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Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441

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A Library of World Literature

Hermann Hesse

Translated and introduced by B. Venkat Mani University of Wisconsin-Madison [email protected]

In1 2017, the German publisher Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH celebrated 150 years of the inception of their book series, Universal-Bibliothek. The series was founded in 1867 by the publisher Anton Philipp Reclam in Leipzig, and by the early twentieth century, its compact paperbacks in monochrome cov- ers – yellow for literature – were the prime source of world literary works in translation for German readers. In 1927, on its sixtieth anniversary, the Universal-Bibliothek commissioned Hermann Hesse—at the time the best- selling German author of novels such as Demian (1919) and Siddhartha (1922)— to write a short essay on book collection for smaller, private libraries. In 1929, an expanded version of the essay, Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur, was published as a slim volume with Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek. A detailed discussion on the print-cultural history of Universal-Bibliothek and the aesthetic and political significance of Hesse’s essay, in the interwar period in Germany, during the National Socialist period, as well as for contemporary discussions of world literature can be found in my monograph Recoding

1 There are four available editions of Hesse’s essay: 1) Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur. Leipzig: Verlag von Philipp Reclam jun., 1929 [Reclam Universal-Bibliothek 7003]. 2) Eine Biblio- thek der Weltliteratur. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1931. 3) Eine Bib- liothek der Weltlliteratur. Mit den Aufsätzen Magie des Buches und Lieblingslektüre. Zürich: Werner Classen Verlag, 1946. 4) Eine Bibliothek der Weltliteratur. Leipzig: Verlag von Philipp Reclam jun., 2003. This translation is based on the 1946 edition. Eine Bibliothek der Weltlit- eratur is available in the following languages: Japanese [Sekai bungaku o dō yomu ka: hoka sanpen. Translator Shizuo Ishimaru. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1961]; Italian [Una biblioteca della letteratura universale. Translators Emilio Castellani and Italo Alighiero Chiusano. Milan: Adelphi, 1979]; Korean [Munhak iran muŏt in’ga. Translator Chae-Sang Pak. Seoul: Kŭm- sŏng Ch’ulp’ansa, 1989]; French [Une bibliothèque ideale. Translator Nicolas Waquet. Paris: Ed. Payot & Rivages, 2012]; Chinese [Dou shu sui gan. Translator Ying Jioali. Shanghai: Shanghai san lian shu dian, 2013].

World Literature (2017). Suffice it to say here that compared to the other state- ments on world literature from the German-speaking world – by Goethe (1827), Marx and Engels (1848) and Erich Auerbach (1952) – Hesse’s statement is virtu- ally unknown, especially in Anglophone scholarship. This translation, the first in English, is an attempt to make this essay available to a wider readership, almost a century after its publication. Hesse’s own conceptualization of translation as an “approximation” (Annährung) guides my translation, especially of two words that are at the center of this essay: “Bildung” and “Geist.” Hesse implies Bildung in this essay primarily as the intellectual training of readers through world literature, albeit outside an educational institution such as a school or a university. The word “Bildung” has several meanings: education, learning, erudition, culture, forma- tion, creation, establishment (of something or someone), and self-cultivation. The German language distinguishes between “Bildung” and “Ausbildung” (for- mal education). As the essay develops, all of these meanings of “Bildung” unfold. However, I simply privilege the word “education,” unless Hesse specif- ically uses the verb “lernen” (to learn). Similarly, the dictionary meanings of “Geist” are mind, intellect, wit, spirit, morale etc. Hesse sometimes distinguishes between “geistig” and “seelisch”, to mark the distinction between intellectual (analytical) and emotional (spiritual). It can be translated into English as spirit or intellect. I use the word “intellect” for Geist to distinguish from instances where Hesse uses “Seele/ seelisch” (soul/ spiritual), or from “Ver- stand,” (reason). Hesse’s essay is an author’s conversation with a fellowship of readers who are not necessarily scholars. He addresses the general reader who might be curi- ous, or even enthusiastic about reading literary works from around the world, but too intimidated by the scale and scope of the weighty term “world literature.” Holding the reader by the hand, Hesse provides a wonderful guide to building one’s own library of world literary works. He starts with a brief introduction to the term world literature, gives practical tips on collecting affordable editions, underlines the significance of choosing translations when one does not know the original language, walks the readers through what he considers the most important works of world literature available in translation, but ends on a personal note. He stresses the importance of personalizing a library of world literature according to one’s own preferences, depending on one’s “lively” relationship with books and reading. World literature for Hesse is a dynamic, transformative concept, which changes with time; readers are not recipients of, but participants in the transformation of world literature. Hesse’s essay was written at a time when books were in competition with radio and cinema. As this first English translation enters our world saturated

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 419 with social media—a world in which the book and the library are no longer confined by paper and walls—I hope that readers who prefer digital books will still find Hesse’s suggestions useful to build their own “virtual” library of world literature. ∵

I could not revise this “Library of World Literature,” which once appeared with Reclam, for this new edition animated by Werner Classen; I have only carried out a few small corrections. This attempt at an introduction to the world of books was written at a time when procuring a book was easy and less expensive. Meanwhile terror and war have completely done away with the world of books, especially German books; there is almost nothing left. Much of what has been destroyed will stay destroyed forever, or at least for a long time. When my little book first appeared, anyone who was interested could order the books it recommended at any bookstore. That will not hap- pen for a good while now. But at least in our country, public libraries have stayed intact, and our publishers are rapidly issuing new editions. However, to a large extent they are only first editions. Nonetheless, even today serious searchers will find the books that are most important to them.

Montagnola, April 1945. H. H.

Real education is not education for a purpose, but it has, like every pursuit towards perfection, meaning in itself. Just as the striving for physical strength, adroitness, and beauty does not have any final purpose, such as to make us rich or famous and powerful, but carries its reward in itself, in that it enhances our experience of life and our self-confidence, in that it makes us more cheerful and happier and gives us a greater feeling of security and health. Similarly, the pursuit of “education,” of intellectual and emotional perfection, is not an ardu- ous path to some limited objectives, but rather a delighting and strengthening expansion of our consciousness, an enrichment of our possibilities for life and happiness. Therefore real education, like real physical culture – simultaneous fulfillment and stimulus – achieves its purposes everywhere and yet does not rest; it is eternal travel in the endless, an implication in the universe, a living within the timeless. Its purpose is not the enhancement of particular capa- bilities and achievements, but rather assistance in giving meaning to our life, in interpreting our past, and in staying open to the future with fearless readi- ness.

