As happens every summer, Ninon has finally broken down in the great heat and fallen ill; tomorrow is the secretary’s last day here. The uncanny saga of the runoff water482 around the house continues unabated; we have had earth walls built in front of the house. The architect is finally supposed to arrive on Thursday from Zurich. No doubt there will be a lot of construction going on for weeks, and that will mean having to dig up our driveway, which will be unusable. So you see, the atmosphere isn’t particularly festive, many of the flowers are already wilting.[ … ]
Enough. Must get back to the drudgery. But many of the gifts were kind and touching.
TO MAX WASSMER
[1957]
A few readers wrote expressing anger at the pamphlet of a young writer who has attacked me for producing romantic kitsch.483 They asked how I’m going to respond, and I replied:
A boy on the street sticks out his tongue at an old man and throws a handful of dirt at him.
Will the old man pursue the boy, who can probably run much faster? Or will he contact a lawyer and file a suit against the boy’s parents?
He adopts neither course, unless he is uncommonly stupid, and simply says to himself that the left wing of the avant-garde has always greatly enjoyed sticking out its tongue and throwing mud about. He will go home, get his coat cleaned, and resume his activities.
TO MAX BREITHAUPT, DIRECTOR OF STUDIES
January 30, 1958
Thanks for your letter about the talk by Thornton Wilder.484
I don’t agree with everything in the talk either. But my response isn’t as negative and passionate as yours. I love Wilder’s work and have a high regard for him, and don’t find anything wrong with his decision to avoid voicing the idealistic sentiments that would be pleasing to church and state, and to focus instead on his personal convictions. If contenders for the Frankfurt Peace Prize had to be unobjectionable, believing Christians, Albert Schweitzer and Reinhold Schneider would be the only previous recipients worthy of the award.
No, I approve of Wilder’s right to entertain and express those convictions, even though I don’t share his touching, childlike belief in the ideals of democracy. The thing I didn’t like about his speech was no more than a minor blemish. I felt that, as a representative of the cultural and intellectual life of America, he shouldn’t have given the Germans yet another lecture on democracy.
TO HIS SON HEINER ON HIS FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY
[February 1959]
Well, on my fiftieth birthday, Max Wassmer arrived, and we had a festive meal at a small inn in Sorengo. After dinner we climbed up to the Casa Camuzzi, where we continued celebrating; Ninon was there for the first time. That very same day my best friend at the time, Hugo Ball, had an operation in Zurich. They opened him up, saw how hopeless things were, and stitched him together again. It was two months before he died. But on July 2 we hadn’t yet grasped the gravity of the situation, and celebrated with chicken, risotto, and lots of wine, then had coffee and cake at my place; Natalina485 was there too. Among the presents from Ninon was a Japanese dwarf tree, which looked tiny and comical in its pot; a few years later I planted the little tree in the garden of the new house, where it grew to be immensely strong and stout. That’s what comes to mind when I think of you celebrating your fiftieth birthday. I’m sending you my presents together with a thousand good wishes for you and your family. Ciao, my dear!
TO HIS FORMER WIFE, RUTH (HAUSSMANN)
Sils Maria [End of July 1959]
Your letter catches me in the Engadine; I have been here a few days, am staying three to four weeks. I took along Peter Suhrkamp’s essays, radio talks, etc., and am supposed to make a selection. It wasn’t my idea in the first place; Peter’s successor at the publishers talked me into it.486 I have become completely indifferent to literary matters since the death of Suhrkamp; I just don’t feel like being involved anymore.
I understand why you can’t look at the pictures of Ticino in Dresden487 without becoming nostalgic. But you have to realize that more or less the same thing is happening to me. The fairy-tale Ticino of our good times together exists no longer. Although the prominent features of the landscape have remained the same, and the mountains and valleys are still covered in forests, the villages have turned into small suburbs. Montagnola has three to four times as many houses and inhabitants as it had then; the vineyards and meadows have given way to new houses with little fenced-in gardens and broad cement highways; factories are sprouting in the valleys, etc., etc. Well, that no longer upsets us old people so much, but corruption has naturally also surfaced in this “booming” new era. The farmers around Montagnola have hiked the price of their land to between thirty-five and forty francs a meter; the speculators purchase it, subdivide it, and construct entire developments; the village has an ultramodern post office, two cafés, a newspaper kiosk, etc.
