Strange News From Another Star

by Hermann Hesse

  That was a strange mountain and a strange summit! We had reached the top by climbing over completely naked walls of stone, and on that summit there grew out of the stone a tree, a sturdy squat tree with several short powerful branches. There it stood, inconceivably lonely and strange, hard and unyielding in the rock, with the cool blue of heaven between its branches. And at the top of this tree sat a black bird harshly singing.

  Quiet dream of brief repose above the world, the sun blazed, the rock glowed, the tree rose unyielding, the bird sang harshly. Its harsh song signified: Eternity, Eternity! The black bird sang, and its blank hard eye stared at us like a black crystal. Hard to bear was its gaze, hard to bear its song, and frightful above all were the loneliness and emptiness of that place, the expanse of the barren heavens. To die was inconceivable bliss, to stay there nameless pain. Something must happen, at once, instantly; otherwise, we and the world would turn to stone from sheer horror. I felt the event wafted towards us hot and oppressive like a puff of wind before a storm. I felt it flickering over my body and soul like a burning fever. It threatened, it was coming, it was there.

  Suddenly the bird whirled from its bough, plunged headlong into space.

  With a leap my guide dived into the blue, fell towards the flashing heavens, flew away.

  Now the wave of fate had reached its peak, now it tore away my heart, now it broke in silence.

  And already I was falling, I plunged, leaped, I flew; wrapped in a cold vortex, I shot, blissful and palpitating with ecstatic pain, down through infinity to the mother's breast.

  A Dream Sequence

  It seemed to me that I had already spent a vast amount of turgid, unprofitable time in that stuffy salon through whose northern windows shone the false sea and the imitation fiords, and where nothing attracted or held my attention save the presence of the beautiful, suspect lady whom I took to be a sinner. In vain I longed to have just one good look at her face. That face floated dimly amid loose dark hair, a cloud of sweet pallor and nothing more. Possibly her eyes were dark brown, I felt some inner reason to expect that; but if so her eyes would not match the face I was trying to read into that indeterminate pallor, whose shape I knew lay buried in deep, inaccessible levels of my memory.

  Finally something happened. The two young men entered. They greeted the lady with elaborate courtesy and were introduced to me. Monkeys, I thought, and was annoyed at myself because the pretty, stylish cut and fit of the reddish-brown jacket one of them was wearing filled me with shame and envy. A horrible feeling of envy towards the irreproachable, unabashed smiler! 'Pull yourself together!' I commanded inwardly. The two young men reached indifferently for my extended hand - why had I offered it? - wearing derisive smiles.

  Then I realized that something was wrong about me and felt a disturbing chill creeping up my legs. I glanced down and grew pale on seeing that I stood in my stocking feet, shoeless. Again and again these shabby, miserable, sordid frustrations and disadvantages! It never happened to others that they appeared naked or half naked in salons before a company of the irreproachably correct! Disheartened, I tried at least to conceal my left foot with my right; as I did, my eyes strayed through the window and I saw the steep wild blue ocean cliffs threatening with false and sinister colours and demonic intent. Worried and seeking help, I looked at the two strangers, full of hatred for these people and full of a greater hatred for myself — nothing turned out right for me, that was the trouble. And why did I feel responsible for that stupid sea? Well, if that was the way I felt, then I was responsible. Beseechingly I looked the reddish-brown one in the face, his cheeks shone with health and careful grooming, and I knew perfectly well that I was exposing myself to no purpose, that he could not be influenced.

  At that moment he noticed my feet in their coarse dark-green socks - oh, I could still be thankful there were no holes in them - and smiled disagreeably. He nudged his comrade and pointed at my feet. The other, too, grinned in derision.

  'Just look at the seal' I shouted, gesturing towards the window.

  The man in the reddish-brown jacket shrugged his shoulders; it did not occur to him to so much as turn towards the window, and he said something to the other which I only half understood, but it was aimed at me and had to do with fellows in stocking feet who really ought not to be tolerated in such a salon. As I listened, the word 'salon' again had for me, as it had in my childhood, the half-seductive, half-meretricious ring of worldly distinction.