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 420 mani

Of the paths that lead to such an education, one of the most important is the study of world literature, the gradual familiarization with the tremendous treasure of thoughts, experiences, symbols, fantasies and ideals, that the past has left for us in the works of authors and thinkers of many peoples. This path is endless, no can ever reach its end, no one could ever fully study or become acquainted with the entire literature of even just one single great culture, let alone that of the entirety of humanity. After all, every time we explore the work of a highly valued thinker or author with understanding, we experience fulfillment and elation – not dead knowledge, but living consciousness and compre- hension. It should not matter to us to have read or known as much as possible, but rather that we undertake a free and personal selection of masterpieces, to which we devote ourselves completely in moments of leisure, to get an idea of the vastness and abundance of that which was thought of and aspired to by humans, and to come into a vivifying and resonant relationship with totality itself, with the life and pulse of humanity. After all, this is the meaning of all life, in so far as it does not simply serve basic needs. By no means should reading “divert” us, but rather focus us; it should not mislead us about a meaningless life nor numb us with false consolation; but help us give our life an always higher, always fuller meaning. Now the selection through which we become acquainted with world literature will be different for every individual; it will depend not only on how much time and money the reader has to devote to this noble pursuit, but also on many other factors. To one person, Plato could be the most respected wise man, Homer the most beloved poet, and for him they would always be at the center of all literature from which he would arrange and assess everything else; for someone else, other names would fill this position. One person would be capable of the enjoyment of noble verse creations, for expe- riencing the brilliant play of fantasy and the resounding music of language, another would stay with the more strictly intellectual; one would continually give preference to works in his mother tongue, even prefer not to read anything else at all, yet another would show a particular predilection for the French, for the Greeks, or for the Russians. On top of that, even the most educated person conceivable knows only a few languages, and not only are not all significant works of other times and nations translated into German, but many literary works are quite simply untranslatable. Real poetry, for example, one that not only mounts pretty content onto pleasantly constructed verses, but in which the word and the verse themselves become content, in which the music of a creative language becomes the resonant symbol of the world and of life events – such poetry remains continually bound to the unique language of the poet, not only to his mother tongue, but also to his per-

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 421 sonal idiom, a poetic language which is only possible for him, and is therefore untranslatable. Some of the most noble and precious poetic works – let one be reminded for example of the Provençal troubadour poems – are accessible and enjoyable for only very few people, because their language perished with the cultural community from which they originated, and only through a loving intellectual pursuit can its music be brought back to sound. At least we [Germans] have the good fortune of having at our disposal an extraor- dinarily rich treasure trove of good translations from foreign and dead languages. Above all, what is most important for a lively relationship between the reader and world literature is that he gets to know himself and with that the works that have a particular effect on him, and that he does not follow some scheme or an educational program! He should follow the path of love, not that of duty. To force oneself into the reading of a masterpiece, only because it is famous and because one is ashamed of not yet being familiar with it, would be a wrong. Instead, everyone should begin reading, knowing, and loving wher- ever it seems natural. One person will discover for himself the love for beautiful verses as early as the first years of school, another the love for history or the sagas of his homeland, another perhaps the joy of folksongs, and again another will feel reading to be alluring and delightful where he finds the feelings of the heart thoroughly examined and interpreted by a superior intellect. There are a thousand ways. One can start with a school textbook or a calendar and end with Shakespeare, Goethe, or Confucius. A work that is praised to us, that we try to read and that we do not like, that meets us with resistance and does not want to let us in, is one we should not want to take either by force or with patience. No, we should put it aside. One should never push and force a particular text on children and young people; through excessive encouragement one can put young people off the most beautiful works, indeed real reading, altogether for their entire lives. Everyone connects to a literary work when a song, a report, or a reflection has caught his fancy, and from thereon he searches for something similar. Enough with the introduction! For each seeker, the noble picture gallery of world literature stands open, no one needs be afraid of its fullness, because it is not the vastness that matters. There are readers who are satisfied with a dozen books in their lifetime and are still true readers. And there are others who have devoured everything and know how to talk about everything, and still all of their efforts were in vain. Because education requires that something be cultivated: namely a character, a personality.Where that does not exist, where education is carried out without substance so to speak in emptiness, there knowledge can certainly come into being, but neither love nor life. Read-

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 422 mani ing without love, knowledge without reverence, education without heart is one of the worst sins against the intellect. Let us begin with our assignment! Without any scholarly principle, without being bent on completeness, in essence simply following my own personal experience in reading and life, I want to attempt in these pages to describe an ideal and small library of world literature. Just a few practical tips about dealing with books deserve to be mentioned. Whoever has once put the beginning of this path behind him and has made himself at home in the immortal world of books will soon not only enter into a new relationship with the content of books, but also with the book itself. That one should not only read, but also buy books, is an oft-preached postulate, and as an old friend of books and owner of a not-so-small library, I can assure you from experience that the purchase of books does not merely serve to feed booksellers and authors, but that the ownership of books (and not merely their reading) has its own pleasures and its own moral. It can, for example, be a pleasure and a delightful game to cleverly, tenaciously, and craftily build oneself a beautiful little library, despite tight financial conditions, for example through the use of the cheaper popular editions and steady searching through many cat- alogs. Conversely it is among the very special pleasures for the educated rich to get hold of the best, the most beautiful edition of every favorite book, to collect rare old books and then to give one’s books their own, beautiful and lovingly devised bindings. Here open, from the careful investment of each saved dime to the greatest luxury, many paths, many pleasures. He who begins with the construction of his own library will be particular above all about only procuring good editions. Now, by ‘good editions’ I do not mean valuable editions, but rather those whose texts were handled very carefully and with a reverence befitting noble works. There are some expensive editions, leather-bound, gold embossed, and adorned with illustrations, which nevertheless are miserable and made without love, and there are inexpensive popular editions whose publishers and editors have worked truthfully and in an exemplary way. An almost universal nuisance today is that every publisher of an author’s work may advertise his edition as “Collected Works,” even when the volume represents only a modest selection of these works. And how dif- ferently do various editors select from an author! Whether a person makes a selection wisely and out of deep respect and love for a poet, whom he has read over and over again for many years, or whether a random scribe, who has received the assignment by chance throws together a selection in a love- less and hasty manner, is by no means the same thing. And then with every decent new edition the texts must be proofread carefully. There were and are a lot of popular works which one publisher has reprinted from the edition of

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 423 another, without consulting the original texts, and in the end the texts abound with errors, distortions and other mistakes. I can list astounding examples. But unfortunately it is not possible to hand readers a recipe, such as naming certain publishers and their editions as necessarily exemplary or reprehensible. Almost every German publisher of classics owns a few good and a few less successful editions; with one we will find the most complete Heine with the best proofread texts, whereas some other authors are insufficiently edited. Fur- thermore, these conditions constantly change. Recently, a respected publisher, who for decades published the classics of the poet Novalis with noticeable lack of love, brought out a new edition of Novalis, which fulfills the most stringent requirements. One must beware of paying more attention to paper and bind- ing in the selection of editions than to the quality of the texts, and one also has to be careful not to try to purchase all the “classics” in uniform editions for the sake of a consistent appearance; rather, one should search and ask questions, until one has found the best edition of each author, whose works one wants to purchase. Some readers are, for example, independent enough to decide for themselves whether they wish to own the most complete editions possible of one author, while selections from another author will suffice. For some writers, there are currently absolutely no complete and satisfying editions, or there are collected works that have been in the process for years or decades, but there is no chance of living to see their completion.That means that one has to settle for a modern inferior edition, or with the help of an antiquarian to take possession of an old edition. For a few German authors, there exist three or four excellent editions, of others just a single one, of some unfortunately none. A complete Jean Paul is still missing, a satisfying Brentano is lacking. The very important earlier writings of Friedrich Schlegel, which in his later years Schlegel himself did not include in his own works, were exemplarily republished decades ago, but have been out of print for many years, and an alternative has never come out. For a few poets (for example Heinse, Hölderlin, Droste[-Hülshoff]), after decades of neglect, our era has produced wonderful editions. Among the inexpensive popular editions, in which one can find works of all peoples and times, Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek remains uncontestably on top. There are a few poets whom I love and of whose works I do not like to do without even the shortest and the most unknown piece. For these, I own two, even three different editions, and each one of them contains something that is missing in the others. If this is true for our own domain, for the works of our best German writers, then matters become even trickier when it comes to translations from other languages. The number of truly classic translations is not exactly large; works such as Martin Luther’s German Bible, and Schlegel-Tieck’s German Shake-

