Hermann Hesse “Beyond pictures and stories”

introduction and coordination by Pier Carlo Della Ferreraessays by Alessandro Melazzini, Giuseppe Curonici and Regina Bucher

[III]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

I was born in the early hours of the evening

on a warm day in July, and it is the warmth

of that hour that I have unconsciously loved

and sought all my life.

I am the son of God-fearing parents whom I

loved dearly and would have loved even

more had they not taught me the fourth

commandment at a very early age.1

Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, a littletown in Wuerttemberg not far from Stuttgart,on the 2nd of July 1877, the second-born ofJohannes and Marie Gundert. His father, aRussian citizen of Baltic origin, who had pre-viously served in a Pietist mission, worked fora publishing house which produced religioustexts. His maternal grandfather, for many yearsa missionary in India, possessed a thoroughand vast knowledge of the Oriental world. From 1881 to 1886 Hesse lived in Basel,where his father had been appointed as edi-tor of the missions’ magazine. After return-ing to Calw with his family, in 1888 hebegan attending the Lateinschule inGoeppingen and in 1891 passed the diffi-cult State examination (Landexamen),

which enabled him to enter the prestigiousEvangelical seminary in Maulbronn the fol-lowing Autumn.

Just hearing “You must” was enough to

churn me up inside and make me obstinate.

It goes without saying that this characteris-

tic had an enormous damaging effect on my

school years.

All attempts at turning me into a useful man

ended in failure, or rather dishonour and scan-

dal, and in my running away or my expulsion.

In March 1892, unable to bear the strict dis-cipline imposed by the way of life in theseminary, the young Hermann ran awayfrom boarding school. He was found halffrozen in the surrounding countryside andimmediately expelled from the institute.There then followed a period of restlessness,of anxious search for identity and conflictwith his family and religion. Several timeshe tried to take up his studies again, but to noavail. He even went so far as to threaten sui-cide and for this reason was admitted to a nur-sing home for mental patients and epileptics.

At fifteen years of age, when at school I had

got nowhere, I started to tutor myself on

my own, conscientiously and with determi-

nation. To my great pleasure, as luck would

have it, in my father’s house there hap-

pened to be a huge library that had belonged

to my grandfather: an enormous room full

of old books, which among other things

contained all the German literature and

philosophy of the eighteenth century.

After his first unsuccessful attempt at work-ing as a sales assistant in a bookshop inEsslingen, in June 1894 Hesse embarkedupon a difficult apprenticeship in a churchtower clock factory. He managed to combinemanual effort with the tenacious intellectualcommitment of a self-taught man and, thanks

mainly to his grandfather’s library, he acquireda solid cultural education, which had its strongpoint in reading religious texts, oriental phi-losophy and Goethe. After moving to Tubingen in 1895, he foundemployment in the Heckenhauer library and attended bookkeeping courses. Althoughhe continued to loathe school, his love for

Previous page:

Hans Sturzenegger

(1875-1943),

Hesse reading,

oil on canvas, 1912

Left:

Letter with water-

colour by Hermann

Hesse to his son

Heiner, December

1932

Right:

Hesse with his family in

1889, at 12 years of age;

from left to right: the

author, his father,

his sister Marulla, his

mother, his sister Adele

and his brother Hans

1 This and the subsequent autobiographical quotations by Hesse

are taken from: H. HESSE, Kurzgefasser Lebenslauf (Autobiographical

outline), in “Neue Rundschau”, issue 8, 1925. Translated from the

Italian (Scritti autobiografici, Milano, Mondadori, 1961) by Barbara

Ferrett Rogers.

The novel of the life of Hermann Hesse

[IV]

Hermann Hesse

culture grew steadily, and in the charm-packed atmosphere of the little universitytown he furthered his knowledge of philoso-phy by reading Nietzsche, and above all hisliterary preparation by studying the authorsof German Romanticism including Novalisand Brentano. He also devoted himself to

studying languages and the history of art. Atthe end of 1898, he published his first workconsisting of six hundred copies of a collec-tion of poems bearing the significant title:Romantic Songs (Romantische Lieder), withthe publisher Pierson in Dresden. The fol-lowing year he tried his hand at a similargenre, short prose, in the anthology of talesOne Hour after Midnight (Eine Stunde hinter

Mitternacht), which was published in Leipzigby the publisher Eugen Diederichs and foundfavour with the critics. He was thus on hisway to solving his first serious existentialcrisis, thanks to the successful conclusion ofhis apprenticeship as a bookseller and thepromising start of a true literary activity.

In the field of culture, living in the pure pre-

sent, in the new and brand-new, is senseless

and unbearable. Only a continual relation-

ship with what has been, with history, with

the old and the very old, makes the life of the

spirit possible. In fact, after having quenched

that initial thirst, there was a need for me to

return from the sea of new things to the old.

And so I did, by going from selling new books

to antiques.

Hesse returned to live in Basel from 1899

to 1903. He worked as a bookshop assistant,first for Reich and later for the antique deal-er Wattenwyl. His activity as a freelancepolitical journalist and critic earned him acertain amount of fame, which enabled himto come into contact with the culturalsphere of the city, which still echoed loudlywith the philosophy of Jakob Burckhardt,who had died a few years earlier; the histor-ical pessimism of this Swiss intellectual wasto have a decisive influence on his work.In 1901 Hesse made his first journey toItaly, where he returned two years later. Thevisit to Genoa, Venice, Ravenna, and aboveall Tuscany and Umbria aroused in him aveneration for beauty imbued with moralparticipation, a source of intense emotionswhich inspired him to write a short bio-graphical sketch of St. Francis of Assisi,which was published in 1904. In 1901 healso made his debut as a novelist in The

Posthumous Papers and Poems of Hermann

Illustration from the

book Calwer histo-

risches Bilderbuch der

Welt (Calw, 1883;

Stuttgart, 1987) which

was in the library

of Hermann Gundert,

Hesse’s grandfather,

whom he spoke about

in the story The Child-

hood of the Magician

[V]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Lauscher (Hinterlassene Schriften und

Gedichte von Hermann Lauscher), enlargedupon and represented in 1907 with the titleHermann Lauscher. After the death of hismother, to whom he dedicated the collectionof poems Poems (Gedichte), between 1903and 1904 he published Peter Camenzind ininstalments in the “Neue Rundschau” and inbook form with the influential Fischer pub-lishing house in Berlin. Autobiographical,and centred on the subject of self-realisationand self-education, which can only be attain-ed at the cost of breaking off and detachmentfrom the community, the novel was Hesse’sfirst great literary success, which enabledhim to leave his job as a bookseller.In 1904 he married Maria Bernoulli, adescendent of the famous family of scien-tists of Basel, and a photographer andpianist of outstanding sensitivity. He settleddown with her in Gaienhofen, a quiet littlevillage on Lake Constance where their threechildren, Bruno (1905), Heiner (1909) andMartin (1911) were born. Hesse decided todevote himself to literature in propitiousisolation. He first lived in a house belongingto farmers, and then in one of his own, witha garden, an orchard and a breathtakingview of the lake and mountains.This was the beginning of an intense periodof activity for Hesse: in 1906 he publishedBeneath the Wheel (Unterm Rad), placatedreminiscences of his traumatic school experi-ences; between 1907 and 1912 the volumes ofstories This Side (Diesseits), Neighbours

(Nachbarn) and Umwege and the collectionof poems On the Way (Unterwegs); in 1910the novel Gertrude (Gertrud), which high-lighted the problem of the frail, precariousequilibrium between artistic vocation andeveryday life. He supplemented his strictlyliterary work with his activity as a journalist:he wrote for various periodicals, (“NeueRundschau”, “Simplicissimus”, “Die Propy-läen”, “Die Rheinlande”) and was one of thefounders, together with Ludwig Thoma, of theLiberal review “März”, an instrument of oppo-sition to the authoritarian regime of WilliamII and to the lower middle-class taste whichwas spreading throughout literature. He cameinto contact with prominent intellectuals andartists, such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig.However, the season of calm and peacefulsedentary life was coming to a close, due

also to the growing difficulties he was com-ing up against in his marital relationship.Disturbed by deep anxiety, fascinated by thevastness of the world, Hesse felt a deep-seat-ed need for different experiences. So hedecided to leave for the East, to becomeacquainted with the places where his moth-er was born and which he had heard peopletalk about so much: from September toDecember 1911, together with his painterfriend Hans Sturzenegger, he made a longjourney, stopping off in Malaysia, Ceylon,Singapore and Sumatra. He recorded hisimpressions and remarks in the miscellanyof notes, poems and stories entitled From

India. Notes of an Indian Journey (Aus

Indien. Aufzeichnungen von einer indischen

Reise), which he sent to press in 1913.In the meantime, after having returnedfrom Asia, complying with his wife’s wishes,he left Gaienhofen and moved with the fam-ily to the outskirts of Berne, in the houseformerly lived in by another painter friend,Albert Welti. But not even the beauty andcomforts of the Swiss capital were able tosave his marriage with Maria, who had nowgrown cold and insensitive; the themes ofthe autobiographical events during thisperiod converged in 1914 into a new novel,Rosshalde.Meanwhile, as confirmation of a presenti-ment that the writer had had many yearsearlier, and to worsen the state of profoundmoral, personal and universal crisis, warbroke out.

