Notes: Hesse.

There was a slight barrier of language, it was a long time since Hilda had spoken any German but she and Hesse recognised each other as fellow artists at once.

I do not think it was a question of nationality in " getting " the story as we did. It was because we read it at that moment and it was full of the mixture of lake and mountain, sunlight and cloud that was untroubled by the memory of explosions or the dust of war. I have read it several times and it always brings those days at Lugano back to me , the story had seemed to burn the impressions on us as sometimes happens with some works of art. They expressa certain moment in the life of the writer and meet their greatest response when a similar experience in the life of the reader is touched.

Hesse was perhaps the last great writer of the nineteenth century, a period when so much of feeling was sublimated into a worship of landscape rather than people, the last attempt to mask the emotions before Freud broke through the barrier to reach the unconscious mind. It would be interesting to know what would have happened if Hesse had had even a brief Freudian analysis. Most of his writing centres round the one great rebellion of his youth that almost cost him his life.

It is possible today that the young feel a security in Hesse together with the questioning their minds require precisely because he had to question every value himself before he could feel secure.

Only Hesse and Masefield among the people I have known had such gentleness. I am not comparing them as writers, each had a different audience but as people. They both had a sense of humor and a love of landscape.

Writing was barely respectable in the nineteenth century unless it was didactic, such writing is spruned today because we have often leaped over it in terms of time.

They both had a religious mind. Masefield had the faith of the sailor, Hesse that of inherited and intense contemplation. We cannot compare them as writers, see above but they did belong to the same world. The difference between them was in depth and training. In Masefield's day in England most culture was suspect.

Klingsor had been Hesse's shout of triumph after the first war, now after the second, it became ours.

A book has its moment when it strikes fire in another heart. His later work was deeper but not so near to us, after the grimy London streets we wanted sun and sky and not abstractions, but although our spiritual truths were other there was a mutual respect.

To each his age group and his love.

The little alleys of Zurich.

The market place at Lugano, boat trips, sails, a gay and new experience for Hilda and myself. In Morgenlandschaft the words were colors in themselves. When I remember Hesse, I go back to that just postwar land of peace and colr where without restrictions we could to what we wanted.

I suspect that they read meanings into his work now that would have puzzled
him. Yet perhaps what they feel instinctively is his simplicity.
We used to stroll down his garden together sometimes when I left and once
I was brave enough to, murmur, " I was on those mountains yesterday,
there, across the lake, the sky was the blue of the little flowers x
growing sometimes out of the stones and I know it was where the Morgenland-
schaft people met. " He did not answer but he smiled and a few days
later he sent me one of his little landscapes. Meeting him, one hardly
remembered that he was a poet and an artist, ~~what~~ one felt was his
compassion.

The pressures Hermann Hesse must have undergone in childhood due to the missionary influences on both sides of the family and the reduction of life to a narrow sense of duty must have been difficult for any sensitive boy to endure. There were compensations, his father and one grandfather were scholars, the other grandfather was a doctor and his mother from her diaries was generous and brave. There would have been Oriental texts lying around him from his birth and here again I know from experience how exciting such scripts can be to a child. I learnt the shape of the Arabic alphabet when I was nine and it became my secret language. I wrote English sentences in it that I did not want my parents to read. All these influences from the East must have become part of Hesse's growth. He went out to India for a few months in early middle age. The actual experience seems to have made less impression upon him that his mother's stories. This is natural, reality can seldom match the illusion of a dream.

