Soul of the Age

by Hermann Hesse

  Enough. I shouldn’t really allow myself the luxury of such long letters. But I wanted to give you a glimpse of the stuff piling up each day on my desk, and on me, too. Addio, heartfelt greetings from your Papa

  TO HERMANN HUBACHER

  [February 16, 1935]

  Caro amico,

  Your letter has taught me something new about you: like so many of my friends, you hate writing letters. That’s unfortunate, since it upsets the balance in our relationship. People like Schoeck, for instance, who spend hours each week in public houses and have perfectly healthy eyes, wait until I have been writing and sending them letters, poems, books, etc., for over a year before they pull themselves together sufficiently to write a postcard. Yet they can all write marvelously, as posterity will discover when it comes across the rare letters of these seeming illiterates. This is awful for me, since I’m far away and all alone, and even though I try very hard to inform my friends about my current work and thinking, I seldom hear any echoes. In this respect, Switzerland, and the Swiss artistic world, closely resembles the flailing heroics of the German barbarians: Away with pen and ink! To hell with scribblers! Their ideal image is more or less the following: blue eyes and a coarse fist, a throat thirsting for some Neuenburger, perhaps some talent as a card player. Well, I haven’t altogether given up hope, and am still expecting a few words conveying your impression of The Glass Bead Game.264 Your opinion will not influence me, but I look forward to hearing it. The Germany of 1810 or thereabouts, especially the circle around Schlegel and Novalis, would have had less difficulty with this work and understood it better. It’s remarkable how vehement the two camps have become! Some people—often they are loyal, old friends of mine—dismiss The Glass Bead Game quite adamantly. Some of them also objected rather vociferously to The Journey to the East, which they called a mistaken excursion into the intellectual sphere, as if there were a place for everything in literature except the intellect! Then there are others who are so fascinated by the main idea that they more or less swallow the whole thing in one gulp, but they are not well enough educated or sufficiently well read to discern the finer nuances of The Glass Bead Game.

  Things aren’t going particularly well for me. I have been overworked for months, which has been getting me down. Quite a lot of the work was in vain. As a way to make a living, I used to contribute to a journal that ultimately swindled me.265 Even if they paid up, my earnings would hardly cover even half my living expenses, and the trickle from Germany is dwindling constantly. I’m eating up my savings, which may tide me over the worst. I occasionally get rather depressed when I think of how difficult it is to earn a living, despite all the hard work. But then again, I like seeing signs that I’m thoroughly dispensable as far as the contemporary world is concerned, and I regard that indifference as a privilege and an honor.

  I’m expecting Carossa this evening, for one day only.266

  Good luck with your recovery, dear friend, and greetings to your family

  TO ALFRED KUBIN267

  [Early summer 1935]

  I was delighted to receive your kind letter and the beautiful little sketch. Life isn’t easy these days, I have lots to worry about, and I suppose you are in much the same situation. So it’s great to receive something positive and comforting.

  I just got hold of a copy of the new book by Heinrich Zimmer, whose formulations are often brilliant, although he occasionally sounds too much like a virtuoso.268 Nobody writing in German has ever captured so well the aesthetic side of Indian culture, its amoral and entirely playful devotion to spectacle, and the eternal flow of images.

  I’m enclosing a new poem from The Glass Bead Game. You already have several of them. I wrote this one at Pentecost.269 Intellectually, I have been living for over three years in the world of The Glass Bead Game and the mythical cycle around it. This imaginary world began to crystallize in my mind as a kind of sequel to the saga in The Journey to the East. I often inhabit that realm, as if the cycle were a genuine saga or even religion rather than something purely imaginary. But even though I live there, I seldom add more words to it; although I certainly haven’t lost my appetite for daydreaming, I don’t feel the same urge to be productive. At times I only write one or two poems in an entire month. Of course, I’m doing some other literary work on the side, book reviews, but I don’t count them, since that sort of work is purely intellectual, not creative.