No, I could not share the enthusiasm for the

beauty of the period, and so I suffered pitifully

for the war, from the beginning to the end, and

for years I fought desperately against that mis-

fortune that had apparently arrived from abroad

out of the blue, while all around me everybody

appeared to be extremely enthusiastic about it.

Le "petit cénacle",

the circle of friends in

Tubinga, in a photograph

taken in 1899; Hermann

Hesse is at the centre,

between O.E. Faber and

L. Finckh (on the left)

and C. Hammelehle and

O. Rupp (on the right)

[VI]

Hermann Hesse

In an impassioned article which appeared inthe “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” on the 3rd ofNovember 1914 – O Friends, not these tones

(O Freunde, nicht diese Töne) – Hesse de-nounced the massacre, referring to theteachings of Goethe and appealing to reasonagainst all fanatic Nationalism. The Germanpress reacted by accusing him of defeatism,but it was not long before vast consent alsobegan to arrive from all corners. Amongthose who expressed their solidarity with hiscourageous stand was the French writerRomain Rolland, the most illustrious repre-sentative of the pacifist movement of thetime, with whom Hesse struck up a rela-tionship of profound mutual respect andwhom he was to meet in Lugano in 1920.Declared unfit for military service forwhich he reported as a volunteer, through-out the entire world war he worked in sup-port of the German soldiers held prisoner

in Italy, France, Russia and England, forwhom he founded a newspaper (1916) anda publishing house. His activities as a free-lance political journalist and editor formedthe predominant part of his intellectualcommitments during this period, while hismost important literary work, Knulp

(1915), was limited to resuming three sto-

ries, already outlined before the war, onthe impossible, tragic escape of a socialoutcast.

The first [great change in my life]

occurred the moment I consciously decid-

ed to become a poet. The same thing was

happening now during the period of the

war. I found myself once again in conflict

with a world I had lived with in peace up

till then. Again, everything fell through, I

was alone and miserable, everything I said

and thought was hostilely misunderstood

by others. So there must have been some-

thing amiss with me, if I was so much at

loggerheads with the rest of the world.

[…] and so I learned better and better to

let the conflicts of the universe take their

course, and I was able to shoulder my part

of the blame in the general confusion.

This was part of the changed outline of my

life, such as the loss of my house, my fam-

ily, and other chattels and comforts.

Bereavement and distressing events fol-lowed one another in swift succession: in1916 his father died and his son Martincontracted meningitis; in 1918 his wifesuffered the first signs of severe mental ill-ness and was admitted to a nursing homeone year later. The writer, overcome by anervous breakdown, approached psycho-analysis and underwent treatment with apupil of Jung, Doctor Joseph Bernhard Lang,with whom he struck up a friendship. It wasLang who advised Hesse to make a note ofand try to interpret and depict his dreams.This gave origin to Hesse’s first pictorial expe-riences. In 1917 he outlined a few sketchesin a notebook during a stay in St. Moritz andone year later illustrated a series of twelvepoems in watercolour which he exhibited inDecember 1919 in Davos in his first one-manshow.

As soon as the war was finally over for me

as well, in the spring of 1919 I retired to

an out-of-the-way corner of Switzerland

and became a hermit.

Hesse left the family for good and, towardsthe middle of May 1919, he moved toMontagnola, near Lugano. For twelve yearshe lived in Casa Camuzzi which his writings

Certificate of Hermann

Hesse’s third marriage

with Ninon Dolbin

in Montagnola on the

14th of November

1931

[VII]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hermann Hesse

in 1937

and his watercolours were to make famous.In precarious financial circumstances dueto the devaluation of the German Mark, hemanaged to keep going thanks to the sup-port of several friends. Despite the fact thathe was in a grievous situation, also psycho-logically, he recovered his creative abilitythreatened by exhaustion.In fact, these were the years of the novelDemian, which reveals the more immediateechoes of the recent crisis and the attemptsto overcome it by means of psychoanalysis,Klingsor’s Last Summer (Klingsors letzter

Sommer), a painter’s relationship with anature refractory to the effort of expressingit, Klein and Wagner, the collection Fairy

Tales (Märchen) and Hesse’s most famousnovel, Siddhartha, which he wrote in 1922inspired by a mystic outburst tempered byvigilant rationality. Cultural and humansynthesis between East and West, this newwork is a sort of apologue on the renuncia-tion of reality understood as a means foracquiring a more authentic individuality.In 1924 Hesse obtained a divorce from hisfirst wife and Swiss citizenship. He marriedthe opera singer Ruth Wenger, but theirmarriage, immediately marked by difficul-ties and incomprehension, was short-lived.The new crisis culminated in 1927, the yearof his second divorce and the publication ofone of his most emblematic and tormentedworks, Steppenwolf (Der Steppenwolf). Ananguished warning against the impendingwar, the novel describes the neurosis of ageneration and the disease of an era reflect-ed in the profound contrasts which areembedded in the soul of the protagonist.Meanwhile, in 1928, after having publishedthe collection of poems Krisis, the writerwas attending to another ambitious novelwhich was to be published in 1930,Narcissus and Goldmund (Narziß und

Goldmund), the story of a friendship set inan imaginary medieval period whose protag-onists represent the poles of an unsolveddualism between an ascetic life and open-ness to the world.Despite the impending catastrophe of theSecond World War, Hesse now appeared tohave left his most tormented and difficultyears behind him, thanks to his acquiredmaturity and his happy marriage withNinon Dolbin, a young Viennese woman

devoted to studying classical archaeology,whom the writer married in 1931. Togetherwith her, his faithful companion for the restof his life, he went to live in the Red Housein Montagnola placed at his disposal by hisfriend Hans C. Bodmer. The following yearhe synthesised his religious interests andmythicizing of the East in the short butdelightful story The Journey to the East (Die

Morgenlandfahrt), the prelude to his greatfinal achievement The Glass Bead Game

(Das Glasperlenspiel). Presented partiallyin instalments from 1934 to 1940 and pub-lished in book form in 1943 in Zurich, thisnovel represents the height of Hesse’s nar-rative work and is strongly influenced by thepolitical climate of the time. The proposi-tion he arrives at, although in an extremeutopianism of an ideal homeland of scholarsand artists, is an act of faith in the possiblere-evaluation of civilisation, that all intellec-tuals should believe in and in some way co-operate.Hitler’s rise to power marked a period of dif-ficult relations between Hesse and theGerman publishers. The regime treated himlike an “unwelcome” author: of all hisnumerous works, only the collections New

Poems (Neue Gedichte) and Commemo-

rative Pages (Gedenkblätter) were pub-lished in Germany during the Nazi period.He responded by leaving the PrussianAcademy of Art and devoting himself infavour of writers in exile: he gave hospitali-ty, among others, to Thomas Mann andBertolt Brecht.He inaugurated the post-war period with a

Hermann Hesse

[IX]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

miscellany of political essays, War and Peace

(Krieg und Frieden) in 1946, which was fol-lowed, in 1951 and in 1955 by Late Prose

(Späte Prosa) and Evocations (Beschwörun-

gen). In 1946 Hesse was awarded the GoethePrize and the Nobel Prize for literature. Hedid not go to Frankfurt, or to Sweden, wherehe sent his wife. In 1955 the GermanBooksellers’ Association awarded him thePeace Prize.Even though fragmentarily, he continued towrite to the very end. He gave up paintingand devoted himself to gardening in thepeaceful atmosphere of Montagnola. He col-lected letters and prose into volumes, editedhis works and limited himself to printingpamphlets and isolated sheets for friendsand acquaintances in exchange for or in replyto messages from well-wishers which pouredin from all over the world.

Since so-called reality does not play a very

important part for me, because the past

often fills me with itself as though it were

the present and the present appears to me

to be infinitely far away, I am also unable to

separate the future so well from the past as

one usually does. I live very much in the

future, and therefore I do not need to end

my biography with today, but can quite

confidently make it proceed.

I should like to briefly relate how my life

covers its span to the end.

At over seventy years of age, immediately

after two universities had awarded me an

honorary degree, I was dragged to Court for

having seduced a young girl by witchcraft. In

prison I asked permission to take up paint-

ing. I was allowed to. Some friends brought

me paints and brushes, and I painted a small

landscape on the wall of my cell.

It contained almost everything that had

given me joy in my life, rivers and mountains,

sea and clouds, peasants at harvest-time, and

a host of other lovely things to satisfy me.

But in the middle of the landscape passed a

tiny train with at its head the locomotive

which, like a maggot in an apple, had already

entered a small tunnel and from whose dark

entrance billowed puffs of smoke.

I was standing before that picture one day

in my prison, when the guards burst in and

wanted to tear me away from my pleasant

work. Then I felt a tiredness, like a nausea

for the whole affair and for the situation as

a whole, brutal and trivial. I now felt as

though I was putting an end to the torment.

If I were not going to be allowed to play my

innocent game as an artist undisturbed,

then I would have had to make use of those

other more serious arts to which I had

devoted so many years of my life: without

magic that world was unbearable.