  Close to tears, I bent over to see whether anything could be done about my feet, and now perceived that they had slipped out of loose house shoes; at least a very big soft dark-red bedroom slipper lay behind me on the floor. I took it in my hand uncertainly, holding it by the heel, still strongly inclined to weep. It slipped away from me, I caught it as it fell - meanwhile, it had grown even larger - and now I held it by the toe.

  All at once I had a feeling of inner release and realized the great value of the slipper, which was vibrating a little in my hand, weighted down by its heavy heel. How splendid to have such a limp red shoe, so soft and heavy! Experimentally I swung it a few times through the air, this was delicious and flooded me with ecstasy to the roots of my hair. A club, a blackjack, was nothing in comparison with my great shoe. Calziglione was the Italian name I called it.

  When I gave the reddish-brown one a first playful blow on the head with Calziglione, the young irreproachable fell reeling to the divan, and the others and the room and the dreadful sea lost all their power over me. I was big and strong, I was free, and at the second blow to the reddish-brown one's head there was no longer any contest, there was no more need for demeaning self-defence in my actions but simple exultation and free lordly whim. Nor did I now hate my vanquished foe in the least, I found him interesting, he was precious and dear to me, after all I was his master and his creator. For every good blow of my strange shoe-cudgel shaped that primitive and apelike head, forged it, rebuilt it, formed it; with every constructive impact it grew more attractive, handsomer, finer, became my creature and my work, a thing that satisfied me and that I loved. With a final expert blacksmith's blow I flattened the pointed occiput just enough. He was finished. He thanked me and stroked my hand. 'It's all right,' I said, waving to him. He crossed his hands over his breast and said obsequiously: 'My name is Paul.'

  My breast swelled with a marvellous feeling of power, a feeling that expanded the space about me; the room - no more talk of 'salon'! - shrivelled with shame and crept emptily away. I stood beside the sea. The sea was blue-black, steel clouds pressed down upon the sombre mountains, in the fiords the dark water boiled up foaming, storm squalls strayed in circles, compulsive and terrifying. I glanced up and raised my hand to signal that the storm could begin. A bolt of lightning bright and cold exploded out of the harsh blue, a warm typhoon descended howling, tumultuous grey forms streamed apart in the heavens like veined marble. Humpbacked waves rose terrifyingly from the tormented sea, the storm tore spindrift from their tops and stinging wisps of foam and whipped them in my face. The benumbed black mountains tore open eyes full of horror. Their silent cowering together rang out like a supplication.

  In the midst of the magnificent charge of the storm, mounted on gigantic, ghostly horses, a timid voice spoke close to me. Oh, I had not forgotten you, pale lady of the long black hair. I bent over to her and she spoke to me childishly - the sea was coming, one could not stay there. I was touched and continued to look at the gentle sinner, her face was only a quiet pallor amid the encircling twilight of her hair, then the chiding waves were already striking at my knees and at my breast, and the sinner floated helpless and silent on the rising waters. I laughed a little, put my arm under her knees, and raised her up to me. This too was beautiful and liberating, the woman was strangely light and small, full of fresh warmth and her eyes were sincere, trusting, and alarmed, and I saw that she was no sinner at all nor any distant, incomprehensible lady. No sins, no mystery; she was just a child.

  Out of the waves and across the rock
s I carried her and through the rain-darkened, royally grieving park, where the storm could not reach and where from the bowed crowns of ancient trees simple, softly human beauty spoke, pure poems and symphonies, a world of noble intimations and charmingly civilized delights, enchanting trees painted by Corot and noble rustic woodwind music by Schubert, which subtly tempted me to the beloved temple in a momentary upsurge of nostalgia. But in vain; the world has many voices, and the soul has its hours and its moments for everything.

  God knows how the sinner, the pale woman, the child, took her leave and disappeared from sight. There was an outside stairway of stone, there was an entrance gate, there were servants present, all dim and cloudy as though behind translucent glass, and something else even more insubstantial, even more cloudy, figures blown there by the wind; a note of censure and reproach directed against me aroused my ire at that storm of shadows. All disappeared except the form of Paul, my friend and son Paul, and in his features was revealed and hidden a face unnamable and yet infinitely familiar, the face of a schoolmate, the primeval legendary face of a nursemaid, composed of the good nourishing half-memories of the fabulous earliest years.

