The will of man becomes the key to coping with human perversity. Hesse knows, from his religious background, that the will of man has to be broken if a "Christian man" is to emerge. But he chooses to follow Nietzsche's lead and elevates the will of man to that function that
affirms and brings into being man's full humanity. In his essay on
"Self Will" Hesse says;
There is one virtue that I love, and only one. I call it self-will.
. . . Only an individual who has fashioned his "self-will," his noble, natural inner law, into his destiny can be a hero. . . . But in reality life would be richer and better if each man independently followed his own law and will.99
Hesse's understanding of sin has an Eastern influence. The East
is a metaphor for the Kingdom of the Spirit. In The Journey to the East
Leo is the man in whom light and darkness are intertwined. H. H. cannot
write the history of the League so long as he remains in ignorance of
his true self. The willful personal self roust die in order that the
suprapersonal self may come into being. But H. H. is unaware of the
hold that sin has on him. His isolated egotism is the flaw, and until
he comes to terms with it, forgiveness is not possible.
With The Glass Bead Game Hesse is still struggling with the
"You do not know man, do not understand him in his bestiality and as the image of God,"^^^ It ie revealing that it la a Christian historian in a monastic setting that has to remind Knecht that Castalia lacks a real understanding of human nature. However, in the "Rainmaker," a story that is at the conclusion of The Glass Bead Game, there is the following quotation;
You had to learn to see man as a weak, selfish, and cowardly creature; you also had to realize how many of these evil traits and impulses you shared yourself , . * man is also spirit and love, that something dwells in him which is at variance with hie instincts and longs to refine t h e m .101
Man sins in being human, and he also suffers. In "The Cyclone," the story of a storm during which the metamorphosis of innocence occurs, a boy moves from the stage of innocence to the stage of innocence lost. When the storm is over he sees his town in a new way, a more adult way, the rose-colored view of permanent bliss has now changed into reality. Life is a process; there is movement (soma gradual, others traumatic); there is transiency. Consequently, there is suffering. Man is tormented
over the conflicts arising from within his divided nature. Hell is being
out of control of the forces within. Suffering can be abated if one learns to know oneself, if one becomes free.
Suffering occurs when one has never said yes to oneself. One
needs to descend into the subconscious, into the lower world. "To know
oneself, to explore the hidden corners of one's soul, not to flinch even if one finds these corners populated with beasts and demons, this is the
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purpose of Emil Sinclair's, Stsppenwolf's, Goldmund's travels."
Whenever man asks the question, "Why?" or whenever he is concerned about the meaning of life, he is involved in some degree of suffering. Peter Camenzind tries to philosophize his way out of this predicament. He says, " . . . suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there
not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature 103
and transfigure us," Camenzind is distressed over the lack of a
motivating force or great passion in his life; Most upsetting to him is the feeling that he is living life as a spectator. This means liv ing with anxiety and the threat of meaninglessness,
S-taaoenwolf establishes this point too. Everything is marked
" . , . with the plight of lonely men, with the problem of existence and with the yearning after a new orientation for an age that has lost its b e a r i n g s . H a r r y Haller is experiencing suffering because he feels he is caught between two ages and two cultures. He is approach ing fifty, no longer young nor yet old. He has been reared on the culture of the immortals (Mozart and Goethe), and now he is faced with the inane, popular culture of jazz and the mass medium of radio. Harry
has a genius for suffering and a boundless capacity for pain. He is
not a man who has made peace with himself. He is the cause of much of
his own suffering. Hesse suggests that it is self-contempt that is at
the heart of the problem. "It was always at himself first and foremost
that he aimed the shaft, himself first and foremost whom he hated and despised,
Whereas one message of Stsppenwolf is that the way to true man hood is through suffering and loneliness, another message is that the surest way to death is to cling to the self and to life. The answer comes in self-surrender. This means living victoriously with suffer
ing. Man must not succumb to cynicism and pessimism. Required is an
act of will— an act of moral courage. Hesse's elevation of suffering
to a virtue would have had Nietzsche's approval, for it is in suffering
that man participates in a universal human experience. How he deals
The highest place in Hesse's hierarchy is reserved to the greatest sufferer, to the man who lives in complete defiance of the Philis
tines, " • • ♦ the hero who perishes because he follows his own
stars in defiance of the accepted laws," , • • However, its highest honors are not granted to the patient and docile but to the few who are stubborn, who follow their inner voice and remain true to their own mind,106
In the collection of essays, JJP the War Goes On. Hesse says: "As long as a man is well off, he can afford to do superfluous and fool
ish things. When well-being gives way to affliction, life begins to
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educate us," Man only comes to a level of existence of being able
to smile in the midst of sorrow when he lets love help him master him
self, Progress toward achieving selfhood comes when both pleasure and
pain are seen as intersecting streams that flow from the same source. In regard to the thinking of Hesse concerning death, it is important to sea that Hesse was in a group of contemporary novelists (a.g,, Rilke, Mann, and Joyce) Wio unanimously react to death by striv ing to create an aesthetic realm of simultaneity or timelessness in
108
which the threat of death is annulled. This attempt to cope with
transience by ignoring it can be seen in Hesse's words:
Dagegen habe ich mein Leben lang viele Wage versucht, auf denen man die Zeit überwinden und im Zeitlosen leben kann • • • 109
On the other hand, my entire life I have tried many ways by which
one can overcome time and live in the timeless , , ,
But the question of a living death, i.e., not really being alive,
is a most important question for Hesse. This possibility of meaningless
ness is what plagues Kuhn in Gertrude. The lonely composer is driven
to distraction over the emptiness of his life. He expresses his feelings
in a poem entitled "Is That God's Will?"