I remembered the Chinese precept: I held

my breathe for one minute, freeing myself

from the illusion of reality. I courteously

asked the guards to be patient for one more

moment because I had to board the train in

my picture to see something. They laughed

as usual, believing me to be touched in the

head.

Then I made myself very tiny and entered

my picture, boarded the little train and pen-

etrated the small black tunnel on it. For an

instant the fleecy smoke could still be seen

coming out of the round aperture, then the

smoke withdrew and disappeared, and with

it the whole picture together with me.

Hesse suffered a brain haemorrhage and diedon the 9th of August 1962 at his home inMontagnola. He is buried there in the ceme-tery of Sant’Abbondio.

Hesse and his wife

Ninon in front of Casa

Rossa in 1931

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hermann Hesse,

February in Ticino (details),

watercolour, 1925

Hermann Hesse, the Eastern Wayfarer

by Alessandro Melazzini*

[XII]

Hermann Hesse

[XIII]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hesse and his friend

Othmar Schoeck on the

way to Castiglione del

Lago during the journey

to Italy in April 1911

In the early days following the death of thewriter, very few German publishers wouldhave given much for Hermann Hesse’s(1877–1962) posthumous fame. Despite thefact that during his lifetime he enjoyed con-siderable success, which reached its heightin 1946 when he was awarded the NobelPrize, the fame of their fellow-countrymanappeared to be on the decline: his readershipbegan to dwindle and the sales of his bookslanguished. But they were wrong, as was Timothy Learywhen he published an essay in America in1963 which was to pave the way for anincredible “Hesse-Boom”, elevating theSwabian writer to the role of prophet of that“psychedelic generation” which viewed theconsumption of hallucinogens as the high-way to the state of Nirvana.1

In fact, if Leary had dwelled a little more indepth upon the writings of Hermann Hesse,he would have been more wary about inter-preting his novels as descriptions of a lyser-gic “trip”.2

However, it was also thanks to that mistak-en conception that thousands of youngenthusiasts, attracted by the exoticism ofSiddhartha and by an interpretation ofSteppenwolf as a handbook of “sex, drugs &jazz”, helped to once again draw publicattention to Hesse, later raising him to therank of a true classical modern writer, capa-ble of crossing the geographic and culturalboundaries in which his works were con-ceived to become a heritage of world litera-ture.And it is precisely on a worldwide scale thatthe 125th anniversary of Hesse’s birth andthe 40th anniversary of his death is celebrat-ed this year. This double anniversary hasprovided the occasion for a close-packedseries of events co-ordinated in variouscountries: Germany, Italy, Switzerland andeven India.3

Hesse, who believed that there was “nothingmore obnoxious […], nothing more stupidthan boundaries”,4 would have undoubtedlybeen delighted with such a “global” celebra-tion, even though, known as he was for hisshy, reserved disposition, the magnificencethat such events bring with them wouldhave probably left him bewildered. Hesse’s deep-rooted internationalism whichthroughout his life rendered him totally

alien to any concept of Nation, should beunderstood more as the outcome of hisyouthful and spontaneous assimilation of the“Christian and almost totally nationless” 5

spirit of his father’s house, rather than as awell-pondered choice made later on in life.His father, in fact, was a Russian citizen ofBaltic origin, and his mother was German,with French-Swiss ancestors. Both his par-ents were staunch, strict observers of thePietist faith. In former years they had servedin India as missionaries before moving toCalw, a small Swabian town in the South ofGermany. Hermann Gundert, his grandfa-ther on his mother’s side, was a famous ori-entalist philologist who possessed a well-stocked library where Hesse assimilated hisfirst spiritual nourishment and breathedthat charm of the East which was to holdhim spell-bound throughout the course ofhis long life.His childhood and adolescence, “happy andenjoyed to the full, but not easy”,6 reverber-ate throughout all Hesse’s works. In his nov-els he often narrated, in a more or lessaltered form, biographic events whichharkened back to those early years of funda-mental importance for his artistic sensitivi-ty, full of “the sweetest and intense sensa-tions, of deeply-felt, instinctive passions”,7

from which he was to incessantly draw hismelancholy. That sublime “poetry of wan-dering” 8 which constitutes the leitmotiv ofall Hesse’s works is tethered to the innocentyears of childhood, the assiduous pursuit offree and direct contact with nature. From his fourth to his ninth year of age,Hesse’s parents moved temporarily to Baselwhere the “stateless” Hermann, who untilthen had travelled on a Russian passport,obtained Swiss citizenship. After the familyreturned to Germany, he became a Germancitizen, and later reacquired Swiss citizen-ship when, as an adult, he took up perma-nent residence in Montagnola, in theCanton of Ticino.We can surmise, also from this bureaucraticwhirligig, that Hesse travelled a great deal.In fact, during the first half of his life heoften set out on journeys capable of reliev-ing the peaceful monotony of his life, seek-ing food for his restless soul in far off lands.Hesse the traveller shunned the hackneyedtourist resorts, admiring more the natural

[XIV]

Hermann Hesse

Hesse in Fiesole

in 1906

enchantment of the reflections in thelagoon rather than the splendour of theDoge’s Palace, conversing with a simplepeasant family rather than talking at lengthin the Uffizi Gallery, filling pages and pagesof his notebooks and often translating theimpressions he got, not only in travel diariessuch as From India (1913) or Journey to

Nuremberg (1927), but also in numerousstories and poems.So many of his journeys lead southwardthat, Volker Michels, the curator of Hesse’swork recalls, with Teutonic precision, thatthroughout his whole life the writer hadnever spent a single month above 50° lati-tude, nor had he ever ventured furthernorth than Bremen.9

Hesse’s favourite destination was Italy,where he went into raptures over that “gen-

uineness of life, under the ennobling tradi-tion of a history and a classical civilisation” 10

which incited him to return frequently tothe peninsular.From his real journeys and from those takenby his literary characters, Hesse also suc-ceeded so well in singing the praises – if wemay be allowed this little parochialism – ofthe “majestic, deeply undulating terracedhills scattered with vineyards” 11 of theValtellina and its products, that, to soothethe afflictions of the soul, Peter Camenzind

(1904), the “son of the mountain” of thenovel of the same name which made Hessefamous and economically independent,indulged with perturbing frequency in the“sharp and exhilarating taste” of the redwine of Valtellina, believing this beverage tobe capable – who needs L.S.D.! – of making

[XV]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Title-page and flyleaf of

the first Italian edition

of Il giuoco delle perle

di vetro (The Glass

Bead Game) (Milan,

Mondadori, 1955), with

dedication in Hesse’s

own handwriting to his

neighbour Celestina

Daccò (Montagnola,

Hermann Hesse

Museum)

him work magic, create and compose poetry.This does not mean that Camenzind shouldbe written off as a simple drunkard, althougheven he considers himself such duringmoments of discouragement. On the contrary,the book refers to the noble tradition of the“Bildungsroman”, the psychological novelin German – which includes such master-pieces as Wilhelm Meister by Goethe, Henry

Von Ofterdingen by Novalis and Green Henry

by Keller – which narrates the progress ofself-education of a young man who leaveshis village to venture out in the world, im-pelled by restlessness and a craving to fulfilhis artistic aspirations and in so doing,through the various experiences of life, buildshis own personality, animated and possessedby “Streben”, the romantic yearning for re-conciliation between individual poetry and“prose of the world”.14 This gives us an insightinto how the theme of Travel should be con-strued in Hesse’s work not only in the geo-graphical sense, but also and primarily as ametaphor of the necessary and painful innerpath towards achieving “Heimat”, the spiri-tual homeland, one’s point of equilibrium andstable harmony.Hesse’s wayfarer is the one who, like EmilSinclair in Demian (1919), bears impressedupon him “the brand of Cain”,15 the brand ofthe searcher and of he who is inwardlygrieved by the clash between his own indi-viduality and the civilian world, the onewho, delving restlessly into his own uncon-scious, yearns to attain that real life, thatauthentic life which lies concealed behindthe curtain of illusions, behind the inces-sant flow of appearances and which alonecan hearten those painfully aware of thetragic sentiment of human frailty. On a journey is the highly-cultured vagrantHermann Lauscher (1901), a novel stillsomewhat immature and at times markedby a certain mannered aestheticism, whichnonetheless already expresses Hesse’s typi-cal themes. Also journeying, or rather flee-ing, is the dishonest clerical worker of theshort story Klein and Wagner (1920), or thetormented Harry Haller in Steppenwolf

