Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  That was back in 1918. Recently a package arrived from Gamper; he wanted to give me something, and it was the watercolor he had painted back then. I searched for a long time, and finally found mine, without the little carriage, but with bushes gone wild and a waterfall daubed in white.[ … ]

  TO A YOUNG PERSON

  Zurich, May 1943

  I’m not capable of writing a proper letter—am being pestered again by physicians—but would nevertheless like to respond to your greetings. I can see from your letter that you’re confronted by a dilemma. But since our experience can never be conveyed in words, your letter naturally only touches on the problem. The issue revolves around the word “ego.” You speak of the self, as if it were a familiar, objective quantity, which, of course, it isn’t. Each of us consists of two selves, and only a sage would know where the one begins and the other leaves off.

  Our subjective, empirical, individual self is actually very mobile, moody, also very dependent on outward events, easily influenceable. We cannot consider it a reliable entity, nor can we allow it to serve as our standard and our voice. This ego merely teaches us something that is reiterated often enough in the Bible: we are, as a species, weak, defiant, and despondent.

  But then there’s another self, buried within the first; the two often mingle, but ought not be confused. This second, lofty, sacred self (the Indian Atman, which you consider an equal of Brahma) is not by any means a personal entity, but represents rather our own share of God, life, the universe, everything that is impersonal and suprapersonal. We would be better off going in pursuit of this self. However, that isn’t easy: the eternal self is quiet and patient, but that other self is forward and impatient.

  Religions consist in part of insights about God and self, in part of spiritual practices and methods of training that allow one to free oneself from one’s moody private self and thus facilitate greater intimacy with one’s own divine inner qualities.

  To my mind, all religions are more or less equal in value. While any one individual religion could make a person wise, it could become degraded and get turned into a silly form of idolatry. Virtually all real knowledge, however, has been lodged in the religions, particularly in mythology. All myths are wrong unless we approach them with due reverence. Each one, however, can unlock the world’s heart. Each one knows ways of transforming the idolatry of the self into the worship of God.

  Enough. I regret not being a priest, although if I were, I might have to ask you for the very thing you cannot afford at this stage. And so it’s preferable that I should greet you as a wanderer, one who, like you, goes about in darkness, but knows of the light and seeks it.

  TO ROBERT WALSER330

  [August 1943]

  We are elderly people now and work is more or less out of the question. Besides, I can no longer read very much. But now and then, when I wish to read something beautiful, I take down one of your dear books and, as I read, enjoy the stroll with you through this beautiful world. I have done so again and just wished to let you know.

  TO OTTO BASLER

  [Bremgarten Castle, August 16, 1943]

  [ … ] There once was a city that supplied me with more mail than any other; many of my friends were there, even though most of them didn’t know one another. The city was called Hamburg. It no longer exists. I still don’t know which friends have died. I have only heard about two of them who lost the roof over their heads along with all their belongings and are now making their way as refugees and beggars to southern Germany; one of them is my cousin Wilhelm Gundert, to whom (together with Romain Rolland) Siddhartha was dedicated.

  Emmy Ball’s daughter, who is married and had been living in Rome, has arrived in Germany as a refugee; she is completely frantic and confused, and is deathly afraid for her husband, who was not allowed to leave. And my sister, who lives near Stuttgart, writes that it is strange not knowing when one goes to bed in the evening whether one will live to see the next morning.

  [ … ] People are always amazed that my very literary stories and poems, which seem so freely inventive, encompass some things that actually exist and can even be documented. Readers are often caught by surprise or laugh aloud on discovering suddenly that there is really a painter called Louis who is a friend of Hesse’s,331 that Castle Bremgarten, the black king,332 the Siamese333 of the Nürnberg journey really exist! And there is a large number of other passages, known only to me, in seemingly fictional contexts that comprise a hidden memorial to real events and actual experiences.

