Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  Thank you again for your letter; it provided me with some important information. We need to support each other by cooperating and occasionally plaguing each other with demands. Life is imperfect, especially in this crazy era, and to hold our own against it, we must be not only industrious but also psychologically acute. Fondly

  P. S. We have just received news that Suhrkamp will be coming soon with his wife. For the final step, a document is required, and I would ask you to provide the following:

  A statement, certified by a notary, that the Verlag Fretz (or better still, Herr Fretz personally) will guarantee payment of the expenses for a convalescent stay by Peter Suhrkamp and his wife from Berlin.

  May I ask you for a note along those lines?

  If this turns out to be true and Suhrkamp actually comes, there will be many things for us to talk over and sort out.386 I can imagine that he will first discuss with you all matters relating to me, and then, if necessary, the three of us can meet in person.

  TO A READER OF “THE GLASS BEAD GAME”

  September 1947

  You will find in the motto prefacing the first volume a precise answer to the question of how the Glass Bead Game is constituted, the extent to which it actually exists, has existed, or is utopian, the degree to which the author believes in it, etc.

  As the author of the biography of Josef Knecht and the inventor of Albertus Secundus, I have contributed somewhat to the paululum appropinquant387—as have those who gained access to the essence of music and developed the musicology of the past few decades, or those philologists who tried to establish ways of measuring the melodies in a prose style, as well as a few others. My nephew and friend Carlo Isenberg, the Ferromonte of my book, was one of those pioneers in non ens, one of those individuals who brought that condition closer to a facultas nascendi. He conducted musical research, played the harpsichord and clavichord, was in charge of an organ and directed a choir, searched throughout southern and southeastern Europe for fragments of the most ancient music. He has been missing since the end of the war, and, if still alive, is imprisoned somewhere in Russia.

  As for myself, I have never lived in Castalia, am a hermit, have never joined a community, with the exception of the Travelers to the East, a league of believers whose way of life is very similar to that of Castalia. But in the course of the past dozen years, ever since portions of my book about Josef Knecht have become known, I have not infrequently been glad to receive greetings from people working away quietly somewhere who like to engage in speculation and for whom the concept that I called the Glass Bead Game has long been as real as it has been for me. They know in their very souls that it exists; they had known of it, or intuitively sensed it, for years before the appearance of my book; they regarded it as an intellectual and ethical challenge, and are beginning to recognize it, increasingly, as a force capable of forging a community. They are further developing the approach suggested in my book: paululum appropinquant. And it seems to me that you are one of them and thus live closer to Castalia than you had imagined.

  TO PETER SUHRKAMP

  October 2, 1947

  I already asked you months ago why you occasionally insist on giving unpublished pieces of mine to the press, even though you don’t own the rights to them, and I protested against this practice of yours. But you never replied.

  And now along comes another surprise. Two poems388 have appeared in Volume 4 of the Deutsche Beiträge, which you offered to the editors without my knowledge or authorization. Actually, neither of the poems was by me! They are poems enclosed by readers with their letters, which I would occasionally copy for a friend, and now the editors of that journal have published those pieces, passing them off, rather grotesquely, as my work. I’m more than accustomed to seeing you dispose of my property without my prior knowledge, and I’m also accustomed to strange practices in the present-day German press, but this is the most ludicrous, vulgar such occurrence to date. I simply cannot avoid making the following reproach: You had no right to allow them to print unpublished pieces of mine, and if this should happen again with any frequency, I shall break off our relationship. I know what friendship is all about, but that sort of behavior has nothing to do with it. And so, for the umpteenth time, I repeat my request: Instead of disposing of manuscript pages behind my back, have a little respect for my wishes, which I have repeated often enough, and do everything you can to prevent such use of the material, and cease promoting it, as if to spite me.

  I’m sorry, but our relationship has to be based on something resembling trust and order.

  TO ERNST PENZOLDT389

  [October 1947]

  My drawings certainly aren’t as beautiful and accurate as yours, but in the last few days I have been dabbling in my own way with a quill and a small brush. Somebody ordered a manuscript of a poem with illustrations, so I have been playing around with paper, watercolors, and paint for two hours or so a day, filling in a few inlets with some villages and mountains. I have left some space in the sky for a few white clouds, and I still need three days’ worth of leisure time to write the texts for the poems, which I am selecting from virtually every period in my life. After I have transformed the sheet into an illuminated manuscript, I shall send it off to the person who commissioned it. The payment will arrive a few days later, and it in turn will be transformed into a dozen packets for needy friends across the border. You may gladly have one, if you need coffee, tea, sugar, or lard. But there is a long interval between the initial order for the packet and the day it actually arrives—usually six to eight weeks.

  Well, let me know at some point how I should address it.390 [ … ] I’m starting to give up wine, haven’t smoked in the last four or five years. It’s good that Suhrkamp is back in Frankfurt!391 And good you told me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about it for weeks. Have a good time on your island!