(1927), as well as the fascinating Goldmundin Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), theelder brother of that likeable vagabondKnulp (1915) who apparently roams around“free, happy and good for nothing” 16 like the

layabout of Eichendorff, but who in the endmournfully senses the frailty of life.Journeying towards themselves are alsothose characters inhabiting Hesse’s worldwho preferred a “contemplative life” ratherthan an “active life”. We recall the moodymusician Kuhn in Gertrude (1910) – thenovel less loved by Hesse – and the painterVeraguth in Rosshalde (1914), who are moreor less resignedly aware of the contrastbetween their personal artistic ambitionsand the unimaginative world in which theylive. Two novels which, together, form theoutcome of Hesse’s reflections on the role ofthe artist and his family conflicts during theperiod he spent in Gaienhofen on the shoresof Lake Constance (1901 – 1912) when,prompted by a desire to flee the city, whichat that time was quite popular in Germanyand already discernible in Peter Camenzind,he fooled himself into believing he couldlead a sedentary rustic life with his first wifeand their three children, but experiencedonly repulsion for what was substantially alife characterised by oppressing middle-class tranquillity. Also on a journey is Josef Knecht, the leg-endary “Magister Ludi” of The Glass Bead

Game (1943), not so much for his numerousexcursions in and outside of the pedagogicalprovince of Castalia, the utopian state mod-

[XVI]

Hermann Hesse

Staging of Siddhartha

at the Piccolo Teatro in

Milan during the season

1999-2000 under the

direction of Lamberto

Puggelli, with Massimo

Foschi in the role of

Siddhartha and Claudia

Carlone in the role of

Kamala

elled on the surroundings of Ticino in whichthe novel is set, but for the spiritual pathwhich leads him to perform his last andmost sublime deed as a servant17 and educa-tor, not in the palaces of a noble but aridOrder of the Spirit, but outside of it and outthere in the world. In his Panic immersionin an Alpine lake and his self-sacrifice, hethus brings to completion – the Hegeliancitation of the famous paradox of theServant, who in the sacrifice of workbecomes Master of his own Master, is clear –the education of the young Tito Designori.18

And above all, on a journey is Siddhartha

(1922), the son of a Brahman who abandonshis father’s house to join the penitent her-mits, and later experiences the erotic joys ofthe courtesan Kamala and finally finds peacespending his old age next to the enlightenedVasuveda. “I am going nowhere. I am only ona journey. I am wandering” 19 is Siddhartha’sreply to Govinda, the friend who asks himwhere he is heading, without understandingthat the final destination of Siddhartha’slong search is “nothing more than a state ofmind, an ability, a secret art of thinking at

any instant, right in the middle of life, thethought of unity, of feeling unity and, so tospeak, of breathing it”.20

The Vagabond, or better still, the Seeker, asHesse defines himself 21, is the one who, feel-ing himself alien to the civilian world andnot understood by it, decides to relegatehimself to its furthermost boundaries and

follow his own individual path in solitude,adverse to all authority, first and foremostthat of the school vehemently criticised inBeneath the Wheel (1906) which, togetherwith The Confusions of Young Torless byRobert Musil published the same year, con-stitutes a harsh attack on the oppressiveconformism of the collegial institution. Thisearly novel by Hesse – the fruits of the liter-ary elaboration of his scholastic experienceand that of his brother Hans – starts fromthe incidental vicissitudes of the seminarianHans Giebenrath and his friend Heilner (thesymbolic recurrence of names beginningwith H.H. is typical of Hesse’s works), andends up in a general accusation againstschool education as such which, consecrat-ed to the motto of “breaking the spirit” ofthe pupil, aims at turning the future adultinto a tractable mechanism of the socialmachine. Many years later, with the charac-ter of the “Magister Ludi” Josef Knecht,Hesse created that ideal of an enlightenedteacher, who alone could have saved littleHans from the state of despair which con-sumes and annihilates him.

The myth of the Wayfarer reaches its climaxin The Journey to the East (1932), the fasci-nating story of that ideal “communion ofsouls” already touched upon in Demian andlater mentioned by Hesse in his speech afterbeing awarded the Nobel Prize. This idealwas constantly cherished also by FriedrichNietzsche: an academy of the free spirits of

[XVII]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hermann Hesse,

View over Lake

Ceresio,

watercolour, 1924

all times and all latitudes on the movethrough space and through the centuries atthe service – let us remember Knecht – ofpeace and human harmony whose final des-tination, as related by the violinist H.H., thecentral character of the Pilgrimage, “wasnot merely a geographical entity but thehomeland and the youth of the soul. It wasthe Everywhere and the Nowhere, the unifi-cation of all times”.22 Xenophon, Plato, Lao-tse, Novalis and all the other great artistsand men of thought, past, present andfuture, all the great writers of the“Weltliteratur” together with their charac-ters, are those pilgrims to whose memoryHesse was to dedicate – in a refined self-referring game – The Glass Bead Game, thegreat senile work devoted to the noble spir-itual order of Castalia, understood by thewriter as a utopian contrast to the barbarousreality of the Nazi Reich.23

The motive of the spiritual journey wasenhanced in particular with mythologicaland psychoanalytical themes in the worksfollowing the profound crisis that Hesse suf-fered during the years of the First WorldWar,24 from which he recovered thanks tohis interest in the Jungian theories on the

collective unconscious and numerous ses-sions of psychoanalysis. In fact, many of Hesse’s characters live con-stantly in unstable equilibrium in the bor-derland between the conscious and theunconscious, between the two worlds inwhich little Emil Sinclair grows up and inthe bottomless pit in which Klein flounders,constantly on the brink of insanity. Anotherexample is Klingsor (1920), whose surrealisticpainting enables the artist to go back throughall the stages of the depths and above all thecrushing into a thousand “multiplicities ofpsychic nuclei” 25 of the “crazy” Harry Haller,who struggles continuously lacerated in animpossible existence, simultaneously withinand outside of middle-class society, courteousand educated, intellectual but also a ferociousnocturnal beast.26

With Steppenwolf Hesse takes up a criticalstance against his previous novels such asPeter Camenzind and Gertrude, in which, inspite of everything, he now perceives a hintof insincerity. While Camenzind and Kuhn,aware of their status of misfits in life, timo-rously shut themselves off in noble silence,Harry Haller on the contrary leaps into theabyss and looks the depths of his soul straight

[XVIII]

Hermann Hesse

Autograph letter from

Thomas Mann to

Hermann Hesse dated

2nd August 1916

in the eyes. But this “dialogue with the uncon-scious”,27 A Glimpse into Chaos (1920) whichreveals the futility of all order and the inter-changeableness of all the adversities whichdestroy life, is the bringer of a cathartic effectcapable of revealing that the conflicts of life,the division between Spirit and Nature,between Good and Evil, between Yin and Yangare nothing more than a veil of Maya conceal-ing the unity of Everything.In fact, only through a glimpse into the abyssis it possible to reach that “PrimigenialMother” towards whom all Hesse’s characterstend, whether they are conscious of it or not:that original womb in which all individualidentities cease to ache, and return to mergein an undifferentiated common origin.28

The “brand of Cain” that Emil Sinclair and hisfriend and alter-ego Demian bear impressedupon them is nothing other than the mark ofChaos (from the Greek �αos, or also chasm,or yawning abyss), the brand of the chosenones who have glimpsed into the abyss ofhuman existence and managed to discern itsindescribable harmony.

Here then is the meaning of so many recur-ring symbols and themes in Hesse’s prose.Another example is the metaphor of thedream, together with the lucid awareness ofthe limits of speech. Powerful though it maybe, language can do nothing more thandeduce from the use of concepts, definitionswhich mark out the boundaries of thoughtbut which are inevitably forced to limit it.Dreams, on the contrary, are capable of giv-ing “freedom to contemporaneously experi-ence all imaginable things, to exchange forfun the inside and the outside, to make timeand space roll by like moving scenes”.29

Through their magic, reality is transformed,grows hazy, loses the rigidity of dialogicalthought and acquires that multiplicity andmystery capable of turning an omega into asnake, as happens to the young Goldmundwhen he drowsily studies Greek, thinkingthat it would please his studious friendNarcissus who, on the contrary, under-stands his friend’s need to follow his destinyby leaving the monastery of Mariabronn – avariation of Maulbronn, the college whereHermann Hesse and Hans Giebenrath stud-ied – to throw himself into the arms of life,women and nature. Yet another example is music and water,vital presences in Hesse’s works, perfectsymbols of serene harmony and of being inbecoming. In almost all Hesse’s novels we find thewater of a river flowing free and impetuous,or the stretch of water of an uncontaminat-ed Alpine lake lying deep and still. Very oftenwe also perceive, riding and hovering poisedbetween heaven and earth, one or manyclouds, “eternal symbol of travel, pursuit,desire and nostalgia”,30 as Camenzind remarksin his beautiful poem to nature, confidentthat there is no other man in the world wholoves clouds more than he.Feminine and maternal, water encompassesthe opposites like the original womb of theMother,31 and it is to her that not only theclerk Klein or the probable suicide HansGiebenrath, but also the legendary Knechtwho, in another life, was also the RainMagician, commit themselves, ending theirworldly life.He who, like the boatman Vasuveda ofSiddhartha, is able to hear the music of theriver, is the one who has perceived the Being

[XIX]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Fountain in the court-

yard of the monastery

at Maulbronn, where

Hesse studied for seven

months between 1891

and 1892

behind the eternal and ever-changing flow-ing of the waves and possesses the smile ofone enlightened. And a smile is also on the lips of his musicianfriend Pablo, who is really the immortalMozart, who, together with his sensual andmysterious girlfriends Maria and Erminia,sets the Wolf of the Steppe on the road torecovery, by making him recognise, behindthe crackling of an old radio, his immortalmusic, that “wordless language that expressesthe inexpressible and represents the unrepre-sentable”.33

Music is the absolute art which fascinates anddeeply moves Emil Sinclair, Hermann Lauscherand Josef Knecht, who, in the unfinished pro-ject of his fourth life, finds in her what his Pietistupbringing had never been able to give him.Music “universe of all expression of the soul,supreme language of the divine nature”,34 as

remarks Father David Maria Turoldo, is forHesse and his characters the highest expres-sion of contact with universal harmony.Hence, the sublime The Glass Bead Game,noble capacity to combine into a singlemelody the vastest spheres of truth, justiceand beauty, cannot fail to rest upon and drawits origins precisely from this art. And wheremusic is reduced to the strident and un-gracious scraping of a violin, it means that noharmony reigns, as was the case in the gloomyseminary of Maulbronn in Beneath the Wheel,where an incompetent boarding school pupilstubbornly insists upon scraping the poorinstrument, merely making an idiot of him-self.