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 424 mani speare belong to them. In these master-translations our people have appropri- ated the values of a foreign language – for a long time to come, but not for eternity! This “long time” will come to an end, and for example Luther’s Bible would no longer be comprehensible by the majority of our people if it is not lin- guistically reworked and suited to the times. And lately a totally new German Bible is in the process of appearing, in a translation supervised by Martin Buber, whose form has changed so much that we can hardly recognize the familiar book of our childhood. The German of Luther’s Bible is close to the limit of the age, which works of our language can reach. The German from the year 1500 has already become very strange to today’s German reader. The Italians make a unique exception with Dante, from whose poems many people know particular sections by heart. No other poet in Europe has reached such seniority without being significantly modified or downright translated. As for us, the question of which German translation of Dante we should read is not to be answered, for every translation is only an approximation, and when we are touched by individual passages of a translation, that is exactly when we eagerly reach for the original and seek to understand the old Italian of the most venerable verses with empathy. We now begin our assignment to build a good little world-library, and we immediately encounter the basic principle of all intellectual history: namely that the oldest of all works are the least dated. What is fashionable and causes a sensation today can again be dismissed tomorrow; what is new and interest- ing today will not be so any more the day after tomorrow. But what has managed to survive a several centuries and has not been forgotten or declined will most likely not undergo any fluctuations in its esteem during our lifetime. We begin with the oldest and the holiest of testimonials of the human intellect, books of religions and myths. Apart from the Bible, well known to all of us, I place at the beginning of our library the section of ancient Indian wisdom, which one calls Vedanta, the end of Veda, in the form of a selection from the Upanishads. A selection from the Speeches of Buddha belongs to this group, and no less Gilgamesh, which originated in Babylon, a powerful song about a great hero who takes up a fight with death. From ancient China we select The Dialogues of Confucius, the Tao-te-ching of Laozi and the magnificent Parables of Zhuangsi. With this we have the struck the basic chords of all human literature: the pursuit of norm and law, as it is expressed exemplarily in the Old Testament and in Confucius, the ominous search for salvation from the insuf- ficiency of earthly existence, as the Indians and the New Testament enunciate, the secret knowledge of the eternal harmony beyond the restless, polymorphic world of appearances, the veneration for natural and spiritual powers in the form of gods and the almost simultaneous knowledge or apprehension that

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 425 gods are only symbols, and that human force and frailty, celebration and suffering, lie in human hands. All speculations of abstract thought, all games of creation, all the suffering about the futility of our existence, all consolation and humor have already been expressed in these few books. A selection from the Chinese Classics of Poetry belongs with them. From the late works of the Orient, the great collection of fairy tales Thou- sand and One Nights, a source of unending pleasure and the world’s richest book of imagery, is indispensable for our library. Although all the peoples of the world have created beautiful fairy tales, this classic magical book suffices for our collection for now, complemented solely with our own German folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Much coveted would be a nice collection of gems from Persian poetry, but unfortunately such a book is not available in Ger- man adaptation. Only Hafez and Omar Khayyam have been often translated. We come to European literature. From the rich and glorious world of ancient poetry we select not only the two great poems by Homer, with which we have the entire atmosphere of ancient Greece; and we also include the three great authors of tragedies, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, which we assign to the anthology of the classical gems of the lyrical poets. When we turn to the world of Greek wisdom, we once again encounter a painful loophole: Socrates, the most influential, perhaps the most important wise man of Greece, whose thought we must piece together from the fragments found in the writings of several others, namely Plato and Xenophon. A book that clearly assembles the most precious testimonies of the life and teachings of Socrates would be a relief. The philologists do not dare to approach this task; it would indeed be tricky. I am not including the actual philosophers in our library. Aristophanes, on the other hand, is indispensable for us. His venerable comedies mark the beginning of the long line of European humorists. We also want to include at least one or two volumes by Plutarch, the master of heroes’ biographies, and Lucian, the master of derisive satires. Now we still lack something important: a book that tells the stories of Greek gods and heroes.The mythology books are insufficient. For want of a better work we reach for Gustav Schwab’s Sagas of Classical Antiq- uity, which narrate the majority of the most beautiful myths with a very good style. Recently, by the way, Schwab has obtained a serious successor: Albrecht Schäffer has begun a book of Greek Sagas, whose first parts have appeared and are very promising. With the Romans I have always preferred the historians to the poets, but we will at least pick up Horace, Virgil, and Ovid and we will also place Tacitus next to them. I would add Suetonius, as well as the Satyricon of Petronius, this witty novel of manners from the time of Nero, and The Golden Ass of Apuleius. In both of these works we see the internal decay of antiquity in Roman impe-

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 426 mani rial era. Next to these man-of-the-world and somewhat playful books from the falling Rome I place one great, uncanny counterpart, also written in Latin, but coming from another world, from that of young Christianity: the Confessions of the holy Augustine. The somewhat cool temperature of Roman antiquity gives way to another more exciting atmosphere, that of the early Middle Ages. The intellectual world of the Middle Ages, which until recently we have gen- erally labeled as “dark,” has been much neglected by our forefathers, and that is why we own few modern editions and translations of Latin literature from those centuries; Paul von Winterfeld’s Deutsche Dichter der lateinischen Mitte- lalters (“German Authors of the Latin Middle Ages”) makes a laudable exception, which for me is very welcome in our library. As the epitome and crown of the splendid medieval spirit lives forth in Dante’s composition, Divine Comedy, read seriously only by a few outside of Italy or educated circles, but something that time and again exudes deep impact, and is one of the few great millennial books of humankind. As the next book in the chronology of ancient Italian literature we choose Boccaccio’s Decameron. This famous collection of novellas, notorious amongst prudes for its bawdiness, is the first great masterpiece of European storytelling, written in wonderfully vivid Old Italian and translated many times into languages of many cultures. Be warned that there are many bad editions. Of the modern German ones, I recommend the one from Insel-Verlag. None of Boc- caccio’s numerous successors, who over three centuries have composed many famous books of novellas, have measured up to him but a selection of them (such as the one edited by Paul Ernst in Insel-Verlag, and recently a massive three-volume edition withVerlag Lambert Schneider) shall not be missing from our list. Of the Italian verse narrators of the Renaissance we cannot do without Ariosto, the composer of the Orlando Furioso, a magically romantic maze full of enchanting images and exquisite ideas, paragon for numerous successors, whose last and perhaps best was our Wieland. We place Petrarch’s Sonnets in the vicinity and do not forget The Poems of Michelangelo, this small and serious book stands alone and proud in the midst of its time. As a testimonial of the tone and life-atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance we also include the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. The later Italian poetry is less to be considered for our selection, except perhaps for two or three comedies by Goldoni and a romantic fairy tale play by Gozzi, and then in the 19th century the superb lyricists Leopardi and Carducci. Among the most beautiful works that the Middle Ages have brought forth are the French, English, and German Christian heroic sagas, foremost those of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. Parts of these sagas, which are widespread throughout Europe, are preserved in the Deutsche Volksbücher