  I’m delighted to hear that you’re going to be illustrating Faust, and think you’re right to focus more on the folk tale than on Goethe.

  It’s decently hot at long last, and all I do most days is the daily work in the garden. A heavy hailstorm has just destroyed virtually everything; there’s quite a lot to do, and when I’m watering tomato plants or loosening the ground around a beautiful flower, I don’t have that terrible feeling so familiar to artists: Does any of this make sense at all? Is it a permissible activity nowadays? No, I’m happy to be doing this, and that’s always a nice feeling.

  My youngest son will be coming to see me soon; I hope that he stays at least two or three days. He is really an architect, but hasn’t been able to find any work for two years, so he has taken up photography, works as a newspaper photographer, etc., and barely manages to make ends meet. He’s a courageous, decent fellow. Well, that’s it for now, and many thanks for the drawing.

  TO WOLFRAM KIMMIG

  [Received October 18, 1935]

  Thank you for your kind letter. I’m having no luck at all with the German Reich. The people who owe me money did not pay me when I could have used it, and when some of them eventually started paying, I was denied access to those funds. I have lost virtually all my savings (the earnings from Steppenwolf and Narcissus and Goldmund); they were in German Gold Bonds, which are absolutely worthless nowadays outside the Reich. The highest I got was a fifth of the value, even less for the rest. I have hardly any income, and am witnessing another “great era” as a mourner.

  I would prefer to let you decide how to handle payments to my account.270 Even if I cannot buy a crumb of bread with all that money, I can occasionally use the account to purchase a book for my sisters.[ … ]

  Unfortunately, there are no more copies of Hours in the Garden.271 Such luxuries are a thing of the past; otherwise I would certainly not have forgotten you. This year, I received an honorarium of one hundred marks for Hours in the Garden and a few marks for the latest issue of Corona, plus roughly the same amount for my book reviews (which eat up three-quarters of my time). Sales of my books are virtually nil. I lost the savings that I had sentimentally invested in local German stocks (Württemberg, the city of Stuttgart, etc.). So we are doing without a few nice luxuries; food may be next. Fortunately, I can go on living in this beautiful house, nobody can say a peep, since I don’t own it, am just a guest.

  As for Hours, it will most probably appear in pamphlet form a year from now—if it’s still possible by that stage to publish anything poetical.

  TO HIS SISTER ADELE

  Baden, November 28, 1935

  Yesterday was Marulla’s birthday, and yesterday you wrote enclosing a little letter for Hanno,272 which I still have. I haven’t had the courage to hand it to Frida.273 Something awful is happening there. Our dear Hans has long feared losing his job274 and his livelihood, and during the past few week this anxiety has developed into a fixation. He began to interpret everything at his workplace in a negative and hostile manner and became suspicious of everybody. The young office girls would occasionally poke fun at him, and he imagined that they were conspiring against him and informing on him, so that he would be fired. He felt each word he overheard was a confirmation of his theory. He had said much the same thing to me recently; I felt that he was exaggerating a bit and told him so, and he seemed quite willing to accept this. But he was in a far worse condition than anybody had suspected; his behavior in the office occasionally astonished his boss, but he pulled himself together when he was with Frida. He woke up from a nightmare once and screamed. On another o
ccasion, he claimed to have heard a woman on the floor below crying, and he said she was crying because she knew he and his family would soon be penniless.

  Well, briefly, Hanno left a little earlier than usual yesterday morning, but failed to arrive at the office. As I write, he has been missing for about thirty hours, and nobody has any idea of his whereabouts. We don’t even have any clues; yesterday we called in the police, who are out looking for him. I was at Frida’s a few times; she is a wonderful person with lots of courage, but she broke down yesterday. They left the light on the whole night, and somebody was always up, just in case Hans came home. I was last there this morning; unfortunately, it’s quite far away. I got in touch with an acquaintance of mine; his wife is going to call on Frida this afternoon and look after her. Her sister from Freienwil has been with her for the past couple of hours.

  the 28th, evening

  I have just returned from Frida’s; her two sisters are there now. Well, they have found poor Hans, and his troubles are over. I have been running around and been so busy all day (I also had a literary visitor today, and Emmy Ball has been here since yesterday) that I have not been able to absorb all of this.