An inner conflict is always apparent in Hesse's work, reduced to simple terms it is the never ending struggle between the mission and the studio, the parent and the child. He was profoundly interested in the modern searches into the working of the mind. He wanted Hilda to tell him as much as she could about her own work with Freud as if he both feared and desired an analysis himself. He would have enjoyed it. His analyst, however, might have had a difficult time with him. I wished I could have sat in a corner and listened to their conversation but I either joined Ninon in her library or later when I went to Montagnola alone, we talked about the Tessin, what was being written by the postwar English writers, the tides of movement in the western world. I shall never forget his smile. The boy in him was very much alive and I think he recognised something of the same spirit. I remember his swiftness, the way he went out a bud on a flowering tree or recommended an author whose work, he felt, I might like. He had his local reputation at Lugano and was amused when I told him that when I was buying one of his novels the assistant had said gravely, "Herr Hesse comes to our shop when he wants a book and always talks to us in Schweizerdeutsch." Swiss German is an entirely different speech from German and though strangers and even some Swiss refer to it as a dialect, this is incorrect. My philological friends assure me that it is the last remnant of spoken eighteenth century German and therefore of great interest to scholars. It is difficult to learn unless one is very young and although I cann understand some words, I cannot speak it. A lawyer friend of mine once visited a town in the United States where a number of Swiss families had settled about 1800. They greeted him at a formal meeting in the language of that period. He could catch some words but the full meaning of the speech eluded him.

Hesse wanted peace of mind. He found it during his later years in the beloved Montagnola with Ninon to guard him. He liked to paint, particularly little Tessin landscapes, colors, for him, were less filled with memories and emotions than words. He was always preoccupied with youth, he did not want to see it trapped by the immense pressures of parental authority although it is possible that this struggle had been at its height at the beginning of the century and was less evident after two European wars. Out of the turmoil that he had felt and the serenity of his present refuge came the strange and dual Glassperlenspiel and some later stories.

The young are right to love Hesse. He is at his best when he writes of the breaking innocence of youth. What they fail to understand when they read him to-day is that his sympathy was beyond out of something they have seldom known, the intense discipline of his early life.

4.

Hesse was perhaps the last great writer of the nineteenth century. It was a period that sublimated feeling into a worship of nature rather than people in a final attempt to mask the emotions before Freud broke through the barriers to reach the unconscious mind. Parental authority was still absolute in his youth. There were already dreams of freedom but because of the discipline both at home and in the school, there was a greater awareness of conflict and frustration than exists in general to-day. Much of Hesse's writing centres found this rebellion and in particular the revolt that almost cost him his life. His parents placed him at Maulbronn, a theological seminary, in the expectation that he would become a clergyman. He ran away from the aridity and stiffness that he found there after a few months and refused to return. He was treated by various doctors, he worked for a while in a machine shop, and then found a happier existence as apprentice to a bookseller at Tübingen. The revolt and the tension that led up to his flight and his subsequent experiences are the real basis for the Glassperlenspiel and a number of his other stories, including In Den Fresselschen Garten with its portrait of the mad and aging poet, Karl Spitteler. This tale interested me particularly because my own analyst, Dr Hanns Sachs, had admired some of Spitteler's work and had studied the causes of the writer's insanity as far as was possible from the meagre sources available to him. Another tale by Hesse, a study of duality, Robert Axion must also have been influenced both by the shock of Maulbronn and the many stories about India told him by his mother. Obedience to art, obedience to family, I fought this through myself and the conflict is the same whether it happens in Switzerland, England or Asia. Perhaps Hesse found the only way to solve his family difficulties was to become a missionary of the arts.

The real key to the understanding of the artist is in a book that few English speaking people seem to have read, extracts from the letters and diaries of his mother, Marie Hesse. She was the daughter of missionaries and born in India in 1842. It is said that she looked upon India as her home throughout her life although she was taken back to Europe when she was three. Much of her childhood was spent at Basel although she also went to relatives at Corcellis as her grandmother had come from Neuchatel. In 1857 she was allowed to return to her parents in India and the subsequent years there seem to have been very happy ones. Eventually her father's prolonged illness caused him to return to Europe where he devoted the rest of his life to working at a dictionary and also to the translation of parts of the Bible into several Indian languages. Marie and her mother joined him at Calv in Germany. A little later, Marie met Charles Isenberg, another missionary, and when he was sent to India in 1864 she went out again and married him there. They had several children but again the climate proved too unhealthy and they were obliged to return to Europe in 1869. Her husband died at Calv in 1870.