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(“German Folkbooks”), which deserve an honorable place in our collection.The best modern edition is the one done by Richard Benz. They belong next to the Niebelungenlied and the Gudrunlied, although these are not, like the others, original compositions, but rather late adaptations of widely known works that have been translated from different languages. The poems of the Proven- çal troubadours have already been mentioned: their disciples were Walther von der Vogelweide, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose works (i.e. Walther’s Poems, Gottfried’s Tristan, and Wolfram’s Parzi- val) we gratefully include in our library, as we do with a good selection of the songs of the knightly Minnesänger. With this we have arrived at the end of the Middle Ages. With the withering of Christian-Latin literature and the great Saga-sources, something new came into being in European life and literature, as individual national languages slowly took over from Latin, and a new type of narration began (as in Italy with Boccaccio); no longer monastic and anony- mous, but rather urban and individual. In France, an extraordinary author bloomed at that time, in solitude in the wilderness: Fr.[ançois] Villon, whose wild, uncanny poems are without com- parison. As we go further through French literature, we find quite a few things that are indispensable for us: we must have at least one volume of Essays by Montaigne, and then the Gargantua and the Pantagruel by Fr.[ançois] Rabelais, the laughing master of humor and disdain for Philistines, then the Thoughts and perhaps also the Jesuit Letters of Pascal, that lonesome pious and ascetic thinker. By Corneille we must have Cid and Horace, by Racine Phaedra, Athalie, and Bérénice, and with these we own the fathers and classicists of French the- ater. But of course a third star also belongs to this group, the comic writer Molière, whose master dramas we add in a volume of selections – we will often think of reaching for him, the master of sarcasm, the creator of Tartuffe. The fables of Lafontaine and the Télémach of the fine Fénelon, are ones we would like to own, even though we shall seldom take them into our hands. From Voltaire we believe that we are able to do without the dramas and also the verse literature, but we must have one or two volumes of his electrifying prose, above all Candide and Zadig, whose pleasure in mockery and good mood were for a while considered the archetype of what was called the French spirit. But France has many faces, including revolutionary France, and apart fromVoltaire we also need the Figaro by Beaumarchais as well as the Confessions by Rousseau. And now I remember: I forgot Gil Blas by Lesage, the wonderful picaresque novel, and the History of Manon Lescaut, the moving love story by Abbé Prévost. Then comes French Romanticism and its successors, the line of great novelists – here one would like to name hundreds of book titles! But let us stick with the truly unique and irreplaceable! There are first and foremost the novels The Red and

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 428 mani the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl (Henri Beyle), which gen- erated a whole new kind of literature out of the struggle between a fiery soul and a superior, skeptically alert reason (Verstand). No less unique is Baude- laire’s volume of poetry The Flowers of Evil; next to these two Musset’s lovely characters and the charming and romantic writers Gautier and Murger seem small. Balzac follows, of whose novels we must own at least Old Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, The Wild Ass’s Skin, and A Woman of Thirty. To these massive books that are overflowing with themes and bursting with life, we add the masterly, noble novellas by Mérimée and the main works of the subtlest of French prose writers, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education. There are a few steps down from here to Zola, yet, he must also be included, for example with the L’Assommoir (The Dram Shop) or The Sin of Father Mouret, and likewise Maupassant with a few of his somewhat morbid, beautiful novellas. With this we have arrived at the threshold of our most recent period.We will not step over that threshold, or we will have to name several other noble works. But we must not forget the poems by Paul Verlaine, possibly the most soulful and tender of all French poems. In English literature we now begin with the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (14th Century), which are partially borrowed from Boccaccio, but are new in tone; he is the first actual English poet. Next to his book we place the works of Shakespeare, not in selections, but as the complete works. Our teachers spoke of Milton’s Paradise Lost with high opinion, but has any of us read it? No. We will forgo it then, perhaps unjustly. Chesterfield’s Letters to his son is not a virtuous book, but we pick it up anyway. From the author of Gulliver, Swift, the Irish genius, we take everything that we can get; his great heart, his bitter bloody humor; his secluded brilliance compensates for all his quirky strangeness. Of the many works by Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe is the most important for us, and also Moll Flanders, with whom advances the impressive line of classical English novels. We may possibly include Fielding’s Tom Jones and Smollet’s Peregrine Pickle; for sure we want Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and his Sentimental Journey, two books of authentic English attitude, skipping from the sentimental to the most muddled humor. Of Ossian, the romantic bard, we have enough with what we find in Goethe’s Werther. We should not forget the poems of Shel- ley and Keats; these are among the most beautiful that exist in poetry. Of Byron on the other hand, as much as I do admire this romantic Übermensch, we shall limit ourselves to one of his great poems, preferably Childe Harold. Out of piety, we also include one of the historical novels by Walter Scott, for example Ivan- hoe. And from the unhappy de Quincey we include the Confessionsof anEnglish Opium Eater, although it is a very pathological book. We should not overlook a volume of Essays by Macaulay, and by the bitter Carlyle we might include

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Sartor Resartus, because of its so very English wit, and certainly Heroes and Hero-Worship. Next up are the big stars of the novel: Thackeray with his Van- ity Fair and the Book of Snobs, and Dickens, who, despite all of his occasional sentimentality is still the king of English narrators with his kind heart and his splendid mood: we must have at least Pickwick [Papers] and [David] Copper- field. Of his successors, Meredith seems to us especially important, namely The Egoist, and if possible we also include [TheOrdealof ] RichardFeverel.The beautiful poems by Swinburne (however, to a great extent untranslatable!) should not be left out, and there should be one or two volumes by Oscar Wilde, above all his Dorian Gray and a few essays. American literature might be represented by a volume of novels by Poe, the author of angst and horror, and the audacious and pathetic poems of Walt Whitman. From Spain, above all others we take Don Quixote by Cervantes, one of the grandest and at the same time most enchanting books of all times, the story of the knight errant and his fights with the imaginary villains and his fat page Sancho, two immortal figures. We also cannot do without the novellas of this author; they are true gems of a superior storytelling. We must also have one of the famous Spanish picaresque novels, one of the predecessors of the fine Gil Blas. The choice is difficult, but I will settle for Pablo de Segovia: The Span- ish Sharper by Quevedo y Villegas, a juicy piece full of intense adventures and amazing wit. Of the Spanish dramatists, of whom there exists a superb and noble line, we consider Calderón indispensable, the great writer of the Baroque, the sorcerer of a half worldly-pompous, half spiritually-edifying stage. We still have different literatures to walk through, such as the Dutch and the Flemish, from which we choose [The Glorious Adventures of ] Tyl Ulenspiegel by de Coster and Max Havelaar [or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Com- pany] by Multatuli. De Coster’s novel, a kind of late brother to Don Quixote, is an epic of the Flemish people. Havelaar is the main book of the martyr Mul- tatuli, who a few decades ago dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of the exploited Malay. The Jews, the dispersed people, have left behind works in many places and in many languages of the world, a few of which we must not forget here. The Hebrew poems and hymns of the Spanish Jew Yehuda Halevi are among those, as are the most beautiful legends of the Hassidic Jews, which we find in Mar- tin Buber’s classic translation in [The Legend of the] Baal-Shem and The Great Maggid. From the Nordic world we include in our collection The Poetic Edda, translated by the Brothers Grimm, as well as one of the Icelandic sagas, such as Egil’s Saga, or a selection and adaptation such as the Icelandbook by Bonus. For more recent Scandinavian literature we choose Andersen’s Fairy Tales and

