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

sensual counterpart reach a near equilibrium at the time when Hesse starts his
relationship with Ninon, whom he married in 1931 (see 3.1). Although Goldmund's
peregrinations are in the foreground, the balance contained in the psychological
characterisation of Narzifi and Goldmund is an expression of this new frame of
mind. 48 Impending old age and the war years bring Hesse's spiritual side to the fore
as witnessed by Knecht's prominent position in the narrative as well as within the
ranks of Castalia. Observing the reflections of Hesse's life in the mirror of his fiction
we are led to consider the possibility that, symbolically, Hesse concludes his spiritual
journey, begun with the flight from Maulbronn, by returning to the seminar. Yet, as
'the true Way is in fact not a circle, it is a spiral' (Boulby 94), Knecht's departure from
Castalia foreshadows and points the direction of a possible new spiritual pilgrimage,
a new beginning, and for his author too:
Hesse knew that, in the deepest sense, he who bursts out from the cloister
must always seek to find his way back within, but on a different level of being;
[...] cradle and coffin are one and yet different. (Boulby, 94)
5.4 Time changes to space
The frequent contamination between different sensory domains through the use of
synesthesia as a fashionable literary device in the early twentieth century was
discussed in section 1 of Chapter 2 and mentioned in passing in the second section of
this chapter. In the preliminary considerations of the present chapter, we also
highlighted the strong attention that was drawn in the same period from the field of
science to the interrelation of time and space, especially as a result of Einstein's
contribution.49 This investigative interest in the nature of time, and its ties with space,
48 In Unterm Rod and Das Glasperlenspiel, the narrator focuses on the characters who stay within the boundaries
of the authority (Heilner, Knecht), while in Narzift und Goldmund it is Goldmund's experiences outside the walls
of the seminary which occupy the larger part of the narrative.
49 As highlighted by Reichenbach in The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928): 'space measurements are
reducible to time measurements' (35). The pairing of time and space is, however, not limited to the scientific
field, nor is it confined to the early twentieth century. In the literary criticism of the late twentieth century, the
chronotope is described by its proponent as 'the primary means for materializing time in space' (Bakhtin, 22).
Moreover, spatial and temporal coordinates have always defined our everyday life experience. As Boehm points
out: 'Die Raum-Zeit ist wiederum das Medium menschlicher Erfahrungen, der Bewegung, des Handelns,
Erzahlens, Lesens der Sinnesaktivitaten' (177). The instinctive human awareness of the interdependence of time
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