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

He would, however, make a clear distinction between Romanticism and its harbinger
in music, Beethoven, on the one hand, and what he considered as the blooming
period of German music, epitomized by Bach and Mozart:
Ich empfinde Beethoven absolut nicht als zu Bach und Mozart gehorig,
sondern als Beginn des Niedergangs, einen grandiosen, heldischen, herrlichen
Beginn, aber doch als etwas mit halb negativem Vorzeichen. (letter to Ludwig
Finckh of 1932, Musik, 157)
Hesse's views on ethics (see Chapter 3, especially section 2) provide a further
example. Deeply fascinated by Nietzsche, Hesse was drawn to an ideal of morality
beyond the categories of 'good' and 'evil', and he also felt that a person's actions and
beliefs should be judged not on conventional moral grounds but in terms of the
strength of that person's commitment to those beliefs.
Ich [...] halte es nicht fur das Wichtigste, welchen Glauben ein Mensch habe,
sondern, dafi er iiberhaupt einen habe, dafi er die Leidenschaft des Geistes
kenne, dafi er bereit sei, seinen Glauben, sein Gewissen zu verteidigen gegen
die ganze Welt, gegen jede Majoritat und Autoritat. (Die Einheit hinter den
Gegensatzen, 189)
On the other hand, his moral code, shaped by his religious upbringing, would lead
him instinctively to separate good from evil and what was of outstanding value from
the ordinary:
Wenn Lehar gleich Mozart ist, warum soil dann nicht Hitler gleich Jesus oder
Sartre gleich Sokrates sein. Die Welt braucht, das haben wir erlebt, Moral
notiger als Gescheitheit. (letter of 1947; Musik, 184)
Contradictions crop up throughout Hesse's works and private papers, and if we
restrict ourselves to Hesse's major works of fiction, paradoxes play a prominent role
in those structured as legends (Siddhartha, Das Glasperlenspiel) or with a legendary
ending (Klingsors letzter Sommer).25 This is partly explained by the tendency of
legends which, like fairy tales, feature heroes who, and this is a significant point of
divergence from fairy tales, are also holy persons or saints, as in Siddhartha or Das
Glasperlenspiel. In portraying the extraordinary life of its hero, a legend occasionally
relates incredible, nearly implausible events. As Karalaschwili notes:
25 In this context, see Karalaschwili, 168.
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