Enough of that. I was delighted to get your kind letter and the wonderful picture of Charles VII, thank you.
TO KURT KARL ROHBRA
[1960]
Thanks for your greetings from the mountains.
My first taste of a mountain winter was in Grindelwald in 1902—one of the first winters the Swiss mountain hotels remained open. The book contains the poems I wrote there.488 Very few skiers were to be seen yet; we enjoyed walking, skating, and tobogganing. I had been sent there on doctor’s orders to recuperate after an appendicitis.
In Munich around 1909, my friend Olaf Gulbransson supplied me with my first pair of skis. They were made of ash wood and lasted until around 1928, when one of the skis broke, and I bought new ones in St. Moritz, made of hickory. Until 1931, I used to spend a few weeks every winter skiing in the mountains, but not since then.
I hope you felt rested when you got home.
I have just thought of something. A good photo of me489 was used without my knowledge in a picture postcard series, “The Portrait”; I just happened to come across a copy. If you can find them anywhere, I would be grateful if you could send me some (A. Egger, Publishers, Cologne 10). Things aren’t going especially well, but I’m managing somehow.
TO ADOLF GEPRÄGS
January 1960
I read your letter with some astonishment. So you want to set up a Hesse room,490 and expect me to fund it, donate the furniture, pictures, etc., etc. You want all this from a person who has never liked personality cults and has only tolerated that kind of thing in his old age, out of a mixture of exhaustion and good-naturedness.
Now that you have described your request in detail—in your first letter you unfortunately neglected to do so—I would advise you that it would be better to abandon your plans for the room. You certainly have no right to expect me to assume this burden; it’s absolutely out of the question. As regards the furniture: I don’t have a single piece from my parents’ house. When there were legacies, etc., I gave everything to my sisters, including money, furniture, pictures, etc. All my sisters are deceased. As far as I know, any material, such as documents, correspondence, etc., in their possession has gone to Marbach, where the Schiller Museum is carefully collecting everything concerning me and my family. But there are also other Hesse collections, which have been around for many years. The Swiss State Library has the largest collection of letters; the library of the Zurich Polytechnic has another large collection.491 Recently, Herr Kliemann of Munich sold somebody in America492 a large collection of newspaper and privately printed pieces, which he had spent many years collecting, with some assistance from me. There was also a teacher named Weiss in Cologne who established a Hesse Archive there, entirely on his own initiative; it lasted for many years. Without informing me, he visited all my relatives, friends, and correspondents, soliciting money, books, manuscripts, photos, etc., and then, finally, sold his entire archive to Marbach for 14,000 Deutschemarks. So, as you can see, you’re too late in the day with your plans, and will no doubt understand how utterly disillusioned I am after all these experiences. I regret having to cause you such disappointment.
&nbs
p; TO G. WALLIS FIELD493
[February 10, 1960]
H. Hesse, who is ill and overworked, dictates the following answer for you:
You can find something on older English literature in my booklet Library of World Literature, published by Reclam.
I have the same high esteem for English literature as I have for that of Germany and France. In my younger days I used often to read French. I never understood English well enough to read good literature in the original. My parents and sisters spoke English fluently; we often had English and American visitors in our home. But I only practiced reading a little easy literature, some Mark Twain, some Kipling. I read a considerable amount of English literature in translation; I have loved recent authors such as Hardy, Meredith, Virginia Woolf, Forster, some others.
That’s all I can say in reply to your questions.
TO A MUSICIAN494
[March 1960]
Some time ago, you sent me a handsome little book by Erich Valentin, Musica Domestica.495 I wish to thank you and the author for the hours of stimulation it has afforded me. What captivated me at once in the first chapter were those often delightfully baroque titles adorning seventeenth-century musical publications. And that brought to mind a classical saying of Anatole France’s: No book could interest him more or give him greater pleasure than the catalogue of a secondhand bookseller. By weaving together scholarship and folksiness, by compressing an enormous mass of knowledge and research into a tight space, while nonetheless managing to get through it, he informs readers with a halfway decent musical education about the history and semantic metamorphoses of such terms as “musica domestica”; he also kindly takes us along on a stroll through the imposing fields of music history and musical interpretation; he refers en passant to virtually everything we ever came across in books of that sort. Of course, I was amused and a little flattered by his attempt to highlight and upgrade the role of listener vis-à-vis that of musician: the musically incompetent amateur lying on the sofa listening to the radio or record player is ennobled as a collaborator and connoisseur. Some people will be pleased to hear this—with varying degrees of justification. Encouraged by my enhanced status, I shall attempt, at a later point, to describe something beautiful I heard on the radio.