  God be with you, dear Adis, be brave, and here’s a kiss

  TO HIS COUSIN FRITZ GUNDERT275

  [December 1935]

  Hans seemed to be leading a quiet, uneventful, happy life ever since he got married (1918); he no longer suffered from bouts of anxiety and despondency, at least as far as others could tell. Apparently, he was indeed happy, and his friends, also his in-laws, were particularly fond of his sense of humor, his delight in puns, puzzles, occasional verse, etc. Of course, all of this helped mask his tendency to get depressed, and twelve years ago, when his boss tried to get him to accept a somewhat different job, which would have offered better chances for promotion to more responsible positions within the corporation, he rejected the offer. He said that he was having enough trouble coping with his clerical position and his own expectations of himself. His latest and final crisis began when the corporation lost some business and started cutting back on the work force: he had long been afraid of losing his job and the wherewithal to feed his wife and children. Over the last two to three months this anxiety got out of hand, particularly the crazy notion that his younger fellow workers were trying to get rid of him. He thought that they were talking to the boss behind his back, etc. After losing control of himself, he called the office, and said in a fit of anger that he was fed up with everything (this was six weeks or so before he died). He thought afterward that they would soon be giving him notice. Then he reproached himself for having jeopardized everything. He brought up these matters occasionally, but only piecemeal. It was only thanks to hindsight, after we had pieced together the things he had said, that we realized how severe his mental condition must have been. His work at the office had become somewhat inaccurate and unsatisfactory. But on the day before he disappeared, after consulting his wife he went to see his bosses, who assured him emphatically that they weren’t thinking of laying him off. Those comforting words came too late; he was no longer able to believe them. He left for work on November 27, but never turned up at the office. They realized right away that he was missing and started looking for him, and came to my hotel to let me know. We spent a day and a half looking for him. The light was on in the apartment all night, and there was always somebody up, in case he came home. They found him the second day. He had apparently been dead for hours, having slashed his wrist with his penknife. We buried him on Saturday, and if the previous days were horrible, the funeral itself was beautiful. We spent a consoling hour in the rainy cemetery at Wettingen. Many friends were there despite the season and the rain; Hans’s little choir sang,276 Pastor Preiswerk spoke beautifully and consolingly, and it was quite clear that many people were fond of our Hans.

  TO ALFRED KUBIN

  Montagnola, Christmas 1935

  Your roll arrived the day before yesterday, at a time when I was in need of some friendly sign, so I opened it and peeled out your sketch,277 which is now hanging on my wall. Your urge to create this fine homage to our dear Stifter makes me feel even closer to you! What a beautiful, mysterious, intimate sketch! The worthy man is surrounded by the forest of his life and works, and the two gently lit figures approaching him bear with them the fragrance of strawberries and woodlands. I’m not just pleased with the sketch—I would have been delighted with anything you chose to give me—but regard it as a very special gift, which I shall absorb like a melody.

