Hermann Hesse, "Autobiographical Writings" 에서

 

 

 

Hermann Hesse, "Autobiographical Writings" (1972)

 

 

Childhood of the Magician (1923)

 

[L]ong before I could read and write

they[Hindu deity and others] so filled me with

age-old  Eastern images and ideas.... And yet

I am a European ... and all my life have zealously

practiced the Western virtues of impetuosity,

greed and unquenchable curiosity. Fortunately,

like most children, I had learned what is most

valuable, most indispensable for life before my

school years began, taught by apple trees,

by rain and sun, river and woods,

bees and beetles. (p 3)

 

From My Schooldays (1923)

 

[M]y soul prospered most and blossomed most beautifully

when it could revere, adore, strive for that highest goal.

This happiness ... which under a series of mediocre,

lackluster teachers had almost withered away. (p 31)

 

About Grandfather (1952)

 

A poem by Hermann Gundert (p 34)

 

[T]hat marvelous Swabian world compounded of

material stringency and intellectual grandeur ... the

world in which Hölderlin, Hegel, Mörike became great....

theologically colored but unwilling to exclude any

tendency from pietism to radical free

thought. (p 38-39)

 

Life Story Briefly Told (1925)

 

In my sixteenth year ... I consciously and energetically

began my own education, and it was my good fortune

and delight that in my father;s house was my

grandfather's huge library ... which contained among

other things all of eighteenth-century German

literature and philosophy. (p 47)

 

One day in 1915 a public confession of this

wretchedness escaped me, together with an ｅxpression

of regret that even so-called spiritual people could find

nothing better to do than preach hatred, spread lies,

and praise the great misfortune to the skies. The result

of this rather hesitantly expressed lament was that in

the press of my native land I was denounced as

a traitor -- a new experience for me. (p 50)

 

And then, behold, at the age of forty, I began

to paint. (p 56)

 

I consider reality to be the last thing one need

concern oneself about, for it is, tediously enough,

always present, ... for it is accidental,

the offal of life. (p 56)

 

Remembrance of India (1916)

 

But even more beautiful and to my mind infinitely more

important was the ... recognition, in all its freshness

and sensuousness, that not only East and West, not

only Europe and Asia are unities, but that there is a

unity and association over and beyond

that -- humanity. (p 67)

 

Journey to Nuremberg (1926)

 

On what do we really live, where do we find life

if not in our feelings? (p 187)

 

And if from now on my journey should bring me

nothing but disappointments -- this moment under

the Tuttlingen moon, with the unexpected emergence

of the Hölderlin verses, was reward enough. (p 197)

 

I know the malice with which the intellectually small

man rejoices when he sees that public men and

men of intellect are also human, have

something comic about them, show

vanity or embarrassment. (p 208)

 

For Marulla (1953)

[여동생 Marulla 를 가족 묘지에 묻은 그 다음 날]

 

In many cases, to be sure, this combining of two sisters

[Adele and Marulla] into one is nothing but a simplication,

an economy or convenience resulting from an incapacity,

a lack in my talent, which has always prevented me from

writing stories concerning many persons. (p 262)

 

If you did not have the animation and marvelous

enthusiasm of Adele, by way of compensation you were

more foresighted and more precise in your judgements,

less easily blinded or carried away, and more exact in your

verbal and written ｅxpression.... What was only beautiful,

only pleasing, was open to suspicion in your eyes,

it had to have the value of truth as well. (p 265)

 

There was one thing of great importance that I never

thoroughly discussed with you ... I mean the faith in

which we raised.... Had your Christian faith and my world

faith been put in naked confrontation, they would have

had to part like water and fire, like yes and no. (p 267-8)

 

Events in the Engadine (1953)

 

Among the experiences destined to be appropriate and

important to me, next to human and intellectual ones,

are those of landscape. (p 271)

 

All old people, whether they know it or not, are in search

of the past, of the apparently irrecoverable; the past,

however, is not irrecoverable, not absolutely gone, for

it can, under certain circumstances, through poetry

for example, be brought back ... (p 276)

 

It[Narcissus and Golmund] was a friendly and beneficent

reunion, for nothing in the book evoked regret or remorse.

Not that I was in complete agreement with everything

about it, naturally the book has shortcomings; it seemed

to me, as with almost all my writings when I reread them

after a long time, a bit too long, a bit too talkative, perhaps

the same thing is said too often in somewhat different

words. Nor was i spared a recurrent and rather shaming

insight into my lack of talent and ability. (p 288)