Strange News From Another Star - Hermann Hesse

 STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER STAR -

HERMANN HESSE

He was a master of great book titles Hermann Hesse, I mean just who wouldn't want to read a book called The Glass Bead Game, or Steppenwolf, or Narziss And Goldmund? And so too Strange News From Another Star? Sometimes the image on the covers of his books wouldn't be up to much but this would have been something out of the author's control and down to Penguin or whatever publishing house the book was from. And of course, seeing as how Hesse has been dead since 1962 he's got even less say in it now. A case in point being the cover of Strange News From Another Star, first published in 1919 and republished in 1976 with an uninspiring silhouette of Hesse's profile superimposed over a quartet of pictures. It's pretty rubbish and not really the image you might conjure up from the title. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but like it or not the cover still plays a part in deciding whether you choose to read it. But like how The Dude abides in The Big Lebowski, like a loyal trooper I persevere. 

It was Timothy Leary in the Sixties who first rekindled interest in Hermann Hesse by citing him as an influence upon new psychedelia. 'We read Hermann Hesse' he told Tom Wolfe, describing Hesse as 'the poet of the interior journey', and not without good reason. Most of Hesse's books deal with the duality between the physical and the metaphysical, the subsequent conflict and the search for balance. His books beautifully illustrate yearnings of the soul and an often unspoken grasping for enlightenment and ways in which to achieve it.

'Turn on, tune in, drop out' as Leary advised which was all well and good but in so doing he and everyone who followed his advice came into direct conflict with the physical world and its representatives in the form of the police, the army, politicians and straight society. What path to take and which way to go then became the only question with Leary finding clues within the works of Hermann Hesse.

Strange News From Another Star is a collection of eight short stories and though it's not one of Hesse's better known book by any means, it's still an important addition to his canon of work because the mere fact that the stories are written by the maestro guarantees them to be of interest and of high quality. It's a given.

Augustus is written almost as a fairy tale, the moral of it being that to love is a good thing but is not enough in itself and that to love is much more important.

The Poet concerns itself with the getting of wisdom, written as a metaphor.

Flute Dream describes life as a dream with love, joy and happiness alongside fear, death and despair being mere other dreams within that dream.

Strange News From Another Star essentially conveys that 'in the midst of life we are in death', as the saying goes.

The Hard Passage is another metaphor for the journey through life.

A Dream Sequence is exactly that: sequences of a dream captured on paper.

Faldum is about a stranger entering a town and granting a wish to each and every one of its inhabitants, one of whom wishes for nothing more but to listen and watch and to think about what is immortal. So he becomes a mountain. It's folklore, so in that sense it's not as stupid as it might sound.

The last story and probably the best one is called Iris, and is about a man's search for what is in effect an essence rare. It's fascinating. The allusions to William Blake and his Auguries of Innocence are obvious , particularly to Blake's couplet 'To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour'. The story starts with a young boy's love of flowers and is the prose equivalent of one of Robert Mapplethorpe's flower photos. It ends with the boy as an old man searching for nirvana and 'the image behind the image'. In the end he finds it right where he began as a child and having abandoned wealth, stature and all notions of modern-day respectability, enters into it.

As with a lot of Hesse's books, Strange News From Another Star raises once again the question that Timothy Leary posed as in did Hermann Hesse ever go down the chemical path to enlightenment and use mind-changing drugs like mescaline? Interestingly, Leary never asked the same about William Blake. There's no evidence, however, that Hesse ever partook of drugs although he did travel extensively through India which means if anything he would have indulged in hashish or opiates.

'To make this mundane world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme' as Aldous Huxley once put it though of course Humphry Osmond put it better with his 'to fathom Hell or soar angelic, you need a pinch of psychedelic'. Hermann Hesse, William Blake and Aldous Huxley all circle around each other warily like in some mad gunfight from an Italian western. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Well there's three right there but as always it's an irrelevant question just as the question of Hesse and drugs is - even though it's an intriguing one. Hesse himself would probably say it's better to just read the books, turn off your mind, relax and float down the stream; to lay down all thoughts and surrender to the void because it's not dying, it's shining, it's being, it's knowing and it's believing. Now where have we heard that before?

John Serpico

Rosshalde - Hermann Hesse

ROSSHALDE – HERMANN HESSE

I've made it my mission to plough through the complete works of Hermann Hesse. Well, you only live once. Hermann who, you might ask? Ah, it doesn't matter, I reply.

