HESSE

It was Colin Wilson's Outsider that first put me onto Hermann Hesse – I read most of his famous novels, and in the 1980s while teaching at Winchester College I would set one of his books a year in my general studies class: The Prodigy, Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha or Narziss and Goldmund. My aim was to promote a degree of self-awareness at this crucial stage of adolescent development, and the first two books spoke particularly to that, the first being based on high parental expectations from a gifted young man, a situation in which many pupils found themselves; the second was more about the development of spiritual awareness, but also with respect to light and dark, good and evil.

This magisterial biography draws on new sources, including recently discovered correspondence between Hesse and his analyst Josef Lang. His output includes 20 volumes of collected works, but also 44,000 letters, most of them as yet unedited. Hesse's poem Steps symbolises his life and metamorphosis:

Just as every blossom fades and all youth yields to old age, so every stage of life, each flower of wisdom and every virtue reaches its prime and cannot last forever. Whenever life calls, the heart must be ready to leave and make a fresh start and to enter bravely into different and new liaisons. And a magic inhabits every new beginning, protecting us and helping us to live.

Here one can see the Wanderer represented as well as the call for renewal, often precipitated by inner tension that can also arise due to outer pressures, for instance in the stifling pietism of his parents confronted with his independent and rebellious spirit - he saw himself as a writer from a very early age, and this gave him a real sense of being alive. One of his great inspirations was Goethe, with his view of nature as a living entity and his understanding of transformative processes; these also occur in Goethe's life (for instance the Italian journey, which Hesse also made) and are reflected in the poem above. Hesse also admired how Goethe integrated different aspects of his personality within himself, most dramatically represented in Faust – 'the cultivation of mutually opposing forces became for Hesse the ideal for his own passage through life.' He also admired Goethe's transcendence of nationalism. Goethe succeeded in integrating mutually opposing forces to a greater extent than Hesse, especially in his relations with women and attitude to his body and sexuality. For Hesse, this never quite comes together and is represented in the contrast between the ascetic Narziss and the sensual Goldmund, even though they are the closest of friends.

The outbreak of the First World War and the publication during the conflict of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West raised profound questions about values and spirituality as expressed in European culture. This brings in themes from his masterpiece The Glass Bead Game about what the spirit can do to counteract naked force and how the individual intellectual can survive in a world devoid of spirituality. Hesse became increasingly critical of German nationalists, who also turned against him with his more universal outlook. His concern was that war destroys the soul and reduces people to friends or foes. Hesse's meeting Josef Lang in 1916 was an important turning point, partly because of the latter's interest in Gnosticism, but also therapeutically. His novel inspired by the dualism of Gnosticism, Demian, came out in 1919.

Although he had a deep interest in Taoism and harmony with nature, Hesse chose to portray aspects of the spiritual quest or pilgrimage for the Self through the Indian figure of Siddhartha. The European context, however, was 'that of an intellectual and spiritual reorientation following the complete collapse of the old system of values.' (p. 426) The author points out that Siddhartha is also about the recovery of individual experience in place of external knowledge as well as 'an attempt to synthesise Eastern and Western thinking, as represented by Buddha and Heraclitus' - the river and ferryman play an important role. At this distance, the hostile reaction on the book's publication takes one aback - critics felt a lack of of sympathetic identification with the conditions in post-war Germany. His point, though, is different: 'we desire to have something given to us from outside that we can only attain within ourselves, through our own dedication' - we have to impart meaning to our own lives.

The author identifies common spiritual themes that bonded Hesse with Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings in 1920: 'the demonic and exorcism; libidinous urges and asceticism; the sacred and the increasing banality of mass culture; the task of the intellectual between social criticism and the timeless evocation of meaningfulness; the monastic life, religion and atheism; the role played by sacrifice for faith; guilt and atonement; the creation of heretics by institutions; the neuroses of modern humans; pantheism and mysticism.' (pp. 477-8) These themes reappear in his later work and in his struggle with the disintegration of the spirit and the senses.

In the end, it seems that Hesse achieved a degree of inner peace, partly by guarding his solitude and avoiding public events, including the receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. The last chapter is entitled The Old Man of the Mountains. A sign in his window carried the following message: 'By the time a person has grown old and has done his bit, he is entitled to acquaint himself with death in peace and quiet. He doesn't need people. He knows them well, and he's had enough of them. What he needs is peace. It's not very seemly to come calling on such a person and pester him with chit-chat. Better just to walk on past his house like it belongs to nobody.'

His daily routine in the last few months included passing an acacia tree where he would always pull with all his might on a dead branch, remarking "It's still holding." His final poem, Creaking of a Bent Branch reflects this sentiment:

A splintered, bent branch, Hanging there for years on end, Creaking its song dryly in the wind, Bereft of leaf and bark, Bare, bleached and tired of living Too long or taking too long to die. Its song sounds harsh and dogged, It sounds defiant and secretly scared Just the last one more summer Just one more winter through.

It seems appropriate to finish with the last verse of Steps: Maybe death's hour too will send this out newborn towards new realms, Life's call to us will never end.. Come then, my heart, take your leave and fare you well!