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

century onwards.4 The discussion on the concept of time reverberates too across the
arts, where it can be argued that there are few works which do not, either directly or
indirectly, relate to or deal with the concept of time. 5 Thematically, time surfaces in
surrealist art such as Dali's The Persistence of Memory (1931), where warped clocks,
portrayed as in the process of melting, are scattered across a beach landscape.
Eisenstein's pioneering experimentation with film editing essentially a narrative
time technique opened up new possibilities for the newly-introduced medium of
cinema. In literature, Proust's concern with memory, which is a facet of his
preoccupation with time, is at the forefront of the monumental ^4 la recherche du temps
perdu, published between 1913 and 1927. In its own author's words, Thomas Mann's
Der Zauberberg (1924) is a 'Zeitroman' ('Einfiihrung in den Zauberberg: Fur
Studenten der Universitat Princeton', 1939). 6 T. S. Eliot's elaboration on time
permeates the Four Quartets, appeared between 1936 and 19427
As a corollary of the discourse on time, new orientations emerge in relation to
the idea of eternity, the attention to the fleeting being an aspect of this new attitude. 8
Between the classical perspective on eternity, exemplified by Faust's longing for a
moment that expands and lingers indefinitely ('Verweile doch, du bist so schon!';
Goethe, 57), and the Romantic aspiration for the liberation from time, a new attitude
comes to the fore. This approach, which we may call 'Existentialist' in view of its
4 Beja notes: 'More than any previous period, perhaps, the first half of the twentieth century saw philosophical
problems largely in terms of time' (54). Heidegger contributes greatly to the debate on time, as witnessed by his
essay 'Der Begriff der Zeit' (1924) and, above all, Sein undZeit (1927).
5 'The arts are littered with references to time. Fiction and non-fiction, poetry, the visual arts, music: all of them
relate to time in the sense that what we read, or see, or hear was created at some past time, be it recent or far
removed. [...] Literature, whatever its nature, is all something from the past. It was, itself, written in the past. In
historical writing the concern is obviously directly with past events' (Holland, 41).
6 'Er [Der Zauberberg] ist ein Zeitroman in doppeltem Sinn: einmal historisch, indem er das innere Bild einer
Epoche, der europaischen Vorkriegszeit, zu entwerfen versucht, dann aber, weil die reine Zeit selbst sein
Gegenstand ist, den er nicht nur als die Erfahrung seines Helden, sondern auch in und durch sich selbst
behandelt' (Mann 1924, XIII-XIV).
7 As an echo of the troubled times in which both Der Zauberberg and the Four Quartets were conceived, not
only time is scrutinized and called into question but also the weather appears disrupted. At the sanatorium in
Mann's novel, it snows in August, and seasons merge with one another forming a continuum: 'Aber die Sache ist
die, daB die Jahreszeiten hier nicht so sehr voneinander verschieden sind, weiBt du, sie vermischen sich
sozusagen und halten sich nicht an den Kalender' (Mann 1924, 111). Seasons are similarly disarranged in Eliot's
poem, where he wonders: 'What is the late November doing | With the disturbance of the spring | And creatures
of the summer heat, | and snowdrops writhing under feet' (1944, 'East Coker', II, 14).
8 For a discussion of the fleeting as a manifestation of the eternal, see 'Epiphany' (4.6) and the introductory
section to Chapter 5.