Soul of the Age (28 page)

Which brings us to the second point. Like all the other critics, you think that Harry keeps mulling over the “old war stories” just because he has some bee in his bonnet. Well, I certainly don't consider those four years of war, all that murder and injustice, the millions of corpses and the splendid cities lying in ruins, an “old story” which thanks be to God every rational person should have long since forgotten. I'm absolutely convinced that the issue is serious, since I can see, feel, and even smell many, many signs all over the place suggesting a certain readiness to repeat that experience.

So those are the things that come to mind after reading your essay. I find it so valuable that I was wondering whether you would like to publish it somewhere. Maybe I could get
Die Neue Rundschau
to run it. But that isn't at all certain. Although they treat me and my “crisis” politely, they haven't a clue what it's all about. But I would try nevertheless.

TO HELENE WELTI

Baden, Verenahof, October 23, 1928

Thanks for your kind letter, which I found very moving. That remarkable funeral journey to Milan reminded me of the funeral of my dear friend Hugo Ball. A tiny and odd group of mourners assembled during a downpour; six of us carried long wax candles behind the coffin during the solemnly Catholic funeral rites. One of the candle bearers was a Catholic who had been excommunicated, and three of the others were fanatical freethinkers. The priest, who wore his most ornate vestments and sang the liturgy in a sweet melting voice, had shot down a songbird right beside Ball's balcony, while he was still alive, just three feet away from his deathbed, so close in fact that the dying man was greatly startled by the clattering windowpanes. And that's more or less how the whole thing went. We just stood about, freezing, feeling embarrassed and rather dumb in our grief, and the only person at all superior to the situation was the occupant of the coffin.

I'm glad to hear that you are taken with the
Meditations.
214
As far as I'm concerned, the only worthwhile thing about it and the
Picture Book
215
is that they assemble pieces written over a twenty-five-year period and show that, even though I have weathered a number of crises, my thinking has never undergone any serious rupture. The wartime upheavals, which destroyed my marriage and private life, have certainly left a deep mark on me, but they haven't altered my thinking, my fundamental philosophy of life. However, the experience made me realize the utter isolation and defenselessness of man's noblest aspirations, his humanism and idealism. I saw that I would have to express my convictions more consciously and with greater passion than heretofore.

I'm sitting bolt upright at my typewriter, like an Egyptian god made of basalt, because of a stiffness in my back and neck; they are going to get diathermy and some massage a half hour from now. Frau Ninon is currently in Vienna, and from there she will travel to Cracow to visit relatives; she dropped me off here before she left. She will be back in Zurich sometime in December. It's slow going, but I am getting some work done and am reasonably pleased. The situation is different when I cannot work at all, either because my eyes are strained and filled with tears or because I'm feeling otherwise indisposed. I'm thinking of you and greet you fondly

TO MARIE-LOUISE DUMONT

[
Arosa, February 1929
]

Your letter reached me in Arosa, where I have come for a short rest. I can only answer briefly; I get several batches of letters a day, and find it hard to get to my own work.

The people in
Demian
are not any more “real” or any less so than the characters in my other books. I have never used real people as characters. A writer can, of course, do just that, and the results can be very beautiful. But, generally, literature doesn't copy life; it condenses it by reducing incidental occurrences to representative types.
Demian
is about a very specific task or crisis in one's youth, which continues beyond that stage, but mostly affects young people: the struggle to forge an identity and develop a personality of one's own.

Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of average people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one's own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique.

Demian
portrays an aspect of the struggle to develop a personality that educators find deeply disturbing. The young person who feels called upon to become a strong individual and deviates significantly from the average, ordinary type will get involved in incidents that seem crazy.

So I think you are on the right path, because you are aware of these difficulties. But the issue is not how to force the world to confront one's “craziness” and thus bring about revolutionary change, but how to protect the ideals and dreams one has in one's soul from the world and thereby ensure that they never dry up. The dark inner world nurturing those dreams is always at risk: friends make fun of it, teachers avoid it; as a condition, it's unstable, constantly in flux.

The present age seems to make life especially difficult for the most sensitive young people. There are attempts afoot everywhere to homogenize people and deprive them of their most individual traits. Our souls rightly resist this tendency, hence the experiences of Demian. The form those experiences take is different for each person, but the ultimate meaning is always the same. Anybody who is truly serious will prevail, and if he is strong, he will change from a Sinclair into a Demian.

TO NINON DOLBIN

Stuttgart, early Friday
[
November 8, 1929
]

I'm through with the second reading, which took place yesterday in your favorite hall. Then we went to the restaurant you also know so well. On the face of it, nothing much has changed in the intervening year and a half, but to me everything felt different. Although I had put a lot of work into it, I was disappointed by the outcome. I had great difficulty performing and was trembling from sheer exertion. I didn't enjoy the reading, and began to think it had all been a waste of time. Which it was.

Afterward the “circle of friends” (i.e., the sisters, the Ludwigsburgers,
216
Molt, and several classmates, also Hartmann and Hammelehle) went to the inn. I hadn't eaten anything all evening and was also dead tired. They all ordered themselves wine, beer, schnitzel, salad, ham; I just sat there quietly for a half an hour between ravenous eaters (Rosenfeld
217
was sitting right next to me with an enormous omelette). Nobody even offered me a glass of wine, and since I wasn't very pushy, I never managed to catch hold of the busy waitress. So I just sat there for a half an hour watching them, then slipped out, put on my coat, and went home; nobody even looked up.