First published in 1914, Rosshalde is perhaps one of Hesse's lesser known books and though not as powerful as some of his others such as Steppenwolf or Journey To The East, it still packs an emotional and intellectual punch. On reading it, my immediate thought is that it reads like an Ingmar Bergman film. Meaning, it's soul-searching, desolate and bleak but in the end wholly uplifting and resolutely deep with meaning.

Rosshalde is the name of the house where an estranged family live out their somewhat dysfunctional lives. Dysfunctional, that is, in terms of happiness. The father is an artist who lives in an out-house in the grounds of the estate while his wife lives in their mansion house, devoutly caring for their son. Their other elder son lives away at University and only comes home during holidays.

Between the father and his wife there is little communication; between the father and the elder son there is not only little communication but open hostility. The only real link between them all is the younger son, whom they all love.

From this toxic situation, however, the father produces great and internationally acclaimed art but at what price? Must the source of great art hung on the walls of the rich always have to be wrung from the anguish and sadness of the artist?

The visit of a friend from the Far East punctures the sterility of the father's life and suggests a solution: To step out into the world and away from seclusion, isolation and self-imposed unhappiness. To embrace the world. To join him in the Far East to live a fuller life, enjoying the beauty and wonder of nature and to capture it in art.

Here then is the theme familiar to many of Hesse's books, that of the question as whether to live one's life in contemplation or to throw one's self into the maelstrom of the world. The father takes heed of his friend's suggestion and decides to abandon his so-called 'family life' and head off to the Far East for a year or so, leaving it open as to whether he might ever return. This decision is arrived at after much soul-searching but rather than running away from his responsibilities he is instead facing up to everything and walking away – and right there is the big difference.

For all that, before he is able to leave tragedy occurs when his younger son is struck down with meningitis and dies. The book ends with the father about to set out on his new life, poorer and indelibly wounded by the death of his son but determined now not to waste or lose a precious hour of his life again.

Rosshalde is a classic depiction of an Apollonian and Dionysian tragedy where light clashes with dark and the real clashes with the illusory. The key is in the joining of the two opposites and that is what the father in setting off for the Far East is going for: To complete himself by living a fuller life but through contemplation still being creative – in his case, to continue to paint.

A point of interest in the story is Hesse's use of metaphor. It's the arrival of his friend from the Far East that prompts and instigates the father's epiphany but clearly this is just a way of representing the advent of what essentially is a moment of revelation, which could actually have been brought about by any number of other things. 
Hesse, in this particular story, represents it as a visit of a friend from the Far East but just as easily it could have been represented by the reading of a book, the hearing of a song, the viewing of a picture, an unplanned incident, an unexpected interruption, or even the imbibing of a drug. Which brings us neatly to Timothy Leary's supposition that Hesse may have been experimenting with psychedelic drugs and that his flashes of inspiration were being derived from this.

You can see where Leary's coming from because Hesse's moments of perception are somewhat similar to the moments of clarity that can be brought about by LSD. Aldous Huxley would have vouched for this. Apart from the books themselves, however, there is no evidence to support Leary's suggestion, which is actually quite good to know. It tells us that rather than being drug-induced, Hesse's ideas, visions and insights are all natural, which makes for even greater respect for him. Which makes for his books to be more likeable, more engaging and – interestingly – more real.

John Serpico

Siddartha - Hermann Hesse

SIDDARTHA - HERMANN HESSE

Hermann Hesse goes into the Mystic and returns clutching a tale about searching for the only One. It's a divine light mission in the proper sense, once again mining themes familiar to all his works.

Essentially, all of Hesse's books are vehicles to convey his thoughts, his ideas and his beliefs; Siddartha being one of the most popular he's ever written. There's no real reason why it should be one of his best received books as there's nothing particularly unusual about it or anything that makes it particularly better than any of his others, though that's not to say it isn't any good, and in fact - it's very good indeed.

It's the story of a young man by the name of Siddartha, the son of a Brahmin, who leaves his family home to venture out into the world in a search for enlightenment. He spends a period of his life in absolute poverty, living in the woods with no roof over his head, no possessions and hardly any clothes to stand up in. A total ascetic.

From this period in his life he learns to think, wait and fast; though he comes to understand also that by continuing down this path of denial of all worldly matters he will still not attain Nirvana and a return to Godhead.

He gets to meet a living Buddha who many seekers after the Truth are following but sees that if he was to follow him too, still he would not become a living Buddha himself but would remain a disciple. He chooses instead to take a completely opposite path and throws himself headlong into the world of pleasure and material gain. After some years, however, he discovers that wealth is a ghetto leading ultimately to the extinguishing of the soul.

Where then might lay the answer? Battered and bruised by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and contemplating suicide, he rests by a river and it is here he has a revelation: 'The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.'

