Hermann Hesse Today - Hermann Hesse Heute

222 Pages·2005·0.75 MB·English

by  Ingo Cornils

Hermann Hesse Today
Hermann Hesse Heute
A M S T E R D A M E R B E I T R Ä G E 58 5
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Z U R N E U E R E N E R M A N I S T I K 2
Herausgegeben von
Gerd Labroisse
Gerhard P. Knapp
Norbert Otto Eke
Wissenschaftlicher Beirat:
Christopher Balme (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Lutz Danneberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Martha B. Helfer (Rutgers University New Brunswick)
Lothar Köhn (Westf. Wilhelms-Universität Münster)
Ian Wallace (University of Bath)
Hermann Hesse Today
Hermann Hesse Heute
Edited by
Ingo Cornils and Osman Durrani
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005
Die 1972 gegründete Reihe erscheint seit 1977 in zwangloser Folge in der
Form von Thema-Bänden mit jeweils verantwortlichem Herausgeber.
Reihen-Herausgeber:
Prof. Dr. Gerd Labroisse
Sylter Str. 13A, 14199 Berlin, Deutschland
Tel./Fax: [phone] E-Mail: [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Gerhard P. Knapp
University of Utah
Dept. of Languages and Literature, 255 S. Central Campus Dr. Rm. 1400
Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Tel.: [phone], Fax [phone] (dienstl.)
bzw. Tel./Fax: [phone] (privat) E-Mail: [email protected]
Prof. Dr. Norbert Otto Eke
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Fac. der Geesteswetenschappen, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam
Nederland, E-Mail: [email protected]
Cover illustration: Untitled watercolour by Eva Hesse, Sri Lanka, 2003.
This book is published simultaneously as Volume 84 in the series
PUBLICATIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC STUDIES
(University of London School of Advanced Study. Institute of Germanic &
Romance Studies) ISBN: 0 85457 209 0
All titles in the Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik (from 1999
onwards) are available online: See www.rodopi.nl
Electronic access is included in print subscriptions.
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 90-420-1606-X
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2005
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents
INGOCORNILSANDOSMANDURRANI:INTRODUCTION 7
Thomas Feitknecht (Bern):“International, mit Schweizer Etikette”.
Hermann Hesses Schweizer Jahre: politisch, geographisch, litera-
risch 13
Jörg Drews (Bielefeld):“…bewundert viel und viel gescholten…”:
Hermann Hesses Werk zwischen Erfolg und Mißachtung bei
Publikum und Literaturkritik 21
Martin Swales (London): New Media, Virtual Reality, Flawed
Utopia? Reflections on Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and
Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf 33
Agnès Cardinal (Kent):Teaching Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf:
Some Reflections on Readers’Responses 41
Frederick A. Lubich (Norfolk,VA): Hermann Hesses Narziß und
Goldmundoder “Der Weg zur Mutter”: Von der Anima Mundi zur
Magna Mater und Madonna (Ciccone) 49
Andreas Solbach (Mainz): Dezisionistisches Mitleid: Dekadenz
und Satire in Hermann Hesses Unterm Rad 67
Angelika Rauch-Rapaport (London): The Melancholic Structure
of the Mind: The Absence of Object Relations in the Work of
Hermann Hesse 83
Colin Riordan (Newcastle): Hermann Hesse and the Ecological
Imagination 95
Volker Michels (Frankfurt/M.):“Auf den Einzelnen kommt es an!”
