HESSE, Hermann (LITERATURE)

Born: Calw, Wurttemberg, Germany, 2 July 1877. Education: Educated at Basle Mission; Rector Otto Bauer’s latin school, Goppingen, 1890-91; Protestant Seminary, Maulbronn, 1891-92; Cannstatt Gymnasium, 1892-93. Military Service: Volunteer, as editor of books and magazines for prisoners of war in Switzerland during World War I. Family: Married 1) Marie Bernoulli in 1904 (divorced 1923), three sons; 2) Ruth Wenger in 1924 (divorced 1927); 3) Ninon Auslander Boldin in 1931. Career: Clock factory apprentice, Calw, 1894-95; apprentice, 1895-98, then assistant, 1898-99, Heckenhauer bookshop, Tubingen; worked for bookdealers in Basle, 1899-1903; freelance writer from 1903; editor, Mart, 1907-15; co-editor, Vivos Voco, 1919-20; regular contributor to Carona and Bonniers Lit-terara Magasin in 1930s. Lived in Gaienhofen, Germany, 1904-12, near Berne, Switzerland, 1912-19, and Montagnola, Switzerland, 1919-62. Awards: Bauernfeldpreis (Vienna), 1904; Fontane prize (refused), 1919; Keller prize, 1936; Nobel prize for literature, 1946; Goethe prize, 1946; Raabe prize, 1950; German Book Trade Peace prize, 1955. Honorary doctorate: University of Berne, 1947. Died: 9 August 1962.

Publications

Collection

Werkausgabe, edited by Volker Michels. 12 vols., 1970; supplement, 2 vols., 1972.

Fiction

Peter Camenzind. 1904; as Peter Camenzind, translated by W.J. Strachan, 1961; also translated by Michael Roloff, 1969.


Unterm Rad. 1906; as The Prodigy, translated by W.J. Strachan, 1957; as Beneath the Wheel, translated by Michael Roloff, 1968.

Diesseits: Erzahlungen. 1907; revised edition, 1930.

Nachbarn: Erzahlungen. 1908.

Gertrud. 1910; as Gertrude and I, translated by Adele Lewisohn, 1915; as Gertrude, translated by Hilda Rosner, 1955.

Umwege: Erzahlungen. 1912.

Anton Schievelbeyns ohn-freywillige Reise nacher Ost-Indien. 1914.

Der Hausierer. 1914.

Rosshalde. 1914; as Rosshalde, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1970.

Knulp: Drei Geschichten aus dem Leben Knulps. 1915; as Knulp: Three Tales from the Life of Knulp, translated by Ralph Manheim,1971.

Am Weg. 1915.

Schon ist die Jugend: Zwei Erzahlungen. 1916.

Hans Dierlamms Lehrzeit. 1916.

Alte Geschichten: Zwei Erzahlungen. 1918.

Zwei Marchen. 1919; revised edition, 1946, 1955; as Strange News from Another Star and Other Tales, translated by Denver Lindley,1972.

Demian: Geschichte einer Jugend. 1919; as Demian, translated by N.H. Priday, 1923; translated by W.J. Strachan, 1958; also translated by Stanley Appelbaum, 2002.

Im Pressel’schen Gartenhaus. 1920.

Klingsors letzter Sommer: Erzahlungen. 1920; as Klingsor’s Last Summer, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, 1970.

Siddhartha: Eine indische Dichtung. 1922; as Siddhartha, translated by Hilda Rosner, 1951; as Siddhartha: An Indian Tale, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, 1999; translated by Stanley Appelbaum, 1999; also translated by Sherab Chodzin Kohn, 2000.

Psychologia balnearia; oder, Glossen eines Badener Kurgastes. 1924; as Kurgast, 1925.

Die Verlogung: Erzahlungen. 1924.

Der Steppenwolf. 1927; as Steppenwolf, translated by Basil Creighton, 1929; revised edition by Joseph Mileck, 1963.

