days on the cleared terrace. Head gardener Vogel252 carts the stuff over from the paths, beds, etc. There are eighty to a hundred baskets of leaves on the boccie field alone, and I have already disposed of about fifty. At first, the piles of leaves seem very loose and dry. But after lifting the top part off, one can see that lower down they are damp and stick to the ground; to avoid destroying the field, I have to rake up the whole thing again and allow it to dry, then have to peel off the lower layers, virtually one leaf at a time.

  Perched on the head gardener’s back, the Lion occasionally acts as an assistant. But, like the Tiger,253 he is rather nervous and shy; both are preoccupied with puberty, and have become very thin and gangly. An enemy and rival showed up the other day. Frau Wiegand254 from Lerici is here. She brought along her splendid Angora tomcat; the two brothers have completely rejected him. They are either afraid or jealous of him, and so the Angora has to keep to itself and must be fed separately. When I attempted to explain the situation to my wife in psychological terms, she asked: Could the two thin household cats really notice that the new tomcat is a luxury animal with a fine pedigree? She wasn’t even sure the tomcat himself realized that’s what he was. My response: “Do you really think Gerhart Hauptmann doesn’t realize he is an Angora writer?”

  We’re worried about the large cactus outside the studio, which was outdoors all winter for the first time; an attractive covering provided some shelter. At the moment it’s a cause for concern. We’re not yet sure whether it will pull through or not; it may be frozen.

  Thanks for the greeting and those pretty sheets. I like each individual piece, but find the overall effect, the colors and the gold, somewhat too playful. I greatly enjoyed the sketches in your letter, which always appeal to me.

  Bruno wrote me a wonderful, long letter expressing various worries about a love affair, which seems quite serious. I only saw Heiner briefly in Zurich; he was extremely busy. The youngest, Martin, spent half a day with me in Zurich. Herr Bodmer255 conveyed his gratitude again for the “Bird.”

  Frau Emmy Ball has gone to Germany, on what is probably just a short visit; she mainly wants to talk to publishers. I must get to work.

  TO JOHANNA GOLD

  [After Easter 1934]

  Your beautiful package arrived on a terribly wet morning. It had been pouring all night and all day for two days, and the low clouds were almost touching the lake. I really needed something to cheer me up. So your gift couldn’t have arrived at a more appropriate moment. Only one egg256 was broken; the others are in perfect condition, and I’m really delighted with them. Ninon says she had been hoping for years that I would eventually get to see the colors and ornaments on those eggs. Like Oriental carpet design, this ancient peasant art is spectacularly beautiful. Similar objects can be found all over the world, except in places where wars or mechanized civilizations have obliterated them. I believe that if a great flood came about and were followed by a slow increase in population, man would create identical beautiful objects from scratch. Those designs are part of a reservoir—or “collective unconscious,” as C. G. Jung would say—that every people can draw from.

  I understand how you feel about the forcible expropriation of creditors in your country. I also lost a lot due to the war and inflation, and I have to reckon on new losses, since I too am forced to live like a capitalist—i.e., I have to make sure that the savings left over from my fortuitous successes earn interest, so that I have funds to draw on during the frequent lean years. Since I don’t have the talent or skills necessary for speculative investment, I have to rely on conventional capitalist procedures, and have been badly swindled several times by certain individuals and also the state.

  We’re putting something nice together: a small selection of my poems, which will appear as one of those attractive little volumes257 in the Insel series. Apart from that, I have been working a lot in the library over the past six months, preparing for a projected story.258 [ … ]

  TO MANUEL GASSER

  [July 1934]

  [ … ] It was kind of you not to send over that young boy who wanted to meet me so badly. But at this point, one more wouldn’t have made that much difference. I have a visitor of some kind every single day. At times there are several here at the same time; nine-tenths are young people from Germany and German-speaking Switzerland. A high school senior from Hannover, who was here recently, admitted that everything wasn’t ideal in the Third Reich. But when I said that I found the complacent response of German youth to news about people being tortured to death in concentration camps absolutely disgraceful—we had just heard of Mühsam’s death259—he said with a superior Germanic smile: Probably none of those imprisoned authors has anything worthwhile to say to the German people. I replied: If, as an eighteen-year-old, he was already so certain about that, and felt it could excuse the utter bestiality of the Third Reich, then he should spare us in Switzerland the pleasure of his visit; so he departed, looking quite crestfallen.[ … ]

  TO C. G. JUNG

  September 1934

  I should like to thank you for your letter, which was a pleasure to read. But the “eagle eye” that you mentioned isn’t particularly impressive. My tendency is not so much to set up analytic distinctions as to adopt a synthetic perspective, with a view toward harmony.

