Hermann Hesse was a Swiss novelist and poet who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.
The award was presented “for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style.”
I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it’s mighty impressive.
Hesse was unusual among fiction writers in that his work was almost exclusively autobiographical. Further, he opened up about himself without hesitation. The reason, he said, was that he wrote for therapeutic reasons. His goal was a greater understanding of himself.
He also had some interesting things to say about language. “Language is a detriment,” he once wrote, “An earthbound limitation from which the poet suffers more than anyone else.”
He also observed, “Never has a human language (I mean a grammatical one) achieved half the animation, wit, elegance and spirit that a cat reveals in the waving of her tail or a bird of paradise in the silvery plumage of its wedding attire.”
Many of Hesse’s writings explored suffering and despair, but usually en route to the subjects of transcendence and healing. He got irritated when readers missed the point and focused on the misery and gloom.
All in all, Hesse was a classic example of a petulant artist. He wrote for his own enlightenment, not the reader’s.
Why is the author of ponderous German prose and poetry my topic here? Two reasons.
First, I learned an interesting minor fact about Hesse’s life recently, and second, I ran across a passage he wrote that has greater meaning if you are aware of that interesting fact.
Permit me to explain.
As a child, Hesse lived in the town of Calw in the Black Forest of Germany, and he had a special fondness for the Nagold River near his home. He spent a great deal of time on the water there.
He and his friends boated the river and swam beneath the St. Nicholas Bridge in the center of the town. Hesse often said that the bridge was his number one favorite place in all the world.
Later in his life, Hesse wrote Gerbersau, a series of stories about life in a fictional Black Forest village. In reality, the stories detailed his youth in Calw — tales of the river, the bridge, his childhood adventures, and descriptions of the quirky inhabitants he grew up with.
So, that’s the minor fact I learned about Hesse: his love of the river and the memories he made there as a child.
Keep that in mind as you read this passage from his 1922 novel Siddhartha…
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Fondly he gazed into the rushing water, into the transparent green, into the crystalline lines of its mysterious design.
He saw bright pearls rising up from the depths, tranquil air bubbles swimming to the reflective surface, imaging the blue of the sky.
With a thousand eyes, the river gazed at him — with green, with white, with crystalline, with azure eyes.
How he loved this water, how it enchanted him, how grateful he was to it! In his heart, he hears the voice speaking, the newly awakened voice, and it said to him: Love this water! Stay here! Learn from it!
Oh, yes, he wanted to learn from the water, he wanted to listen to it. Whoever understood this water and its secrets, it seemed to him, that person would understand much else, many secrets, all secrets.
Of the river’s secrets, however, today he saw only one that seized his soul: This water ran on and on, it always ran, and yet it was always there, it was always and ever the same and yet at every moment new!
Lucky the man who grasped this, who understood this!
He did not understand or grasp it, he only sensed the stirring of a surmise, a distant memory, divine voices.
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Give credit to Siddhartha’s translator, of course, but Hesse’s passion for rivers and his perception of the magic of moving water comes through unmistakably.
A lot of people have a thing for that magic, I guess.
Interesting. The correlation between literature and real life events is seldom shown so clearly.
Thanks for noticing, my friend.