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Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

German poet and novelist, who has explored in his work the duality of spirit andnature and individual's spiritual search outside restrictions of the society. Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Several of Hesse's novels depict the protagonist's journey into the inner self. A spiritual guide assists the hero in his quest for self-knowledge and shows the way beyond the world "deluded by money, number and time."

"For even the most childish intoxication with progress will soon be forced to recognize that writing and books have a function that is eternal. It will become evident that formulations in words and the handling on of these formulations through writing are not only important aids but actually the only means by which humanity can have a history and continuing consciousness of itself." (Hesse in Reading in Bed, ed. by Steven Gilbar, 1974)

Hermann Hesse was born into a family of Pietist missionaries and religious publishers in the Black Forest town of Calw, in the German state of Wttenberg. Johannes Hesse, his father, was born a Russian citizen in Weissenstein, Estonia. Hesse's mother, Marie Gundert, was born in Talatscheri, India, as the daughter of thePietist missionary and Indologist, Hermann Gundert. His parents expected him tofollow the family tradition in theology - they had served as missionaries in Ind

ia. Hesse entered the Protestant seminary at Maulbronn in 1891, but he was expelled from the school. After unhappy experiences at a secular school, Hesse left his studies. He worked a bookshop clerk, a mechanic, and a book dealer in Tbingen,where he joined literary circle called Le Petit Cnacle. During this period Hesseread voluminously and determined the become a writer. In 1899 Hesse published his first works, ROMANTISCHE LIEDER and EINE STUNDE HINTER MITTERNACHT.

ELISABETHIch soll erzhlendie Nacht ist schon spt -willst du mich qulen,schne Elisabeth?

Daran ich dichteund du dazu,meine Liebesgeschichteist dieser Abend und du.

Du musst nicht strendie Reime verwehn.Bald wirst du sie hren,hren und nicht verstehen.

Hesse became a freelance writer in 1904 after the publication of his novel PETERCAMENZIND. In the Rousseauesque 'return to nature' story the protagonist leavesthe big city to live like Saint Francis of Assisi. The book gained literary suc

cess and Hesse married Maria Bernoulli, with whom he had three children. A visitin India in 1911 was a disappointment but it gave start to Hesse's studies of Eastern religions and the novel SIDDHARTHA (1922). In the story, based on the early life of Gautama Buddha, a Brahman son rebels against his father's teaching and traditions. Eventually he finds the ultimate enlightenment. The culture of ancient Hindu and the ancient Chinese had a great influence on Hesse's works. For several years in the mid-1910s Hesse underwent psychoanalysis under Carl Jung's assistant J.B. Lang.

In 1912 Hesse and his family took a permanent residence in Switzerland. In the n

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ovel ROSSHALDE (1914) Hesse explored the question of whether the artist should marry. The author's replay was negative and reflected the author's own difficulties. During these years his wife suffered from growing mental instability and hisson was seriously ill. Hesse spent the years of World War I in Switzerland, attacking the prevailing moods of militarism and nationalism. He also promoted theinterests of prisoners of war. Hesse, who shared with Aldous Huxley belief in the need for spiritual self-realization, was called a traitor by his countrymen.

Hesse's breakthrough novel was DEMIAN (1919). It was highly praised by Thomas Mann, who compared its importance to James Joyce's Ulysses and Andr Gide's The Counterfeiters. The novel attracted especially young veterans of the WW I, and reflected Hesse's personal crisis and interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. Demian wasfirst published under the name of its narrator, Emil Sinclair, but later Hesse admitted his authorship. In the Faustian tale the protagonist is torn between hisorderly bourgeois existence and a chaotic world of sensuality. Hesse later admitted that Demian was a story of "individuation" in the Jungian manner. The author also praised unreservedly Jung's study Psychological Types, but in 1921 he suddenly canceled his analysis with Jung and started to consider him merely one ofFreud's most gifted pupils.