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Jacobsen’s stories, the main plays of Ibsen and several of Strindberg’s volumes, although the last two may not mean much in times to come. Russian literature of the past century is particularly rich. Since the great classic author of the Rus- sian language, Pushkin, is among those who are untranslatable, we begin with Gogol, whose Dead Souls and short stories we include in our library, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, currently an already somewhat forgotten masterpiece, and Oblomov by Goncharov. As for Tolstoy, whose great artistry has now and then been somewhat forgotten due to his sermons and reformation attempts, we consider essential at least the novels War and Peace (perhaps the most beautiful Russian novel) and Anna Karenina, but we also do not want to leave out his Folktales. When it comes to Dostoyevsky, we may neither forget the [Broth- ers] Karamazov nor Raskolnikov [Crime and Punishment], nor his most soulful work, The Idiot. Now we have browsed through literature of several peoples from China to Russia, from the earliest Antiquity to the threshold of our own times, and we have found a lot that is admirable and lovable. Yet we have still left our greatest treasure, our own German literary works, unexamined. Only the Nibelungen- lied and a few publications of the late-Middle Ages have been mentioned. Now we want to look at this world, German literature since about the year 1500 with special love, and choose that which we think we love most and have made most our own. Of Luther we have already mentioned the main work at the very beginning, the German Bible. But we also want to own a volume of his shorter writings, either something that contains a few of his folksy Pamphlets [The Large Cate- chism of Martin Luther] or a selection of Luther’s Table Talk or a book such as Luther as German Classicist published in 1871. During the counter-reformation there appeared in Breslau a remarkable human and poet, from whose work only a slim little book full of verse concerns us – this, however, belongs to the most sublime blossoms of German piety and literary creation: The Cherubic Wanderer by Angelus Silesius. Other than that, one of the many existing selections may suffice for poetry of the time before Goethe, such as my Lieder deutscher Dichter. The folksy poet from Nurenberg, Hans Sachs, seems quite worthwhile to include in our collection from the age of Luther. We add [The Adventurous] Simplicissmus by Grimmelshausen, in which the period of the Thirty Years’ War loudly and grimly unleashes a masterpiece of freshness and thriving originality. Next to it stands the more humble, but much deserving of our love, Schelmuffsky by Chr.(istian) Reuter, the powerful humorist. In this nook of our library we also place the [Singular Travels, Cam- paigns, and] Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, which were composed in the 18th century. And now we are at the threshold of the great century of mod-

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 431 ern German literature. With pleasure we put Lessing’s volumes on the shelves; they need not be complete works, but they must contain some of his letters. What about Klopstock? The most beautiful of his Odes are in our collection, and that suffices. It is more difficult with Herder, who has been much forgotten and who certainly has not yet played out his role entirely – it is well worth it to peruse his works and read him from time to time, even if none of his larger works can hold its own in its entirety.A good three-volume selection is available with Reclam, and also one with Körner. With Wieland too, collected works are dispensable, but his Oberon and possibly the The History of the Abderites should not be missing. Friendly, witty, a playful calligrapher of form, trained by Antiq- uity and the French, a follower of the Enlightenment, but not at the expense of fantasy, Wieland is a unique and much forgotten figure in our history. As for Goethe, we include in our collection the most beautiful and the most complete edition that our means can possibly allow us. While we may omit some of the occasional dramas, from the essays and reviews, the actual literary works, including also the lyrical poems, we must have in unabridged form. Here, in these volumes, everything that is our spiritual fate resounds, and much of it is definitively formulated. And what a journey from [The Sorrows of Young] Werther to Novella, from the earlier poems to the second part of Faust! Besides Goethe’s own works we must also have the most important biographical doc- uments, Eckermann’s Conversations [with Goethe] and some of the correspon- dence, especially the letters with Schiller and with Frau von Stein. Much has come from the young Goethe’s circle of friends, perhaps the most beautiful is Heinrich Stilling’s: [His Childhood,] Youth [Years, and Wanderings] by Jung- Stilling. We place this dear book near Goethe and as well as a selection from the writings of Matthias Claudius, The Messenger of Wandsbeck. With Schiller I tend towards making concessions. Although I hardly ever pick up the majority of his writings anymore, the entirety of this man, his intellect and life is something so great and compelling to me, that I cannot believe that his star is continually in decline. We prefer his prose writings (not the historical, but the aesthetic) and a number of his great poems from around the year 1800, and we add, too, Schiller’s Conversations by Petersen. I would like to include many other things from this time period, books by Musäus, Hippel, Thümmel, Moritz, Seume – but we must be relentless and may not smuggle likeable, and yet less significant items into a library, which also forgoes Musset and Victor Hugo. From the unique time around 1800, intellectually Germany’s richest time period, we have a long line of authors of the first rank to still to be listed, who until recently were either completely forgotten or unbelievably undervalued due to prevailing trends and a very restricted way of writing literary history. Thus, even today one can come across derivative judgments of a

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 432 mani forgotten critique of Jean Paul, one of the greatest German spirits, in the popular literary histories that are used as handbooks for thousands of students, in which nothing remains of the image of this writer. We take revenge by adding the most complete Jean Paul edition that we can find. Whoever thinks this an exaggeration should at least feel obligated to own the main works: [Walt and Vult, or the Twins] Flegeljahre,[Flower, fruit and thorn pieces; or, the married life, death, and wedding of the advocate of the poor, Firmian Stanislaus] Siebenkäs, and Titan. And we may not forget The Treasure Chest by the classical anecdote writer J.P. Hebbel, including his Alemannic poems. There have recently been several good and complete editions of Hölderlin, one of which we include with reverence; we will recall this noble shadow often and listen in on this magical voice. Hölderlin’s neighbors should be the works of Novalis on the one side, and those of Clemens Brentano on the other, but unfortunately there is still no truly satisfactory edition of Brentano. His stories and fairy tales have never been completely forgotten, yet only few have discovered the intense music of language in his poems. The book Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz (“Clemens Brentano’s Spring Cycle”) is a memorial to him and his sister Bettina (von Arnim). The collection of German folk songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which was collected by him and (Achim von) Arnim belongs here as the most beautiful and original of German books. By (Achim von) Arnim we must have a well-selected volume of novellas, real gems like the Majoratsher- ren, and we should not leave out Isabella of Egypt. A few stories by Tieck (above all The Blonde Eckbert, Life’s Luxuries, and The Rebellion in the Cevennes) as well as his Puss in Boots, probably the most humorous piece of German Romanti- cism. Unfortunately there is no usable edition of Görres. Also a closet drama like Dorothea Schlegel’s [Die] Geschichte [des Zauberers] Merlin[s](Story of the Magician Merlin) has not been printed for decades! As for Fouqué, only the pretty [The Story of ] Undine comes under our consideration. We must have the complete works of Heinrich von Kleist, the dramas as well as the stories, essays, and anecdotes. He too was only discovered late by his people. As for Chamisso, PeterSchlemihl suffices for us, yet this small book certainly deserves a place of honor. We take the most complete edition of Eichendorff possible: besides the Poems and the beloved Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, the remaining stories must also be present; the dramas and theoretical writings however, are dispensable. We should also have several volumes of E.T.A. Hoff- mann, the most virtuous narrator of Romanticism, not only the most popular of his shorter stories, but also the novel The Devil’s Elixirs. Hauff’s Fairy Tales and Uhland’s Poems are matters of taste, but more important are the poems of Lenau and Droste, both of them unique musicians of language. We include one or two volumes of Friedrich Hebbel’s Plays, as well

