Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  Although that’s an abominable thing to have to say, it’s absolutely true. Somebody who has good connections with the Swiss or some other embassy in Hungary could mention Herr Schäffer to them, so that they might give him some advice and help him out in an emergency. But there is no normal, legal channel for providing help.

  There are dozens of people like that living in Switzerland at the moment. Many are fellow writers, some quite famous, who have been notified that they have to leave Switzerland within a brief period. Their only crime is that they were Austrians, with good reasons for not wanting—or not being in a position—to exchange their Austrian passports for a passport of the German Reich. Our Alien Police don’t need to swear an oath to Hitler; they could hardly serve his interests more diligently than they do now. I have been able to ease this particular burden for a number of people by making representations to the Alien Police and by vouching for the political and moral reliability of the endangered refugees. Unfortunately, I don’t have any contacts in those countries whose laws and bureaucracy your protege is subject to. In Vienna, for instance, there is a recent book of mine lying in a publishing house which has been expropriated by the Nazis, and so I no longer own the book. The same thing has happened to all of my German (Berlin) income from previous books; it’s now in the hands of the Third Reich or some other gang of thieves. That’s what government and politics amount to nowadays.

  And everything one says about the Nazis and the fascists applies just as much to Stalin and his empire. Recently, I had to ask Romain Rolland to try to approach Stalin about a group of people, some are very well known, who were hauled off a year ago by the secret police. He said in a resigned tone that he himself had close friends living in Russia who had disappeared in that manner, and that he had sent Stalin numerous letters and telegrams, but never received a single reply. There are no longer any contacts between the state and the intellectuals, in every camp.[ … ]

  At the moment, when not completely preoccupied with my own worries, I am trying to get some close friends of ours out of Austria; some of them are in real danger. It’s slow and tough going, a bit like wading in lime, because we have to talk to one another in a roundabout way, using recondite allusions. However, we are expecting a visit from one of those people and hope to help her some more. A wonderful young woman friend of mine, whose passport is about to run out, is in Sweden looking desperately for a man willing to go through with a fictitious marriage, in exchange for a financial consideration, to enable her to become a Swede; of course, all the applicants are swindlers. What a crazy world our Christian West has become!

  TO KLAUS MANN303

  [July 21, 1938]

  I was delighted to get your letter. Thank you very much.

  There aren’t any bombs exploding here yet, but I feel almost as absorbed in the war as I was in 1916–19 while working for the POWs. I’m worried now about the fate of the refugees and émigrés and spend most of my time working for them. I realize that all such efforts are futile, but I felt nevertheless that I had to become active again, largely because of my wife, who comes from Austria and whose close relatives and friends were all still there. There are refugees in our house, sitting at the typewriters, writing curricula vitae, petitions for entry permits, petitions to the Alien Police. In other words, I’m waging yet another paper war, and it’s no prettier this time around. Last time, I set up and edited a small review for the POWs and supplied them with reading material, music, musical instruments, books for students, etc. Once, in a little package intended for a POW library in France, I enclosed a small, cheap edition of The Golden Pot by Hoffmann,304 only to get bawled out by the person who received it. He wrote saying that German prisoners and fighting men were not willing to waste their time on such pathetic, romantic stuff from the era of their great-grandparents. They were demanding reading matter that would keep them in touch with contemporary life in its richness and authenticity, etc.—e.g., works by Rudolf Herzog.305

  The story about Hölderlin, Mörike, and Waiblinger,306 which you read in Barcelona, is quite old; I wrote it circa 1913.

  I hope we get to see each other again.

  TO GEORG REINHART

  [February 1939]

  Dear Herr Reinhart, my dear friend,

  I was so happy to get your kind letter! I have to laugh at your comments about my poem.307 You find it pessimistic, but I have just received a long letter about the same poem from Morgenthaler, who says: “What an astonishing and unexpectedly optimistic ending! The most obvious thing would have been to hurl accusations at the heavens and curse the God who tolerates such abominations. But the image of the God that you portray is a thousand times more beautiful, comforting, and virtuous—I shall bring the poem with me when I report for duty. It should make the most difficult burden easier to bear.”