The finest description of Hesse’s prose, com-pared precisely to a musical composition, wasleft to us by Hesse himself, in the ironic and

[XX]

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse,

Houses in

Montagnola,

gouache, 1920

acute story – adored by his friend ThomasMann35 - with the curious title A Guest at the

Spa (1925): “If I were a musician – imaginesthe writer – I could without any difficultywrite a melody for two voices, a melody com-posed of two lines, of two sets of tones andnotes, which are in harmony, complete eachother, struggle with each other, and conditioneach other […] and anyone who knew how toread a music score could read my doublemelody, would see and hear, the opposingnote, the sister note or hostile or antitheticalnote of each note. Well, it is precisely this, thisdouble vocality, this antithesis in eternalmotion, this double line that I would like toexpress with the material I have at my dispos-al, namely with words, and I am desperatelyworking on it, and I am unable to do so”.36

In fact, all the couples depicted by the writer,such as Narcissus and Goldmund, Veraguthand Burkhardt, Muoth and Kuhn, Siddharthaand Govinda, Sinclair and Demian, Knechtand Designori form a melody for two voicesplayed in the attempt to represent the mythi-cal ideal man who finally manages to unitethe two poles of existence, living in harmonybetween Eros and Logos, between theApollonian and Dionysian spirit, beyond allseparation, in the primordial divine unity.37

But, even though a note rather than the oppo-site sounds within them, the fate of all thesewayfarers is unique and different for each ofthem. While Narcissus has chosen the path ofcontemplation, Goldmund follows the path ofart and sensual love. While the wolf HarryHaller roams wild and anarchic on theSteppes, the “Magister Ludi” Josef Knechtaccomplishes the action with the intention ofserving and preserving the Castalian Order,even when he abandons his position asteacher of the Game leaving the splendid ped-agogic province.Hesse never tires in showing us that to reach“Heimat” the only road to take is the spiritualpath of our own conscience. This is why, whenSiddhartha meets Buddha, he admires andrespects Gotama exceedingly, but does notbecome his disciple, as does his friendGovinda, but continues to go his own way,aware that only in this way can he be close tothe Venerable One.That of Hermann Hesse is a lesson on free-dom and responsibility, simple and touchingas are all the great truths of human wisdom:be yourself, go your own way, because “afather can give his son a nose and eyes, andperhaps intelligence, but not a soul. This isnew in every man”.

[XXI]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

* Doctor of Political Economics at Milan’s

“Luigi Bocconi” University and student in

Philosophy and German Studies at the

Heidelberg University.

(e-mail: alessandro@skabadip.com)

1 Cf. G. DECKER, Hesse-ABC, Leipzig, Reclam, 2002, p. 187.2 Phenomena such as these are known as “creative misunderstan-

dings” and are the delight of scholars of comparative literature.3 Cf. www.hesse2002.de.4 H. HESSE, Wanderung, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1975,

p. 9. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.5 B. ZELLER, Hermann Hesse, Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2001, p. 40.6 H. HESSE, Hermann Lauscher, trad. di E. BANCHELLI, Milano,

SugarCo, 1991, p. 20. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett

Rogers.7 E. BANCHELLI, in H. HESSE, Hermann Lauscher, cit., p. 8.8 C. MAGRIS, Preface to Romanzi, Milano, Mondadori, 1977, p. XXV.9 Cf. V. MICHELS, Preface to H. HESSE, Il Viandante (the journeyer),

trad. di F. SOLINAS, Milano, Mondadori, 1993, p. 6.10 H. HESSE, Peter Camenzind, trad. di E. POCAR, Milano, Mondadori,

1980, p. 66. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.11 H. HESSE, Esperienze in Engadina (experiences in Engadine), in

Il Viandante, cit., p. 308. Translated from the Italian by Barbara

Ferrett Rogers.12 H. HESSE, Peter Camezind, cit., p. 43. Translated from the Italian

by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.13 Ibidem, p. 56.14 C. MAGRIS, Fra il Danubio e il mare, Milano, Garzanti, 2001, p. 15.15 H. HESSE, Demian, trad. di E. POCAR, in Romanzi, cit., p. 433.

Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.16 C. MAGRIS, Preface, cit., p. XXV.17 Knecht in German means servant.18 Cf. H. HESSE, letter to Rolf v. Hoerschelmann dated 22nd February

1944 in Ausgewählte Briefe, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1974,

p. 208. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.19 H. HESSE, Siddharta (Siddhartha), trad. di M. MILA, Milano,

Adelphi, 1994, p. 131. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett

Rogers.20 Ibidem, p. 175.21 Cf. H. HESSE, letter to Vasant Ghaneker dated April 1953 in Aus-

gewählte Briefe, cit., p. 405. Translated from the Italian by Barbara

Ferrett Rogers.22 H. HESSE, Il Pellegrinaggio in Oriente (The Journey to the

East), trad. di E. POCAR, Milano, Adelphi, 2002, p. 25. Translated from

the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.

23 Cf. H. HESSE, letter to Thomas Mann dated 23rd October 1946

in H. HESSE e T. MANN, Carteggio (correspondence), trad. di R.

RONCARATI, Milano, SE, 2001, p. 197. Translated from the Italian by

Barbara Ferrett Rogers.24 In addition to being appalled at Europe torn to pieces by the

Nationalists, in the “annus horribilis” 1916 Hesse loses his father,

his first wife is admitted to a nursing home for mental disorders

and his son Martin falls seriously ill.25 C. MAGRIS, Preface, cit., p. XXXIII.26 M.P. CRISANAZ PALIN, Introductory note to H. HESSE, Demian, in

Romanzi, cit., p. 301.27 H. HESSE, Blick ins Chaos, Berlin, Seldwyla, 1920, p. 13. Trans-

lated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.28 B. BIANCHI, Introduction to H. HESSE, Sull’amore (About Love),

Milano, Mondadori, 1988, p. 6.29 H. HESSE, Il Pellegrinaggio in Oriente, cit., p. 26. Translated from

the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.30 H. HESSE, Peter Camenzind, cit., p. 13. Translated from the Italian

by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.31 Cf. B. BIANCHI, op. cit., p. 6.32 Note how the verb listen – a listening obviously of the soul and

not of the senses – already appears in the title of Hesse’s first novel,

the previously mentioned Hermann Lauscher, since Lauscher in

German means “the listener”.33 H. HESSE, Il lupo della steppa (Steppenwolf), trad. di E. POCAR,

Milano, Mondadori, 1996, p. 127. Translated from the Italian by

Barbara Ferrett Rogers.34 D.M. TUROLDO in G. RAVASI, Il Canto della Rana, Casale

Monferrato, Piemme 1990, p. 13.35 T. MANN, in H. HESSE e T. MANN, op.cit., p. 153. Translated from

the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.36 H. HESSE, Psicologia Balneare (A Guest at the Spa), trad. di

I.A. CHIUSANO, in Altri Romanzi e Poesie, Milano, Mondadori,

1996, p. 481. Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.37 Cf. H. HESSE, Der Ideale Mensch, in Eigensinn macht Spaß,

Ebner Ulm, Insel, 2002, p. 105 s. Translated from the Italian by

Barbara Ferrett Rogers.38 H. HESSE, Knulp, trad. di E. POCAR, in Romanzi, cit., p. 257.

Translated from the Italian by Barbara Ferrett Rogers.