He sees his life also as a river where Siddartha the boy, Siddartha the mature man and Siddartha the old man are only separated by shadows, not through reality. He sees his previous lives were also not in the past, and his death and return to Brahma not in the future. 'Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence'.

So he becomes a ferryman, spending the remainder of his days learning from the river and listening to its many voices, which when heard in totality becomes just the one voice and the one word: Om.

Hesse concludes that there is such a thing as an Ultimate Truth but that there's no single path to it, and that it isn't anything that can actually be taught, only realised. Everyone must be allowed to live their own life and to follow their own path even if it might cause them harm, though with the proviso that it shouldn't cause harm to others.

Siddartha concludes that 'love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.'

Siddartha is a good book and Hermann Hesse was a very good storyteller. For further reading on the subjects he writes about here I'd recommend anyone to go to the primary sources, those being the Baghavad Gita and the Upanishads. For all that, however, Siddartha by Hermann Hesse is a good place to start.

John Serpico

Wandering - Hermann Hesse

WANDERING - HERMANN HESSE

Hermann Hesse gets all mystical on your ass as he sets off on a trip through a pass in the Alps on the way to Montagnola on the Swiss/Italian border, recording along the way his thoughts and observations in prose, poetry and sketches.

I must confess, I'm no connoisseur of poetry. I like Rimbaud and Baudelaire and William Blake - and I like Patti Smith - but when it comes to poems by, for example, Hermann Hesse, I'm just not very interested. His book, Wandering, contains poetry and they don't really float my boat - Philistine that I am. I much more prefer his prose and his novels of which, in fact, I'm a bit of an admirer and it's in the prose pieces in Wandering that I think the most interesting ideas are to be found.

In these pieces Hesse wrestles with the same themes that inform a lot of his books as in the dichotomy between living life out in the physical world or retreating to the cloistered world of contemplation. Which of the two might be the most valid is a question he returns to again and again as he bids vainly to combine the two.

His recurring question over how to live a life is dealt with very succinctly in the piece, Red House, where he admits 'There is no center in my life; my life hovers between many poles and counterpoles. A longing for home here, a longing for wandering there. A longing for loneliness and cloister here, and an urge for love and community there. I have collected books and paintings and given them away. I have cultivated voluptuousness and vice, and renounced them for asceticism and penance. I have faithfully revered life as substance, and then realised that I could recognise and love life only as a function.'

Let's just stop and think about that for a moment, shall we?

Right. Wandering was written in 1920 but there's a piece in there that sadly - and very interestingly - is rather pertinent to Europe and Great Britain in 2016. The piece is called Farmhouse and in it Hesse writes: 'If there were many other people who loathed the borders between countries as I do, then there would be no more wars and blockades. Nothing on earth is more disgusting, more contemptible than borders. They're like cannons, like generals: as long as peace, loving kindness and peace go on, nobody pays any attention to them - but as soon as war and insanity appear, they become urgent and sacred. While the war went on, how they were pain and prison to us wanderers. Devil take them!'

It's the line 'As soon as war and insanity appear, they become urgent and sacred' that leaps out because is not the subject of 'borders between countries' profoundly topical these days? If so, does this mean that war and insanity is today's currency?

Hermann Hesse came into fashion in the Sixties and early Seventies but I fear he's rather fallen from the spotlight of late which is a shame because he's still got an awful lot to offer the modern day reader. The question he mulls over as in should one throw oneself out into the world or retreat to a cloister can these days be translated into the question of should we get out onto the streets or stay in our rooms on the Internet? Can the two be successfully combined? Where does real life lay? Should we make our friends on Facebook or down the pub? Viewing the world today (or Britain, at least) it would seem most people are choosing the Internet option but - call me old fashioned - I tend to agree with what Henry Miller once said: 'What is not in the open street is false derived, that is to say, literature.'

Yes indeed, the works of Hermann Hesse are still very relevant. 

John Serpico

The Journey To The East - Hermann Hesse

THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST -

HERMANN HESSE

The Journey To The East by Hermann Hesse is the story of a trip through time and space, carousing through the windmills of Hesse's mind with not only friends of his youth but also with characters from books.

By 'the East', Hesse means not only a geographical place but the home of his youth and his soul, moving from his present day through to the Middle Age and the Golden Age and back again. 'The East' is 'everywhere and nowhere and the the union of all times'.

Along the way he comes across such things as Noah's Ark, found amid the tramways and banks of Zurich, guarded by dogs all bearing the same name. He visits a Chinese Temple where incense holders gleam beneath a bronze Maja and a black king plays flute sweetly to the vibrating tone of the temple gong. He roams through Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland; through 'the heroic and the magical'. He rides with Sancho Panza, swims with mermaids and bears witness to miracles.

