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Hesse and Dialectics a Comparative Literature Essay

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Hesse and Dialectics a Comparative Literature Essay J.Reynolds HHP digital, 2013 Hesse and Dialectics A Comparative Literature Essay J. Reynolds Introduction In undertaking this project, I am not limiting myself to my previously announced intentions, on the first day of class I announced that I did not care for “mysticism", that my concern is primarily with social problems. This concern has not diminished, but I see in Hesse a unique attitude and approach to the human condition. Looking for any possible weakness in Hesse's work, I sought a way to attack him. I now feel that Hess himself was engaged in the business of reconciliation, and that a direct attempt at confrontation would be alien to his purpose, and therefore it should be to mine. I am using the framework of Hegelian dialectics to approach Hesse, with the realization that this will only work up to a certain point and then collapse completely, as I will explain in the last part of my paper. Four concepts of dialectics: Totalism - we understand "things" relative to other things and to "everything" we understand (or think we understand) Process - we understand "things" going through space and time and going through changes. Emergence - we understand things as coming into being and heading on out toward non-being. The slightest change can change our entire perspective (change changes). Contradictions - opposites exist simultaneously and proximately, they complement each other and generate life. One more notion that I will be discussing will be synergy. The individual composite elements unite into a greater whole. From this greater whole, petty laws and distinctions lose their import. (I see one planet. I am a citizen of the world). *** Totalism "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that‘s no matter tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out out arms farther …. and one fine morning So we beat on, boats against the current, born* back ceaselessly into the past."1 In this final passage from The Great Gatsby, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, seems to express despair over the tyranny of time and space. No matter what great hopes we aspire to, we are continually thrown back upon our present condition. 1 Francis Scott Fitzgerald,, The Great Gatsby, New York: Scribners, 1925. p.159. 1/5 J.Reynolds HHP digital, 2013 "That's well said," replied Candid*, "but we must cultivate our own garden."2 In other words, Voltaire would have us not dwell overly much on the problematic of our past or future, but simply make the most of our here and now. We‘re stuck here, so we might as well make the most of it. Fitzgerald is making a frank confession that he can personally see no purpose to our existence because we seem to be stuck in space and time. Voltaire urges us not to trouble ourselves with such questions, merely to make the most of our situation. Fitzgerald cries out that things are bad. Relative to what? Conditions at other times and other places, relative to what they could be like? Voltaire is locked in. He urges us to accent our little heres and nows. Candide is well off at the start and is cheated by his own adventurous spirit. Gatsby, on the other hand is bad off in his early life. He improves his lot by mastering the decay which constantly threatens to engulf him once more. His goal is a better life, but he is limited to the extent that he sees this new life defined by his old life. Most of Hesse 's characters get off to pretty good starts. The idyllic conditions in Peter Camerzind's Nimikon, the wealth and style of Max Demian, the comfortable home life of Emil Sinclair, the Brahmin Siddharths, to put forth a few examples. But the quest is the some, and just as perilous, the search for a better life, the actualization of a better man. Process I have already begun to talk about the notion of process to some extent. The notion of time is ubiquitious in western thought, and mechanical time is one of the first concepts instilled in young American pupils. "But the longing to get on the other side of everything already settled, this makes me, and everyone like me, a road sign to the future. If there were many other people who loathed the borders between countries as I do, then there would be no more wars and blockades."3 Hesse disliked the artificial constraints which men put on each other and the world around them. Peter Camenzind defies the danger of the mountains and the privacy of Rosi Girtanner's house to "deliver" flowers. Boppi defies his paraplegia through humor and song. Hans Giebenrath defies the oppressiveness of temporal "reality" by punching out. Man exists not in time, but through time. Time is relevant to man only insofar as man constitutes his own time. The man is free to go where he wants and when he wants. The movement of the body is the dance of the soul, and you can't dance in a car. Hesse predicted that "in fifty years the earth will be graveyard of machines […].”4 This desire for the end of tyrannical time is revolutionary. The idea of being trapped in time is not unique to Hesse. Sartre's characters find themselves trapped in a round-robin of mutual derision in his play No Exit. A similar dilemma is encountered in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and The Stranger by Camus. In all of these works the principal characters are trapped in some 2 Voltaire, Candide and other Writings, New York: Modern Library, 1956. p. 189. 