  Thus Morgenthaler. A poem can affect people very differently. I find that perfectly all right. Personally, I never conceived of the demiurges in either pessimistic or optimistic terms. What I had in mind was more along the lines of Indian mythology, according to which Vishnu creates the world as part of a game, or while he is asleep; then, in four stages, the young, blossoming, reverential world descends from one era to the next, until it reaches a final state of decadence; Shiva is then called upon to smash it to bits—and lying somewhere is wonderful Vishnu, all graceful and smiling; the beginnings of the new world, which he has playfully conjured up and created, once again seem charming and delightful.[ … ]

  The postmark on many of my letters is deceptive. A friend of mine in Zurich handles most of my mail, buys the stamps, which I cannot afford, and, if necessary, has copies made of letters, etc.

  TO ROSA MUGGLI

  [ca. March 5, 1939]

  Thanks a lot for your very interesting letter and also for the commission:308 I started copying the manuscript soon after the first time you mentioned it in a letter, and I think I shall be able to send it to you soon—that is, about ten days from now.[ … ]

  I am pleased to see you take such loving interest in my books. But you will make sure that this doesn’t degenerate into a personality cult, won’t you? A certain awe for literature, and thus also for the poet, is necessary for the higher life—nowadays there are few people who recognize this and act accordingly. But beauty and the intellect form a unity, and it’s well nigh impossible for a poet to express a thought that has not yet been articulated. He draws on treasures which are thousands of years old, not always intentionally, unconsciously as well. Just recently, my wife, who loves to read Greek, came across two verses by the Greek thinker Empedocles, five hundred years before Christ, which state almost verbatim something I wrote about in several verses (in the poem “All Deaths”).309 Since then that same idea has been expressed thousands of times, then forgotten again, and it will recur after we have departed.[ … ]

  TO ERNST MORGENTHALER

  [August 1939]

  My dear friend,

  Your son is quite right. Why don’t we learn how to meditate?

  Here is the difficulty: We Westerners have problems with the art of meditation, which is so highly developed in Indian yoga, and in China, Japan, etc., not only due to the way we are and our bad education but also because the Asian models consist of sequences of images and ideas which we cannot understand or assimilate. The psychologist C. G. Jung knows a lot about this.

  The enclosed little pictures, which I am presenting to you as a gift, were inspired by the universe of Chinese meditation. They are from a recently published book, The Great Liberation310 by Suzuki, but it’s easier if I enclose the prospectus of the book. I would ask you to return it eventually.

  I have sent Ninon away for eight days; she was so tired and worn out with worries. And, unfortunately, some construction will be going on afterward. We are getting some repairs done, and also rectifying a few mistakes made when the house was built; that will take ages.

  TO OTTO BASLER

  [October 19, 1939]

  [ … ] The outbreak of war wasn’
t exactly unexpected. If Hitler had succeeded in capturing Danzig and the Polish Corridor without anybody saying a word, that would have been worse than war. I had half feared this might happen, and many people in Germany thought so, too.

  I think I told you ages ago that I believe that a number of military catastrophes—the world war was the first in a series—will be necessary before this untenable situation collapses and is liquidated. Although it’s terrible to have to live through this, it isn’t at all surprising.

  I am one of those elderly egotists who secretly hope they will be dead by the time the grenades start bursting in their rooms. But on second thought, if at all possible I first want to finish Josef Knecht.311

  We receive a lot of letters by military post; there was a nice one the day before yesterday from Morgenthaler. My eldest son, in the home guard, is about to go on a longish furlough.