Of course, it was only in old age that I began listening to the radio, and when I think back on my musical experiences, I see that the pleasures of broadcast or canned music are not all that significant; they didn’t make me a music lover or, in some areas, even a demi-connoisseur. No, before I began lapping up music all alone in my room, I spent decades attending hundreds of public concerts, operas, festivals, and solemn performances of church music in the “proper,” venerable places—that is, concert halls, theaters, and churches—amid a congregation of like-minded and similarly receptive souls, whose faces were attentive yet lost in contemplation, full of reverent devotion, illuminated from within, in a manner that reflects the beauty of their perceptions, and, for several measures, I paid them as much attention as the music. For decades I haven’t been able to listen to the final chorus of St. John’s Passion without recalling a performance in the Zurich Concert Hall under the direction of Andreä.496 Sitting on the chair in front of me was an elderly lady whom I had hardly noticed during the concert. The last chorus had died away, and the congregation was beginning to leave, Volkmar was laying down his baton, and I, too, was taking my leave and preparing to return to the secular world, with feelings of reluctance and regret—something that happens frequently to me on such occasions—when the old lady in front arose slowly, stood there for a moment before leaving, and when she turned her head a little to one side, I could see tear after tear coursing across her cheeks.
My eyes and ears did more than glance at, and feast on, my neighboring worshippers: my eyes witnessed the solemn, sprightly, or tempestuous motions of the strings, the energetic parallel motions of the violin bows, the heavy sawing of the basses. I observed the director and the soloists, who were often close friends of mine. Those friendships and encounters with composers, directors, virtuosi, male and female singers were an indispensable part of my musical life and musical education, and whenever I recall particularly striking concerts in the festival hall or church, I not only hear the music again and sense the special atmosphere and temperature of those houses, but also see the touching apparition of Dinu Lipatti, and elegant Paderewski, versatile Sarasate, also the blazing eyes of Schoeck, the casual, lordly manner of Richard Strauss, the fanatical style of Toscanini, the nervous style of Furtwängler; I see Busoni’s wonderful face sunk in raptures over the keys, see Philippi in a vestal oratorio pose, Durigo with her eyes wide open at the conclusion of the “Lied von der Erde,” Edwin Fischer’s sturdy childlike head, Hans Huber’s sharp, gypsylike profile, Fritz Brun’s beautiful, wide arm movements executing a movement in andante, and twenty or a hundred other noble and wonderful figures, faces, and gestures. None of this comes across on the radio, and I only know about television from hearsay.
I would like to jot down some brief notes on two passages in Valentin’s book, so you can pass them along to the author. In one passage he quotes Mörike as hearing “Strauss” sing. The Strauss in question was undoubtedly the famous opera singer Agnese Schebest, who was unhappily married to D. F. Strauss, the even more famous author of The Life of Jesus. The correspondence between Strauss and Fr. Th. Vischer tells that heartrending tale, with greater accuracy than one might find desirable.
The other passage I would like to comment on, and correct as well, concerns my friend and patron H. C. Bodmer. Valentin states: “The Zurich physician H. C. Bodmer was a Beethoven specialist.” That’s inadequate and somewhat incorrect. My friend Bodmer wasn’t a physician nor was he a specialist of any kind. It’s true that he started studying medicine at the age of thirty-six, and took all the tests including the doctoral exam, but he never practiced. He had studied music in his youth and would probably have most liked to be a director; he was friends all his life with a great many significant musicians and became a musical Maecenas on a grand scale. Over the decades he built up one of the largest and most valuable Beethoven collections, which, in keeping with his characteristically regal generosity, he donated to the Beethoven Archive in Bonn. But his horizons were far broader than those of a specialist, and even though he reserved his greatest love and enthusiasm for Beethoven, he also had a thorough grasp of later music history, and loved several contemporaries deeply, Mahler in particular.
