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

In the twentieth century, the advent of cinema, and its mixture of texts, images, and
sounds propelled a similar process of interspersion among disciplines. 7 As an artist
who chiefly operates in the twentieth century but whose cultural background is
mainly rooted in the previous two centuries, Hermann Hesse reflects the same
tendency. As an active painter for part of his life and a music lover and a
connoisseur, who played the violin in his childhood, the sensory domains of sight
and hearing appeal to him greatly and play a major role in his activity as a writer. 8
On a linguistic level, Hesse draws on both sounds and images to broaden and
enrich his range of expression. 9 The two spheres are sometimes fused or show a high
degree of interdependence, as in the case of Hesse's attempt to transfer music into
words, which requires him to call on the visual. 10 This is also explained by the fact
that, as his friend and writer Romain Rolland noted after their first meeting, music
feeds Hesse's visual imagination:
Hesse ist vor allem ein Augenmensch [...] beim Horen von Musik sieht er
immer Bilder und Landschaften (bei einem bestimmten Praludium von Cesar
Frank, das er besonders liebt, sieht er hohe Berge). 11 (in Volker Michels'
'Nachwort' to Musik, 220-21)
At the beginning of his career, the sound qualities of a word would often determine
Hesse's linguistic choices since, as Boulby points out, 'in the wake of the French
Symbolists, language is still almost as significant for how it sounds as for what it
7 The influence of the visual arts, and cinema in particular, on the imagery of contemporary writers as well as the
impact of film editing and montage on their manipulation of literary techniques can hardly be overestimated.
8 A review published in 1926 contains Hesse's enthusiastic appreciation of both music and painting, indirectly
shedding light on the influence the two arts exerted on him: 'Fur mich ist die Musik obenan Mozart, neben dem
Sehen von Farben der hochste Genuss' (Musik, 150).
9 Music, for instance, reveals itself 'mit einem winzigen, seidenzarten, Flugelgesumme' (Ger, SW 2, 302) and
resounds through the 'schwingende Weltmusik' (Kur, SW 11, 40) of the stars, or even through 'die Melodien des
Gurgelns' (Kur, SW 11, 78); Mozart as a character in Der Steppenwolf '[schlagt] Triller mit den Beinen' (SW 4,
194); 'Sonnenblumen [schreien] im Garten golden ins Blau empor' in Klingsors letzter Sommer (SW 8, 311);
and a man portrayed in Kurgast releases his breath 'beherrscht und rhythmisch wie aus einer Oboe' (SW 11, 90).
10 Gianino notes that this aspect of Hesse's writing surfaces especially in Gertrud(see Gianino, p. 80). Indeed,
the musical content of Kuhn's compositions is not illustrated in musical terms but transposed into a visual key,
projected onto an abstract plane, where Hesse portrays sensations inspired by the music more than the music
itself. However, the 'rendition' of music through images has far-reaching implications that affect and extend to
Siddhartha and Der Steppenwolf (see the remainder of this section and 'Time changes to space', section 4 of
Chapter 5).
11 Diirr refers to Goethe as an 'Augenmensch' too in the chapter 'Ton, Wort und Farbe' (15), and in relation to
Rolland he notes: 'Der geniale Franzose und Freund Hermann Hesses stand selbst zwischen Dichtung und
Musik'(18).
40