  TO MAX HERRMANN-NEISSE

  December 1939

  Your letter with the very welcome poems arrived recently, with only a slight delay. I would like to thank you; I enjoyed reading something of yours again and discovering how you’re faring.312

  The last few months have been quite hectic and unsettling, because we were getting some quite necessary construction done, which took a lot out of my wife, but it’s almost finished now. The war has, of course, left its mark on us too, in several ways. My wife had close relatives and some old friends living in Poland and hasn’t heard yet whether any of them have survived; we are particularly worried about friends of hers in Prague who haven’t managed to get out yet. And my three sons are in the Swiss Army and have been on active duty since the outbreak of war. I’m not all that interested in world events. Old people don’t care very much anymore how the elements no longer capable of life get eliminated, even if that process is quite diabolical. I firmly believe that man is endowed with a certain sense of stability, and it seems to me that he awakes from every abomination with a bad conscience, and so each corrupt period gives rise to a new yearning for meaning and order—but I do not believe that I shall live to experience the next upward motion after this present downward slide. I’m old and tired.

  Our region is very quiet and there is very little sign of the war, as opposed to the situation in German Switzerland. And finally, at the very end of a rainy year, we are having a spell of beautiful, steady weather and days of gentle sunshine. Pictorially, the colors in our landscape are most beautiful in winter, especially before the first snow has fallen. Everything is suffused in a soft, intense glow, and then at twilight, when the mountains seem to light up from within, the spectacle culminates in an intimate festival of light, which always seems like a silent, smiling protest of the friendly, enduring, motherly powers against the antics of world history.

  TO ROLF SCHOTT

  [December 26, 1939]

  Thanks for your letter! Your expression of devotion to me makes me feel ashamed; I am an old and exhausted man, sitting at a table littered with mail, and I sometimes find it comforting to think that death will allow me to slip out of a role that has become merely routine and no longer suits me. Those of us who have acquired fame are recipients of much love and respect, and I have begun to realize that this show of affection is worthwhile and genuine and becomes problematic only when it degenerates into a personality cult; the love is actually intended for a far worthier object. When a person nowadays reveres a writer, poet, or musician, he is really admiring—whether consciously or not—every accomplishment of human culture which the poet has inherited and just happens to represent. Of course, as everybody knows, nowadays those cultural pursuits are controversial and imperiled. So if you have to play the role of somebody who has accidentally acquired fame, you have to act like a bishop, let people kiss your hand, and then make sure that the intended offering is forwarded to the right address.

  I’m a little worried that I shan’t ever finish my novel. I have spent many years weaving something which is very much a late work. I have completed the most important part, which, even as a fragment, would indicate clearly what I had in mind. But the odds of my completing the entire work are not that great. I have not been sufficiently diligent; before taking each small step, I tried to make sure that my ideas were mature enough and that I had calmed down sufficiently—but, meanwhile, old age and the onset of senility have caught up with me, and the question now is not whether I am old, intelligent, and ripe enough to complete the missing parts, but whether I have sufficient energy, drive, and willpower to tide me over the long interruptions and inevitable doldrums. I haven’t touched it for months. The news of the day saps whatever I have by way of energy, receptivity, and concentration, not because of the newspapers, which I seldom read, but because of the mail spread out every day on my table, with tales of war, death, misery, homelessness, injustice, violence, the fate of all the refugees and other victims. I pass on news of families and friends, try to help find missing persons, struggle with our Alien Police, usually in vain, and then I also have worries of my own. Financially, I’m dependent on my Berlin publisher, but separating us is a frontier with barbed wire—namely, currency barriers—I have three sons serving in the Swiss Army, and so forth.