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 433 as his Diaries, at least in selection, and a decent, not too short edition of Heine’s works (prose as well!) must not be missing. And then a pretty, rich edition of Mörike, especially the Poems, then Mozart [’sJourneytoPrague] and the Hutzel- männlein and possibly even Nolten the Painter. Adalbert Stifter, the last classic author of German prose can follow with Indian Summer, the Studies, and Rock Crystal. Three significant authors from Switzerland have become part of German writing over the past century: Jeremias Gotthelf, the man from Bern, the brilliant writer of country epics, and Gottfried Keller and C.F. Meyer from Zürich. We wish to include both the Uli-[The Farm Hand] novels by Gotthelf, the Green Henry,The People of Seldwyla and also Sinnesgedicht by Keller and Jürg Jenatsch by Meyer. From both of them exist poems of high rank as well – we look for them, just as we look for some other poets for whom there was not enough room here, in the various good anthologies of modern poetry that we have. Whoever has interest can add Scheffel’s Ekkehard to the list, and I also want to put in a word for Wilhelm Raabe: we should not leave out his Abu Telfan [or, the Return from the Mountains of the Moon] and Schüdderump. But with this we stop – of course not to occlude ourselves from the contemporary book-world, no – our own era should have a place in our thoughts and in our library, but we are not the ones to tackle this. Our own time is not in a position to judge about what belongs in the inventory that outlasts generations. As I look back on my work at the end of our tour, I cannot conceal its incom- pleteness and disparities. Is it right to include the Adventures of Baron Munch- hausen in a World Library, but to omit the Indian Bhagvad Gita? Might I, if I wanted to be fair, hold back the brilliant comedy writers of old Spain and the folk songs of the Serbs and the fairy tales of the Irish and so on, and infinitely more? Does a volume of novellas by Keller really outweigh Thucydides and The Painter Nolten, the Indian Pancatantra, or I Ching, the Chinese book of oracles? No, of course not! And so it will be easy to demonstrate that my choice of world literature is highly subjective and temperamental. But it will be difficult, even impossible, to replace it with another, completely fair and fully objective one. We would have to include all authors and works that we have been accustomed to encounter in all literary histories since childhood, and whose synopses are copied over and over again from one literary history to the next, because life is too short to really read them. And to be honest, a good beautiful verse by a German poet, whom I can enjoy to the last reverberation, may possibly give me much more than the most revered work of Sanskrit literature, when it is only accessible to me in a stiff, un-enjoyable translation by an incompetent translator. Besides, knowledge and evaluation of authors and their works are often subject to changing fates. Today we revere authors, who twenty years ago

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 434 mani would have not been found in a literary history. (For God’s sake, a serious over- sight occurs to me: I have forgotten the author Georg Büchner, who died in 1837, the author of Woyzeck, Danton’s Death, and Leonce and Lena. Of course he should not be missing!). That which to us today seems important and still alive of classical German literature, is in no way the same as what an expert of this literature would have marked as immortal twenty-five years ago. While the German people were reading the Trumpeter of Sackingen and the scholars in their reference works were recommending Theodor Körner to us as a classical author, Büchner was unknown, Brentano completely forgotten, Jean Paul was on the black list as a wretched genius. And so our sons and grandsons will again find our present-day opinions sorely retrograde. There is no guarantee against it, not even in scholarship. But these eternal fluctuations of appraisals, this forgetting of intellectuals, which are then rediscovered and highly praised decades later, in no way rests only upon human weaknesses and inconsistency, but is rather subject to laws, which we no doubt cannot formulate precisely, but that we can very well guess and feel. Namely that all intellectual artifacts which once had an effect beyond a certain time period and have stood the test of time belong to the inventory of humanity and can be unearthed and brought to new life at any time – depending on the currents and intellectual needs of each living generation. Not only did our grandfathers have a completely different perception of Goethe than we do, not only did they forget Brentano or overrate (Christoph August) Tiedge or (Oskar von) Redwitz and other fashionable authors – they also did not know Tao-te-Ching of Laozi, one of the leading books of humanity, at all, because the rediscovery of ancient China and its wisdom was a matter of our present-day world and time, not that of our grandfathers. Then again we have without a doubt lost sight of many a great and superb region of the intellectual world today, which was well known to our forefathers and which will need to be rediscovered by our grandchil- dren. Surely we have, without a doubt, managed crudely in the construction of our ideal little library; we have overlooked gems, we have left out entire powerful cultural circles. How about the Egyptians, for example? Are those couple of thousands of years of such a high and united culture, those radiating dynas- ties, that religion with its powerful systems and its uncanny cult of death – is all this nothing to us, should all of this leave no legacy for our library? And yet, so it is. The history of Egypt is for me among the kind of books, which I have completely left out of our consideration: namely illustrated books. There are several works about Egyptian art, namely the ones by Steindorff and by Fechheimer, with wonderful images, and I have held these works in my hands many times. It is from them that I know what I believe I know about the Egyp-

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 435 tians. But I do not know of a book that would introduce us to the literature of the Egyptians. Many years ago I once read a work about the religion of Egypt with great attention. It included Egyptian texts, laws, epitaphs, hymns, and prayers, but as much as the entire thing interested me in terms of content, little of it remained for me; each book was good and nice, but it was not a classic. And thus Egypt is absent from our collection. And now I think again of an inexplicable forgetfulness and sin of omission. My image of Egypt, if I recall, rests not only on those books of images and one religious-historical book, but just as strongly on the reading of one of my favorite Greek authors, namely Herodotus, who was much enamored by the Egyptians and who actu- ally thought more highly of them than of his own Ionic compatriots. And I also truly forgot Herodotus. This must be corrected: he deserves a special place among the Greeks. Again and again when I consider and examine the list of the ideal library that we have put together, it seems terribly incomplete and flawed, and yet it is not the disfigurement of literary history that perturbs me most about our library. The more I try to imagine it as a whole, it seems to me that this collection of books has certainly been assembled subjectively and without pedantry, but still according to some knowledge and experience. But the problem is not so much its subjectivity and haphazardness, but the opposite. Our little ideal-library is, despite its omissions, for me principally too ideal, too organized, too much of a jewel case. It may be this or that the other good work has been forgotten; but the most beautiful pearls of literature of all times are there for sure and our collection can hardly be surpassed in quality or objective value. But if I stand in front of this library that we have come up with and if I try to imagine who would want to be the creator and owner of this collection, I do not feel capable of imagining this owner: he is neither an old obsessed intellectual with sunken eyes and the ascetic facial expression of a night watchman, nor is he a man-of- the-world in his stylish house, nor a country-doctor or a clergyman, nor a lady. Our library looks very pretty and ideal, but it is too impersonal: its catalog is such as almost any old book lover could have set it up in almost the same way. If I saw this library in front of me in reality, I would think: a fairly nice collection, genuinely tried and tested pieces – but does the owner of these books have absolutely no hobbies, no predilections, no passions, does he have nothing in his heart other than some literary history? If for example he owns two novels by Dickens and two by Balzac then he has simply been talked into them. Had he really had chosen personally and in a lively way, he would either love both of them and own as much as possible by both, or he would prefer the one over the other, he would love the beautiful, lovable, charming Dickens much more than the somewhat brutal Balzac, or he would love Balzac, would want to own