Some years later, Marie married again a missionary. His father had been Estonian and they went there to visit his relatives for a long visit in 1876. It is a strange, wild country, I was there myself for a day in July, 1939, landing at Talinn on my way to Finland. It was wild and cold even in July, I felt the people were full of the strength of the North (it also means obliviousness) of the extreme north with something of the wolf inside them as well as the fragile pale blue cornflowers that women were carrying to the market and that were as roses to them in that climate.

There were more children, Marie had nine in all, but several of them died in early infancy. Hermann, the writer, was born at Calf in July, 1877.

NOTES. Quest. Lugano.

It is possible that today the young feel a security in Hesse together with a questioning precisely because he questioned only because he felt himself secure.

Only Hesse and Masefield had such gentleness. I am not comparing them as writers because they had different audiences but as people.

Each had a sense of humor and of landscape.

Writing was barely respectable unless it was didactic in the nineteenth century, didactic writing is spruned today because we have leapt over it in terms of time.

Both had a religious form of mind. Masefield the faith of the sailor, "esse that of inherited and intense contemplation. We cannot compare them as writers, see above, but they did belong to the same world. The difference was indepth and training of impression. In Masefield's day in England most culture was suspect.

Kilingsor was Hesse's shout of triumph after the first war, now after the second one it became ours.

His later work was deeper but it was not so near to us, we wanted sun and sky after the war and not abstractions.

Our spiritual truths were other but there was a mutual respect.

A mixture of my two loves, history and poetry, in the islands.

The little alleys of Zurich.

******

Market place, boat trips, sails, a gay and new land for Hildaan myself, with Morgenlandschaft the words were colors in themselves. Now when Iremember Hesse, I go back in memory to his other land of peace and color, there were few restrictions there, one did what one wanted.

-----------

Once but this time alone I took a couple of heavy wool pullovers, my winter coat and a rug and went to the end of the lake in a special steamer that ran, I believe, once a week, to the admiration of the captain. I fear they really felt it was another example of English insanity. However I was well wrapt up and it was interesting and strange to see the little ports, the scene of so much activity in summer with tourists in immense straw hats pushing each other on to the gangway while now even if there were no snow, the edge of the lake and the villages were sunk into a hibernating sleep. It was cold but it was bearable and the blocks of apparently life trees shone with strange and different colors underneath for which there was no name underneath a surface film of charcoal.

------

We were not always alone in Lugano. George Plank came out twice to stay with us in winter. I am happy myself when it is very, very hot, when people lie panting around me, I feel full of energy and eager to take long walks. George was the contrary having once had severe sun stroke. An artist, the colors of the winter Tessin landscape fascinated him as much as they did Hesse, the shades and shadows of the lake, the tiny flowers in the botanical gardens. The lake of black velvet.

Hesse was perhaps the last great writer of the nineteenth century. It was a period that sublimated its feelings into a worship of nature rather than people, a last attempt to mask the emotions before Freud broke through the barriers to expose the unconscious mind. It is interesting to wonder what would have happened had Hesse had even the briefest analysis. Much of his writing centres round one theme, the great rebellion that almost cost him his life when having entrered a theological seminary to please his parents, he ran away from it in desperation because he could not bear its aridity. This is the basis for the *Glasperlenspiel* and a central idea in many of his stories. It is in the *In den Fresselschen Gartenhaus* with its portrait of the mad and aging poet, Carl Spitteler, a tale that first interested me because my own analyst, Dr Hanns Sachs, had admired Spitteler's poetry and studied his insanity as far as possible, and Hesse wrote of it again in a strange but most interesting study of duality, *Robert Aghion set in India*. Xārīxandxipītyyxfamilyxifexandxfreedomxaxovexaīxexxuxxuxxtrixyxxwitzerkandxandxindia. He, more than most writers, was always in conflict with duality, art and piety, family life and freedom, Switzerland and India. Whatever else he was, he was finally a missionary of the arts.

