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

'modulated' and developed, identify the pattern of the first-movement form, or
sonata form. 38
Ziolkowski's analysis of the structure of Der Steppenwolf also highlights
important dynamics underlying the novel, such as the 'technique of double
perception' (1965, 207), according to which events unfold concurrently on two
different planes: the plane of everyday reality and that of reality filtered through the
lens of Haller's imagination. Haller is in effect described by Ziolkowski as 'an eidetic,
an individual capable of producing subjective images that in their vividness rival
objective reality' (1965,197). 39 The device of 'double perception' is presented by
Ziolkowski as the literary equivalent of the counterpoint technique, in view of the
fact that an event in the novel brings about two different interpretations of the event
itself.40
Although Ziolkowski's argument has generally encountered the favour of
peers, and, in some cases, scholars have adopted his approach to draw similar
parallels with Hesse's other works (e.g. Gianino, see note 5), his view has also
attracted some criticism. Both Karalaschwili and Hollis, for instance, draw attention
to the 'double perception' technique in relation to the series of events occurring in the
'Magisches Theater7 where, according to Ziolkowski, the interplay of the two levels
(mundane reality, and reality filtered through the protagonist's imagination) reaches
its peak.
Karalaschwili emphatically dismisses Ziolkowski's interpretation of the Magic
Theatre as moving upon a double plane of real life and Haller's subjective
perception. Karalaschwili's point is that the 'Magisches Theater' encompasses a
38 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music defines the sonata form as a 'type of musical construction [...]
normally used in the first movement of a sonata, symphony, or concerto [...] Regular sonata form implies three
sections: exposition (containing first subject, in tonic key, and second subject, in dominant, and sometimes
further subjects)[;] development (in which the material of the exposition is worked out in a kind of free fantasia)
[;] and recapitulation (in which the exposition is repeated, though often with modification, and with the second
subject now in the tonic). [...] The basis of sonata form is key relationships'.
39 The 'double perception technique' finds an echo in Rose's description of Demian, whose '[characters] hold
one meaning as persons of real life and another as archetypes of the [protagonist's] psychological world' (Rose,
55).
40 According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, counterpoint is 'the ability, unique to music, to say
two things at once comprehensibly. The term derives from the expression punctus contra punctum, i.e. "point
against point" or "note against note'". Taking his cue from Calvin's description of the pun as a 'devic[e] by
which two different things can be presented with a sort of simultaneity' (42), Ziolkoski also observes that the
'double perception achieves the effect of a sustained pun 7 (199); see also Chapter 6, section 1, especially note 13.
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