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

spread very rapidly to the human sciences, the arts, and literature of the same period.
The intersection of time and space gains prominence in the Four Quartets, where the
titles of the four sections ('Burnt Norton', 'East Coker, The Dry Salvages', and 'Little
Gidding') all derive from place names and are Eliot's point of departure for his
discourse on time. 50 In Der Zauberberg, Hans Castorp's speculations on time-space
measurements with his cousin Joachim seem to announce Reichenbach's
considerations (Reichenbach's study was published four years later than Mann's
novel, see note 56):
«Die Zeit ist doch tiberhaupt nicht . [...] 1st das eine Bewegung,
eine raumliche Bewegung, nicht wahr? Halt, warte! Wir messen also die Zeit
mit dem Raume, aber das ist doch ebenso, als wollten wir den Raum an der
Zeit messen, - was doch nur ganz unwissenschaftliche Leute tun. Von
Hamburg nach Davos sind zwanzig Stunden, - ja, mit der Eisenbahn. Aber zu
Fufi, wie lange ist es da? Und in Gedanken? Keine Sekunde!» (1924, 98)
Hesse's elaboration on the interrelations between space and time takes a cue from
this debate, as is evident in Die Morgenlandfahrt, where the narrator H. H. 'observes
that the Journey to the East is a voyage through time as well, a road to Xanadu which
leads back into the land of childhood' (Boulby, 247). 51 Hesse's interest in the
interdependence of time and space has an interesting poetic and aesthetic corollary:
the inscription on one of the doors of the Magic Theatre in Der Steppenwolf defines the
quintessence of art as 'Die Verwandlung von Zeit in Raum durch die Musik' (Ste, GS
IV, 386). This statement, which resounds with relativistic overtones, is also indebted
to a tradition that extends in German intellectual history at least from Romanticism
to Wagner and his operatic transliteration of Eschenbach's Parzival. 52 Scher, who
and space is, as Jammer notes, revealed on a linguistic level too: 'Today we still speak of a "short" or "long"
interval of time; we say "thereafter" instead of "thenafter," or "always" instead of "at all times'" (9). The
intersection of space and time also emerges in the English 'span' and in the German 'Zeitraum' and 'Zeitpunkt'.
50 Account must also be taken of lines such as 'We cannot think of a time that is oceanless' (Dry Salvages, II).
51 See note 40 for original excerpt from Die Morgenlandfahrt. See also Karalaschwili, 243.
52 'For the Schlegels', Boulby notes, 'architecture [was] conceived of as frozen music' (161). In Wagner's
Parsifal, completed and premiered in 1882, Gurnemanz says to Parsifal at the end of the first scene of Act I: 'Du
siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit' (Wagner 1972, 112). Although it is difficult to document any
direct influence of either Eschenbach's text or Wagner's libretto on Hesse in this respect, it is worth noting that
'Klingsor' appears as one of the characters in Parsifal and that mentions of Parzival crop up in 'Chagrin
d'Amour' ([1907] SW 9, 248), 'Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur' ([1929], GS VII, 319), and Die
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