Narziss und Goldmund. 1930; as Death and the Lover, translated by Geoffrey Dunlop, 1932; as Goldmund, 1959; as Narcissus and Goldmund, translated by Ursule Molinaro, 1968, also translated by Leila Vennewitz, 1993.

Die Morgenlandfahrt. 1932; as The Journey to the East, translated by Hilda Rosner, 1956.

Kleine Welt: Erzahlungen. 1933.

Fabulierbuch: Erzahlungen. 1935.

Das Glasperlenspiel. 1943; as Magister Ludi, translated by Mervyn Savill, 1949; as The Glass Bead Game, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, 1969.

Der Pfirsichbaum und andere Erzahlungen. 1945.

Traumfahrte: Neue Erzahlungen und Marchen. 1945.

Berthold: Ein Romanfragment. 1945.

GlUck (collection). 1952.

Zwei jugendliche Erzahlungen. 1957.

Freunde: Erzahlungen. 1957.

Geheimnisse: Letzte Erzahlungen. 1964.

Erwin. 1965.

Aus Kinderzeiten und andere Erzahlungen. 1968.

Stories of Five Decades, edited by Theodore Ziolkowski, translated by Ralph Manheim. 1972.

Die Erzahlungen. 2 vols., 1973.

Six Novels, with Other Stories and Essays. 1980.

Pictor’s Metamorphoses and Other Fantasies, edited by Theodor Ziolowski, translated by Rika Lesser, 1982.

The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, translated with introduction by Jack Zipes, 1995.

Verse

Romantische Lieder. 1899.

Hinterlassene Schriften und Gedichte von Hermann Lauscher. 1901;revised edition as Hermann Lauscher, 1907.

Gedichte. 1902.

Unterwegs. 1911.

Musik des Einsamen: Neue Gedichte. 1915.

Gedichte des Malers. 1920.

Ausgewahlte Gedichte. 1921.

Trost der Nacht: Neue Gedichte. 1929.

Vom Baum des Lebens: Ausgewahlte Gedichte. 1934.

Das Haus der Traume. 1936.

Stunden im Garten: Eine Idylle. 1936.

Neue Gedichte. 1937.

Die Gedichte. 1942.

Der BlUtenzweig: Eine Auswahl aus den Gedichten. 1945.

Bericht an die Freunde: Letzte Gedichte. 1961.

Die spaten Gedichte. 1963.

Poems, translated by James Wright. 1970.

Hours in the Garden and Other Poems, translated by Rika Lesser. 1979.

Other

Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht. 1899.

Boccaccio. 1904.

Franz von Assisi. 1904.

Aus Indien: Aufzeichnungen von einer indische Reise. 1913.

Zum Sieg. 1915.

Brief ins Feld. 1916.

Zarathustras Wiederkehr: Ein Wort an die deutsche Jugend. 1919.

Kleiner Garten: Erlebnisse und Dichtungen. 1919.

Wanderung: Aufzeichnungen. 1920; as Wandering: Notes and Sketches,translated by James Wright, 1972.

Blick ins Chaos: Drei Aufsatze. 1920; as In Sight of Chaos, translated by Stephen Hudson, 1923.

Elf Aquarelle aus dem Tessin. 1921.

Sinclairs Notizbuch. 1923.

Erinnerung an LektUre. 1925.

Bilderbuch: Schilderungen. 1926.

Die schwere Weg. 1927.

Die NUrnberger Reise. 1927.

Betrachtungen. 1928.

Krisis: Ein StUck Tagebuch. 1928: as Crisis: Pages from a Diary,translated by Ralph Manheim, 1975.

Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur. 1929; revised edition, 1957.

Zum Gedachtnis unseres Vaters, with Adele Hesse. 1930.

Gedenkblatter. 1937.

Aus der Kindheit der heiligen Franz von Assisi. 1938.

Der Novalis: Aus den Papieren eines Altmodischen. 1940.

Kleine Betrachtungen: Sechs Aufsatze. 1941.