When the south wind blows The avalanche tumbles And death's dirge rumbles.
Through the lands of men I wander alone.
Ungreeted and unknown. Is that God's will? Pain ie my lot.
My heart is like lead. I fear God is dead,
— Shall I then live?' ^
Klingsor, also, is concerned about finitude. He takes aim at
death, with empty wine bottles as cannon, and tries to shoot down time,
11 1
death, and suffering. And Friedrich Klein tries to deal with noth
ingness by refusing to cling to anything and just falling into the
water and into death. He would resist nothing, including God's will.
Mark Boulby makes a relevant comment at this point. He says Klein could
have just as easily let himself fall into life since "letting-oneself- fall-in life" is the doctrine of Demian and of the Tao. Siddhartha,
too, lets himself fall into life. This act of submission is equivalent
112 to the German mystics' "de-becoming" (Entwerden).
Knulp has a different approach to the subject of death. In his
113 eccentric way ha wants nothing but to make "Sundays out of weekdays."
He lives with an existential awareness of the passing of time. He thinks
one should make the most of each day and not worry about tomorrow. He says, "If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity . . . I'd say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn't have
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to be today." Life is to be enjoyed and death is not to be resisted.
There is little room for agony or anxiety. Apparently the existential
void does not haunt Hesse very much, nor does the possibility of personal
extinction. His characters surrender to the inevitability of death and
do not fight against its eventuality.
In Stsppenwolf Harry Haller's inner war causes him to raise the
terrible mistake. Is man born to be immortal as a child of God? He receives an answer, as the novel concludes, that is vary much this-world
oriented. Qualitative existence, here and now, is all men can hope to
expect. Only the elite, the great of history, become immortal,
Goldmund has a passion for filling his life with as many amorous pursuits as possible (although none of them are permanent nor do they produce any children). As he moves from lover to lover he becomes
increasingly fearful of the loss of sense experience, "The transience
of orgasm is the kernel of all experience, and it is the germ also of 115
the "kernel of his frequent tendency to sadness and disgust.*" This
realization is responsible for Goldmund's artistic endeavors. His
vision of creating the mother figure. Eve (a quest deriving from his own loss of his earthly mother), by way of artistic expression, symbol izes this search for permanence, Goldmund confides to Narziss that he seeks to suspend death through sexual ventures, but it is to no avail. Death and suicide, actual and projected, are very much in evi
dence in Hesse's work. However, the best illustration of Hesse's
handling of death is seen in The Glass Bead Game. Theodore Ziolkowski
points out the fact that the power of death, i.e., the threat of death, is sublimated to the extent that it becomes unimportant. For example, "The old Magister Muslcae does not really die; he gradually dematerial- izes until his spiritual element is subsumed, as it were, in the
abstract realm of spirit.
The posthumous writings, added to the narrative of Knecht's life, are significant. They are the creative writings from his student days;
they serve to emphasize the real motif of Knecht*s life and death. One
of the poems in these posthumous writings is called "Stages" and is not only an integral part of Knecht*s life; it shows a strong element in
Hesse's life that wants to accept the Christian affirmation of Eternal Life even though it contradicts the main ideas of Hesse regarding death.
