Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  A few months ago the Russians moved into my wife’s homeland.316 A cousin of hers, who wanted to move into that area from Romania because he preferred to become Russian rather than stay Romanian, was killed by the Romanians on his way there. Although the occupation began months ago, my wife’s only sister wasn’t able to send us a letter or card until a few days ago; there is no hope of her getting a passport so she can go abroad and see her sister again. We finally received a card, which the Russians must have let through; the language was exceedingly diplomatic, each word chosen with great care, and every statement was couched neutrally—like a cautious letter smuggled out of a German concentration camp.

  [ … ] In the last few weeks my wife has had an old wish fulfilled; we came across a woman philologist, whom we invited to spend some time with us, and for two hours a day she reads Aeschylus with Ninon and reviews grammar. She has been here now for three or four weeks or so, a pleasant guest.

  Regards to Sasha; I often think of her when I look at the shoots of a plant on the balcony of my studio. I remember putting some sprigs of that plant in my purse years ago at your house; now the oldest shoot is about two meters tall.

  [January 1941]

  I really have to tell you and Sasha about the plant you gave me three years ago at Easter; I took three sprigs with me in my purse and planted them in a pot here. Those three yielded a hundred or so little plants, and I have given some away to acquaintances. But only one of these plants—it’s one of the oldest and probably one of the three originals—has developed fully. It grew quickly, and is now 265 centimeters tall, without taking into account the bends and curves in its stem, which is tied in several places to a stick. The stem, which is about the thickness of a child’s finger, is wooden, very hard, and bare until it reaches two-thirds of its height, which is where those little branches begin, organized around the stem. The new little blossoms are always forming at their tips, then falling off and developing into new plants down below. Now it has entered a new and probably final stage in its development: Over the last few weeks, an umbel has formed at the very top, a little above the uppermost branches; it consists of four little bundles of six to ten pretty little calyciflorae, the majority of them are still buds, the ones that have opened up are cup-shaped and red, a wonderfully bright red.

  It may be one of those plants that blossom only once in their lives and then die; in any case, I wanted to tell you about these things, so you know how your gift has fared.

  There are some strange things growing on earth. Recently I found out about the final hours of a friend of mine317 whom I had been worrying about for some time and whose burdens I had often shared prior to that. He was Jewish, well off, came from the Sudetenland. He went off to war in 1914 as a fancy Austrian lieutenant, was captured, spent years in Siberia, returned to Bohemia on foot, subsequently took over his father’s small factory. His workers regarded him as a comrade; some were on a first-name basis with him. He remained a bachelor for a very long time, was knowledgeable about Indian literature and the Kabbalah. We corresponded for years; he visited us here a number of times, once with a lady whom he married shortly afterward. He was hardly married when he began to see that the Germans would take over the Sudetenland, so he left his hometown and withdrew to Prague. The area did indeed become German, but he didn’t get a penny for his factory. His lifestyle in Prague was elegant at first, then more and more modest, and finally he was in total poverty, and since Prague was in the hands of the Germans, he fought tenaciously, while remaining cool and patient nonetheless, to escape, to obtain an entry permit for some country. The most desirable countries were already ruled out; either they were hermetically sealed off, like ours, or they demanded huge bribes for a visa; he tried Peru, Bolivia, Shanghai, etc., etc., but to no avail. Finally, about six months ago, he boarded a ship filled with Jewish refugees, which was supposed to travel down the Danube through Romania to Palestine. I received the few last lines from him directly, asking me to do a few things, and I did whatever was possible. That was the last thing we received, and I have just heard the rest of his story. The ship arrived in Haifa all right, but the passengers were not allowed to disembark and were held in police custody. And one day they were attacked by planes, and the misery of the hundreds of half-starving people came to an end. Apparently, they identified the body of his wife, but never found that of my friend.

  We were both in bed for a while with a cold, but now I can get up every day for a little.

