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

Welt und Ewigkeit, zwischen Leid und Seligkeit, zwischen Bose und Gut zu
liegen scheint, auch eine Tauschung. 36 (Sid, SW 3, 465-66)
Like the illusory veil of Maya, time and its succession of instants prevent human
beings from perceiving eternity, a dimension in which there is no before or after, no
future or past, only the present (see 5.2). This, as Moritz points out, would also entail
the end of dichotomies and the abolition of any cause-and-effect dynamic:
Da Vergangenheit und Zukunft sich nur in der Relation - also im Gegensatz -
zur Gegenwart bestimmen lassen, fuhrt die Aufhebung des
Trennungsprinzips unweigerlich zur Relativierung der zeitlichen Abfolge und
damit auch des kausalen Zusammenhangs von Ursprung, Entwicklung und
Endziel. Gleichzeitig ist die Aufhebung der Zeit als Abschaffung des linear-
kausalen Nacheinanders und als Ermoglichung eines synchronen Zugleichs
im Grunde conditio sine qua non der magischen Aufhebung aller Gegensatze.
(Moritz, 96; original emphasis)
1.4 Magical thinking
For Hesse, the abolition of-time brings about the end of all antitheses which, as noted
in the previous section, Moritz links with the musicality of his texts and his concept
of 'magisches Denken', the latter being, in Hesse's terms, the act of the mind that
dispels the illusion of time and reconciles opposites:
Magical thinking denies polarity and operates by analogy rather than
by syllogism; springing from the ultimate experience of unity 'der Moment
des erlebten Paradoxen, der aufblitzende Augenblick, wo getrennte Pole sich
bertihren' ['Exotische Kunst', 1922 (GS VII, 271)]-it dissolves all barriers,
especially the border line between the outside world and that within.37
(Boulby, 116)
Although it is controversial whether time is completely independent of the mind or,
rather, one of its categories in other words, whether we live in time or, on the
contrary, time lives' in us Hesse and his 'magisches Denken' reject the hiatus
between the inner dimension of the self and the external reality of the world; this
36 In Der Steppenwolf, the character of Goethe expresses a similar view by alluding to an a-temporal dimension:
time is 'uberschatzt' and, seen from the point of view of eternity, does not exist, as observed in the Introduction
to this thesis (see SW 4, 96-97).
37 In his essay on Dostoevsky's Idiot, Hesse defines 'magisches Denken' as the ability to catch glimpses of an
ideal harmony beyond life's discords ('Gedanken zu Dostojewskijs Idiot' (1919), GS, VII, 178-186).
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