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

('Die Briider Karamasoff; GS VII, 165). 13 The gap or distance between opposites is a
source of knowledge and insight for Hesse, whose detachment from writing, which
he juxtaposes with painting, at the end of 1920s helped him become a better writer. 14
Das Malen veranderte Hesses Schreiben. Durch Reflexionen der Tatigkeit in
einem andern Medium wandelte sich seine Wahrnehmung. Hesse gewann
mittels Malerei »allmahlich eine Distanz« zur Literatur, wie er in einem Brief
an Georg Reinhart vom 5. Juni 1924 schrieb. Abschliefiend resiimierte Hesse:
»Als Dichter ware ich ohne das Malen nicht so weit gekommen«. 15 (Gommen,
47)
A second point is that while the distinction between man and woman, or the
succession of day and night and the consequent contrast between light and darkness,
are grounded in the objective reality of nature, the clash between such categories as
'good7 and 'evil 7 springs from the mind. 16 Hesse, who seeks to portray the abolition
of the gap between the external world and the inner reality of the self, is not inclined
to differentiate between polarities inherent in the reality of natural phenomena and
those generated in the mind. His narrators and characters tend to internalize external
antitheses (see 1.4 on "magical thinking') and regard contrasts in nature as
manifestations of the dichotomies in their personalities. In Demian, for example, the
spheres encompassed by 'light' and 'dark' have strong moral overtones. This is
stressed by Gommen:
Die zwei Welten stehen sich polar gegeniiber. Sie bilden Gegenwelten mit
diametralen ethischen Grundsatzen. Die Zuordnung basiert auf moralischen
Mafistaben, welche nicht natiirlich generiert, sondern von Menschen als solche
konzipiert wurden. (22)
An important consequence of this epistemological premise is that polar opposites are
interdependent and complementary. Hesse, as a man, had to face up to the fact that,
13 'Die Briider Karamasoff oder Der Untergang Europas: Einfalle bei der Lekture Dostojewskijs' (1919). Hesse's
statement echoes Goethe's: 'Was in die Erscheinung tritt, muB sich trennen, um nur zu erscheinen' (cited in
Gores, 98).
14 Hesse's interest in painting dates back to the time of his therapeutic sessions with Dr J. B. Lang in 1917. The
disciple of Jung invited Hesse to start painting his dreams along with self-portraits in an attempt to connect the
writer with his unconscious (See Arzeni, 98-99).
15 The letter cited is from Hermann Hesse als Maler, ed. by V. Michels (Frankfurt a. M: Suhrkamp, 2002), p.
110.
16 Categories such as 'day' and 'night' entail some level of abstraction too, since these are distilled mental
images of phenomena, the boundaries of which fluctuate on the real-life plan as in the intermediate phases of
dawn and dusk. I believe, however, that the distinction between polarities rooted in the more objective plan of
nature and those entirely generated from the mind is still tenable.
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