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

observed in Chapter 3 (section 2), meditation is prescribed as an antidote to the
narcissism of gifted players in Das Glasperlenspiel.40 'Humor7, or 'Galgenhumor', and
self-irony which, as will be discussed in the next section (6.4), implies a process of
'reflection', an attitude of the self directed back at itself, is the route Hesse follows
especially in the three major works of his second phase (Kurgast, Die Nurnberger Reise,
and Der Steppenwolf)*1 In the third person of the account of Kurgast, where Hesse is
both the narrator and 'der Kurgast Hesse' (SW 11,108), the narrative voice describes
the characteristic ritual ('automatischen Scheinhandlungen', ibid.) of the meals at the
spa as laughable. Moreover, enlightened by a moment of revelation, the narrator
suddenly experiences the conflation of the observing and experiencing self ('die
Vereinigung der beiden Ich, des essenden und des zuschauenden', ibid.), a
circumstance that brings him to laugh at himself and at the overall situation:
plotzlich mufite ich das Glas schnell wegstellen, derm mich erschiitterte von
innen her eine plotzlich aufgesprungene, ungeheure Lachlust, eine ganz
kindische Frohlichkeit, eine plotzliche Einsicht in die unendliche
Lacherlichkeit dieser ganzen Situation.42 (Ibid.)
Self-irony is also what Hesse, in Die Nurnberger Reise, opposes to vanity which, to
some degree, every person possesses, not only virtuosi or artists, but 'auch der Asket,
auch der an sich selbst Zweifelnde' (NR, SW 11,163).43 As far as Der Steppenwolf is
concerned, Hollis points out that self-irony is 'by far the most important form of
humour in [the novel]' (1973, 41), something which entails an act of 'self-
transcendence' (119).
40 It is worth recalling Hesse's view that virtuosity, which for him often bordered on excessive individuality, at
times tainted the performances of extraordinarily talented musicians (see 3.2).
41 The crucial difference between 'Galgenhumor' and self-irony is that, while the former emphasizes the agent,
external to the individual, that triggers a particular situation or event (see the death of Hesse's father or Haller's
execution), the stress on the latter lies on voluntary, self-inflicted humiliation.
42 As will be discussed in the next section (6.4), Hesse's use of the literary device of the double is not only
closely connected with self-irony but also with the theme of the mirror.
43 In Die Nurnberger Reise, too, the device of the double is exploited in connection with the emergence of self-
irony. The third-person narrator observes himself and ridicules his own vanity: 'Der Beobachter in mir (eine
Figur, welche nicht zu den Personen dieser Erzahlung gehort), der mit den zufalligen Freuden und Leiden des
reisenden Barden nichts zu tun hat, als dafl er sie notiert, er war dabei und wird ein andermal sachlicher von
diesen Erlebnissen sprechen. Heute spricht nur der reisende Tenor, der zufallige Mensch in mir, der Zufalliges
erlebt und leidet' (NR, SW 11, 178). Indeed, the overtones of'Reisende Tenor' conjure up the Wagnerian tenor
Muoth and his insatiable longing, as portrayed in Gertrud. Moreover, through the contrast between 'Der
Beobachter' and the tenor ('der zufallige Mensch'), the passage brings out the dualism of the ideal (transcendent)
and the real (immanent) self.
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