Leaving his family in 1919, Hesse moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland.Siddharta was written during this period. It has been one of Hesse's most widelyread work. Its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual guide to a number of American Beat poets. Hesse's short marriage to Ruth Wenger, the daughte

r of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger, was unhappy. He had met her in 1919 and wrotein 1922 the fairy tale PIKTOR'S VERWANDLUNGEN for Ruth. In the story a spirit,Piktor, becomes an old tree and finds his youth again from the love of a young girl. Hesse divorced from Maria Bernoulli, and married in 1924 Ruth Wenger, but the marriage ended after a few months. These years produced DER STEPPENWOLF (1927). The protagonist, Harry Haller, goes through his mid-life crisis and must chose between life of action and contemplation. His initials perhaps are not accidentally like the author's. "The few capacities and pursuits in which I happened tobe strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myselfas a person who was in fact nothing more tan a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf." Haller feels that he has two b

eings inside him, and faces his shadow self, named Hermine. This Doppelgnger figure introduces Harry to drinking, dancing, music, sex, and drugs. Finally his personality is disassembled and reassembled in the 'Magic Theatre' - For Madmen Only.

"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality andnever allow the world within to assert itself."

During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Hesse stayed aloof from politics. BETRACHTUNGEN (1928) and KRIEG UND FRIEDEN (1946) were collections of essays, which reflected his individualism and opposition to mass movements of the day. NARZISS UND GOLDMUND (1930, Narcissus and Goldmund) was a pseudomedieval tale about an abb

ot and his worldly pupil, both in search of the Great Mother.

In 1931 Hesse married Ninon Dolbin (1895-1966). Ninon was Jewish. She had sent Hesse a letter in 1909 when she was 14, and the correspondence had continued. In1926 they met accientally. At that time Ninon was separated - she had married the painter B.F. Doldin and planned a career as an art historian. Hesse moved withher to Casa Bodmer, and his restless life became more calm. Hesse's books continued to be published in Germany during the Nazi regime, and were defended in a secret circular in 1937 by Joseph Goebbels. When he wrote for the Frankfurter Zeitung Jewish refugees in France accused him of supporting the Nazis, whom Hesse d

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id not openly oppose. However, he helped political refugees and when Narcissus and Goldmund was reprinted in 1941, he refused to leave out parts which dealt with pogroms and anti- Semitism. In 1943 he was placed on the Nazi blacklist.

"The secret of Hesse's work lies in the creative power of his poetic similes, inthe "magic theater" of the panoramas of the soul that he conjures up before theeyes and ears of the world. It lies in the identity of idea and appearances that, to be sure, his work - like any work of human hands - can do more that suggest." (Hugo Ball in Hermann Hesse, 1947)

In 1931 Hesse began to work on his masterpiece DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, which was published in 1943. The setting is in the future in the imaginary province of Castilia, an intellectual, elitist community, dedicated to mathematics and music. Knecht ('servant') is chosen by the Old Music Master as a suitable aspirant to theOrder. He goes to the city of Waldzell to study, and there he catches the attention of the Magister Ludi, Thomas von der Trave (an allusion to Hesse's rival Thomas Mann). He is the Master of the Games, a system by which wisdom is communicated. Knecht dedicates himself to the Game, and on the death of Thomas, he is elected Magister Ludi. After a decade in his office Knecht tries to leave to start alife devoted to realizing human rights, but accidentally drowns in a mountain lake. - In 1942 Hesse sent the manuscript to Berlin for publication. It was not accepted by the Nazis and the work appeared in Zrich, Switzerland.

"Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, j

ustice and understanding and fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side." (from The Journey to the East, 1932)

After receiving the Nobel Prize Hesse published no major works. Between the years 1945 and 1962 he wrote some 50 poems and about 32 reviews mostly for Swiss newspapers. Hesse died of cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep on August 9, 1962 at theage of eighty-five. Hesse's other central works include In Sight of Chaos (1923), a collection of essays, and the novel Narcissus and Goldmund (1930), set in the Middle Ages and repeating the theme of two contrasting types of men. In the 1960s and 1970s Hesse became a cult figure for young readers. The interest declined in the 1980s. In 1969 the Californian rock group Sparrow changed their name to Steppenwolf after Hesse's classic, and released 'Born to be Wild'. Hesse's boo

ks have gained readers from the New Age movements and he is still one of the bestselling German-speaking writers throughout world.