  Good heart-comforting darkness, warm cradle of the soul and lost homeland, opens before me, time of inchoate being, the first uncertain quiverings above the fountain's source, beneath which sleep ancient times with their dreams of tropical forests. Do but feel your way, soul, do but wander, plunge blindly into the rich bath of guiltless twilight desires! I know you, timid soul, nothing is more necessary to you, nothing is so much food, drink, and sleep for you, as the return to your beginnings. There the waves roar around you and you are a wave, the forest rustles and you are the forest, there is no outer, no inner any more, you fly, a bird in the air, you swim, a fish in the sea, you breathe in light and are light, taste darkness and are darkness. We wander, soul, we swim and fly and smile and, with delicate ghostly fingers, we retie the torn filaments and blissfully unite the disjointed harmonies. We no longer seek God. We are God. We are the world. We kill and die along with others, we create and are resurrected with our dreams. Our finest dream, that is the blue sky, our finest dream, that is the sea, our finest dream, that is the starlit night, and is the fish and is the bright happy light and bright happy sounds - everything is our dream, each is our finest dream. We have just died and become earth. We have just discovered laughter. We have just arranged a constellation.

  Voices resound and each is the voice of our mother. Trees rustle, and each one of them rustled above our cradle. Roads diverge in a star pattern and each road leads towards home.

  The one who had called himself Paul, my creature and my friend, was there again and had become as old as I was. He resembled a friend of my youth, but I did not know which one and therefore I was a little uneasy with him and showed him a certain courtesy. From this he drew power. The world no longer obeyed me, it obeyed him and therefore everything that had preceded had disappeared and collapsed in craven improbability, put to shame by him who governed now.

  We were in a square, the place was called Paris, and in front of me an iron girder towered into the air; it was a ladder and on both sides were small iron rungs to which one could hold with one's hands and on which one could climb with one's feet. Since Paul desired it, I climbed first and he beside me on an identical ladder. When we had climbed as high as a house or a very high tree, I began to feel frightened. I looked over at Paul, he felt no fear but he recognized my own and smiled.

  For the space of a breath while he smiled and I stared at him, I was very close to recognizing his face and remembering his name, a fissure in the past opened and split down to my schooldays, back to the time when I was twelve years old, life's most glorious period when everything was full of fragrance, everything was congenial, everything was gilded with an edible smell of fresh bread and an intoxicating shimmer of adventure -Jesus was twelve years old when he shamed the scribes in the temple, at twelve we have all shamed our scribes and teachers, have been smarter than they, more gifted than they, braver than they. Memories and images pressed in upon me. Forgotten schoolbooks, detention during the noon hour, a bird killed with a slingshot, a coat pocket stickily filled with stolen plums, wild, boyish splashings in the swimming hole, torn Sunday trousers and torments of conscience, ardent prayers at night about earthly problems, marvellous heroic feelings of magnificence on reading verses by Schiller.

  It was only a second's lightning flash, avidly hurrying picture sequences without focus. In the next instant Paul's face stared at me again, tormentingly half recognized. I was no longer sure of my age, possibly we were boys. Farther and farther below the narrow rungs of our ladders lay the mass of streets that was called Paris. But when we were higher than any tower, our iron girders came to an end and proved to be surmounted, each of them, by a horizontal board, a minuscule platform. It seemed impossible to get on top of these. But Paul did it negligently, and I had to do it too.

  Once on top I laid myself flat on the board and looked down over the edge as though from a high little cloud. My glance fell like a stone into emptiness and found no goal. Then my comrade pointed with his hand and I became fascinated by a marvellous sight that hovered in mid-air. There, above a broad avenue at the level of the highest roofs but immensely far below us, I saw a foreign-looking company; they seemed to be high-wire dancers and indeed one of the figures was running to and fro on a wire or rod. Then I discovered that there were a great many of them, almost all young girls, and they seemed to me to be gypsies or other nomadic folk. They walked, lay, sat, moved at the height of the roofs on an airy framework of the thinnest scaffolding and arbourlike poles, they lived there and were at home in that region. Beneath them the street could only be imagined, a fine swirling mist extended from the ground up almost to their feet.

