HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

emphasis on earthly life, discards the whole concept of eternity. 9 Despite its temporal
distance from the period in question, Wim Wenders' Der Himmel uber Berlin (1987)
offers perhaps one of the most powerful and poetic formulations of this attitude. In
the film, the angel Damiel longs to abandon the sphere of eternity and to plunge
himself into the finitude of human existence and time:
Es ist herrlich, nur geistig zu leben und Tag fur Tag fur die Ewigkeit von den
Leuten rein, was geistig ist, zu bezeugen - aber manchmal wird mir meine
ewige Geistesexistenz zuviel. Ich mochte dann nicht mehr so ewig
driiberschweben, ich mochte ein Gewicht in mir spiiren, das die
Grenzenlosigkeit an mir aufhebt und mich erdfest macht.
Ich mochte bei jedem Schritt oder Windstofi »Jetzt«, und...
»Jetzt« und »Jetzt« sagen konnen und nicht wie immer »seit je« und »in
Ewigkeit«. (Wenders; Handke, 19-20)
Hermann Hesse, who in 'Geist der Romantik' (1926) distinguishes between the
Classical and Romantic standpoints 'die klassische Einstellung [...] wird sich
bemiihen, den Augenblick auszuschopfen und zu verewigen. 10 Die romantische
Einstellung wird [...] auf das Zeitlose zielen' (KF, 204) oscillated between the
Classical and Romantic tension towards eternity and the Existentialist dismissal of
any timeless reality. On the one hand, he sought a realm beyond time, where life's
discords and contrasts could be overcome (see Chapter 5).n On the other, as Chapter
3 (section 3) will seek to show, he was aware of the inherent risks of a life detached
from reality and time, and his message therefore resounds as one of commitment to
life, as illustrated by Knecht in his letter of resignation to the educational authority
('Erziehungsbehorde') in Kastalien: 'Wir sind selbst Geschichte und sind an der
Weltgeschichte und unserer Stellung in ihr mitverantwortlich' (Gla, SW 5, 323).
9 The two attitudes, the Classical and Romantic longing for eternity and the Existentialist focus on life within the
boundaries of time, have an illustrious antecedent in the antithetical views of Plato and Aristotle, portrayed in
Raphael's School of Athens (c. 1510), where the former points his finger upwards (towards the 'hyperuranium')
while the latter's palm points downwards, expressing Aristotle's more immediate concern with the reality of the
material world.
10 As Abrams notes, Friedrich Schlegel first introduced the distinction between 'classic' and 'romantic', 'which
[...] turned out to be equally indispensable and unmanageable to literary critics and historians' (Abrams, 237).
11 An excerpt from 'Kofferpacken' (1926) captures effectively Hesse's yearning to break free from time: 'die
ra'umliche Flucht, das Laufen auf Wanderschuhen und das Fahren auf Eisenbahnen und Schiffen [bringen] mich
nicht ans Ziel [...] sie [ftihren] nicht aus der Zeit hinaus' (KF, 210). The flight from time is a major theme in
Siddhartha too (see below in this section).
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