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

Rofthalde (1914). 5 Hesse stresses this fundamental turning point in his life in various
documents such as 'Beim Einzug in ein neues Haus':
Es kam, nicht ganz zwei Jahre nach unserer Ubersiedlung, der Weltkrieg, es
kam fur mich die Zerstorung meiner Freiheit und Unabhangigkeit, es kam die
grofie moralische Krise durch den Krieg [...] es kam das jahrlange schwere
Kranksein unsres jiingsten, dritten Sohnchens, es kamen die ersten Vorboten
der Gemiitskrankheit meiner Frau. 6 (GSIV, 629)
With regard to his standing as a writer, after his early works had met with success
and public approval, Hesse had gradually grown weary of his own style. Moreover,
his standpoint as a pacifist was criticized, and the War accentuated the isolation that
he first experienced in his home-retreat in Gaienhofen on Lake Constance and then,
after a few years spent in Berne, in Montagnola (from 1919).7 Hesse's attitude
towards music in this first phase is characterized by the appreciation of certain
romantic elements from which he will progressively distance himself at a later
stage. This romantic slant is apparent in his infatuation with the music of Chopin, as
generally underlined by scholars (see, for example, Ziolkowski 1965,191).
Chopin frequently appears in Hesse's early works: the narrator of 'Der
Inseltraum', the opening story of Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht (1899), plays 'ein
Notturno von Chopin' (ESM, SW 1,186); in a letter to his parents, dated 1897, Hesse
maintains that
was fur Nietzsche Wagner war, ist fur mich Chopin, - oder noch mehr. Mit
diesen warmen, lebendigen Melodien, mit dieser pikanten, lasziven, nervosen
Harmonie, mit dieser ganzen so ungemein intimen Musik Chopins hangt alles
Wesentliche meines geistigen und seelischen Lebens zusammen. (Musik, 126-
27)
5 Gommen terms the first period of Hesse's artistic production 'Phase der naiven Einfachheit (1895-1916/17)'
(see p.64,141). Boulby similarly dates Hesse's early career: 'it extends from his literary beginnings in the 1890's
until 1916' (79). Freedman, who identifies four main turns in Hesse's life ('new lives'), subdivides this period in
two distinctive phases, the dividing line being the time between 1902 and Hesse's marriage with Mia (1904).
6 Mileck too emphasizes the centrality of this juncture: 'The period 1916-17 marked a turning point both in
Hesse's life and in his art' (1961, 171).
7 ' 1915 was a turning point which brought this critic of the war [Hesse] into conflict in unheard of fashion with
his country and its government, with public opinion, with conventional intellectual life, and indeed with every
form of orthodoxy both in the world and in himself (Boulby, 89). Boulby also stresses the change in the
course of Hesse's writing prompted by the war upheaval: 'A stream of letters, essays, and pamphlets now
commences, and these have a flavor, an urgency, and a message very different from the largely dilettantist
literary exercises of the Gaienhofen years' (82).
69