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

wieder und wieder, was er nun schon so wohl zu kennen glaubte, alles kam wieder
und war doch jedesmal anders' (SW 4, 388). 32
A further comparison with the variation form is put forward by Ziolkowski.
In the last part of Der Steppenwolf, the protagonist, Harry Haller, is dragged by Pablo
into a theatre at the end of the 'Maskenball'. Haller enters a number of boxes in the
theatre, in each facing a different experience and being confronted with a different
aspect of his own personality. According to Ziolkowski, the theme, modulated
throughout this section of the novel, consists of
the notion that Haller's personality comprises a multiplicity of opposite
elements [...] Each booth in the Magic Theatre represents a variation on this
theme: in each one he sees a specific instance of the opposite tendencies in his
nature. (222)
Ziolkowski's argument will be discussed in more detail in section 2.5.
2.4 Leitmotif
The restatement of ideas and themes is a common device to achieve cohesion in both
literature (e.g. through anaphora) and music: in opera, a recurrent theme or a motif
associated with a character was a technique which had been established well before
Wagner's time. Nevertheless, this was to undergo substantial changes with Wagner,
to the point of becoming a compositional signature.
Wagner's use of the leitmotif principle differs from that of such composers as
Verdi and Weber. First, Wagner's motifs themselves are for the most part
short, concentrated, and (in intention, at least) so designed as to characterize
their object at various levels of meaning [...] Another and more important
difference, of course, is that Wagner's leitmotifs are the essential musical
substance of the work; they are used not as an exceptional device, but
constantly, in intimate alliance with every step of the action. (Grout, 749)
As Scher notes, Wagner's use of leitmotif played a seminal role in twentieth-century
literature:
32 This excerpt, which echoes a similar statement from Kurgast (see section 3 of Chapter 5), foreshadows the
considerations on 'circularity' in Chapter 5, one of the images Hesse calls on to conjure up timelessness.
51