  The year is almost over, and I wish the same could be said for all the problems and worries I have had this year. There are no indications that this is so, even though I have already had to contend with more than enough bad luck, disappointment, and misfortune. My life is rather messy at the moment, and I’m no longer in touch with my own work. In the last two years the new novel hasn’t grown an inch, and I cannot even look at it anymore. Of course, I’m still diligent, more so than ever, in fact. I read and review hundreds of books, etc., but that’s a substitute, a mere gesture. And then I wasn’t feeling well all year, had gout and other ailments, felt no joie de vivre whatsoever. I also had to contend with all sorts of losses, the loss of friends either through death or acts of disloyalty, attacks on me in Germany, professional disappointments, total uncertainty about the continued existence of my publisher and the availability of my works, and finally a special blow: In November, I went to Baden on the Limmat, where I go almost every year, to bathe and, if possible, rest a bit. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to rest. I had brought along too much work, and since Baden is so close to Zurich, I often had visitors, etc. I had a brother in Baden; he had been living there for many years, worked as a low-level clerical employee, had a wife and children. He was such a kind, childish person, musical, great friends with children, loved games, but he was unhappy and completely alienated in his awful career. In recent times he very much feared losing his job and seeing his family starve. He complained to me about this, and we spent an evening together: I tried to comfort him, offered some advice, promised to help out in an emergency, suggested that he be patient and keep his sense of humor. His mood eventually improved somewhat. Then I visited him again with two of my sons, who had come to Baden for the day to see me. Four days later, I was told that my brother had left home in the morning, but had failed to appear at the office. He was missing for two days, and we searched for him; he was lying in a field, with a severed artery. I buried him on the last day in November.

  Actually, the absence of my brother doesn’t mean that there will be a large gap in my life; he had no part in my life. But I was very shaken by the discovery that he, who had seemed so petit bourgeois, childish, and harmless, was even closer to the demons than I, and had slashed himself with his penknife when the situation became intolerable for him.

  So instead of thanking you for your Stifter, I have told you all sorts of lugubrious tales. Well, that’s all for now; I shall have better news some other time.

  All the best for the New Year!

  TO WILHELM SCHÄFER

  [January 1936]

  You sent greetings recently through Schmidtbonn,278 and so I feel I should let you know about an episode that, to my mind, reflects very badly on the current state of German literature and the manners of the literati.

  I mean the vociferous attacks—or rather denunciations—that Will Vesper has been launching against me over the past few months.279 The ostensible reason for these attacks is that I occasionally write reviews of German books for a Swedish journal. I realize that Vesper doesn’t share my opinions; there was a time when he couldn’t lay hands on enough Heine for his Ernte,280 but now he is virulently anti-Semitic, etc. He has started resorting to a despicable tactic: he just floods the German dailies with articles claiming that I am an émigré and have no right to call myself Swiss, etc. What is really intolerable is that his assertions are based on “facts” invented by himself, quite unabashedly so. It is obvious what he has in mind: Vespe
r wants people in Germany to treat me as an émigré and traitor. I also happen to know the driving force behind all of this.

  I am enclosing a copy of a letter that rebuts the assertions he has made about me and corrects his falsified biographical data. Vesper has never sent me copies of his attacks—in order to lessen the likelihood of my refuting his fabrications. But the world of German letters may well feel that an outspoken fellow writer should not be treated that way. In any case, there are some colleagues whom I respect, and I want to make sure they get to hear about this. Hence this importunity.

  Funnily enough, their opponents—the German press in exile—accuse me of exactly the opposite.281 But that campaign (using methods similar to Vesper’s) is directed, not at me, but at my publisher, Fischer, whom they’re out to destroy.

  TO OTTO BASLER

  [January 24, 1936]

  I now find myself in a situation that I have long expected and predicted: the press in the German Reich has called me a traitor to the Volk, etc., etc. (a hint to officialdom that my books should finally be banned); at the same time the German-Jewish refugees are writing about me in the manner suggested by the enclosed article,282 even though I have really done everything I can to help them, and have had to make quite a few sacrifices as a result. The man who wrote that piece probably knows just as well as I do that I am a Swiss citizen, not an émigré, and that it has been over twenty-four years since I last lived in Germany. He probably also knows that I have done a lot for the émigrés, especially their literary output. But, of course, when there is such strife, the facts and even truth itself become irrelevant, and the émigré press, which is determined to get rid of my publisher, has long since adopted the methods of the Nazis: they even persecute imaginary enemies with the utmost brutality, using every means at their disposal, no matter how illicit.