  Another example: The legendary figure of Collofino (Feinhals) often appears in my stories. There is a real person called Collofino; he has written a few things: I used to be quite friendly with him, and we often exchanged greetings and presents. Most recently he appears very discreetly in the Latin quotation used as a motto for The Glass Bead Game. It says: “ed. Collof.”—i.e., edited by Collofino—and that is correct since the Latin version of the saying, allegedly written by one Albertus Secundus but actually originally formulated in German by me, came about with assistance from Collofino. The other collaborator was Franz Schall, whom I’m also going to name in the book.334 At my request Schall, an excellent Latinist, translated the motto into medieval Latin; I then showed it to Feinhals, who found some things that needed refining and so he engaged in some correspondence with Schall about the matter. All of which led to the final version of the saying, as it now stands. So, as you can see, there is more work behind some of the little details than readers might suspect.

  Schall is now dead. And Collofino, a very rich man in Cologne, who owned a large business and also a large house filled with art objects, wrote to me recently from a Baden hospital: In June, his business, and a few days later his home, were so badly destroyed that there wasn’t a trace left of either, nothing whatsoever. That’s what is happening nowadays. Collofino is about seventy-four years old.

  Addio!

  TO HIS SON MARTIN

  [Baden, beginning of December 1943]

  Postmarked December 3, 1943

  This afternoon we had a nice time. It was four o’clock; I was lying in bed, waiting for Ninon, who usually comes at this time. When she arrived she told me right away that she had met Max Wassmer, his wife, and Louis Moilliet on the train; they were traveling and wanted to pay me a quick visit. I got up, and all five of us sat together for an hour, until the guests had to catch their train. Ninon stayed until seven o’clock; she is going to a lecture in Zurich this evening. So now, after the evening meal, I have time to write you a few lines.

  The motto of my fat new book, given at the beginning in Latin and German, clearly states the raison d’être and purpose of the work. It is an attempt to portray something nonexistent, but desirable and possible, in such a way that the idea thereby moves one step closer to realization.

  By the way, this motto is not what it purports to be—i.e., the aphorism of a medieval scholar (although it could well be). I wrote it in German, and it was then translated into Latin by my since deceased friend Schall.

  During the more than eleven years when I was writing it, the book was far more than just an idea, a plaything; it became a protective shield against these ugly times, a magical refuge into which I could retreat for hours, whenever I was ready intellectually, and not hear a single tone from the real world.

  If I made my life difficult and almost unbearable during these years—first of all, by chaining myself and my life’s work to the Berlin publisher, and second, by marrying an Austrian Jewess—the many hundreds of hours that I spent on The Glass Bead Game enabled me to exchange all of that for a completely clean, completely free world, which I could inhabit. Some readers will derive the same kind of profit from this as I did.

  It was great that I was able to finish the book—it’s almost two years ago now—before my intellectual powers began to ebb. I quit at the right moment, and that makes it easier for me to accept the silly things that I have perpetrated in the course of my life.

  Bruno is probably coming on Sunda
y. Heiner was here briefly on Monday—only for an hour and a half, but we had a nice time.

  Best regards, your father

  TO PROFESSOR EMIL STAIGER

  Early January 1944

  I really enjoyed your kind letter. My book has already had its first, unpleasant encounter with the public, in the form of feuilleton reviews—the only serious comments were those by Professor Faesi—and it’s now slowly beginning to affect the kind of reader for whom it was intended. Your letter is the most beautiful such response so far. The echo was so beautiful and rich that I have been feeling very content today, even though my condition is quite wretched.

  Actually, I did not intend the book as utopia (in the sense of a dogmatic program) or prophecy, but rather as an attempt to evoke what to me is one of the truly genuine, legitimate ideas. It’s possible to sense the frequent occasions when that particular idea has manifested itself in world history. Your letter indicates, much to my delight, that I haven’t thereby ventured into an impossible, suprahuman, theatrical realm. I had many spirits around me as I worked on this book: all the spirits who brought me up, some who had the same simple humanity and were as far removed from pathos and humbug as the Chinese sages of history and legend.