Zur Aktualität von Hermann Hesse 107
Marco Schickling (Eltville): Hermann Hesses Literaturkritik der
dreißiger Jahre 121
Jefford Vahlbusch (Eau Claire,WI):Toward the Legend of Hermann
Hesse in the USA 133
Nicolás Jorge Dornheim (Mendoza): Zweimal Herman(!) Hesse:
Argentinische Hesse-Rezeption im Abwind? 147
Hans J. Hahn (Oxford): Störfälle, oder Probleme des integrierten
Außenseiters, in den pädagogischen Romanen Hermann Hesses und
in Carsten Probsts Träumer 159
Stefan Gullatz (Heidelberg):Demianand the Lacanian Gaze 173
C. Immo Schneider (Ellensburg, WA): Hermann Hesses Das
Glasperlenspiel: Roman oder Essay? Versuch einer literarischen
Gattungsbestimmung 187
Rüdiger Görner (London):Letzte Lieder: Zur Sprache des Späten in
der Lyrik Hermann Hesses 205
Notes on the Editors 221
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank the following for their support:
Pro Helvetia, London
Goethe Institute, London
DAAD, London
Institute of Germanic Studies, London
Hermann Hesse Stiftung, Bern
School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds
School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent
at Canterbury
Dr Ruth Owen, Leeds
Frau Eva Hesse, Massa Marittima, Italy
Hermann Hesse Today / Hermann Hesse Heute
Edited by Ingo Cornils and Osman Durrani
Introduction
Just over a quarter of a century has passed since the principal intermediary
between Hermann Hesse and the Anglo-Saxon world declared that the era of
collective ‘Hesse-Mania’ was finally over. The fevered interest that this
author’s works once generated, especially outside Germany and almost in
defiance of the experts, had, according to Theodore Ziolkowski, evaporated
as rapidly as it had arisen. Hesse’s rise to the pinnacle of fame had turned
out to be a short but spectacular episode in the annals of literary history. As
the phenomenon receded, uncomfortable questions remained as to its origins
and its subject’s place in world literature. These are issues that still concern
us today and form the basis of this volume.
For most non-German readers, the so-called ‘Hesse Boom’began when this
representative of the ‘good’Germany received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1946. Here was an author who, from a remote mountain region in Switzerland,
had been designing models of sceptical self-reliance for decades when Fascists
and Communists around him were striving to impose their narrow visions of
conformity on the nations of the world. A defeated, denazified Germany
needed his salutary words so much that his last novel became compulsory
reading in schools. His influence grew apace during the postwar years and
was not restricted to central Europe. Colin Wilson discovered a copy of The
Glass Bead Gameon a library shelf in London’s Archway and found that its
author fitted perfectly into the impassioned study of alienation which he was
writing at the time from the point of view of what was then called an ‘angry
young man’. The third chapter (‘The Romantic Outsider’) of Wilson’s best-
seller of 1956 dealt extensively with Hesse; it placed this author beside Sartre
and Dostoevsky, Boehme and Kierkegaard as an example and a proponent of
the necessary estrangement of the creative individual in a world determined
by mechanisation and anonymity. And it is Wilson who is widely assumed to
have been the main catalyst for a development that penetrated every corner
of the globe and elicited a euphoric response from readers in the USA, Japan,
South America and many other regions. What was particularly astounding was
that the response came not so much from Hesse’s traditional target audience of
middle-aged, middle-brow, mid-European novel-readers, but from a transat-
lantic teenage following as unfamiliar with the notions of ‘Romantic subjec-
tivity’as they were with the concept of the Bildungsroman, to which Wilson
had rightly related this author. Now not only school and college students, but
8
marginalised groups such as draft dodgers, anti-war campaigners and
so-called‘Flower Children’, were recruited with apparent ease into an exten-
sive community of the faithful that included, according to George Steiner at
least, members of Hippie communities who rarely read anything else.
The uncertain and shadowy audience whose appetite for Hesse’s novels
brought him into the limelight may also explain why he slipped out of the
public arena as quickly as he had entered it. As the sensational aspects of his
‘discovery’recede in the collective memory, it is timely to stand back and
survey an important author’s past, present and future place in the canon. He
has not disappeared, but has remained a distinctive feature of the literary
landscape on those continents he once took by storm. New translations have
appeared in South America and elsewhere, while Germany has launched a
much-needed standard edition of his complete works (Sämtliche Werke, edited
by Volker Michels1). This embraces prose, poetry and literary criticism, to
replace the earlier, more randomly compiled sets of ‘collected works’that
were issued to satisfy the mass market without offering the critical appara-
tus necessary to sustain scholarship. The new edition doubles the textual
material once available to his readers and provides fresh information that in
several key respects challenges the conventional image of the remote ‘guru’,
as he was often described in the period of mass adulation. His voluminous cor-
respondence demonstrates a high level of involvement in contemporary issues
and his book reviews, which form a substantial proportion of his output, reveal
a range of progressive opinions on literary matters. Irrespective of these devel-
opments in the field of editorial labour, Hesse also retains his appeal for young
readers. In 2003, when a member of staff at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilian
University proposed running a seminar devoted to him, reservations were
expressed by senior colleagues – until they realised that enrolment figures for
this module comfortably exceeded those for most other literary seminars. On
a more popular level, too, it should be noted that the annual ‘Hesse-Tage’at
Sils Maria in Switzerland attract many participants of all ages.