Dank an Goethe. 1946.

Der Europaer. 1946.

Krieg und Frieden: Betrachtungen zu Krieg und Politik seit dem Jahr 1914. 1946; revised edition, 1949; as If the War Goes On. . . : Reflections on War and Politics, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1971.

Stufen der Menschwerdung. 1947.

FrUhe Prosa. 1948.

Berg und See: Zwei Landschaftsstudien. 1948.

Gerbersau. 2 vols., 1949.

Aus vielen Jahren. 1949.

Spate Prosa. 1951.

Briefe. 1951; revised edition, 1959, 1964.

Eine Handvoll Briefe. 1951.

Gesammelte Dichtungen. 6 vols., 1952; enlarged edition as Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols., 1957.

Uber das Alter. 1954.

Briefe, with Romain Rolland. 1954.

Aquarelle aus dem Tessin. 1955.

Beschworungen: Spate Prosa, neue Folge. 1955.

Abendwolken: Zwei Aufsatze. 1956.

Aus einem Tagebuch des Jahres 1920. 1960.

Aerzte: Einpaar Erinnerungen. 1963.

Prosa aus dem Nachlass, edited by Ninon Hesse. 1965.

Neue deutscher BUcher. 1965.

Kindheit und Jugend vor Neunzehnhundert, edited by Ninon Hesse. 1966.

Briefwechsel, with Thomas Mann, edited by Anni Carlsson. 1968; revised edition, 1975; also edited by Hans Wysling, 1984; as The Hesse/Mann Letters: The Correspondence of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann, 1910-1955, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1975.

Briefwechsel 1945-1959, with Peter Suhrkamp, edited by Siegfried Unseld. 1969.

Politische Betrachtungen. 1970.

Eine Literaturgeschichte in Rezensionen und Aufsatzen, edited by Volker Michels. 1970.

Beschreibung einer Landschaft. 1971.

LektUre fUr Minuten, edited by Volker Michels. 1971; as Reflections, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1974.

Meine Glaube, edited by Siegfried Unseld. 1971; as My Belief: Essays on Life and Art, edited by Theodore Ziolkowski, translated by Denver Lindley and Ralph Manheim, 1974.

Zwei Autorenportrats in Briefen 1897 bis 1900: Hesse—Helene Voigt-Diederichs. 1971.

Eigensinn: Autobiographische Schriften, edited by Siegfried Unseld. 1972; as Autobiographical Writings, edited by Theodore Ziolkowski, translated by Denver Lindley, 1972.

Briefwechsel aus der Nahe, with Karl Kerenyi, edited by Magda Kerenyi. 1972.

Gesammelte Briefe, edited by Ursula and Volker Michels. 4 vols., 1972-86.

Die Kunst des MUssiggangs: Kurze Prosa aus dem Nachlass, edited by Volker Michels. 1973.

Hermann Hesse, R.J. Humm: Briefwechsel, edited by Ursula and Volker Michels. 1977.

Politik des Gewissens: die politische Schriften 1914-1932, edited by Volker Michels. 2 vols., 1977.

Die Welt im Buch, edited by Volker Michels. 1977.

Briefwechsel mit Heinrich Wiegand, 1924-1934, edited by Klaus Pezold. 1978.

Hermann Hesse/Hans Sturzenegger: Briefwechsel, edited by Kurt Bachtold. 1984.

Bodensee: Betrachungen, Erzahlungen, Gedichte, edited by Volker Michels. 1986.

Soul of the Age: The Selected Letters, 1891-1962, edited by Theodore Ziolkowski. 1991.

Editor, with others, Der Lindenbaum, deutsche Volkslieder. 1910. Editor, Der Zauberbrunnen. 1913.

Editor, Der Wandsbecker Bote, by Matthias Claudias. 1916.

Editor, Alemannenbuch. 1919.

Editor, with Walter Stich, Ein Schwabenbuch fUr die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen. 1919.

