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

celestial dance and the human communion underlying the round dance also has its
dark side. 106 As a reaction to the fatalism of the turn of the century, dancing acts as a
catalyst and outlet for vital instincts and, as Salmen points out, popular dances have
no longer the gallant aplomb of the preceding century but are characterized by
frenetic movements instead:
Suddenly after 1890 dances, rhythms, gestures, and dancing attire shattered
the conventions of the upper middle-class ball culture [...] Those who
defended 'academic' dance and the previous norm universally diagnosed the
development as a contagious neurosis that originated with dances like the
Boston, Cakewalk, Tango, Onestep, or Ragtime. 107 (210)
The narrator of Das Glasperlenspiel, commenting on the 'zynisch[e] Gelassenheit oder
bacchantisch[e] Hingerissenheit' (SW 5, 20) characteristic of 'das feuillettonistische
Zeitalter', which transfers the early twentieth century into the fiction of the novel,
stresses the importance of dance as a way to fight the resigned pessimism
('Untergangsstimmung') of the age: 'man ging tanzen und erklarte jede Sorge um die
Zukunft fur altvaterische Torheit' (ibid.).
The urge to oppose the fear of death by means of frenzied amusement in the
early twentieth century pervades popular dances to an extent that these may, at
times, appear as collective apotropaic rituals evoking, by analogy with the need to
dispel the fears aroused by the plague sweeping across Europe around the middle of
the fourteenth century, the medieval Dance of Death. 108 Hesse captures this attitude
106 As Salmen notes, the idea of brotherhood and communion by way of dance also makes its way into the
paintings of the period (see Matisse's La dame (1901)): 'The will to live in social union, to overcome alienation,
and to discover identity through action was manifested most clearly in pictures in which free people dancing the
round dance bound themselves to one another' (222). Although it is difficult to trace its exact origins, the idea of
the 'celestial dance' probably emerged in connection with rituals inspired by the revolutions of the stars in
remote prehistoric times. In Greek antiquity, the idea was associated with the ordering principle of Creation, as
'[the] act of Creation presupposes the bringing together of discordant and conflicting parts into a harmonious and
well-ordered whole' (Carter, 4). It was then transformed into a symbol of God's love by Christians: 'the pagan
idea of dancing gods was absorbed by Neoplatonists and adapted by the Church Fathers to suit the Christian
concept of Heaven and angelic beings' (Carter, 14). Subsequently, around the end of the fifteenth century,
'Ficino's fusion of pagan and Christian elements in his new Platonism revitalized the idea of the dance as an
image of order, harmony and love' (Carter, 14).
107 The boston, the tango, and the onestep are also among the fashionable dances mentioned in Der Steppenwolf.
108 'In [the] contrast between an optimistic life force and an uncannily destructive urge to ruin, the medieval
theme of the Dance of Death was lent a renewed actuality' (Salmen, 219). The outbreak of the bubonic plague,
also known as the Black Death, is recalled in the medieval context ofNarzifi und Goldmund, where Goldmund
faces up to the pandemic with resigned pessimism, without abandoning himself to any vitalistic impetus: 'Mit
diesem Pesttod aber war nicht zu ka'mpfen, man mufite ihn toben lassen und sich ergeben, und Goldmund hatte sich
langst ergeben' (SW 4,452).
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