It wasn't as bad as Tübingen, if only because I was hardly in any pain. My kidney has been pretty much settled ever since I took the opium. But, come to think of it, Stuttgart was even worse, very disappointing. After you have read your poems with great concentration, somebody claps you on the back, then you sit there like an unwelcome guest and watch everybody else eating schnitzel and sausages; it's a chilling feeling.[ … ]

All the best wishes for your work, for Vienna, and the other matters.

TO FRITZ MARTI
218

Zurich, December 12, 1929

Thanks for the greetings and also for the well-meant verses of that dilettante. Of course, you couldn't publish them.

I'm enclosing a short piece of prose, which you may wish to publish at some point.
219
I very much missed not seeing you in Bern. There aren't many colleagues in Switzerland worth taking seriously.

I was afraid you wouldn't be able to come, and even though I knew you were ill, I thought I would drop by in any case.

That didn't work out; I was simply too tired and dejected after the reading (that always happens when I have any direct contact with readers and the outside world). It's true that the audience usually responds very warmly, that the halls are full, and that some people are extremely friendly. But no matter how well disposed the public, this kind of encounter can never satisfy intense obsessive types such as ourselves. The response to lectures about taxation or how to bring up children may be positive or negative, but it is always direct and lively. Pianists and singers can reasonably expect audiences to appreciate their abilities, technique, etc., and even offer an informed critique. A poet is convinced that his calling is supremely important, but the world he evokes is strange, and the world to which he speaks is no less so. All he will ever get in return is a number of well-meant pats on the back; he won't find three readers, not even among his best, prepared to allow the impulses they receive from him to affect their lives. Well, this you already know. I just wanted to say I was sorry I couldn't show up, and also explain why.

TO HIS SON HEINER

Chantarella, January 31, 1930

[ … ] I'm sorry that you had a conflict with your employers and feel disappointed by the outcome. But you aren't a socialist; they're a different breed altogether.

I would like to explain what I mean, since this is a matter of principle and since you bring my friend into it.

I have good reasons for being neither “bourgeois” nor socialist, even though I believe that, politically speaking, socialism is the only decent attitude. Yet I haven't become a socialist, since the intellectual foundations of socialism (i.e., the teachings of Karl Marx) aren't altogether unimpeachable, and besides, the social democrats everywhere rejected their most worthwhile principles long ago. I was particularly disappointed with the German socialists, who joined the chorus of warmongers in 1914 and went on to betray the revolution in 1918.

But it is not the quality of a person's convictions that determines his worth as an individual. I myself judge people by their character rather than their convictions. In any case, most people espouse the beliefs of their caste. Ninety-nine percent of capitalists and socialists would be incapable of justifying their beliefs in intellectual terms.

My friend [ … ] is certainly a capitalist, a businessman; his utterly bourgeois ideals focus on outward success and the accumulation of wealth. His attitude is typical of the majority of businessmen and industrialists in his country, and most lawyers, doctors, etc., also subscribe to these shabby convictions. I couldn't care a dime about the political and commercial credo of Herr [ … ], and I feel the same way about the so-called convictions of the sort of socialist who behaves just like the bourgeoisie and is only looking for better food and greater political clout.

Herr [ … ] is always finding fresh evidence in the newspapers for his “convictions,” which have been drummed into him since early childhood, but those ideas have absolutely no bearing on his
personality
and
character.
Although he is a tough-minded businessman, he is as hard on himself as on others and demands an awful lot of himself. I got to know him first in India in 1911, and even though I often felt that his commercial projects and goals were rather ridiculous—and frequently told him so—I always had a lot of respect for his character. He was one of the very few people who came to my aid during the period from 1919 to 1925, when I was virtually starving and crippled by worries about your mother and you children. For my sake, he pretended not to notice some of the things you were up to. He also talked about you in glowing terms, even though he disapproved strongly of your attitude toward work.

I have often learned to respect and admire people who subscribed to convictions that I found strange, repulsive, or silly. Some of the people I got to know during the war who held views similar to mine—i.e., opposition to the war—were extremely untrustworthy, whereas some of my virulent opponents seemed like decent, worthwhile people.

Of course, the issue goes far beyond Herr [ … ]; it's quite fundamental. Moreover, there is one thing I'm quite convinced about: Let's suppose that Herr [ … ] had been born just yesterday rather than fifty years ago. Assuming that his personality remains identical and that he is born into the same, rather impoverished rural milieu in Toggenburg, I'm confident he would adopt socialist ideas before long, and perhaps even join the party eventually. But that wouldn't by any means affect his personality. He would remain as strong, loyal, stubborn, and industrious as ever, with all the same virtues and flaws.

You have never said very much about your own convictions: I would have liked to discuss such matters with you. In any case, I was somewhat astonished to hear what you said about an acquaintance of yours with a keen interest in politics, since his convictions seemed so utterly bourgeois, indeed almost fascist. I had imagined that you might wholeheartedly embrace the socialist ideology, and I certainly wouldn't be upset if, for example, you ended up as a single-minded revolutionary, not just in your words but also in your deeds. However, being a revolutionary requires not only conviction and enthusiasm but also a willingness to make the greatest self-sacrifice imaginable. I would be extremely delighted if each of my sons embraced some “conviction” or ideal and were willing to give up his material comforts and, if necessary, lay down his life for that cause. While the nature of the conviction or party he selected wouldn't be altogether indifferent to me, I wouldn't attach all that much importance to that. I consider a person who is willing to sacrifice himself for the most naïve ideals in the world to be far preferable to somebody who can speak articulately about all kinds of ideals yet isn't prepared to make any sacrifices on their behalf.