For further reading: Mein Onkel Hermann: Erinnerungen an Alt-Estland by Monika Hunnius (1921); Herman Hesse by Hugo Ball (1947); The Novels of Hermann Hesse byT. Ziolkowski (1965); Hermann Hesse by F. Baumer (1969); Hermann Hesse, His Mindand Art by M. Boulby (1967); C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse by M. Serrano (1971);An Outline of the Works of Hermann Hesse by R. Farquharson (1973); Hesse by T.J.Ziolkowski (1973); Hermann Hesse: A Collection of Criticism, ed. by J. Liebmann(1977); Hermann Hesse: Biography and Bibliography by J. Mileck (1977); HermannHesse: Life and Art by Joseph Milek (1981); Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel:A Concealed Defense of the Mother World by Edmund Remys (1983); The Hero's Quest for the Self by D.G. Richards (1987); Hermann Hesse's Fictions of the Self by

E.L. Satelzig (1988), Reflection and Action by James N. Hardin (1991) - See: Romain Rolland, who was interested in Indian philosophy. Hesse's novel Demian was based on Carl Jung's theories of individuation. James Joyce's daughter Lucia wasamong Jung's patients in the 1930s. Suom.: Hesselt suomennettu mys valikoima Riikinkukkokehrj ja muita kertomuksia (1989). - See also Zelda Fitzgerald.

Selected works:

ROMANTISCHE LIEDER, 1899EINE STUNDE HINTER MITTERNACHT, 1899

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HINTERLASSENE SCHRIFTEN UND GEDICHTE VON HERMANN LAUSCHER, 1901PETER CAMENZIND, 1904 - trans. - Alppien poikaUNTERM RAD, 1906 - The Prodigy / Beneath the Wheel - Ers nuoruusGERTRUD, 1910 - Gertrude and I - suom.ROSSHALDE, 1914 - trans. - suom.KNULP, 1915 - trans.DEMIAN, 1919 - published under pseudonym Emil Sinclair - trans. - suom.KLINGSORS LETZTER SOMMER, 1920 - Klingsor's Last Summer - Katoava kesSIDDHARTHA, 1922 - trans. - suom. - film 1972, dir. by Conrad Rooks, starring Shashi Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Romesh Shama, Pinchoo KapoorBLICK INS CHAOS, 1923 - In Sight of ChaosPIKTOR'S VERWANDLUNGEN, 1925GESAMMELTE ERZHLUNGEN, 1927DER STEPPENWOLF, 1927 - Steppenwolf - Arosusi - film 1974, dir. by Fred Haines,starring Max von Sydow, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi, Carla RomanelliBETRACHTUNGEN, 1928NARZISS UND GOLDMUND, 1930 - Narcissus and Goldmund / Death and the Lover - Narkissos ja KultasuuDIE MORGENLANDFAHRT, 1932 - The Journey to the East - Matka aamun maahanDIE GEDICHTE, 1942DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, 1943 - The Glass Bead Game (also: Magister Ludi) - LasihelmipeliBERTHOLD, 1945TRAUMFHRTE, 1945

KRIEG UND FRIENDEN, 1946 - If the War Goes On...FRHE PROSA, 1948BRIEFE, 1951SPTE PROSA, 1951DICHTUNGEN, 1952 (6 vols.)ZWEI IDYLLEN, 1952DIE GEDICHTE, 1953 - Poems (trans. of 31 poems)The Prodigy, 1957GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN, 1957PROSA AUS DEM NACHLASS, 1965NEUE DEUTSCHE BCHER, 1966KINDHEIT UND JUGEND VOR 1900, 1966BRIEFWECHSEL. HERMANN HESSE - THOMAS MANN, 1968

POLITISCHE BETRACHTUNGEN, 1970GESAMMELTE WERKE, 1970 (12 vols.)Strange News from Another Star, 1972GESAMMELTE BRIEFE, 1973Hours in the Garden and Other Poems, 1974Tales of Student Life, 1975Hermann Hesse and Romain Rolland: Correspondence, 1976DIE ROMANE UND GROSSEN ERZHLUNGEN, 1977 (8 vols.)Six Novels with Other Stories and Essays, 1980Pictor's Metamorphosis and Other Tales, 1982Stories of Five Decades, 1984Soul of the Age, 1991

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