Anniversaries provide a welcome opportunity to gauge the level of inter-
est and the direction taken by literary scholars and other interested parties.
The year 2002 marked the 125th anniversary of Hermann Hesse’s birth. In
addition to the regular events at Sils Maria and celebrations at his birthplace
in Calw, both aimed primarily at the lay reader, two further international con-
ferenceswere hosted, one in Mainz and the other in London. The former was
organised around the theme of ‘Hesse and Modernity’, while the British event
aimed to evaluate the current status of this author at the start of the new mil-
lennium. London’s Institute of Germanic Studies provided a venue for 20
speakers from North and South America, Russia, Switzerland, Germany and
the United Kingdom over a three-day period, and was attended by scholars and
lay readers from as far afield as Korea. The present volume is a record of the
1 Hermann Hesse: Sämtliche Werke (SW). Hrsg. von Volker Michels. Frankfurt/
M. 2001 f.
9
papers given at this conference, and thus challenges the view that Hesse’s
commercial success must in some way detract from his quality as a writer.
The papers that make up this volume range from relatively broadly-based
surveys to the examination of specific topics, each attempting to cast new
light on the phenomenon of Hesse. Thomas Feitknecht opens the discussion,
as he did at the conference, by placing Hesse’s international qualities within
the context of his firm and enduring commitment to Switzerland. Several other
speakers present overviews of Hesse’s achievement from new angles. Jörg
Drews formulates some of the often underplayed or unstated reasons that
may have persuaded critics to be less than enthusiastic. But even a perceived
lack of scope and thematic restrictedness should not blind us to their under-
lying humane concerns; and when it comes to neglected areas of inquiry such
as Hesse’s prolific book reviews, both Drews and Marco Schickling agree
that here Hesse displayed his clear appreciation of, and commitment to, a view
of modernity that often eluded him in his own creative output.
Still on the theme of Hesse’s overall reputation, Volker Michels is well
placed to ask why the German establishment continues to shun an author who
is valued outside his native country. Michels considers Hesse’s strengths to
lie in his untiring advice to others, his humour, and, self-evidently, his deter-
mination to address the social and political issues of his time. In a consistent
style that is characterised by its sensuality, musicality and precision, Hesse
encourages the reader to think and act, even when such advice may run counter
to current trends and opinions. The ‘transatlantic Hesse legend’itself is re-
examined by Jefford Vahlbusch who identifies the confused sources on which
the story of Hesse’s impact on American youth was based and takes a refresh-
ingly sceptical look at the ways in which scholars have manipulated those
sources in their own often fanciful analyses. This paper suggests a new,more
critical approach to the much-debated issue of Hesse’s reception in the USA
between 1950 and 1975.
Hesse’s fortunes among lay readers in various parts of the world continue
to generate material for reflection. Nicolás J. Dornheim reports on his current
standing in South America, where some of the novels are available in no fewer
than seven distinct translations. Interesting parallels are drawn between the
economic situation in Germany after World War I and the period of hyper-
inflation in Argentina, which may have given novels such as Demian added
relevance in that part of the world. Agnès Cardinal seeks to account for the
continuing instrumentalisation of the term ‘Steppenwolf’ in the modern
world and examines a range of typical responses to that novel on the part of
today’s British university students.
Two other themes of importance today are considered by Colin Riordan and
by Angelika Rauch-Rapaport. The former investigates the ecological imagi-
nation, reviewing the ways in which nature is presented as an idyll available
only to those equipped properly to perceive it. Thus the novel Peter Camenzind
is remarkable for its perception of nature as an issue in its own right, at a time
which saw the onset of mass tourism, no less than for its prescriptive solution