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hermann Hesse,

Lake and hills (details),

watercolour, 1924

Hermann Hesse, Switzerland, Italy and Ticino

by Giuseppe Curonici*

[XXIV]

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse is one of the most interna-tionally translated writers, and the mostwidely read among his contemporaries. Afterthe normal or condensed editions at thebeginning of his career, he won immenseacknowledgement during the second half ofthe Twentieth century.Many of the subjects dealt with by Hesse canbe easily interpreted in a universal sense, andthe reader is able to identify with them. Oneof these is truly fundamental: seeking andbuilding one’s own personality. The second isnonetheless important: the ability to see allthe evil possible, to feel it on oneself in one’sown life, and at the same time the need or thestrength not to give way to panic, to thetemptations of nihilism, or to the loss of val-ues. These are also a few of the reasons whyHesse’s work aroused particular attentionamong young people. His portrait of the manin a state of crisis, Steppenwolf, representsthe conflicts and the decline in values ofWestern civilisation in the first half of theTwentieth century. This could hold good foranybody, also in other times and places.Another remarkable aspect is his internation-al approach. Although Hesse is undoubtedly aGerman author, the reference to differentcultures emerges continuously in his works.Aspiration after inner peace and harmonywith others and with the world – aspiration,and not the foolish presumption that it canbe easily possessed – is the theme ofSiddhartha, The Journey to the East, andThe Glass Bead Game, and it is developed ina sort of non-dogmatic religiousness inwhich Christian spirituality, love and worshipof nature, Indian traditions, and Chinese tra-ditions converge. Hess emerged whole andunscathed from the Nazi period. He preachedpeace, accepting to live through many yearsof hardship rather than submit. He hadbecome a symbol of the German cultureelected upon the rebirth of European civil lifeafter the scorching ashes of the war. Besidesfor his merits as a writer, it is most likely alsofor this political-historical-ethical reasonthat he was awarded the Nobel Prize, precise-ly in 1946, the period of the rebuilding.

An international horizon and acoming and going around BaselHesse’s relations with Italy and CantonTicino are not merely geographical anec-

dotes, but concern some of the most intenseinspiring forces at work in the soul of theauthor. To understand their significance, itis necessary to insert the image that Hessehad of Italy and Ticino into the whole of hisproduction throughout his entire life; inaddition it is necessary to consider other ref-erences which, however far away they maybe (how far away is India?) emerge from thesame insuppressible requirement of thesoul: the search for the spiritual homeland.We have to bring this idea of spirituality andinternationality clearly into focus together.Let us say first of all what it is not. It is notequalisation, it is not cosmopolitanism, it isnot cultural tourism like a generic practiceof switching from one place to another andfrom one philosophy to another out of fatu-ous curiosity or due to the inability to stayput in one place; it is not the non-commit-tal attitude of those who deny faith or thetruth. Vice versa, Hesse’s attitude is toler-ance or rather brotherhood. He respecteddifferences, other people’s thoughts andconscience, acknowledged that what ismissing in one civilisation can be learned or,we could even go so far as to say, importedfrom different cultures. A European authorcomes to the Italian-speaking part ofSwitzerland to write an Indian story inGerman, Siddhartha, which dates back to1922 and seems as though it was writtenyesterday. A special kind of joy unfolds whenwe discover that from thousands of kilome-tres away and thousands of years ago similarcallings arose, as in the figures of Buddhaand St. Francis.

Hesse’s cultural geography We are faced with a question mark: how didHesse come to incorporate these prospects ofcultural pluralism into his personality andinto his production? Where and when didHesse begin to concentrate on unifying somany directions? The historical answer can be found at number21 Missionstrasse, in Basel. This city wasimportant for Hesse, because it was the gate-way to intercontinental culture, and the occa-sion of his entry into Switzerland.The Pietist religious movements whichbranched out over the centuries betweenGermany and Switzerland, were reformed in1815 in Basel to form a missionary society: the

[XXV]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hesse and his first wife

Maria Bernoulli in

Gaienhofen on Lake

Constance

Evangelische Missionsgesellschaft, referred tomore briefly as Basler Mission, which is still infull operation today. The celebrated IndologistDoctor Hermann Gundert, director of the mis-sion in India, at Malabar, was HermannHesse’s maternal grandfather. He was animportant cultural mediator, the author oftranslations of parts of the Bible, and of anEnglish-Malayalam vocabulary. After return-ing to Europe, in 1860 he became director ofthe missionary publishing house in Calw,linked to Basel. Later on, Gundert’s daughterMarie returned from India. The Calw editionswere entrusted to the young Protestant minis-ter Johannes Hesse, who had also been a mis-sionary in India. Johannes was German-speak-ing but of Russian nationality, because hecame from Estonia, one of the German-speak-ing Baltic provinces belonging to the Empireof the Tsars. Johannes Hesse married MarieGundert; Hermann Hesse was born in Calw in1877, and was a Russian citizen. In 1881 the family moved to Basel, becauseJohannes Hesse had been appointed professorat the Basler Mission school, where he

remained for five years. The family acquiredSwiss citizenship in 1883, but in 1886returned to Calw. However, in 1890 theyoung Hermann Hesse, who was bornRussian and became Swiss, was grantedGerman citizenship, more precisely citizen-ship of Wuerttemberg, to be able to sit forthe State examination and continue hisstudies in theology in Tubingen. The follow-ing year he entered boarding-school inMaulbronn. After seven months he ran away,then staged an attempted suicide. Heworked as an apprentice clockmaker, thenthought of running away again, but furtherafield. He was thinking of Brazil. At this point we can understand the great sig-nificance that all that complicated coming andgoing around Basel had for Hesse: a multiva-lent and profound encounter. The Pietism,which presented Christianity primarily as aspiritual experience; the spiritual upright-ness of the missionaries; the contact withIndia and in general a far-reaching sense ofintercultural relations and tolerance; hisentry into Switzerland, the intermediate stage

[XXVI]

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse,

Casa Camuzzi,

watercolour, 1926

before settling in Ticino. In Basel, he began to publish poetry andworked as a bookseller. In 1901 he left for Italy.He reappeared three months later. In 1903, hewent on his second journey to Italy, with MariaBernoulli whom he married the followingyear. They went to live in Gaienhofen, on theshores of Lake Constance where their threechildren were born. In 1911, together with hispainter friend Hans Sturzenegger, he left forthe Indies, on a journey of acquaintance andculture. In 1912 Hesse moved to Berne, andfrom that moment until the end he remaineddomiciled in Switzerland. In 1919 he settledpermanently in Ticino.

Where is Eden?For some very respectable reason, Eden is inIndia, or in the Lake District, or in Italy. It’sexactly the same thing. In 1927, for Hesse’sfiftieth birthday, his writer friend Hugo Ball(who was the cultural moving spirit ofDadaism) published the first biographical-critical monograph on Hesse, and in thatexcellent book he affirmed that Montagnola

is Honolulu. We have nothing to object, aslong as he explains something.Between the nineteenth and twentieth cen-tury, Western civilisation was shaken, orrather, overwhelmed by new events of enor-mous significance. Industry became massindustrialised civilisation. Living conditionschanged. Economic growth and social con-flicts became more intense. Nationalisticrivalries were paving the way for the FirstWorld War. Colonialism was spreadingthroughout the world and laying the founda-tions for the present-day globalisation.Cultural and psychological hardship becamemore acute: the changeover from a simplerural life to a technological civilisation, amidstenthusiasm and suffering, conformism andrebellion, prompted a radical change of life-style. For some, it even meant bringing backethnic traditions. To others, it appeared to bethe target of the social revolution. For quite asubstantial number of intellectuals and artists,an almost individual, deeply-felt aspirationwas the search for pure, uncontaminatedplaces, where they could live an authentic

[XXVII]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Postcard from Hermann

Hesse to his father,

dated Venice 2nd May

1901: "Fondest regards

to you and to every-

body! I am staying at

the house of Miss

Hüller in Venice:

Fondamenta Fenice

2551. I am well, despite

a cold and I am content.

Letters etc. here, please.

Yours affectionately,

Hermann"

(Marbach, Deutsches

Literaturarchiv)

life, amidst the unsullied forces of nature,which is greater and more profound than thecities of men.In substance, it means setting out on a jour-ney and seeking elsewhere a possible EarthlyParadise, which resembles the inexpressibleand indescribable spiritual homeland. TheEnglish writer Stevenson moved to theSouth Sea Islands. The painter Gauguin wentto Brittany and then to Tahiti and theMarquesan Islands. Nietsche went up toEngadine. Giovanni Segantini went from theBrera Academy of Art to the farmsteads ofMaloja. Van Gogh went to Provence. Cézannehad already taken refuge at his home, also inProvence. Others went to the fishing villageson the Côte d’Azur, whose features had notyet been changed by the tourist industry. Onegroup of philosophers and artists went up tothe mountain of Ascona, and the mountain ofthe philosophers was Monte Verità. After theFirst World War, a new influx arrived inAscona – now they were painters and writers.These are just a few famous examples: in fact,the movement was scattered throughout var-ious parts of Europe.At that time, Ticino, one of the poorest terri-tories in Switzerland, was still almost com-pletely at a stage of pre-industrial civilisation.Its assimilation to a Utopian land, to an Eden,was possible. For Hesse, it also took on thevalue of a need and a remedy, mainly due tothe accumulation of distressing circum-stances, which we will mention shortly.In reality, to Hesse’s eyes, India, Italy andTicino had one feature in common: the placeof primordial values, the religious sense ofnature, the spontaneous way of life, the har-mony between man and nature, at least as aUtopian Edenic image. However, once wehave ascertained the common core, we haveto consider the differential elements. India. In the case of India, Hesse was influ-enced by his childhood acquisitions, thehousehold tradition, the presence of wide-spread spiritual cultural systems, alternativeto the European system and especially tomaterialistic conformism. Italy. For the image of Italy, another traditionis at work, that of the man of German culturewho tends towards the country of classicalantiquity and art. An impulse to movetowards the south, a south which is natureand culture. This also applies precisely in the

case of Hesse, who nevertheless did not givemuch thought to classical antiquity and noteven to Christian antiquity (in fact, he neverever went to Rome); on the contrary, what hewas keenly interested in was the country, thepeople, and art from the end of the MiddleAges up to his day and age. Ticino. Hill of Montagnola overlooking LakeLugano, is the synthesis of an imaginaryEden with an actual village. It offers the dualadvantage of being at one and the same timeclose to Central Europe and still close to rus-tic nature. This is the place where Hesseaccomplished the culminating part of hiswork, at a ripe old age and until the end of hisdays.