  TO JOACHIM MAASS318

  [End of July 1941]

  I should have written to you long ago and also to our friend Bermann, but I can’t hold anything in my fingers, which are swollen and so incapacitated that all sorts of things—books, garden tools, occasionally even a spoon—are constantly dropping out of my hands. You will have to be patient with me.

  Ninon was anxious to find out more about my condition, and my physician wanted to cover himself, so I spent a few days in the cantonal hospital in Zurich, where they examined me for traces of the favorite terminal ailments of elderly gentlemen. They must have taken at least twenty blood samples; I had to spend whole mornings lying with a tube in my stomach. I ended up paying almost four hundred francs for those three days. Ninon was quite happy, since they hadn’t found cancer or anything like that. I found those few days tough going. Contemporary medicine is not even remotely capable of detecting early signs of such fatal illnesses. It is no more reliable than we ourselves can be—that is, if a person has a delicate, potent, well-developed sensibility. I had not been at all curious or worried, and found the bustling factorylike atmosphere in the hospital miserable. I was actually ashamed that I had gritted my teeth and obeyed the doctor and Ninon. Naturally enough, the elderly Tolstoy came to mind, the way he escaped from his house, the doctor, and his wife’s caresses, etc., so that rather than end his days amid the machinery of health care, he might die in the woods or on the road.

  Actually, those learned experts merely came up with the following: a few irregularities in blood composition, considerable weight loss, and, finally, the excruciating rheumatism in the joints that I have had to endure for the past nine months; they had little to say about the latter, and now I’m alone again with my illness. The latest news is that I have chosen a treatment consisting of injections with the poison from bee stings, and have had four injections, no effect yet.

  Suhrkamp has written to me again after months of silence. He is depressed, conditions in the business are getting worse. Readers also tell me that a number of my books aren’t available anywhere.

  I have not heard anything from [Martin] Beheim-Schwarzbach319 for three months or so. His books are no longer available; I was able to procure a few for him, but that is no longer possible.

  Please give my greetings to the Bermanns, and pass on the following: I received Tutti’s vellum manuscript all right and immediately wrote a thank-you letter. Frau Fischer wrote to me from St. Monika, and I have also heard from Thomas Mann.

  I stopped reading the news about the war quite some time ago. Ninon’s sister is in Czernowitz; she and her husband320 managed to survive, but they are hungry and don’t have a job, money, or prospects of either.

  Suhrkamp has published a very beautiful book: Rings of Glass by Luise Rinser.321

  Unfortunately, I didn’t receive the book on Schubert by Annette Kolb,322 but I have seen some advertisements for it. My fingers are letting me down—as you can see from the mistakes. Lots of greetings from Ninon, we often think of you!

  TO MAX WASSMER323

  Baden, November 12, 1941

  My dear friend Wassmer,

  I’m writing today about an important matter and would like to ask for your help. We have been worrying for ages about my wife’s only sister, whose life and liberty are currently at great risk. She is living in her homeland, Cernauti (formerly Cernowicz). She survived the Russian invasion, then the war and the recapture of that region by the Romanians, but now she is in danger every day because of the pogroms, deport
ation, concentration camps, etc. Finally, after much strenuous effort, we managed to get them a Cuban visa. The visas, made out for Dr. Heinz Kehlmann and Frau Lilly Kehlmann, both of Cernauti, are supposed to arrive today or tomorrow at the Cuban Consulate in Bern. When my wife receives the official written notification from the Consulate, she will forward it to you immediately. And I would entreat you, my dear friend, to help us out at this juncture. Once you have received that notification, could you bring it to the Confederate Alien Police in Bern and ask for a transit visa for the Kehlmanns? They need a permit to travel through Switzerland on the way to Cuba, and also permission to spend one month in Switzerland, for the following reason:

  Given the present situation, they cannot travel from Cernauti to Berlin—the only Cuban Legation for Romanians is in Berlin—so they cannot pick up the visas in person. That is why we asked to have the visas sent to Bern. Moreover, my wife would like to spend a little time with her only sister and help her prepare for the long journey before she emigrates for good.