But I promised to tell you about my wonderful radio experience.
It was an evening of Chopin, performed by a Chinese named Fou Tsong. I had never heard his name before and still know nothing about his age, schooling, or other personal data. The program was beautiful, and I was naturally enthralled by the wondrous prospect of hearing the great love of my youth, Chopin, performed by none other than a Chinese. I have heard the elder Paderewski, the child prodigy Raoul Koschalski, Edwin Fischer, Lipatti, Cortot, and many other great pianists playing Chopin. The style varied considerably: cool but correct, melodious, animated, or moody and idiosyncratic, some emphasizing the rich timbre, others the rhythm, pious here, frivolous there, some anxious, others cheerful; although the performances were often extremely beautiful, they seldom corresponded to my notion of how Chopin ought to be played. Of course, I was convinced, naturally, that this ideal method corresponded to Chopin’s own style as a performer. And I would have given a lot to hear A. Gide playing one of the ballades. As a pianist, Gide had worked intensively on Chopin all his life.
Well, the unknown Chinese gained my respect in the first few minutes, and acquired my love soon thereafter; he was utterly equal to the challenge. I had unwittingly expected the highest degree of technical perfection—one takes that for granted in view of Chinese perseverance and ingenuity. His virtuoso, technical perfection couldn’t have been surpassed by Cortot or Rubinstein. But that wasn’t all. I wasn’t just hearing a masterly performance, but rather Chopin, the real Chopin. It brought to mind Warsaw and P
aris, the Paris of Heinrich Heine and the young Liszt. There was a fragrance of violets, rain in Mallorca, and exclusive salons; the sound was both melancholic and courtly, and the rhythmic differentiation and dynamics were of equal sensitivity. It was a miracle.
But I would have liked to see that highly talented Chinese with my own eyes. Perhaps his bearing, gestures, and face would have answered a question that had occurred to me after the program: Has this highly gifted individual arrived at an inner understanding of this European, Polish, Parisian music, with all its melancholia and skepticism, or is there a teacher, colleague, master, or model whose music he has learned by heart and is now imitating down to the last detail? I would like to hear him playing the same program again repeatedly, on several different days. If everything was genuine and priceless, if Fou Tsong was truly the musician I felt inclined to see in him, then each new performance would constitute something new, unique, and individual—even if only noticeable in small details—and wouldn’t merely replay an extremely beautiful record.
Well, maybe an answer will be forthcoming someday. The thought hadn’t disturbed me during the concert, only afterward. And as I listened to him, I almost glimpsed for a few moments the man from the East, not the real Fou Tsong, of course, but a creature I myself had imagined, created, and conjured up. He resembled a figure from Chuang-tze or the Kin Ku Ki Kwan, and I felt that, as it played, his hand became the same kind of eerily sovereign, utterly relaxed, and devout instrument, under the guidance of the Tao, that allowed the painters of ancient China to get their brushes close to what in a happy moment can be intuitively apprehended as the meaning of the world and of life itself.
TO OTTO ENGEL
[October 1960]
You deserve a lot of credit for having written this good and, ultimately, consoling letter while still in the throes of severe suffering.
I tend to shrug off the abuse and mockery that the young literary roughnecks occasionally fling at me. People are more cruel as youngsters than they are later in life, and in the past I myself have poked fun mercilessly at several venerable figures, although not in public. In such cases, Meng Hsiä497 says: “Child throws dirt at old fellow. Old fellow brushes off his coat.” And, of course, there is some truth in the avant-garde’s critique: I have always tried to find a decent form for my work, and have also employed artistic practices that merely heed a spirit of play, but on the whole I considered the what as important as the how, a horrific notion to any pure artist, whether he swears by Mallarmé, George, or the Surrealists. In addition to a love of play and the usual artistic ambition, I have always had other concerns, which could be called religious, psychoanalytic, whatever—and at an early stage I sensed the atmosphere of decline in the West, and since I didn’t always manage to keep my head stuck in the sand, I often felt drawn toward the wisdom and doctrines that we inherited from the ancients and the Orient.
Soul of the Age Page 41
