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

eckte die Glieder mit rhythmischen Bewegungen der Arme, welchen bald der
ganze Korper folgte, um in einem enthusiastischen Tanz den Tagesanbruch zu
feiern und sein inniges Einverstandnis mit den um ihn wogenden und
strahlenden Elementen auszudriicken. (Gla, SW 5, 390)
The narrator accumulates a combination of profane and religious associations around
Tito's dance: on the one hand, Tito abandons himself to 'eine festliche Opfergabe den
Machten' (390), '[ein] Opfertanz des panisch Begeisterten' (391) which he performs
with 'magische Besessenheit' (ibid.); on the other, the dance uplifts ('hinanhob', 391)
and transfigures Tito with liturgical seriousness ('gottesdienstlichen Ernst7, ibid.),
which affects the spectator (Knecht) and connects him to his innermost spirituality:
der festliche Morgen- und Sonnenbegriifiungtanz seines Schiilers [eroffnete]
ihm, dem Zuschauer, seine tiefsten und edelsten Neigungen, Begabungen und
Bestimmungen. 112 (SW 5, 390-91)
This chapter sought to underline the moral overtones of the problem of
meaning in art for Hesse, whose ideals and moral convictions influenced his
appreciation of art, and of music in particular. This moral focus was underlined in
connection with some of Hesse's orientations which brought him close to
Existentialists and away from the biographies, attitudes, and music of composers
such as R. Strauss and Wagner. Wagner, as a musical innovator, and his score of
Tristan und Isolde, were paired with Hesse and Steppenwolf on account of their
affinities on a formal level and their distance on a poetic plane.
The second part of the chapter highlighted the extent to which the dialectical
interplay of two fundamental components of Hesse's thought, 'intellectualism' and
"naivety7, informed Hesse's opinions and connections to light music and dance.
112 As Bishop points out, Tito's 'mystic dance [...] is both pagan and uncultured, yet Knecht watches [his]
ecstatic performance in wonderment' (Bishop, 224)
105