  Another point: If this request is granted—as is only human and natural—the Swiss Consulate in Bucharest will have to write to the Kehlmanns in Cernauti, or better still, send them a cable (since they are in great danger of being deported), asking them to come to Bucharest to pick up the transit visa for Switzerland.

  In the meantime, we shall be trying, with the help of a Ticino lawyer, to get a temporary permit from the canton so that they can come to Ticino. We know that Bern can only agree in principle and that we first have to secure permission from the canton.

  Meanwhile, Ninon is also trying to procure Cuban visas for her oldest friend in Cernauti, and also her son and his wife. Although we would like to keep the two issues separate and attach a lot more importance to the first, we would nevertheless like to ask you whether there is any chance of securing permission for these three persons to travel through Switzerland; they would stay five or six days.

  My wife is in Zurich, at H. C. Bodmer’s, Bärengasse 22. But she is at my place in the Verenahof almost every afternoon from four o’clock onward.

  Of course, I shall reimburse you right away for any costs incurred.

  Addio, and God be with this letter. I hate to burden you with all of this, but have no alternative.

  TO THOMAS MANN

  Montagnola, April 26, 1942

  Your kind letter of March 15 arrived three days ago, which is relatively quick. It was a pleasure to read, and that is saying something nowadays. I’m glad to hear that you have received my latest privately printed booklet—an enormous number have gone astray, especially in Germany. We were both delighted with the wonderful picture of you and Fridolin,324 who looks very much like your wife. I happen to have one of Heiner, my son in Zurich, and his daughter, and am enclosing it.

  How wonderful that you finally have a house again and a proper study with a library, and that the climate is agreeable! I was also really delighted to hear that you’re working with gusto on the fourth volume of Joseph.[ … ]

  My books are not banned in Germany, but nearly were on several occasions and that could happen again anytime. The authorities frequently blocked all payments to me. Of course, they are fully aware of my Swiss and European attitude, but are on the whole happy enough to label me as an “undesirable.” Most of my books are currently out of print, and, of course, in most cases there is no question of their being republished. But, after all, wars don’t last forever, and even though I cannot imagine what the world will be like when this war is over, I am naïve enough to assume that our things will be brought out again, someday. A Zurich publisher, Fretz, had the idea of putting together an edition of my collected poems;325 while they were assembling the material, they discovered that I have written some eleven thousand lines of verse. I felt somewhat taken aback by that figure.

  The world is doing everything it can to make parting easy for us old people. It is utterly amazing how much thought, planning, and foresight it takes to perpetrate these lunacies, and the same is true of the irrationality and naïveté with which nations make virtue of necessity and ideology of slaughter. Man is so bestial and yet so naïve.

  We are long accustomed here to seeing traces of the war everywhere. My three sons have been in the military for three years, with some interruptions and furloughs. The state is encroaching everywhere upon the natural, civilian life of human beings. At times it seems to me that all this warmongering since 1914 represents a gigantic, if unsuccessful, attempt by mankind to crush the excessively well-organized machinery of the state apparatus.

  Fond regards to your family, and especially to your dear wife, from both of us.

  TO HIS SISTER ADELE

  [October 1942]

  When celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Mother’s birth,326 think of me for a moment, and I shall be with you in spirit. You will no doubt be reminded of days in Octobers past on which we celebrated Mother’s birthday. I believe that Ludwig Finckh was there once, although that may have been for your birthday. We filled a basket with beautiful mushrooms from the wood. And you may also recall the pleasure Mother used to get from those events, her skill organizing parties and the like, selecting flowers for little bouquets, etc. That was her voice singing the remarkable song for our birthdays: “Is it not a great joy [to be born a human being]…?” That question is still valid, and certainly not outmoded, as it once seemed.

  I have always felt that our mother inherited a remarkable and mysterious combination of traits from her parents. While resembling in many ways her grandfather, whose wisdom I greatly admire, she was very much the Francophone Calvinist in her moral commitment and passionate devotion to good causes.