  Paul made some remark about it. 'Yes,' I replied, 'it is pathetic, all those girls.'

  To be sure, I was much higher than they were, but I was clinging to my position and they moved lightly and fearlessly, and I saw that I was too high, I was in the wrong place. They were at the right height, not on the ground and yet not so devilishly high and distant as I was, not among people and yet not so completely isolated; moreover, there were many of them. I saw very well that they represented a bliss that I had not yet attained.

  But I knew that sooner or later I would have to climb down my monstrous ladder and the thought of it was so oppressive that I felt nauseated and could not endure being up there for another instant. Desperate and shaking with dizziness, I felt beneath me with my feet for the rungs of the ladder - I could not see them from the board - and for hideous minutes hung at that terrifying height struggling convulsively. No one helped me, Paul was gone.

  In abject fear I executed hazardous kicks and graspings, and a feeling came over me like a fog, a feeling that it was not the high ladder or the dizziness that I had to endure and taste to the full. For almost at once I lost the sight and form of things, everything turned to fog and confusion. At one moment I was still hanging dizzily from the rungs, at the next I was creeping, small and frightened, through narrow underground passages and corridors, then I was wading hopelessly through mud and dung, feeling the filthy slime rising towards my mouth. Darkness and obstacles were everywhere. Dreadful tasks of grave but shrouded purport. Fear and sweat, paralysis and cold. Hard death, hard birth.

  What endless night surrounded us! How many paths of torment we pursue, go deep into the cavern of our rubble-filled soul, eternal suffering hero, eternal Odysseus! But we go on, we go on, we bow ourselves and wade, we swim, choking in the slime, we creep along smooth noxious walls. We weep and despair, we whimper in fear and howl aloud in pain. But we go on we go on and suffer, we go on and gnaw our way through.

  Out of the seething hellish vapours visibility returned once more, a short stretch of the dark path was again revealed in the formative light of memory, and the soul forced its way out of the primeval world into the familiar circle of known time.

  Where was this?
Familiar objects gazed at me, I breathed an atmosphere I recognized. A big room in half darkness, a kerosene lamp on the table, my own lamp, a big round table rather like a piano. My sister was there, and my brother-in-law, perhaps on a visit to me or perhaps I was with them. They were quiet and worried, full of concern about me. And I stood in the big dim room, walked back and forth, stopped and walked again in a cloud of sadness, in a flood of bitter, choking sadness. And now I began to look for something, nothing important, a book or a pair of scissors or something of that sort, and I could not find it. I took the lamp in my hand, it was heavy, and I was terribly weary, I soon put it down but then picked it up again and wanted to go on searching, searching, although I knew it was useless, I would find nothing, I would only increase confusion everywhere, the lamp would fall from my hands, it was so heavy, so painfully heavy, and so I would go on groping and searching and wandering through the room all my miserable life long.

  My brother-in-law looked at me, worried and a little reproachful. They can see that I am going mad, I thought immediately, and picked up the lamp again. My sister came to me, silent with pleading eyes, full of fear and love, so that I felt my heart would break, I could say nothing, I could only stretch out my hand and wave her off, motion to her to stay away, and I thought: Just leave me alone! Just leave me alone! You cannot know how I feel, how I suffer, how frightfully I suffer! And again: Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!

  The reddish lamplight dimly flooded the big room, outside the trees groaned in the wind. For an instant I seemed to have a most profound inward vision and sensation of the night outside: wind and wetness, autumn, the bitter smell of foliage, fluttering leaves from the elm tree, autumn, autumn! And once more for an instant I was not I myself but saw myself as though in a picture: I was a pale haggard musician with flickering eyes named Hugo Wolf and on this evening I was in the process of going mad.