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

ejection entails an act of the mind in order to bring about the abolition of time
regardless of whether time is an external agent or a product of the mind. 38
The blueprint of Hesse's 'magisches Denken' can be traced back to
Romanticism. On the one hand, his emphasis on the identity of inner and outer
reality (see 'Innen und Aufien' [1919]; SW 8, 336-47) is indebted to Schopenhauer,
'who adapted Kant's aesthetics to the needs of Romanticism, do[ing] away with the
dualism between subject and object, for even the world is will and idea' (Beja, 30); on
the other, his idea of 'magic' descends from Novalis and his 'magischer Idealismus',
who, in turn, draws on Fichte's elaboration of Kant's transcendental idealism:
Fichte verwandelt Kants transzendentale Grundlegung der Natur in eine
transzendentale Operation des Geistes, indem er nicht nur wie Kant die
Bedingungen der Erkenntnis und des Gegenstandes im Subjekt finder,
sondern die Natur aus dem Geist entstehen la'fit und sie als ein Produkt des
Geistes enthiillt. 39 (Volkmann-Schluck, 45)
With its origins in Romanticism, 'magisches Denken' becomes Hesse's point of
departure for his elaboration on the idea of metamorphosis, which I discuss in
Chapter 4 (4.5).
1.5 Intellectualism vs naivety
In section 1.3,1 remarked on Siddhartha's ambivalent attitude towards those he
terms 'Kindermenschen' and noted the fluctuation, frequent in Hesse, in the
connotations of the word 'kindlich',. In the 'Legende vom indischen Konig', for
instance, the king's philosophical speculation and quest for truth are compared to a
'childlike' game which adults would laugh at:
Und indem er ihnen seine Fragen aufgab und seine Ehrengaben verteilte, kam
er sich vor wie ein Kind, das mit anderen Kindern einem Spiele hingegeben
ist, einem hiibschen Kinderspiel, liber das die Manner lacheln. (SW 9, 29)
38 'The Eastern mystics, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bergson are among the leading proponents of the unreality of
time'(Holland, 124).
39 The idea [of magical thinking] actually comes from Fichte, whose idealism was indirectly a significant source
of Hesse's thought' (Boulby, 186). Karalaschwili stresses the same point (see 51-52).
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