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

in the case of the 'Unio mystica7 experienced by Harry Haller (see 3.5). Although
what the 'Kurgast' Hesse calls 'Teemusik' 'nich[t] in [sein] Bewusstsein tritf, 'der
rein sinnliche Reiz der paar gut gespielten Instrumente7 (Kur, SW 11, 94) can win his
attention. Like its more sophisticated counterpart, 'Unterhaltungsmusik' is indeed
able to alleviate the burden of time and loosen its hold on human beings:
[ich] hore die Unterhaltungsmusik voruberrinnen und habe das angenehme
Gefuhl, es rinne damit horbar und fiihlbar ein Stuck Zeit hinweg, ein Stiick
von der Zeit, von der wir Kurgaste so viel iibrig haben. (Ibid.)
Hesse's dialectics is obviously at play here for, despite being inherently temporal,
music, in fact, can oppose time. Music also reconciles the eternal and the transitory as
will become apparent in the rest of this section. The pairing of Pablo and Mozart
implies that classical music is in alliance with banal ephemeral tunes, and on this
ground we disagree with Schneider, who considers jazz merely as 'an episode7 for
Hesse. 89 As there would be no Transcendenz' without 'Immanenz 7, and a life entirely
dominated by 'Geist' would lead to disgust (see Chapter 1, section 2), 'classical' gains
significance only if it constantly refers to and draws upon the popular. Mutual
interdependence is a structural element of all polarities in Hesse.
The identification of Mozart with Pablo has a further consequence which
reverberates beyond the social and aesthetic spheres. 90 Pablo's music does not stand
comparison with the compositions of Mozart; nevertheless, he somehow belongs to
the same circle of Mozart and Goethe ('die Unsterblichen'), being as 'the living
embodiment of their philosophy' (Lange 1970, 70). Like Mozart and Goethe, Pablo
has learned to 'laugh at appearances and look for a deeper reality beneath the surface
of things' (Ziolkowski 1965, 210), this is what he in the guise of Mozart teaches
Haller; moreover, he has discovered how to transcend his own principium
89 '"Mozart is Pablo," Joachim-Ernst Berendt asserts in his interpretation of Der Steppenwolf. That would mean
that Mozart, like Pablo, the saxophone player, also embodied jazz, which Hesse includes in his experimental
novel as complement to what is referred to as the "classical" music of the years 1500 to 1800. But for Hesse,
jazz, like his "Krisis" poems, represented only an episode. The name "Pablo" seems associated more closely
with such virtuosi as Sarasate and Casals, who shared that first name and like jazz did not entirely meet
Hesse's standards of classical, ethical musicianship, of which Mozart was the supreme representative'
(Schneider 2009, 388)
90 'Pablo', Karalaschwili points out, 'ist die Verkorperung [...] des Instinktes und der elementaren Sinnlichkeit,
und er ist auch Mozart, eine Versinnbildlichung hochster Geistigkeit' (90).
97