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

und die Worte waren kleine schwarmende Vogel', '[t]he color gold is again primarily
that of iconography, and the birds are the eloquence of the soul' (Boulby, 216). The
symbol resurfaces in 'Vogel' (1932) and persists until Hesse's very last days. Indeed,
his last night, 9 August 1962, was spent with his wife Ninon. 'Without doubt they
listened to a piano sonata by Mozart over the radio, and he [Hesse] wrote a poem
about [a] branch that refused to die' (Freedman 1979, 390). 65 The title of this last
poem, 'Knarren eines geknickten Astes', where the past participle 'geknickt'
resonates powerfully with 'zerissen', ironically parallels and echoes the epitaph on
his father's grave.
65 Schneider provides a detailed reference to the piano sonata: 'on the eve of his death he [Hesse] heard a kind
of viaticum a radio performance of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 7 in C Major (KV309)' (389).
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