  TO SALOME WILHELM

  Montagnola, January 11, 1948

  I felt very unhappy after reading your kind December letter. Obviously, you never—or haven’t yet—received the two letters in which I gave some hints about my situation and also explained why I cannot read that novel by your acquaintance. The situation is as follows. For the past two years my daily mail has been so voluminous that the task of reading it once would exhaust a healthy young man: anywhere between a hundred and five hundred pages of letters a day, a continuous stream of dull and corrosive water seeping into my eyes, my mind, and my heart, day after day; the world it portrays is full of misery, complaints, desperation, also some stupidity and coarseness. Those letters ask me to help, issue statements, send things, and give advice; the tone ranges from straightforward requests to actual threats. Moreover, I have to feed some two dozen people in Germany; working on the side, I earn several hundred francs a month to keep my sisters and friends alive. My eyes have been damaged for years. All that time I have not known a day without some eye pain; my only help comes from my wife, and she is already heavily overburdened with household chores, guests, volunteer work for the émigrés, etc. She is gradually wilting, consumed, like me, by this awful treadmill.

  Even three or four years ago almost nothing would have pleased me as much as hearing that somebody had written a biography of Wilhelm392 and that I might be of some use. But, things being the way they are, I have had to take another pill and work overtime another hour to get this miserable letter written. Here is the only advice I can think of: Mentioning those old ties, ask Dr. C. G. Jung, who lives in Küsnacht near Zurich, to do something for your manuscript. He himself will hardly be able to do anything; he has been very ill and is probably just as overworked as I. But he has something I lack, lots of help from secretaries, students, etc., and it might possibly suffice if he persuaded his Zurich publisher, Rascher, to have a look at the manuscript. It could be a suitable addition to his list.

  Well, enough of that. We’re living in a period of transition; we don’t know what the future will bring, but the current outlook is unfavorable. Although it seems as though
I myself haven’t inhaled any air or eaten any bread in years, I have to enjoy the following task: I scrape resources together to prevent a group of righteous citizens from starving, even though they voted for Hindenburg and, to some extent, for Hitler as well. By the way, on the positive side, some former Nazis have really converted, and become alert, honorable-minded people, but people with nobility have always been in a small minority, everywhere. Farewell, and don’t be angry with me—you aren’t, of course—you realize that, despite everything, I have faithful memories of you and Wilhelm and feel grateful to you.

  TO HIS SON HEINER

  [End of February 1948]

  There is something on the way to you for your birthday, along with my best wishes.

  We had Frau Geroe here for a few weeks—she was ill—and my poor Berlin publisher and his wife spent a few days with us. Then, two weeks ago, after months of senseless worries and excitement, our Romanian refugees finally arrived—Ninon’s only sister and her husband. They have lost their homeland and have not yet found a country willing to issue them an immigration visa. They were only allowed into Switzerland as my guests for a brief period of “recuperation”; they couldn’t take a single penny along. Even in Bucharest they weren’t allowed to buy the tickets; we had to send money for the journey, etc., by messenger to the Hungarian border. At least they are out of Romania, having narrowly escaped a frightful end, since they are not only undesirable intellectuals but also Jews, and Romania prides itself on not being any less anti-Semitic now that it is Communist and loyal to Stalin than it was under Hitler or Antonescu.393 They are systematically “liquidating” the entire section of the population to which Ninon’s people belong. Naturally, we are going to harbor both of them at our place, with or without the consent of the Alien Police, until they can get a visa for some country where they could eke out a living. They have experienced unmentionable horrors, which only get talked about incidentally or by chance, and one feels ashamed again to be part of this infernal world, in which a person’s life—ten thousand lives even—is worth less than a pound of flour.

  TO A PATRON

  Montagnola, March 1948

  Thanks for your kind letter. Your guess is right: I’m continuing my activities on behalf of Germany. They have consumed most of my time for almost three years, and I shall possibly die serving this cause, since no serious change can be expected in the foreseeable future. Only yesterday a cousin of mine was here. He is head of a Stuttgart clinic, a brilliant doctor, passionately committed to his profession. He works in a half-destroyed building; there is a huge crowd of patients every day, and they do not have enough rooms, beds, or anything else. The treatment of severely ill patients has to be constantly interrupted, since they are always running out of the necessary medicine, etc., etc., and cannot acquire any more.

  I devote about a third of my activities to the task of supplying food to almost two dozen friends of mine in Germany; for this I need some five hundred francs each month, and that easily amounts to a third of my income. In addition, I supply them with books, and the third part has to do with the provision of reading matter, advice, instruction, etc., to the POWs. Some of them have been living behind barbed wire in camps in Africa or Syria for three to four years, and even the shortest good book can virtually save their lives. In the last three years I have sent the prisoners almost 2,000 books. Incidentally, that is a service I performed once before, for over three years, during the First World War.[ … ]

  But enough of that. It’s a crazy age, since one cannot even write anybody a letter without inundating them with miseries, of which they no doubt already have more than enough themselves.