Journeys to ItalyDiscovering Italy was a wonderful existen-tial, not only cultural, experience enjoyed byHesse at the beginning of the 20th century.His first journey to Italy is documented by aDiary and other texts of a descriptive orautobiographical nature. Hesse’s works Aus

Italien, collected by Volker Michels (Frank-furt a.M., 1983), were published under the

[XXVIII]

Hermann Hesse

[XXIX]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Postcard to Paul

Schoeck from Assisi,

spring 1911; Hesse was

travelling with the

musician Othmar

Schoeck and the

composer Fritz Brun.

"This convent in Assisi

is the most beautiful

thing one could ever

see! Ah Assisi! Strolling

through the streets (?!)

I hear + find here

everything there is to

be found in the Italian

song book [by H.Wolf]!

Fondest wishes from

your Othmar.

After having drunk so

much Chianti all

Othmar needs is a halo.

Fritz Brun

But we need Chianti

more than we need a

halo. Hesse"

title From Italy, by Eva Banchelli (Milan,1990). He departed from Calw in the eveningof Monday the 25th of March 1901 andarrived in Milan on Tuesday at half pasteleven in the evening. He visited Pavia, Genoa,Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato, Leghorn andother places, returned to Florence andremained there until the 28th of April. Thenhe went to Ravenna, Padua, Venice, theLagoon, the Lido. He took leave of Venice onthe 17th of May, and stopped one day in Milanto see Brera. Saturday evening “at half pastten I boarded the St. Gotthard train”. Thecustoms procedures in Chiasso annoyedhim. Near Lugano he fell asleep. The after-noon of Sunday the 19th of May he arrivedback in Calw.He had conscientiously prepared himselfbefore the journey. He had studied theItalian language and the history of art.The entire diary is crammed with works andartists. Architecture, sculpture, and antiqui-ty take a slightly secondary place comparedto the space occupied by paintings. Here theyoung writer’s interest was extremely accen-tuated, and his sensitivity keen and sharp.He dwelled continuously upon the richnessof the colour, not only for the effects of per-ception, but for the closely connected cul-tural significance. 10th of April, Pitti Palace.“I again sit at length in front of Titian’sCaterina. The truly exceptional thing aboutthe painting is the total unity of the shades,which is for the most part missing in Tuscanpaintings, a unity in which the light, figures,landscape, etc. are chords of equal intensity”.His flair for feeling pictorially is exceptional,and so much so that we find it also when,instead of describing paintings, he describesreal landscapes. 23rd of April: “From theBridge of Graces, a wonderful view over theRiver Arno which, from a clear dark green atthe top, after passing under the bridges fur-ther down, mirrored all the colours of theevening”. An enormous cultural revolution took placein Tuscany, the transition from theMediaeval to the Modern Age. Hesse paid lit-tle attention to this historical event, eventhough his preparation contained a master-piece of historical research, the very famousbook on the Renaissance by Jakob Burck-hardt. Instead, Hesse concentrated mainly,from time to time, on the individual paint-

ing. However, at least once he spoke clearlyabout the historical change, towards the endof his work on St. Francis and Francisca-nism, in 1904, when he mentioned Giotto,acknowledging him as an extraordinaryinnovator: “Giotto in particular, the first greatpainter of the modern age, was impelled tosuch depth precisely by his gratitude and byhis deep love for Francis and his spirituality”.After the two fundamental journeys of dis-covery, in 1901 and 1903, attested by hisdiaries, Hesse came down from the North toItaly several times, preferably in the compa-ny of a friend. However, the accumulation ofmuseum and historical information, subtlyand little by little began to interest him less.He appreciated people, the population, theenvironment, the way of life which appearedto him to be less strenuous and artificialthan in his own country. A rhythm of lifecloser to natural spontaneity. The text A

Day’s Journey in Italy, written in 1913, givesa conclusive judgement. “Apart from the dif-ferences and fascinating contrasts betweenpeoples and countries, I will always, and withever-increasing clarity, be met by a unitaryfeeling of humanity”.

Italian language and literatureItalian was apparently the only foreign lan-guage that Hesse knew well, and his secondlanguage after his mother tongue. Today,the proprietor of the bookshop Fuchs andReposo, the Wega bookshop, in via Nassa inLugano, recalls that as a young girl sheoften saw that tall, thin, extremely courte-ous gentleman, who spoke German orsometimes Italian with a German accent,enter the shop. There are also people inMontagnola who still remember him. Whenone of his German friends went to visit him,Hesse acted as his guide. At the Cavicc tav-ern or the Bellavista restaurant, he acted asinterpreter between Thomas Mann and theowner’s wife. We should bear in mind thatHesse learned Italian, not after settling inthe Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, butmany years earlier. In fact, he had startedstudying it even before the journey in 1901.At the beginning he obviously spoke Italianwith a barbarous accent. His Diary of thoseevent-filled months gives us various bits ofinformation.Milan, Wednesday 27th March: “Dinner in a

[XXX]

Hermann Hesse

Hesse as he paints in

the neighbourhood of

Montagnola in a

photograph taken

during the late Twenties

little trattoria (macheroni con sugo)”. Allthose maccheroni needed was a “c”. “Thewhole family, cat included, sat at the tablewith me and laughed at my Italian”.Thursday 28th, in Pavia, a stop at a countrytavern: “simple, easy-going people who werevery kind to me and laughed at my Italian”.He arrived in Florence and was given hospi-tality at the home of Professor Thurnheer.Easter, 7th April: Professor Thurnheer “haskindly provided me with literature onFlorence”, but on Friday Hesse had alreadypurchased a classic of Italian Rennaissanceliterature, Vite by Vasari. Three weeks later,Sunday 28th April, he was lunching with theThurnheers, and wrote: “With them I onlyspeak Italian”. On the 17th of May, on his way

back home, he conversed on the train fromMilan to Venice with an Englishman. “Wespoke half in Italian and half in German.Then we were joined by a lady from Venicewith a pretty daughter and we all chattedtogether in Italian”.The second important journey to Italy was in1903. He travelled in the company of MariaBernouilli and her friend, the painter Gudrun,who was waiting for them at the station inMilan. In Florence he was given a room bythe Thurnheers, and the two girls foundaccommodation nearby. On Tuesday 7th Aprilhe gave a display of his linguistic knowledge.He chatted with the Thurnheers for an hour,and concluded: “I was delighted that my rustyItalian had begun to flow so well again”.Hesse read some of the most important

Italian authors directly, wrote articles inGerman on their work, and published trans-lations-revisions. Several of his German ver-sions of pages from Little Flowers of St.

Francis were referred to by Eva Banchelli astranslation and adaptation, or free adapta-tion. The reason why Hesse admired St.Francis is clear: he corresponded very close-ly to the model of Christian spirituality thathe had contemplated and interiorised fromearly childhood through the intense devout-ness of his parents and famous grandfatherGundert. A young man from a rich and hon-oured family, after having tasted the spicesof life, gives up everything, chooses poverty,inner spirituality, and becomes a monk.Who does this biographical profile repre-

sent? The son of the middle-class family ofAssisi, Francis? Or the son of the rich man of Kapilavastu, Buddha? Or an abstract modelof conversion? In 1904 Hesse published twobiographical works, one on Boccaccio, andone on St. Francis. To be quite truthful, theyare two very different characters, placed sideby side or in opposition with each other. Inthe novel he wrote in 1930, Narcissus and

Goldmund, the two protagonists are anascetic monk and a sensual artist. Similarpairs of opposites emerge insistently in theworks of the mature Hesse. The polarity, thecontradiction of human life is one of thethemes that attracted him most. Hesse produced numerous articles for news-papers and magazines, which ranged fromstories to short essays and reviews of books.

[XXXI]

“Beyond pictures and stories”

We see him pass, with a free itinerary,through many Italian names and authors:Leonardo, Machiavelli, Pascoli (for whom heremarked on the 5th of June 1914 in the“Münchner Zeitung”: “Many of his delicatePoemetti are so full of musical resonance asto make them seem impossible to translate”).