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 436 mani all of his books and again would throw the far too sweet, far too nice, far too bourgeois Dickens out of his library. A library must have something of such a personal character, which I should like. Thus, in order to bring our far too correct, far too neutral catalog into some disorder again and to show how it is with a personal, lively, passionate relationship with books, I see no other way than to confess some of my own readerly passions. I was familiarized with a life with books very early on, and I was not foreign to the pursuit of cleverly and fairly choosing my reading of world literature. I have eaten from many a bowl and I have made it my duty to know and understand much of what was unfamiliar to me. But this reading as studying; this getting to know foreign literatures out of a sense of education and righteousness, this was not my nature, but rather, time and again a special amorous- ness took hold of me in the world of books, a special new discovery captivated me, a new passion made me warm. Many of these passions have replaced one another, some of them have returned periodically; others were singular occur- rences and were lost again. That is why even my own private library in no way resembles the pattern set up above, although it contains pretty much all of the books mentioned there. But here and there my library has extensions and infla- tions, and so it will be with every library that has grown out of a true desire: some parts will be meager and conceived with a sense of duty, others will be darlings and favorites, and will have a spoiled and groomed outwardly appearance. Now my library has had some such special departments, which have been nurtured with very special love, and I cannot speak of all of them here, but the most important ones should be mentioned. I want to tell a little bit about how world literature is reflected in the individual, how it attracts him sometimes from one side, sometimes from the other, how it quickly influences and builds his character, and is soon steered and ravished by him. The enjoyment of books and the desire to read started early for me, and in the first years of my youth, the only library that I knew and was allowed to use, was that of my grandfather. The great majority of this massive library of several thousand books was of no interest to me and remained so forever; I could not understand at all how one could amass books of this kind in such large quantities: historical and geographical annals in long rows, theological works in English and French, English juvenile literature and devotional literature with gilt edges, endless sections full of scholarly journals, neatly bound in cardboard or tied together by twine arranged by the year. All of this seemed to me fairly boring, dusty, and hardly worthy of preservation. However, this library also had, as I slowly discovered, other sections too. To begin with, there were a few individual books that attracted me and prompted

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 437 me to rummage through the entirety of this seemingly bleak looking library and fish for that which was of interest to me. There was, for example, a Robinson Crusoe with absolutely enchanting illustrations by Grandville, and a German edition of Thousand and One Nights, two heavy quartos from the [eighteen] Thirties, also illustrated. These two books showed me, that in this murky sea there were some pearls to be found, and I did not cease to search the high bookshelves of the hall, often sitting for hours high up on a ladder or lying on my stomach on the floor, where countless books lay stacked everywhere. It was here, in this mystical and dusty hall of books, that I made my first valuable discovery in the field of literature: I discovered German literature of the 18th century! It was available in this whimsical library in rare completeness, and not just simply Werther, Messiade and some almanacs with copper prints by Chodowiecki, but also lesser known treasures: Hamman’s complete works in nine volumes, the entire Jung-Stilling, the complete Lessing, the poems by Weisse, Rabner, Ramler, and Gellert, six volumes of Sophie’sJourneyfromMemel to Saxony, a few literary magazines and different volumes by Jean Paul. By the way, I also remember having read Balzac’s name for the first time then; there were a few small blue carton-volumes in decimo-sexto, a German edition of Balzac, which had appeared during his lifetime. I have not forgotten how I got my hands on this author for the first time and how little I understood him. I began to read in one of the volumes; the financial circumstances of the hero were explained at length, how much monthly income he had from his estate, how much maternal inheritance, which prospects of further inheritance, how much debt etc. I was deeply disappointed. I had expected to hear about passions and entanglements, about journeys into wild countries or about sweet and forbidden experiences of love, and instead of that I was supposed to be interested in the wallet of a young man, of whom I knew nothing! Disgusted, I put the little blue book back in its place, and for years never read another book by Balzac, until much later when I discovered him anew, this time seriously and forever. But my experience of this grandfatherly library was also that of the Ger- man literary works of the 18th century. There I got to know wonderful forgotten things: Bodmer’s Noah, Gessner’s Idyllen, and the Travels of Georg Forster, the entire Mathias Claudius, Der Tiger von Bengalen (“The Tiger of Bengal”) by the Hofrat of Eckarthausen, the monastery story Siegwart, Hippel’s Kreuz- und Querzüge and countless others. Without a doubt among these thick tomes there were many that were quite superfluous, a number of rightly forgotten and dismissed writings, but there were also wonderful Odes by Klopstock, pages of tenderly elegant prose by Gessner and Wieland, fantastic flashes of genius by

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 438 mani

Hamann among them, and I cannot regret having read the inferior as well the superior, because to get to know a certain historical period substantially and extensively also has its advantages. In short, I learned about German writings of one century in its completeness, such as an educated specialist hardly knew it, and from the somewhat clichéd and quirky books the breath of a language blew onto my face – that of my beloved mother tongue, which prepared for its classical blossoming just during that century. In this library, in those almanacs, in those dusty novels and heroic stories I learned German, and shortly there- after, as I became acquainted with Goethe and the entire heyday of modern German literature, my ear for and awareness of language were sharpened and trained, and the special type of intellectuality, from which Goethe and the Ger- man classical period originated, became intimately familiar to me. Even today I have a preference for this literature, and some of those forgotten writings still stand in my library. A few years later, during which I had experienced and read a lot, another area of intellectual history began to attract me, namely ancient India. My reading did not follow a direct path. Through friends I learned about certain writings, which at the time one called theosophical, including an occult wisdom. The writings, in part huge tomes, in part tiny crummy little tracts, were all of a somewhat joyless type, uncomfortably instructional and schoolmarmishly pre- cocious, they had a certain ideality and naiveté that did not repel me, but also a hypoxemia and an old-maidish devotion, which I found completely detestable. Even then they captivated me for a while, and soon I had discovered the secret of this attraction. All of these secret lessons, which were allegedly whispered to the composers of these sectarian books by invisible spiritual leaders, pointed to one common origin, the Indian. From there on I searched further, and soon I made the first discovery; with a pounding heart I read a translation of the Bhagvad Gita. It was a dreadful translation, and until today I know of no truly beautiful one, even though I have read several, but here I found for the first time a golden nugget, which I had anticipated in this search: I discovered the Asian unitarian thinking in its Indian form. From there on I stopped reading those pretentious writings about Karma and reincarnation and stopped getting annoyed with their narrowness and school-mastery; instead I looked to acquire what was accessible to me as real sources. I became acquainted with books by Oldenberg and Deußen and their translations from Sanskrit, Leo- pld Schröder’s book India’s Literature and Culture, and a few older translations of Indian literature. Along with Schopenhauer’s intellectual world, which had become important to me in those years, these ancient Indian wisdoms and mindset influenced my thinking and life for several years. Nevertheless, with it there was always a remainder of dissatisfaction and disappointment. First of