  I’m sending you copies of all my privately printed works. If you can and so wish, you may send me whatever amount you think fitting, to help support my army of problem children.

  TO MAX BROD394

  Montagnola, May 25, 1948

  Almost every day I receive a small handful of supplicatory letters, mostly from Germany. A person is ill and ought to get into a sanatorium with good food. Another is a literary person, researcher, or artist, has been living in a single room with three or four other people for years, doesn’t even have a table; he should get some space, relaxation, and a job. One writes: “All it takes is a nod from you, then the recognized welfare agencies will do everything they can to help.” Another: “A word from you to the federal agencies would be enough to secure for the poor man an entrance visa and work permit, perhaps citizenship as well.” Whereupon I always have to reply that not a single authority, agency, sanatorium, or baker’s shop in this country would give a meal to anybody merely on the basis of a nod or whisper from me. What is so amazing and painful about these requests is the petitioners’ faith in the existence of a fairy-tale magician who has only to lift a finger and misery will yield to happiness, war to peace.

  And now even you, a close friend of Kafka’s, the profound tragedian, are addressing me with that sort of request, and this time I am not just being asked to support an individual or two, but to assist an entire people and also “restore peace”! I’m frightened at the very thought, since I must confess that I cannot believe in the ability of “intellectuals” to unite or in the noble intentions of the “civilized world.” In matters of the intellect, quantity is irrelevant, and it doesn’t matter whether ten or a hundred “prominent people” are petitioning the holders of power for some change in policy, since the cause is in any case quite hopeless. If, years ago, you had turned to the new groups in your own country that had terrorist training and had appealed to them to be humane, Godfearing, and nonviolent, you would have heard in no uncertain terms what activists and people under arms think of those ideals.

  No, no matter how noble your intentions, I cannot share your view. On the contrary, I believe that all the “intellectual” pseudo-protests, endless petitions, demands, sermons, or even warnings directed by intellectuals at those who control the world are wrong and merely damage and degrade the cause of the intellect, and all such efforts should definitely cease. Dear Max Brod, our realm is certainly “not of this world.” Our role is not to preach or give orders or make demands, but to remain steadfast amid the infernos and the devils and to refuse to put much hope in the effectiveness of our fame or in the impact of large numbers of people like us. In the long term, for sure, we shall certainly prevail, since people will remember some of our work long after the ministers or generals of today have fallen into oblivion. But as for the short term, the here and now, it is we who are the poor fellows, and the world has absolutely no intention of letting us play its game. We poets and thinkers only amount to something because we are human beings who, whatever our faults, have a heart and a head and some fellow feeling for everything natural and organic. The ministers and other political operators base their temporary power, not on the heart and mind, but on the masses, of whom they are the “exponents”! We should avoid the things with which they operate: numbers and quantity. We have to leave this area to them. It’s not easy for them either, and that is something we ought not forget: They often find things even more difficult than we do. They don’t have a life or mind of their own, and cannot be tranquil or worried, or have a sense of equilibrium, since they are carried along, pushed about, and swept aside by millions of voters. It is not that they are entirely unmoved by the abominations which occur under their very eyes and for which they themselves share some responsibility; they are just at a loss. They have their own ground rules, which provide some cover and can make their responsibility more tolerable. As custodians of the intellectual heritage, servants of the word and of truth itself, we feel as much compassion as horror. But we think our ground rules are more than ground rules, that they are real commandments, real laws, eternal, divine. Our duty is to preserve them, and every compromise and concession we make to those other “ground rules” puts them at risk, even if our intentions are most noble.

  I realize that, by stating all of this so bluntly, I may cause superficial observers to conclude that I
am by nature one of those artistic dreamers who believe that art bears no relation to politics and that the artist should remain ensconced in his ivory-towered, aesthetic existence, and shouldn’t have any contact with harsh realities that would spoil his mood or make him dirty his hands. I know that in this regard I don’t have to defend myself in your eyes. Ever since the First World War relentlessly opened my eyes to reality, I have raised my voice often; indeed the sense of responsibility thus awakened in me has consumed a large portion of my life. But I have carefully remained within certain bounds; as an artist and man of letters, I have tried to remind my readers continually of the sacred, basic commandments that we ought to obey as human beings, but I have never tried to influence politics myself, in the style of the hundreds of petitions, protests, and warnings that intellectuals are constantly issuing, with great ceremony, but to no avail; those activities merely damage the reputation of our humanitarian cause. And my position is not about to change.

  Although I was not able to grant your wish, as you can see, I have at least tried to make your concern known to others, by publishing your letter and my response.395

  TO A STUDENT396

  [ca. July 1948]

  Dear Herr Z.,

  I am an old, sick man; for the past three years, I have been utterly consumed and exhausted by the tasks of the day, which are fundamentally alien to me—caring for a large number of starving people, having to contend with volumes of daily mail that would defeat the youngest, healthiest person—so I cannot respond adequately.