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

only creep into his life when he is in his early puberty: 'bald wiirde auch mir die
Stunde schlagen' ('Kindheit des Zauberers' in TF, GSIV, 467). 9 At that time, the
clashes with his parents and conflicts with the external reality of everyday life began
and, like many adolescents, Hesse found himself maladjusted and cast away from
the paradise of his childhood. 10
Despite the problematic and traumatic path from childhood to adolescence,
Hesse's early years remained a continual source of inspiration and a vital centre of
his creativity:
Ich habe diesem Gedachtnis zeitlebens oft gehuldigt und ihm kleine
Denkmaler errichtet, es ist in vielen meiner Erzahlungen und Gedichte etwas
von jenem Marchen festzuhalten versucht worden. 11 (KF, 329)
As noted in Chapter 2 (see especially section 1), Hesse's appreciation of music
began in his childhood. Later on in his life, music is able to bring Hesse back to his
juvenile and all-embracing enthusiasm for life. As he records in 1928, recalling the
performance of a virtuoso and the ecstatic response of the audience: 'wieder waren
wir Knaben und kamen aus der ersten Violinstunde, wieder traumten wir uns selig
iiber die Berge der Schwierigkeiten hinweg' ('Virtuosen-Konzert' in Musik, 55). The
'Matthaus-Passion', which he first listened to as a child, would trigger a train of
memories that would bring him back to his childhood: 'Es war schon und
herzbewegend und brachte wie jedes Mal eine Flut von Erinnerungen heran, bis in
die Knabenzeit zuriick' (Musik, 214)
The centrality of childhood is mirrored in virtually all his works, where it
features as a theme. 12 Peter Camenzind frequently refers to the idyllic quality of life
in his Alpine hometown. Unterm Rad focuses on the difficult passage from a carefree
childhood to the suffocating world of adults. As mentioned above, Kuhn's destiny is
shaped by the accident which cripples him as a child and by his early fascination
9 'Als ich dreizehn Jahre alt war, und jener Konflikt eben begonnen hatte' ('Kurzgefasster Lebenslauf, SW 12
49).
10 As observed in 3.1, Hesse was to experience a similar situation during the First World War; a time when he
felt an outcast, in spite of his success as a writer.
11 'The call of childhood sounds through memory, which in Hesse's work has an intense and active function to
perform' (Boulby, 7).
'Knabe' and its compounds is one of the words which occur most often in his works.
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