  I was glad to hear that you find the fundamental attitude of my book cheerful and simple. I was also pleased by what you say about the meaning and potential impact of the book. There is a concise expression of that meaning in the motto at the very beginning of the book, which can be summed up as follows: The very evocation of an idea or the portrayal of something being realized actually brings us a step closer to its realization (paululum appropinquant). Here, too, I regard your judgment as a form of confirmation.

  Besides thanking you for the joy you have given me, I should like to say that I got to know and like you through some pieces of yours in Trivium. I have occasionally had the following feeling: there are people at work who are interested in precisely the same things as myself.

  I should like to meet you at some point. I’m not mobile enough to visit people, but if you happen to be in this area, you could perhaps drop in on me and my wife, who shares my burrow.

  TO MARIANNE WEBER

  [February 1944]

  Your early-spring letter of February 2 confirms something I have often suspected. In spite of your misery over there, you people are better able to experience joy, appreciate fleeting happiness, and take what the moment has to offer than we are in this country, which has ostensibly been preserved from destruction, where everything still stands, but where there is no longer any air to breathe. There are young people here too, naturally enough, but we old people, and myself in particular, have had enough and are ready.

  That is a wonderful story about the officer who recited my verses during nighttime maneuvers! But there were also more than enough officers who washed their hands after shooting ten or a hundred hostages or burning down a village, then lay down to read Rilke or Goethe for an hour. I would rather hear about an officer who never read Rilke or Hesse, but taught his soldiers to shoot their own leaders rather than the Russians and the Jews. In Germany around 1919 some of the young people had grown tired of war, and were fervent pacifists and internationalists, especially among the students. They read Rolland and Hesse and seemed a kind of yeast, but not long afterward Hitler had an army of 100,000 youngsters, which the Volk had supplied of its own accord, even paying for the brown uniforms. Oh, in Germany they only believe in the Janus face, the “Faustian” disposition, which can burn down villages today and play Mozart so wonderfully tomorrow. And we have certainly had enough of that for all time. Well, forgive me for having written to you in such a mood. But that cannot be helped, since my mood hasn’t really changed in years.

  TO ROLF V. HOERSCHELMANN

  February 22, 1944

  Many thanks for your letter. One ought to keep in mind that Castalia doesn’t consist primarily of utopia, dreams, the future; it also embraces reality, since such things as orders, Platonic academies, schools of yoga have been around for a long time. And as regards women: the poet Bhartrihari, for instance, was a Buddhist monk, who was always running away because he felt he couldn’t survive without women, but each time he returned, feeling repentant, and was welcomed back with great warmth.

  Your other question: The Glass Bead Game is a language, a complete system; it can be played in every manner conceivable, by one person improvising, by several people in a structured way, competitively and also hieratically.

  My friend Christoph Schrempf, who was well over eighty, has died in Stuttgart. Among the people I have known, he most resembled Socrates (and had written some marvelous things about him).

  Well, you had one further question: Knecht’s death can naturally be interpreted in many different ways. To me, the most significant meaning attaches to the sacrifice that he makes in such a courageous and joyous manner. In my view, he hasn’t at all interrupted his education of the youth, but brought it to fulfillment.

  TO A READER

  Montagnola, Peter and Paul’s Day [1944]

  Thanks for your birthday letter, which I enjoyed. As for the litter of kittens, which you mentioned, it now consists of the following: Our dear dwarf (Zwinkeler) died about a year ago; Ninon grieved as much for him as for the Architect, and I mourned him no less than I mourned our unforgettable Lion. Shortly afterward we adopted a very young kitten from Frau Geroe’s litter.335 It’s called Snow White, or Snow, and looks the part. We wanted to get another tomcat, so that he wouldn’t be lonesome, and ordered one from Zurich: a small, very beautiful, tigerlike animal with a pedigree teeming with Siamese, Angoras, etc. Ninon knew the people. We called this tomcat “the Zurich one,” which is still its name, even though it has turned out to be a tabby cat, and had kittens three days ago; we only let her keep one. There are constant pilgrimages in this household to the childbed with the Zurich baby.