3 Hermann Hesse, Wandering (translation by James Wright) New York: Noonday, 1972, p. 5. 4 Miguel Serrano, C. G. Jung & Hermann Hesse, A record of Two Friendships, New York: Schocken, 1966, p. 31. 2/5 J.Reynolds HHP digital, 2013 sort of process over which they have control [yet] which is somehow never exercised, and humanity which is somehow never fully realized. In Kafka's Trial, the process finally catches up with Joseph K. and he is destroyed. The opposite (or same) result takes place in Jerzy Kozinskits Being There: Chance is educated entirely by television, and does not distinguish reality from T.V. He ends up as Vice-president of the United States. Emergence "... unless a man has been born again he cannot see the kingdom..." (John 3:3) "Dear God, I had never seen myself with those eyes before, and in a rapture of love I kissed my own lips in the mirror […].“5 “I was less and less able to believe that these were the same eyes that a moment before had been fixed in a dread obsession.”6 The above quotes express an abrupt change. The process is interrupted, the new man emerges and "sees" with new eyes. For the seer, the entire perceptual cosmos is suddenly transformed. The resurrected man can see the kingdom. Lieutenant Glahn is enabled to discover yet another passion within him. Harry Haller expresses genuine amazement when a new door of perception is opened within him. Timothy Leary, in The Politics of Ecstasy compares this to the drug experience: the sudden realization of the ultimate oneness of everything that is perceived through the senses. Having experimented with Leary’s soma myself, I am inclined to agree, but only up to a point. Insomuch as drugs alter body (and therefore brain) chemistry, they may supply the necessary first stop away from bourgeois reality. However, each of Hesse’s characters undertakes a journey through himself, and this journey is always difficult and often painful. The process of actualization on the human level is a prerequisite for the final emergence on the spiritual level. Emil Sinclair is permitted to flounder about among the herd. Harry Haller must learn to dance to the crackling radio music of life before he finally enters the magic theater. Goldmund touches the plague (but the plague does not touch him!). The individual may attain glimpses of the higher reality, but only when he is prepared. In Inferno, Dante places the preparation process most appropriately as a journey through hell.7 I found his description of the emergence from this initial process most profound: “When we had reached the joint where the great thigh merges into the swelling of the haunch, my Guide and Master, straining terribly, turned his head to where his foot had been and began to grip the hair as if he were climbing; so that I thought we moved toward Hell again."8 Just as in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, and Hesse’s Magic Theater the categories and distinctions of everyday reality no longer matter. Concepts like "up" and "down", "ins" and "out", "around" and "through" are not as useful as before, because, as Jesus admonishes, we must find new bottles for the new wine. 5 Knut Hamsun, Pan, New York: Noonday, 1956, p.97. 6 Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, New York: Bantam, 1963, p. 128. 7 http://www.worldofdante.org/inferno1.html 8 Dante, Inferno, (translation by Jobs Ciardi), New York : Mentor, 1954, p. 283-87. 3/5 J.Reynolds HHP digital, 2013 Emergence requires more than turning on, tuning in, and dropping out, the process is long and hard, although but a moment in the final scheme of thin. Dante, attempting to communicate a crucial point in his vision, puts his reader to work for him: "[...] imagine for yourself what I became, deprived at once of both my life and death." Hesse draws his reader into the moment of crisis, of decision and change, at the profound stage in The Hard Passage : "And wasn‘t I a human being, a poor simple fellow who in defiance of his own heart had been drawn into situations and deeds which God could not expect of him?" 9 It is not enough to talk about the new life, even with a new terminology or in a unique way.
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