A book that is essential to an understanding of Hesse is one that few English speaking readers have discovered. I do not know if a translation exists. It is Marie Hesse, extracts from her diaries and letters. She was the mother of the writer, born in India, the daughter of missionaries, taken back to a mission school or relatives in Switzerland at the age of three where with happy and unhappy memories of relatives and schools, she stayed until she could return to her parents in India aged about fifteen. Due to her father's illness the family had to return to Europe about three years later where her father was given at post at Calv in Germany. Eventually she returned to India and married Charles Osenberg, a missionary there in 1865. There are marvellous accounts of her voyages when there was no Suez Canal and the passengers had to go to Cairo and then drive across the desert to Suez and a second boat. She loved the East but on account of ill health they had to return to Egypt again. She went back to Calv and her husband died in Germany in 1870. She earned her living for herself and her children for a time giving English lessons and helping at a Mission school until she met and married Johannes Hesse in 1874. He was partly of Estonian descent and a noted linguist. He had also worked on the Malabar Coast but had to give this up on account of ill health. Hermann, the poet, was born at Calv in 1877. Marie Gundert had in all nine children by her two husbands but several of them died in early infancy. Her diary is a wonderful picture of family and mission life in Europe and Asia during the middle of the nineteenth century and it is much easier to understand Hesse's own tales when we know something of the background in which he grew up and from which he revolted. Maria Gundert died in 1902 but a key to many of the conflicts of country, life and duty that fill so many of her son's books, lies in her diaries.

It was perhaps a problem of the century as well. The days of utter obedience to parental authority were almost over although the actual shattering of its code came only with the first war. The young dreamt of freedom yet because of the stiff discipline that still existed in family and school life, there was a much greater sense of conflict that there is today. Hesse reflects that struggle, he wanted to resolve it, he did so to a point in his mind, but he never quite attained the relief from it that he sought.

## Lugano II.

The pressures Herman Hesse must have undergone in childhood due to the
missionary influences on both sides of the family and their reduction
of life to a narrow form of duty must have been difficult for a
sensitive boy to endure. There were compensations, his father and
his grandfather were scholars, his mother from her diaries must have
been exceptionally generous and brave although they seem to have exacted
higher standards from their own children than from those of their
neighbours.

I liked the summers most because then I could go out with a boatman,
the currents were tricky, but we sailed slowly along the coast.
The captain ( on my winter trip ) patted me as he passed by. It was
cold but it was bearable and the blocks of lefless trees were such
strange colors.

A few years later, Lugano decided to "go industrial " so that
again although we did not know this at the time we were looking at a
landscape that would soon be greatly altered if not utterly destroyed.

Due to her lameness Hilda never went back after 1959. Today it would
seem lonely and strange to be there without her.

The dividing point between the nineteenth century and to-day is Freud's discovery of the unconscious drives between the conscious mind. ( It is interesting to wonder what would have happened if Hesse had had even the briefest psychoanalytical treatment. How he would have enjoyed it. )

You may ask any writer to be a little in advance of his age but hardly to skip two generations.

We all dreamed of freedom yet because of our strict upbringing and the stiff discipline of the schools there was a much greater awareness of both duty and conflict than exists today.

Hesse considered the conflict but he in turn must be considered in the historical context. He is often a prophet and remarkably modern but he is also bound by an immense sense of duty to art and people that is foreign to us today.

A surge of translating emotions into a worship of landscape, into a sunset, the view of a mountain or a sail, before Freud broke the barriers of the conscious mind to explore the territories underneath it. Landscape is part of the bone of Hesse's work, doubt or wonder are translated into that other alphabet of lakes, mountains paths or the great chestnut trees that covered so many of the hills. The artist is never of his time, when he records it, he may look backwards to the past or forwards to a future he may welcome or may fear. He forecasts a tomorrow that he may not see.

People now read largely the later philosophical works. It was the Hesse of a middle period who meant most to us because he expressed our own feelings of after the war.

It was not a calmer world, merely a differently colored one, we were preoccupied (obsessed) by our own survival.