  Your remarks about sublimation go to the heart of the problem, and demonstrate the difference between your view and mine. We’re dealing, first of all, with an incidence of the linguistic confusion so prevalent nowadays—so many people use the same term but mean something different. You regard sublimation as a term best employed by chemists; Freud means one thing by it, and I have something else again in mind. Maybe some chemist originally conceived of the word sublimatio, I have no idea, but there’s nothing esoteric about the word sublimis (or even sublimare): it’s classical Latin.

  There would be no difficulty resolving that particular point. But this time there are real issues at stake behind the linguistic quibble. I agree with your interpretation of the Freudian concept of sublimation. I wasn’t trying to defend Freud’s notion, but rather the actual concept itself. I feel that it’s an important concept where cultural issues are concerned. And this is where we part company. As a physician, you regard sublimation as something volitional, the transference of a drive to an alien sphere of activity. In the last resort I, too, regard sublimation as a form of “repression,” but I only use that lofty term in cases where it’s possible to speak of “successful” repression—i.e., the effects of a drive on a sphere that is no doubt alien, but also extremely significant in the cultural sph
ere, art. For me, the history of classical music is the history of a technique of expression and discipline, in which entire groups and even generations of masters have—for the most part completely unwittingly—transferred their drives to an area that, by virtue of these genuine sacrifices, achieves a degree of perfection and classicism. I believe that it is worth making every sacrifice to achieve that form of classicism, and if, for instance, classical European music between 1500 and the eighteenth century consumed its maestros, who were more like servants than victims, ever since then it has been emitting light, comfort, courage, joy for thousands of people, and has been, again rather unwittingly, a school of wisdom, courage, and savoir vivre, and will continue as such for a long time to come.

  And I have a high regard for any talented individual who devotes a portion of his instinctual drives to such activities, even if he happens to be rather pathological as a human being. Whereas it would seem wrong to me to cling to some form of pseudo-sublimation in analysis, I feel that it is permissible, indeed extremely valuable and desirable, on occasions when that works and the sacrifice bears fruit.

  That is why psychoanalysis is such a difficult and dangerous experience for artists. Those who take it seriously might easily have to refrain from all artistic activity for the rest of their lives. That is fine if the person is just a dilettante, but in the case of a Handel or a Bach, I feel we could do without psychoanalysis if we got Bach in return.

  In our own sphere, we artists practice a genuine form of sublimatio, not out of assertiveness and ambition, but in a purely graceful way. I do not mean the type of artist that the people and the dilettante have in mind, but rather the artist as servant; Don Quixote, a knight even in all his madness, is also a victim.

  Well, I want to stop. I’m neither an analyst nor a critic. If you look at the review I sent you, you will see that I only very rarely say anything critical, and then always en passant. I never dismiss anything, and if I cannot take a book seriously or find some value in it, I shelve it silently.

  I have always sensed that your personal belief is genuine, a mystery. I was glad to find confirmation for this intuition in your letter. You use the analogy of chemistry for your secret, just as I use the analogy of music for mine, and not just any music, classical in particular. Everything that can be said on this subject has been formulated in a remarkably pointed manner in Lü Bu We, chapter two. For years I have been pursuing this musical analogy in a dreamlike fashion, and hope that I can eventually show you a portion of it.

  TO HEDWIG FISCHER

  [October 16, 1934]

  My thoughts have been with you and my dear departed friend since hearing of his death earlier today.260 We were just talking about him yesterday. Thomas Mann and his wife were here; Ninon is away in Italy on vacation. I shall always treasure fond and grateful memories of my friend Fischer: his friendly manner and reflective nature, his lively interest in others, that wonderful, concerned, fatherly glance of his. And I feel I shall miss him often.

  But today I’m thinking mostly about you. Your life with your husband, the collaboration and comradeship you had together, and your constant concern about his well-being—that has always struck me as beautiful and exemplary. It’s hard to believe that this union has been so cruelly terminated! I cannot find the right words to express my condolences and sense of bereavement. I truly hope that you will overcome this painful loss, and that, through the mourning process, you will acquire an image of your union with the deceased which will be with you always, like a benevolent spirit. With condolences from an old friend