  Our parents bequeathed us many things, including some contradictions and difficulties; the legacy is not simple or easy, but it has a certain richness and nobility. It fosters a sense of duty, and often helps one to keep one’s eyes open and see things clearly and make judgments at a time when most people content themselves with slogans. Although our parents demanded quite a lot of us, they asked a lot more of themselves, and showed us through their lives something that has become rare and is unforgettable. Nowadays people always try to persuade us that our parents’ faith, worldview, and judgments were primitive and antiquated; but I must say that, even though I sometimes felt that way as a youth, things have sorted themselves out over the years and now seem very different.

  A pity that we have no really good pictures of Mother from the later years! But we carry her picture around inside us.

  Greetings to all present!

  TO ROLF CONRAD

  [Baden] November 1942

  My Berlin publisher327 has also visited me here, and I have at least regained possession of my manuscript—it was written over the last eleven years and has just been gathering dust for seven months in Berlin. It cannot appear in Germany, and since the work of my final years could be destroyed by a fire or a bomb, I shall now have to have the book published somewhere in Switzerland, so that it will at least be preserved. Of course, its publication in Switzerland is no more meaningful than anything else taking place these days. The book is directed at those readers who are somehow expecting it and could benefit from it. It’s now going to be twice as expensive, even for the few who buy it here, and will not earn me anything. But the same applies to most things we do these days—there may be some metaphysical sense to it all, perhaps.

  TO THE “NATIONAL-ZEITUNG,” BASEL, ON ITS HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY328

  The National-Zeitung is not just the place in which many of my short pieces have been making their first appearance, but also the newspaper I read daily. There are two reasons for that. First of all, it is a Basel newspaper, with good coverage of local news, and I find that attractive and advantageous, since I like to know where what I am reading comes from, where it grew up and is at home, and am only open to ideas and opinions when they have an individual countenance, and have been molded and given a unique shape by the locality. And, moreover, Basel is the city where I first went to
school. It’s an old love of mine—I almost said, “an unhappy love.” This is one reason why I am so fond of the National-Zeitung. The other reason is related to my sympathy for the newspaper’s social and humanitarian point of view, for its convictions, for its special way of being Swiss, and for its interpretation of the concept of the nation-state.329

  I intend to remain loyal to the National-Zeitung and wish it all the best on its anniversary and relocation to the new building.

  TO ERNST MORGENTHALER

  [April 1943]

  Your kind letter with the two notorious sketches arrived just at the right time, when I was in need of company, or “contact,” as the Bavarians put it. I have been alone for five days, Ninon is away on a trip, and I am sitting here surrounded by little bottles of medicine and Vichy water, pharmacy bills.[ … ]

  You’re right—if the generals could be persuaded to paint for a few hours every morning, the world would be a different place. But the generals and dictators don’t like to get paint stains on their trousers, and having only one model on a chair to torment is no match for their ambitions, since they feel a need to command thousands, millions of people. The likes of us have as difficult a time trying to understand that ambition as has a general trying to comprehend our joys and our sorrows.

  I just thought of a story about painting. I was in Locarno in March 1918, had just begun to paint, attempted a few watercolors; one day I asked the painter Gustav Gamper, a quick and skillful watercolorist, to take me along with him on a painting expedition. We headed off toward Gordola with our rucksacks and little chairs; I was feeling quite fearful and anxious about the tasks ahead, and as we went along, I pleaded with Gamper: “Please do me a favor—no waterfalls.” I thought that was hardest of all to do. Suddenly he stopped at a fork in the path: some velvet brown foliage behind a little wall, through which one could see a gorge with a waterfall, and higher up the mountain a chapel and a couple of huts. He unpacked immediately; the scene really looked very charming, and he completely disregarded my objections. So we sat down and started painting right away. When we were almost finished, a little wagon with a horse and a local Ticino family came along, and Gamper said: “Let’s paint the little carriage in quickly,” and indeed within two minutes it was in his picture; I was astounded and gave up all hope.