  Well, today, as you can see, I am an old egotist in a foul mood and don’t deserve the beautiful sunlight streaking down over my shoulder from the Generoso. I could wait, but the situation would hardly get any better tomorrow or later on; it’s impossible to combat old age as an enemy or even to cause it any embarrassment; it is burying us like a landslide, choking us like a slow creeping gas.[ … ]

  TO HIS SON MARTIN

  [April 1940]

  [ … ] I am enclosing the last version of the new poem.313 Yes, it is comical. While everyone is out in the trenches and bunkers, etc., preparing to blow the world around us to smithereens, I have been spending entire days preparing a new version of this small poem. Initially, it had four verses and now it has only three; I hope it has become simpler and better, without losing anything of substance. I was never happy with the fourth line of the first verse, and whenever I had to copy the poem out for friends, I tested every line and word in it to help me decide what was dispensable and what wasn’t.

  Nine-tenths of my readers wouldn’t notice which version of the poem is in front of them. At best I shall get about ten francs from the newspaper that publishes it, regardless of which version I submit. This sort of pastime is quite ridiculous. It’s funny, comical, a bit crazy really, and people start asking themselves: Why is the poet so worried about a couple of verses and why does he waste his time in that manner?

  One possible response: In the first place, the poet’s efforts are probably worthless, since it’s scarcely likely that he has just written one of the very few poems that will be remembered one hundred or five hundred years from now. Nevertheless, this comical individual has just done something that is better, less harmful, and more desirable than the activities in which most people are currently engaged. He wrote some verse, threaded words together, but didn’t shoot at anybody, blow up anything, spread gas, manufacture ammunition, sink ships, etc., etc.

  Another possible reply: Even when surrounded by a world that may well be destroyed tomorrow, the poet continues to cull little phrases, select and arrange them; the anemones, primroses, and other flowers growing everywhere in the meadows now do exactly the same thing. In a world that may soon be covered in poison gas, they are carefully shaping their leaves and calyxes, with five or four or seven little petals, even or ridged, everything quite precise, and as pretty as can be.

  TO WOLFGANG HAUSSMANN

  [1940]

  Thanks for your kind letter from Sedrun! I never received the letter you mention having written last year.

  I was pleased to hear about you and your family. For me, the world you have evoked has receded into the very distant past; I don’t think it’s likely I shall be able to go to Stuttgart again.

  It was still peacetime when I got to know your father;314 we were both working on März. It was through him that
I met the Rosenfelds,315 with whom I became friends; we used occasionally to play billiards there together.

  My life ever since has by no means been peaceful; I feel that there has been a war in progress since 1914, and very few of my colleagues and former intellectual peers have really passed that test, with the exception of Romain Rolland, whom I first got to know in 1914, and Thomas Mann, who joined us after the war. I lived alone for about twelve years, then got married again; nowadays life isn’t exactly easy—the war years count twice, so I have become an old man, and no longer travel, take vacations, socialize, etc. As for the world war, I awoke from all sorts of soft illusions in 1914 and since then I see nothing but war in the world, and so I do not attach very much importance to it, since it’s wrong to assume that gunpowder, poison gases, and generals are intellectual powerhouses, even though they can get up to a lot of mischief. In a world torn apart by constant wars, it has become harder and harder to ensure that one has some tranquillity and love in one’s heart and occasionally transmits some of that through one’s art, yet one must keep on trying.

  Greetings to your dear esteemed mother, to your brother Robert, and fond regards to you yourself

  TO ERNST MORGENTHALER

  Montagnola, October 25, 1940

  My dear friend,

  [ … ] I believe that the present erosion of moral standards in governmental and political affairs cannot be halted, but am convinced that this hell will not last forever, and that the political behavior of the people and the conduct of nations will once again become tolerably humane. I don’t think any nation or constitution in the world is so secure that it cannot be overturned and taken by force. The inferno of the totalitarian state is a phase in the decline of nationalism and will not last forever, but before it disintegrates, it will almost completely destroy the things that we believe in, which make our lives worth living. At times like this it is a good idea to have some direct connection in one’s own life with those who are being persecuted and are suffering, such as having a Jewish wife, so that one doesn’t go blindly past the abominations, but sees them with one’s own eyes; the people who survive that experience will prove useful at a later date.