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

mit Entsetzen erinnerte ich mich an jene scheufilichen Photographien von der
Front, die man wahrend des Krieges zuweilen zu Gesicht bekommen hatte, an
jene Haufen ineinander verknauelter Leichname, deren Gesichter durch
Gasmasken in grinsende Teufelsfratzen verwandelt waren. (SW 4,184)
Moreover, a sense of guilt permeates the whole novel, affecting individuals ('Man
wird geboren, und schon ist man schuldig'; Ste, SW 4,193) as well as the judgement
about entire societies and epochs, the failings of which are reflected in works of art.
This is the case with Wagner and Brahms, whose music, in the eye of the narrator, is
marred by 'die Schuld ihrer Zeit' (Ste, SW 4,193). Such feelings trigger an intense
longing to expiate, which Haller mingles with his search for oblivion and death: 'Ich
begehre ja nichts anderes als zu biifien, zu biifien, zu bufien, den Kopf unters Beil zu
legen und mich strafen und vernichten zu lassen' (Ste, SW 4, 200).
In Das Glasperlenspiel, knowledge and history appear as a particularly
burdensome and laborious task which threatens to crush the memory of an
individual under its weight. As a man of culture and a humanist, Hesse was aware
that forgetting is essential to discarding those elements which are unnecessary or
redundant to the brain; indeed, memory cannot retain every single detail of a life
experience. As he stresses in his diary:
Tausende von Biichern habe ich in meinem Leben so gelesen und schnell
wieder vergessen. Ware das Vergessen nicht, die unentbehrlichste aller
Fahigkeiten, so sahe mein Kopf wie eine Buchhandlung aus; das tut er aber
nicht, ich habe Ubung im Vergessen. ('Stiller Abend' in KF, 240)
Alcoholic oblivion is a short-term palliative sought by Hesse and his
characters (e.g. Klingsor, Haller) in their attempts to forget: 'haufig suchte ich meine
Freude, meinen Traum, mein Vergessen in einer Flasche Wein, und sehr oft hat sie
mir geholfen, sie sei dafur gepriesen. Aber sie geniigte nicht' ('Kurzgefasster
Lebenslauf, SW 12, 57). However, they know that, if they want to throw their
memories into relief, a different path has to be followed. The episode of Haller and
the young girl mentioned in the preceding section illustrates 'the idea that events
might have turned out differently, and if interpreted differently, might still be
capable of changing the subject's understanding of [his] life and [his] self (King, 23).
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