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

that of the child' (141). 44 Therefore, while the circle, as a symbol, expresses the
negative aspects of eternal recurrence, the 'spiral' takes account of the positive
associations Hesse accumulates around eternal return.
Following the thread of these considerations, two further points on circularity
need to be made by way of conclusion. Firstly, Hesse's literary and pictorial output
can metaphorically be superimposed on the image of the river and the water cycle.
Hesse's novels deal with the same conflicts, although they are presented in a
different light in each work. As noted in Chapter 1, Hesse describes his main
characters as various 'incarnations' of his own self. 45 We stressed that his
protagonists typically stem from the same psychological type, the 'Suchender' (see
Chapter 4, section 1). Arzeni, who lays emphasis on the mystical dimension of
repetition, stresses that Hesse, as a painter, tends to portray similar subjects as if they
were a visual mantra to him:
Beharrlich malt Hesse immer wieder die gleichen Themen, die gleichen
Baume, die gleichen Hauser mit unzahligen kleinen Variationen. Die
Wiederholung schenkt offenbar Frieden. Wie bei jenen Ikonenmalern, die mit
kaum wahrnehmbaren Abweichungen, die nur sie kannten, unendlich oft die
gleiche Figur malten, [...] weil ihre Gedanken sich in dieser unendlichen
Wiederholung klaren und dem Absoluten ein wenig naher kommen. (107)
Secondly, a cyclic pattern can be identified in Hesse's biography too. As noted above,
for all their similarities, the initial and final stages of the triadic process of
'Menschwerdung' do not coincide (see citation above; Boulby, 94), and this
development echoes Hesse's personal evolution: from the clashes with his parents
and the obstinate rejection of authority which characterized his adolescence, as
transliterated into the fiction of Unterm Rad and emblematically witnessed by his
sudden flight from Maulbronn, to his ultimate acceptance, and even endorsement, of
authority, as registered in his later works (e.g. Die Morgenlandfahrt, Das
44 This is also in in line with what expressed by Hesse in'Von der Seele' (1917): 'Nicht zum Kinde, zum
Primitiven zuruck sollen wir, sondern weiter, vorwarts, zu Personlichkeit, Verantwortlichkeit, Freiheit' (GS VII,
72).
45 See section 6 in Chapter 1: 'War es notwendig, daB dem Camenzind, dem Knulp, dem Veraguth, dem
Klingsor und dem Steppenwolf nun nochmals eine Figur folgte, eine neue Inkarnation, eine etwas anders
gemischte und anders differenzierte Verkorperung meines eigenen Wesens im Wort?' ('Eine Arbeitsnacht', SW
12, 125).
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