Editor, Ein Luzerner Junker vor hundert Jahren, by Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee. 1920.

Editor, Dichtungen, by Solomon Gessner. 1922.

Editor, Mordprozesse. 1922.

Editor, Novellino. 1922.

Editor, with Karl Isenberg, Novalis: Dokumente seines Lebens und Sterbens. 1925.

Editor, with Karl Isenburg, Holderlin: Dokumente seines Lebens. 1925.

Editor, Geschichten aus dem Mittelalter. 1925.

Editor, Sesam: Orientalische Erzahlungen. 1925.

Critical Studies::

Faith from the Abyss: Hermann Hesse’s Way from Romanticism to Modernity by Ernst Rose, 1965; The Novels of Hermann Hesse, 1965, and Hesse, 1966, both by Theodore Ziolkowski, and Hesse: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Ziolkowski, 1973; Hermann Hesse: His Mind and Art by Mark Boulby, 1967; Hermann Hesse by G.W Field, 1970; Hesse: An Illustrated Biography by Bernhard Zeller, 1971; Hermann Hesse by Edwin F. Casebeer, 1972; Hesse’s Futuristic Idealism by Roger C. Norton, 1973; Hermann Hesse, The Man Who Sought and Found Himself by Walter Sorrell, 1974; Hesse: A Pictorial Biography by Volker Michels, translated by Theodore and Yetta Ziolkowski, 1975; Hermann Hesse: A Collection of Criticism edited by Judith Lieberman, 1977; Hermann Hesse: Life and Art by Joseph Mileck, 1978; Hermann Hesse’s Fictions of the Self: Autobiography and the Confessional Imagination by Eugene L. Stelzig, 1978; Hermann Hesse’s Quest: The Evolution of the Dichter Figure in His Work by Kurt J. Fickert, 1978; Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis: A Biography by Ralph Freedman, 1979; Hermann Hesse’s Das Glasperlenspiel: A Concealed Defense of the Mother World by Edmund Ray, 1983; Hermann Hesse: Politische und wirkungsgechichtliche Aspekte edited by Sigrid Bauschinger and Albert Reh, 1986; The Hero’s Quest for the Self: An Archetypal Approach to Hesse’s Demian and Other Novels by David G. Richards, 1987; The Ideal of Heimat in the Works of Hermann Hesse by Andreas Kiryakakis, 1988; A Poet or Nothing At All: The TUbingen and Basel Years of Hermann Hesse by Richard C. Helt, 1996; Exploring the Divided Self: Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Its Critics by David G. Richards, 1996; Understanding Hermann Hesse:The Man, His Myth, His Metaphor by Lewis W. Tusken, 1998.

Hermann Hesse’s work has its roots in many areas of culture, especially German romanticism, Eastern religious thought, Nietzschean philosophy, and Jungian psychoanalytic theory. It has always appealed particularly to the young because of its recurrent stress— already perhaps implied in these sources—on breaking barriers, on the individual’s need to emancipate itself from all ties and follow its own star. His first major work was the novel Demian, which attained widespread popularity as one of the earliest texts to deal sympathetically with adolescence. Here Hesse strikingly—if perhaps over-eclectically—combines new interpretations of Old Testament and gnostic symbolism with Jungian motifs to trace the moral and spiritual emancipation of his typical hero: the man who learns how to put comforting bourgeois security behind him, to accept fully the unconventional, even amoral, complexity of his soul and thus gain control of his own destiny. A heady optimism attaches to his ”rebirth,” expressed through images redolent both of a Jungian journey into the Collective Unconscious and a Nietzschean Will to Power. However, this elated confidence becomes tempered over the years in Hesse’s subsequent works.