As every flower fades and as all youth Departs, so life at every stage.
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth. Blooms in its day and may not last forever. Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavour. Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give. In all beginnings dwells a magic force For guarding us and helping us to live. Serenely let us move to distant places And let no sentiments of home detain us. The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces. If we accept a home of our own making.
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking Or else remain the slaves of permanence. Even the hour of our death may send Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces. And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart; bid farewell without end.
The human experience of sin, suffering, and death provokes
speculative philosophical questions. It also causes one to enter the
area of religious experience in search of some of the answers to these questions. Hesse's work does not start with a faith commitment that
can be labeled. His ideas are a combination of many different religions.
It is important to look at the content of religious experience,
and this involves Hesse's understanding of the nature of God. This will
mean looking at the Divine/human encounter that results in the experience
of salvation. Although Hesse is not a systematic theologian he is con
sistent about one aspect of what he thinks is present in the Divine Life. God contains the opposites of male and female, good and evil, light and
darkness. Hesse objects to the Judeo-Christian belief in a God of ethi
as well as the positive aspects of existence usually ascribed to deity, to a dynamic tension within the Godhead. The reason for this is not an attraction to Zoroastrianism but to the Oriental emphasis on wholeness
and unity. Dostoyevsky influences him as well. In his essay on "The
Brothers Karamazov" Hesse claims; "In the Russian man, good and bad,
God and Satan, are one and the same. He worships a god who at the same time is the devil and who resides in a (Nietzschean) realm beyond good and evil."^^^
Hesse looks within man to discover what deity there is. "In
each one of you there is a hidden being , , . Bring it to life! In
each of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse
toward the future, the new, the higher. Let it mature, let it resound,
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nurture it!" Hesse constantly exhorts people to look within their
own being and not elsewhere. He wants man to listen to his inner voice.
He cautions people against looking to external sources for the Divine Presence, e.g., Bibles, pulpits, or thrones. He also cautions men against an abaolutistic arrogance, for he thinks it is better not to be
certain whether there is a God than to know without doubt. But he asserts,
"Our mission is solely to remind you that there is a God and only one God;
he dwells in your hearts, and it is there that you must seek him out and
speak with him."^^^
The significance of this one God that lives in all men is that
every man is seen as a brother. Therefore, man cannot be divided into
race and nationality, for everyone is related to one another and is re
sponsible for one anotheri " . . . the only way to a higher and nobler
humanity leads through this forever-repeated experience of unity, through the forever-renewed insight that we men are brothers and of divine
Therefore to us erring brothers Love ie possible even in discord. Not judgment or hatred
But patient love
And loving patience lead Us closer to the g o a l ,122
The content of this God within is other than Hesse's Protestant background would indicate. For example, the eternal mother is a symbol
that fascinates Hesse, It is the maternal principle that indicates a
sense of permanence and rebirth. What is permanent, for Hesse, is the continuity of change, and it is the mother figure that symbolizes both
change and permanence. The mother is a panentheistic symbol and, as
seen in Goldmund's experience, has grown from his idea of his earthly mother into a universal mother image. Eve— the "One" in whom the oppo sites (pleasure and pain, good and evil) reside.
It is with Demian that Hesse develops his God of the opposites. The reason for Damian's protest against the traditional religion of Christianity is because it ignores the reality of sax within its under standing of God, Demian wants a deity that combines sexual and evil aspects as well as the usual positive characteristics of deity.
Prior to Hesse's contact with Analytical Psychology, his writing gives hints of what disturbs him about the religious tradition of his
ancestry. In Gertrude the quest for meaning is reduced to a series of
brief, meaningful moments. Only occasional flashes of light make a
long weary life bearable. "However, I do know that if there is a state
of bliss and paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such 123
moments . . . " What is more significant is the belief, indicated
later in the novel, that unless there is something better ahead, the
whole of life is not worthwhile. But it is his concern over finding so
much meaninglessness that requires a religious belief that would include the negative as well as the positive dimensions of life.
Well, either the world is bad and worthless, as Buddhists and Christians preach, in which case one must do penance and renounce everything • , • Or else the world and life are good and r i g h t - then one can just take part in it and afterwards die peacefully, because it is finished, , , , Most people believe in both , , , And those who really believe do not live in accordance with their beliefs, , , , For instance; I believe as Buddha did that life is not worthwhile, but I live for things that appeal to my senses as if that is the most important thing to do,124