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 439 all, the translations of Indian sources which I could get a hold of were almost all very insufficient; only Deußen’s Sechzig Upanishaden (Sixty Upanishads) and Neumann’s German Reden Buddhas (Speeches of Buddha) gave me a pure, complete taste and pleasure of the Indian world. But it was not just a matter of translations. I searched in this Indian world for something that was not to be found there, a kind of wisdom whose possibility and existence, indeed the necessity of its existence I suspected, but nowhere came across it as realized in words. Again a few years later, a new book-experience brought me fulfillment – to the extent that one can talk of fulfillment in these matters. I had already become acquainted with Laozi through my father, who directed me to him first in a translation by Grill. And then a Chinese book-series began to appear, which I consider one of the most important events in contemporary German intellectual life: Richard Wilhelm’s translations of the Chinese classics. One of the noblest and most highly developed blossoms of human culture, until then only existent for us German readers as an unknown curiosity to be smiled upon, was bequeathed to us not through the usual detour through Latin and English, not from third or fourth hand, but rather directly translated by a Ger- man, who spent half of his life in China and who was unbelievably at home in intellectual China, who knew not only Chinese, but also German, and who had himself experienced the significance of Chinese spirituality for contemporary Europe on his person. The book-series, published by Diedrichs in Jena, began with the Analects of Confucius, and I will not forget, how amazed and magically delighted I was as I devoured this book, how strangely and at the same time how correctly, as anticipated, as desirably and splendidly it resounded with me. Since then this book-series has become more impressive; Confucius was fol- lowed by Laozi, Chuang Tzu, Mengzi, Lü Buwei, and the Chinese Folktales. At the same time more translators have tried anew to approach Chinese poetry, and with greater success, popular prose literature from China. Here Martin Buber, H. Rudelsberger, Paul Kühnel, Leo Greiner, and others have achieved beautiful things and have nicely complemented Richard Wilhelm’s work. For decades I have found in these Chinese books an ever-increasing pleasure; more often than not one of them lies near my bed. What was missing in those Indians – the closeness to life, the harmony of a noble intellectuality, determined to the highest ethical standards with the play and appeal of the sensual and everyday life, the wide hither and thither between higher intellec- tualization and the naïve contentment of life – all this was available here in abundance. If India made high and moving achievements in the ascetic and in monastic renouncement of the world, ancient China achieved no fewer wonderful things in the raising a spirituality, for which nature and spirit, religion

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access 440 mani and the everyday do not imply antagonism, but rather friendly oppositions, and both come to their own right. If the Indian-ascetic wisdom was youthfully puri- tan in the radicalness of posing demands, then the wisdom of China was that of an experienced man who had become smart, was not unknowledgeable in humor, whom experience had not disappointed, and whom smartness had not made flippant. The best intellectuals of the German-speaking regions have during the past decades let themselves be touched by this benevolent stream. Compared to many an intellectual movement that was first boisterously loud and then again died down again quickly, Richard Wilhelm’s work on China has grown quietly and steadily in importance and influence. Just like the preference for the German eighteenth century and the search for Indian teachings, just as the gradual acquaintance with the teachings and literatures of China greatly transformed and enriched my library, so did several other adventures and intellectual infatuations. There was for example a time when I owned almost all great Italian novelists in original editions, Ban- dello and Masuccio, Basile and Poggio. There was also a time when I could not get enough of fairy tales and sagas of foreign peoples. These interests gradually died down again. Others however, have remained, and appear to be increasing rather than decreasing with age. Among those is the pleasure in memoirs, letters, and biographies of people who once made an impression on me. Already in my early youth for a few years I collected and read anything about the personality and life of Goethe that I could possibly find. My love for Mozart led me to read nearly all his letters and everything that was written about him. I had a similar love at times for Chopin, for the French author Guérin who wrote The Centaur, for the Venetian painter Giorgione, for Leonardo da Vinci. What I read about such people did not consist of very important and valuable books, and yet, I benefited quite a bit from it because there was love in it. The world today tends to underestimate books. Today one finds many young people to whom it appears laughable and unworthy to love books rather than vivid life; they find that our life is too short and too valuable for that, and still find the time to spend many hours with coffeehouse music and dance, six times a week. As lively as it may be in the universities and workshops, in the stock markets and entertainment establishments of the “real” world, we are still no closer to real life there than we are, if we spare an hour or two every day for wise men and poets of earlier times. Certainly, too much reading can be harm- ful, and books can compete unfairly with life. Still, I do not warn anyone against devoting themselves to books. There would be still more to tell and say. In addition to the hobbies I have described, there is one more to add: the search for the secret life of the Chris-

Journal of World LiteratureDownloaded from 3 (2018) Brill.com09/30/2021 417–441 08:45:35AM via free access hesse: a library of world literature 441 tian Middle Ages. I was indifferent to its political history in its details; only the tension between the two great powers – the Church and the Empire – was important to me. And monastic life was particularly attractive for me, not because of its ascetic side, but because I found wonderful treasures in monastic art and literary works and because the orders and monasteries appeared to me as enviable sanctuaries of a pious-introspective life, and most exemplary as places of culture and education. During my forays into the monastic Middle Ages I found many a book that does not belong in our ideal library and that has nevertheless become very dear to me, and I also found such, which I find very worthy of inclusion on our list, for example the Sermons of Tauler, the Life by Suso, and the Sermons of Eckhart. What appears to me today as embodiment of world literature will one day appear as one-sided and insufficient to my sons, as it would have appeared laughable to my father or grandfather. We have to give in to the inevitable and may not deem ourselves smarter than our fathers.The pursuit of objectivity and righteousness is a nice thing, but we need to bear in mind the unattainability of all these ideals. In our pretty world-library we do not want to read until we become scholars or judges of the world, but only so that we may enter through the gates most accessible to us and find the holiness of the intellect. Let everyone begin with that what he can understand and love! One cannot learn to read in the higher sense from newspapers, and not from random everyday literature, but only from masterpieces.They often taste less sweet and less spicy than fashionable literature. They want to be taken seriously and want to be acquired. It is easier to let a fast-paced American dance into oneself than the hard springing measures of a drama by Racine, or the tenderly layered, rich and playful humor of a Sterne or Jean Paul. Before the masterworks seek to prove their worth to us, we must have proven our worth to them.

Journal of World Literature 3 (2018) 417–441 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:45:35AM via free access