  (Above) Am Erlenloh, the house with Hesse built in Gaienhofen in 1907

  (Below) The house on Melchenbühlweg, formerly the residence of his friend Albert Welti, the painter. Hesse lived in this house, “a neglected old aristocratic country estate,” until April 1919. The first work completed there was the novel Rosshalde

  (Above) Casa Camuzzi in Montagnola, where Hesse lived from May 1919 to August 1931

  (Below) The house in Montagnola which H. C. Bodmer had built for Hesse in 1931. Hesse moved in in August 1931

  Radio Basel is giving me a “Hesse hour” for my birthday, but that won’t be until July 3. Moreover, my Zurich printer is presenting me with a small private edition,336 an old, short piece of mine—one of the ones I still like—which will be forwarded to friends and well-wishers.[ … ]

  TO PROFESSOR EUGEN ZELLER

  July 17, 1944

  I enjoyed your letter of June 29, and would like to thank you for it.

  My youngest son337 is getting married next week, but I shall not be present; I seem to have a knack for avoiding such occasions. For instance, on July 3, Radio Basel devoted an evening to me, produced in collaboration with the author, and on the evening of July 3, I was sitting in Montagnola with my wife, listening just as reverently and curiously to the Hesse evening as any other Swiss citizen. I heard myself reciting a few poems—which had been recorded a few weeks beforehand at my house.

  There were quite a few responses to the evening. My eldest granddaughter wrote to me delightedly, saying that I was a great writer, and Elisabeth wrote too, the Elisabeth of Camenzind and of the early poems.338 There were many other letters, two of which I found interesting.

  One was from a woman who was once our cook in Bern. She was intelligent, decent, attractive, a remarkable girl, we liked her, and she was fond of the children, but then she became unpleasant, and ended up causing us a lot of vexation. In the letter she said that she had been intending for decades to apologize for what had taken place, and now, having heard my voice on the radio after thirty years, she wanted to go ahead and do so.

  A pastor in Thurgau339 wrote sa
ying he owned a manuscript of mine, a portfolio containing many poems, which I wrote in 1892 (in other words, when I was fifteen); I had dedicated it to his aunt Eugenie Kolb.340 The name is certainly right. I wrote to him and attempted to acquire this rarity, but the man would not agree to give me the portfolio permanently. However, I was able to persuade him to loan it to me for fourteen days. It has been lying around here for the past four days, so I am rereading the little verses that I wrote there while still virtually a child:

  The power, you know, of the child with the bow

  Who arises in May like fragrance from roses

  And strikes the heart, a blow so sweet, so sharp.

  or

  I sang a little song,

  Poured out my very heart,

  Now it has faded away,

  And she has heard it not.

  I was glad to read what you said about The Glass Bead Game.

  TO PASTOR W. FINK

  March 21, 1945

  Yesterday I received your kind letter of January 16, in which you try to cheer me up by telling me the story about the evening in Maulbronn. I enjoyed that. You are right, I have always perceived things intensely, and tasted fully all the joys and sorrows of life; at times this has seemed a boon and a blessing, at others merely a curse.

  A dear friend of mine341 is severely ill; the doctor thinks that he will not survive. He had a stroke a year ago. It is strange. This man, who was brought up along strictly Catholic, clerical lines by some priests, kept in monastic seclusion and inadequately fed, has retained the stigma that was inflicted on him in two rather infantile ways. First of all, he has remained hungry physically, and can never get enough; he used to get up at night occasionally and eat pounds of sugar or bread, etc. Second, throughout his life he retained the spiteful pose of the atheist and rebel, and as an old man wrote a very scholarly book directed against his personal enemy, Yahweh.342 Now, close to death, he gratefully permits the Catholic prayers to be spoken, not by the priest, but by a woman who is helping care for him, and he says his ora pro me or ora pro nobis like a believer.