This is already the case in Siddhartha, another stylized but gentler picture of the search for self. The text has the simplified form of an Eastern myth, and the new idiom indicates a new depth of understanding: the goal of self-overcoming may be attainable but the search is lifelong, and culminates not in redirected activity but rather in changed vision, in the hard-won capacity to embrace all oppositions intellectually and emotionally, to cease thinking ”exclusively.” The most remarkable aspect of this novel is its beautifully sustained imagery and simplicity of style. It is here that Hesse first shows himself a master of the German language: it flows with wonderful euphony, and elsewhere—as in Klingsors letzterSommer (Klingsor’s Last Summer)—can attain a splendidly rich sensuousness.

Hesse’s next major work, Der Steppenwolf (Steppenwolf), is perhaps his best-known novel and one that bears clear autobiographical reference to its author’s at times tortured middle years. Far removed from the archetypal serenity of Siddhartha, it is a remarkable, graphic portrayal of unresolved personal problems. Hesse captures the agonizing simultaneity of violent oppositions in one and the same personality, for whom life becomes a battle between the longing for simple security and the painful awareness of inner division and self-hatred. Where in earlier works the less ”acceptable” aspects of personality are portrayed fairly conventionally as sensuality or Nietzschean will-power, here the depths of degradation are plumbed with ruthless honesty, from aggressive sexuality to bestial destructiveness. The same honesty extends to the social setting; through Harry Haller’s alienation we see something of the disturbing mix ofjingoism, complacency, and self-gratification of the inter-war years. Yet despite Haller’s agony, there are intimations of how this deep sense of dislocation, both internal and external, might be overcome by sublime acceptance, for which the ”Immortals”— great artists such as Goethe and Mozart—stand as models. Haller must learn like them to turn life itself into art; if he can abandon not only conventional moral disapprobation but all rational categorization and embrace discreteness, he might rewrite the whole concept of identity, learning to see personality no longer as circumscribed unity but as infinite, capable of embracing all experience as part of the potential self. This theme has interesting aesthetic consequences in the text, which no longer seeks to tell a sequentially developing, finite story, but rather to create a sense of simultaneity and openness via a structure reminiscent of a musical theme and variations, or of a series of interrelated mirrors—an explicit leitmotif in the text. Above all Hesse succeeds in blurring the distinction between internal and external action, dream and actuality. The whole text is both multiva-lent and ”unfinished”; it has echoes—more subtly handled than in Demian—of romanticism, Freudian and Jungian analysis, Zen Buddhism, which undercut but never destroy the level of social realism and thus create a fluid view of personality as multidimensional. So too does the fact that no one part of the text has an objective narrative source, and thus the reader also is detached from inherited models of character definition and textual interpretation. The linguistic problems involved in attempting to present simultaneity in epic form are returned to explicitly in Kurgast.

Surprisingly, Hesse’s next novel Narziss und Goldmund (Narcissus and Goldmund) lacks all such complexity and manifests a return to much more basic narrative skills. Set in medieval times, it tells a broadly allegorical tale about the inescapable responsibility of individual self-discovery. Two friends, one a sensuous artist and the other an ascetic intellectual, gradually both learn that the road to defining one’s own personal truth is long; as in earlier texts, Hesse shows that friends may act as valuable mentors but can never release the individual from the journey towards selfhood that encompasses both pain and joy. While charming in its narrative simplicity, it lacks conviction at a deeper level, especially when compared with Hesse’s great work Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game). Set in a post-20th-century future, this summation of all his inspiration from Goethe to the Orient projects the theme of personal multiplicity onto a cultural plane, and explores the grandiose possibility of harmonizing all knowledge, as an antidote to what Hesse sees as the dangerous cultural and spiritual narrowness of our century. Yet the text offers no final answers and raises many profound questions about the relationship between intellect and practical activity, harmony and extremism, culture and barbarism, stasis and progress. Like his central figure Josef Knecht, Hesse remained self-questioning until the end.

In addition to these major works Hesse produced many short stories, autobiographical sketches, and essays of great delicacy and perceptive insight both into himself and his age. His poetry, while lacking the originality of his prose, still has the power to charm by its romantic sensitivity to nature and inwardness of imagery. Some of it has indeed been set to music, notably by Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs).

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