  TO HIS SON HEINER

  January 19, 1935

  I was delighted with your letter, even though some of the news was bad. I have had to maintain a rather hectic pace for days on end, but there was one pleasant event in between the gloomy news and constant work. Around Christmas, Annemarie told me that her mother (Frau Ball) would be fifty on January 17 and that we should think of her. That was rather late in the day, and I was extremely busy, but I did everything I could at that late stage. I made sure that as many people as possible were informed about the date; I wrote many letters and cards, and contacted several newspapers, etc. Since Frau Emmy lives in such poverty, I was hoping that some people would send her not only birthday greetings but a few pennies as well. That wasn’t easy, since she hates it when people refer to her impoverished state and start behaving like condescending benefactors. Something of that kind must already have taken place by that stage, since after I had already spent several days virtually killing myself organizing this birthday, I received a letter from Emmy (who, of course, didn’t know what I was up to) saying: She had to tell me that she was about to turn fifty; people were constantly mentioning her birthday, congratulating her, being condescending, etc.; she just couldn’t stand that sort of thing and wanted it to stop. She also asked us to be so kind as to refrain from celebrating her birthday, congratulating her, etc., etc. Well, it seemed as if my foolish preparations had all been in vain, and I was feeling a little sorry that I had taken over the responsibility for the whole affair from Annemarie. But then I said to myself, and Ninon had the same idea, that Emmy might change her mind tomorrow, and so I didn’t respond right away. We waited a few days, then wrote to Frau Ball saying that since she was ill and on her own, she shouldn’t dream of spending her fiftieth birthday crouching over the fireplace and freezing in her village, but should spend the day with us. We would have a car go to collect her, etc. She agreed right away, and so the 17th was a big day. We had all silently thought about my fiftieth birthday, since that was the very day Hugo Ball was operated on in the hospital, when they ascertained that his condition was untreatable. That was on July 2, 1927. He lived until September. So Emmy came by car, and at our front door received a congratulatory poster drawn by Böhmer. Then we had lunch with wine and coffee, and afterward Emmy was shown the table with her presents. She said later on that it had been her most wonderful birthday ever. From me, she received a small manuscript with pictures, lots of writing paper, books, and cognac; Ninon gave her a suit; Alice Leuthold had sent flowers and some money; and there were also several gifts of money from acquaintances of mine, on whom I had prevailed, about 200 francs, perhaps slightly more. That evening after she left, I felt like keeling over, but I had to stay up for hours trying to catch up with my work.

  One seldom gets a chance like that to organize some fun for one’s friends, to cheer them up and help them out a little. I know dozens of people who have absolutely no prospects and are in a diabolically convoluted situation. For instance, there is poor Luschnat, whom I would like to help, and I have managed to do something for him. Here is his situation: He is as poor as a beggar, and has been ordered to leave Switzerland, but he has received a short reprieve due to our efforts. His wife and child stayed behind when he fled from Berlin in March 1933; she doesn’t want to emigrate. They have filed for divorce, but it won’t come through for ages. You can imagine the way the German bureaucrats will deal with the case of a suspicious emigrant. In the meantime, he has fallen very much in love with another woman. She is an impoverished political refugee who cannot earn a living here or elsewhere, or even gain admission to other countries; her passport is valid only for Switzerland. A child is due at the end of May, and her landlords in Ticino are continually evicting her. Luschnat’s deadline for leaving Switzerland happens to coincide with her due date. He will not leave without her and the child, and nobody knows what will happen. And I have many such cases to worry about. It’s almost enough to destroy a person.

  The Basel National-Zeitung has managed to highlight a nasty and coarse remark about my publisher S. Fischer: in the new edition of a book by Annette Kolb, the “Jewish publisher” cowardly omitted a positive footnote about the Jews.261 Well, I happen to know the prior history of this footnote,262 and I’m also well acquainted with Annette Kolb, her book, etc. It’s a small episode in the quiet struggle that we are waging to preserve intellectual life in Germany; for example, my pieces in Fischer’
s Rundschau are the only efforts by a German critic to review and occasionally promote Jewish books. I wish to continue this activity, and have just agreed to write a twice-yearly review essay on the state of German literature for the main literary review in Sweden.263 Here is the story of the footnote: Nobody even noticed it in the first printing—the publishers courageously permitted its inclusion, which was dangerous for them. Then, perhaps through a denunciation, a German court discovered the passage in the book, and our publisher was forced to choose between dropping the footnote in future printings or having the book banned and existing supplies immediately confiscated. Even then the publisher didn’t agree to this right away, as every other German publisher would have done, but took the time to think the matter over, traveled to Paris for a discussion with Annette Kolb, who naturally agreed that the passage should be dropped. And now the National-Zeitung, no less, mocks the publisher for his noble, courageous behavior by calling his firm a cowardly, kowtowing Jewish publishing house! It would normally be possible to defend oneself against such charges by presenting the facts; the newspapers would then be forced to retract their calumny. But in this case the publisher can do nothing of the sort. If this leaks out, a Nazi spy will be sent to the firm, which will even have to pay him, and the publisher may end up in a concentration camp.

  I get to see all these cases, or many of them at least, and I have to investigate them, furtively and in private, since my current role somehow is to work for Germany while remaining Swiss and European. I don’t expect to have much impact on a large scale. I’m just hoping to preserve a tiny group of thinkers and readers who have kept clean and could transmit a legacy of intellectual honesty beyond the chaos of the present. And it’s even difficult to quell the fighting and hatred between people who ostensibly share the same convictions. Take, for example, the man responsible for that disgusting comment in the National-Zeitung. I suspect that he is a fervent democrat and an enemy of the Nazis who deep down also hates Jews. The filth everywhere! And I’m stuck in the middle of it and would like to stay clean. There are some sources of consolation, but one wishes at times that everything was over and done with.