Hesse makes his journey alongside fellow members of what is termed 'the League', an ancient, semi-secret society numbering at times thousands and at other times just small groups. It's whilst travelling with one such group that one of the members, by the name of Leo, suddenly disappears. Though Leo just like all other members of the League is on a personal quest of his own, he's with the group working as a servant, his job being to carry luggage.

With his disappearance along with a bag containing valuable items, his importance to the journey and to the group is realised by Hesse and the other members, leading to them arguing amongst themselves and falling out with each other. The journey to the East is abandoned and Hesse is left for the rest of his days without meaning or purpose to his life.

His attempts to write about the journey to the East and to document his experiences with the League fail as he finds it impossible to put it all into words. He finally, however, meets Leo again one day and all is revealed to him: The servant, Leo, is in actual fact the President of the League and his disappearance when in the role of a servant along with the valuable items in the bag was actually of no real importance. The important thing was the journey and whilst the servant may have abandoned Hesse, it was Hesse who had abandoned the journey.

In Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test it gives mention to The Journey To The East as being a book owned by Ken Kesey that all of Kesey's fellow Merry Pranksters read. They all identify with it because like Hesse they too are on a journey to the East just as Hesse was so obviously - as they call it - 'on the bus'. Hesse, like Jack Kerouac, was 'on the road'.

They are all of them on a trip, turned on and tuned in. From Hesse, Kesey, Kerouac and all the Merry Pranksters to all the characters as mentioned in Hesse's book: Zoroaster, Lao Tse, Plato, Sancho Panza, Xenophon, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, and Baudelaire.

No wonder Timothy Leary rated Hesse.

Of course, anyone can write a book about the meaning of life. It's easy. The genius of Hermann Hesse, however, is that The Journey To The East is about the losing and the forgetting of the meaning of life and we can all identify with that, can't we, because we've all done it? We've all been there at one time or another even if only fleetingly. The secret is in the remembering and it's for this reason why The Journey To The East remains to this day a classic of modern literature.

Read it and weep.

John Serpico

Turn on, tune in, drop out

Knulp - Hermann Hesse

KNULP - HERMANN HESSE

'I want to break free', as Freddie Mercury once said and don't we all, eh kids? Apart from George Michael, that is, who doesn't want your freedom but that's a whole different story.

Knulp, by Hermann Hesse is a meditation on the subject of freedom; of what it might mean and of the consequences of pursuing it. Does being free mean being fulfilled? Does freedom bring happiness? Is freedom in itself a large enough reward for what might be lost in gaining it?

Hesse's genius was in the way he was able to ponder such questions and convey meaningfulness through beautifully written stories. He's one of my most favourite writers.

First published in 1915, Knulp is the story of a young German tramp who has opted to drop out of society; not through misfortune or misadventure but through choice. He spends his days wandering from village to village, always being offered food and a place to lay his head by strangers and old friends alike. Men enjoy his company and women love him. Knulp is seemingly a happy soul.

We learn that he was once a model student and if he had only continued with his studies could have become a great man and achieved great things. When he views the lives of those who have married, worked and built worlds around themselves - though he holds them no malice - he knows that this simply isn't for him.

Knulp, however, is a haunted man and reveals this during conversations with old friends and fellow tramps. He recognises a loneliness within himself and though he sees it in other men too, within him it is much more acute.

Come the end of the book, Knulp as a much older man but still a tramp, is dying and has returned to the village where he was born to view it for one last time. For all the roaming he's done, for all the adventure, the singing, the dancing, for all the friends he's made and the girls he's loved; Knulp understands that it was in the days of his childhood that he was the most happy and the most fulfilled. In those days of innocence now long passed, before knowing anything of the world beyond the garden, the woods and the fields in which he played; it was there that he was most free.

Knulp heads off to the woods in the mountains to be alone with his thoughts and it's there that he wrestles with the idea that the life he has led has been a botched and futile one. In his thoughts he converses with God who reassures Knulp that whatever happened in his life was good and right, that nothing should have been any different. Moreover, that Knulp was a wanderer in God's name and wherever he went he brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom.

Contented that everything is as it should be, Knulp lays down in the snow... and sleeps...

Knulp is a very beautiful book that deserves to be read at least once and deserves to be contemplated. And on contemplating it you'll realise that the cover painting on the Picador edition as painted by Guernsey artist Peter Le Vasseur, depicting a man looking over into a garden at a boy (or the boy looking over the fence at the man, or just both simply looking at each other?) is brilliant, poignant and perfect.

John Serpico