In TicinoPerhaps what Ticino was for Hermann Hesseindeed resembles the most attainable part ofthe Utopia of Eden. The writer settled therepermanently in 1919, but he had begun toget to know it, little by little, from as early asthe start of the century. The most fleetingglimpse he got of it was when he crossed iton the train at full speed, on his journeys toItaly. In 1905 he made an excursion on footbetween Lake Como and Lake Lugano. Twoyears later he went to Ascona, on MonteVerità, for physiotherapeutic treatment.From 1916 he made frequent visits to theregion of Locarno for short holidays, some-times to the lake and sometimes to themountains, either alone or with friends.The years coinciding with the First WorldWar, and immediately after, were extremelydifficult for Hesse. During the conflict, hedevoted himself to charity work for Germanprisoners of war. He suffered repeated violentattacks in the newspapers, because he had

voiced his opinion against Pan-Germanicmilitarism. One of his children fell ill, hisfather died suddenly, and his wife had to beadmitted to a nursing home for a very seri-ous psychiatric disorder. Since he himselfwas in danger of losing his balance, and wasaware of it, in 1916 Hesse underwent psy-

choanalysis with Doctor Lang, the disciple ofC.G. Jung. The initial and unexpected conse-quence was the start of a new creative activ-ity. Doctor Lang advised his patient to takeup drawing and painting, for therapeuticpurposes. Hesse produced self portraits inblack and white, and innumerable land-scapes, which rose to as many as three thou-sand water colours in the space of ten or fif-teen years. They are almost all landscapes ofTicino. His painting activity was at one andthe same time physical and mental; his anx-iety melted into pictures. And the subject hepainted was, in a certain sense, the one mostfull of life, peace and majesty: the sky, lakes,a few villages, trees, forests. Nature. Germany’s defeat was a psychological, moraland also financial catastrophe for him, dueto the inflation which wiped out his savings.The partially mastered crisis did not come toan end; Hesse found a suitable arrangementfor his three children, and decided to leaveBerne, tear himself away from everythingand start life anew, perhaps between Ascona,Arcegno and Ronco. But there was oneamazing drawback! His wife, who had beentemporarily discharged from the mentalhome, had decided to come to Ticino andbuy herself a house precisely in Ascona.Alarmed at the news, Hermann Hessechanged his plans. He had to shift furthersouth, on the shores of another lake, LakeLugano. He stayed at a hotel in Sorengo, andafter a few days discovered a home which fas-cinated him in the village of Montagnola.The architect Camuzzi, who had workedduring the middle of the nineteenth centuryin St. Petersburg, upon returning to hishomeland, had restructured a large farm-stead for himself, turning it into an eclectic-baroque-oriental palace. Here Hesse rentedfour rooms without heating. There was afireplace, and a balcony. He set to work. Hisoutput during the first few years was fren-zied, then slowed down to a more relaxedpace. In 1931 Hesse, who still had somefinancial difficulties, was helped enormouslyby the patron Hans C. Bodmer, who had CasaRossa built for him. It was here that thewriter lived and worked until his death.Montagnola was the cradle of his mostfamous works. One of them, Klingsor’s Last

Summer, is a story set in Casa Camuzzi: thegarden, the balcony and the landscape are

Hesse at work in the

garden of Casa Rossa

around 1935

[XXXII]

Hermann Hesse

easily recognisable. The names of the placesare anagrams of actual names: Manuzzo isMuzzano, Laguno is Lugano, Caruno meansCarona. We feel we should point out some-thing very much alive: they are all placesthat can be reached from Montagnola onfoot, there and back at the most in one day.This means that they are places felt directlyby Hesse with his bodily presence. Hessededicated innumerable descriptive and auto-biographical pages to Ticino, the landscape,the people, the festivities, the churches andthe villages. He was grateful to the land thathad given him hospitality.

But what about the notice? One day a strictsign appeared on the gate post at theentrance to Casa Rossa: visitors are not wel-come. At that time, Hesse was the mostfamous writer in the world. He was seventy,eighty years old, and he was always being vis-ited by young people with sleeping-bags andguitars, and strangers from all corners of theworld. What was he supposed to do, payattention to dozens of visitors every day? Ateighty? He closed the gate, out of selfdefence. But he didn’t let the conversationdrop. He answered anyone who wrote tohim. He wrote thirty-five thousand letters.In 1923 he had wanted to abandon hisGerman citizenship, out of love for theGerman people and culture and out of con-tempt for the new black political factionswhich were about to plunge his country intoa worse upheaval than the previous one. Hewanted to become Swiss, Ticinese, he whohad desired to learn Italian. The town coun-cil granted him honorary citizenship. He isburied in the cemetery of Gentilino.

* Art critic and literary critic. Formerly

Professor of the Cantonal Liceo of Lugano

and Director of the Cantonal Library of

Lugano. Winner of the Bagutta Opera

Prima Award, 2002.

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Hesse’s typewriter

(Montagnola, Hermann Hesse Museum)

The Hermann Hesse Museum in Montagnola, a rendezvous

by Regina Bucher*

[XXXIV]

Hermann Hesse

The Hermann Hesse Museum was inaugura-ted on the 2nd of July 1997, to celebrate the120th anniversary of the artist’s birth, NobelPrize for literature in 1946, in the old CamuzziTower, located in the heart of the village ofMontagnola and forming part of the groupof buildings of Casa Camuzzi.The Museum is directed by the HermannHesse Foundation, and has become a placewhich enables visitors to wander, in a sti-mulating atmosphere, along the creativepath trodden by Hesse, to immerse themsel-ves in the realm of his literary work and tosavour the beauty of his watercolours. Thelayout of the Museum allows contact andintercommunication between the visitors.The seating accommodation at the entran-ce, in the garden and in the book-shopwhere Hesse’s works are available in fourlanguages, invites visitors to rest andexchange views.By virtue of its extensive design, in additionto the permanent exhibition of manuscripts,letters, book editions, watercolours, photo-graphs and personal objects – including hisdesk and typewriter –, the Museum offersthe visitor different possibilities of approa-ching Hesse. Each year, three separate temporary exhibi-tions contemplate and feature a particularaspect of themes and personalities linked toHesse, giving the public access to very oftenunpublished works and texts. Exhibitionsfeaturing the sculptor Hermann Hubacher,the carpet-weaver Maria Geroe-Tobler and an

exhibition on the inhabitants of Montagnolaand their relations with Hermann Hesse arescheduled for 2003.Audio-equipped areas are provided in theMuseum, whereby it is possible to hearHesse’s voice as he reads his texts or to listento his favourite pieces of music. A smallcinema features a documentary film inItalian, German and English, on the artist’slife in Ticino. The weekly lectures in Italianand German, followed by a discussion withthe audience, as well as the walks throughthe places cherished by Hesse, the conferen-ces, concerts and various recitatives, help tomake the visit to the Museum precious andenjoyable.The main purpose of the Foundation is tokeep Hesse’s work alive, to promote aware-ness of the topicality of his literary worksand characterise the spirit of the artist astranscending all boundaries. The Museum welcomes 20,000 visitors eachyear, and is thus an important cultural cen-tre of attraction in Ticino, frequented by an

international public.Translated into 60 languages and with over100 million books sold, Hermann Hesse isthe German-language author of the twen-tieth century most widely read throughoutthe world. For this reason the HermannHesse Foundation in Montagnola has fre-quently organised projects and exhibitionsoutside the borders of Canton Ticino, forexample in Winterthur, Zurich, Berlin,Milan, Venice and Brussels.

* Director of the Fondazione Hermann

Hesse Montagnola

The Hermann Hesse

Museum in the tower

of Casa Camuzzi in

Montagnola

Right:

The Painter’s

Treasure:

Hesse’s paints

and palette

(Montagnola, Hermann

Hesse Museum)

“Beyond pictures and stories”

Biographical profile of Hermann Hesse and selection of the quota-

tions for the thematic illustrations accompanying the Annual

Report for the financial year by Pier Carlo Della Ferrera.

Iconographic research by Regina Bucher and Pier Carlo Della

Ferrera.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the people and institutions who, in their

various capacities, provided information, news and useful sugge-

stions for the accomplishment of this book. Our special thanks

go to Professor Giuseppe Curonici and Doctor Regina Bucher,

Director of the Fondazione Hermann Hesse in Montagnola.

Information about the Fondazione Hermann Hesse Montagnola

www.hessemontagnola.ch / hesse.museo@ticino.com

Tel. 0041 91 993 37 70 / Fax 0041 91 993 37 72

Copyright

© Calwer Verlag, Stuttgart, p. IV

© Diego e Luigi Ciminaghi, Milano, p. XVI

© Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, p. XVIII

© Fondazione Hermann Hesse, Montagnola, p. XV, XXXIII, XXXIV

© Heiner Hesse, Arcegno, p. II, X and XI, XVII, XX, XXII and XXIII,

XXVI

© Sanjiro Minanikawa, Tokyo, p. XXXIV

© Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, p. III, V, VII, VIII, XII,

XIV, XIX, XXV, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXI

Photographs by

Martin Hesse, p. VII, XXX, XXXI

S. Minanikawa, p. XXXIV below

R. Pellegrini, p. XXXIV above

Reverse of flyleaf:

Siddhartha, 1922

(translated by Hilda ROSNER,

London, Owen, 1954

and Barbara Ferrett Rogers)

DESIGN AND CO-ORDINATION

SDB, Chiasso

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Lucas Häfliger, Bellinzona