Soul of the Age (29 page)

You will have to fight your own battles on the job at [ … ], and I understand fully why you don't get on at all with my friend Herr [ … ]. All I can do for you is show my love by following the matter very closely. However, I should like to correct a mistaken assumption in your letter.

You think it's only a question of sticking it out as an apprentice; then the whole situation will change, and you will be your own man. That will never happen. Even as an employee—or perhaps a boss—as opposed to an apprentice, you will still be serving the interests of a class that you basically cannot abide. It would be far better if you tried to get to know the enemy—i.e., capitalist society—by embarking on a serious study of socialism. That should get you out of this rut. I'm not a socialist, and believe that socialism is as open to refutation as any other ideology. But nowadays it's the only creed that openly criticizes the kind of lives we are leading in this inauthentic society. My current studies have rekindled my interest in such questions. I'm reading the memoirs of Trotsky.

Addio,
dear Heiner, I wish you all the very best. As regards your job, etc., we were not any better off in the old days. As an apprentice, I had to live for years on a hundred francs a month, and had to work very hard for that. Some of the things you can do weren't possible back then; there was, for instance, no question of moving in with a girlfriend. In some respects life is tougher for you young people, but some things are easier and a lot nicer.

Addio,
my dear, we shall be seeing each other again, and there will be time to talk things over; I'm looking forward to that. Fond greetings from your father

TO GEORG REINHART

June/July 1930

Thanks for your letter. I was delighted to hear from the horse's mouth. So somebody has told you about our plans to build a house? Hubacher, I suppose; I mentioned it to him and some others. We haven't started construction yet; indeed the builder-owner and I haven't drawn up the contract, which will give me a legal right to live there. But we have discussed everything and finished the plans. My patron Herr H. C. Bodmer-Stünzi
220
had originally wanted to give me the house as a gift, but that would have put me in an awkward position in many respects, and so I asked him to let me build the house and live in it, on the understanding that it will remain his property and merely be on loan to me. In the case of my death or if I ever give up the house, it will revert to him. Please don't tell anybody about this. I think I should let you know about it, but there is no reason why other people have to find out about it.

I had a wonderful time talking about Asia while my Japanese cousin (the person to whom I dedicated the second part of
Siddhartha
) was here. He has been living in the Orient for over twenty-five years and was spending a brief vacation in Europe. He has much of the wisdom that I admired in Richard Wilhelm, and their careers were also quite similar. He went there first as a Christian missionary, and is now trying to foster intellectual dialogue and exchange between the two cultures.

Prinzhorn
221
has written once again after a longish silence; he recently translated some André Gide, has become friends with him, thinks I should get to know him and start a correspondence, which is all right by me, but I'll have to put that on hold for now.

TO HIS SISTER MARULLA

[
ca. mid-November 1930
]

So this is what it means to grow old: a touch of rheumatism in the legs, a stiff back, graying hair. Yet, deep down, I feel I'm not all that old: it doesn't seem so long ago that I was a schoolboy going to Dölker's school and buying fruit, etc., from Frau Haas at the market. That sort of thing would be going through my head, and there was another crazy notion that helped me delude myself about my age: “Even if I'm no longer a spring chicken, my little sister must still be a youngster, since she has only just sat for her teacher's certificate.” Then, all of a sudden, I discovered that this little sister of mine has become old on the sly, and is about to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. It's hard to believe. I just shook my head, and sat down to write my little sister a birthday letter.

I only found the short piece entitled “Johannes” by Monika Hunnius
222
recently, even though the almanac put out by Salzer, the publisher, has been lying around here for over a year. I dislike Salzer
223
and his devoutly Christian business acumen, and am not particularly fond of Monika as a writer. She believes that having a temperament suffices, and rides roughshod over every nuance. She also seems to believe that the Baltic region is some sort of paradise on earth. But I did read her essay, since I felt that I might find something. I was delighted to discover the nice sketch of Father and the reminiscences about you.

Whenever I think about Father, a funny experience comes to mind. It has to do with certain theories of heredity. I never doubted that I had inherited my artistic talent and temperament more from Mother than from Father. Yet I have always seen myself more as Father's son than as Mother's, and I also feel that my various psychic oddities and assorted nervous complaints stem more from Father than from Mother: sleeplessness, headaches, eye problems, etc.

But on several occasions recently some relatives on the Gundert side have said that we Gunderts have a hard time because we inherited a temperament that makes life difficult for us and predisposes us to conditions such as melancholia, etc., which are difficult to cope with. To put it briefly, those people (not related in any way to Father, of course) attributed all their nervous complaints and psychological problems to the Gundert legacy, whereas I had always felt I had inherited those very problems from my father's side! I learned something from this, and also found it amusing.

And in the course of time my attitude has changed in other respects as well. I can no longer distinguish some traits of Father from those of Grandpa Gundert: a very gentle intellect, a refined diffidence in the making of judgments, a genuine fondness for the customs and intellectual traditions of India, which is quite apparent underneath all his Christian scruples. At times, the two figures almost merge in my mind. Anyhow, I'm discovering that some of my intellectual qualities, the ones I consider anachronistic, non-German or non-European (in other words, the best), were also attributes of our father, or of Grandfather Gundert.[ … ]

I don't yet know what to make of my new house, even though we often have sessions with the architect, which are mostly handled by Ninon. The house already has four walls and a roof, but won't be ready for us to move into until July. At the moment, I can only see the drawbacks: the difficulty getting servants, the big increase in our cost of living. I'm very reluctant to leave the old apartment, which was so beautiful (even if only in the summer), and also my pied-à-terre in Zurich, which I have to give up in the spring. But everything will eventually sort itself out.[ … ]

Farewell, Marulla. I have to say goodbye to my little sister; you were a schoolgirl at old Ansel's not so long ago. I find it difficult to accept that my sister is now an older lady, and that, between the two of us, we have racked up over a hundred years. With fondest wishes

TO WILHELM KUNZE

[
November 1930
]

I haven't been able to work for the past few weeks due to constant pain, but I have read your book with interest.
224

I don't really have a newspaper I could review it for. I just wrote a few lines about it, and shall send them off today to the
National-Zeitung
in Basel, which may publish the piece. I'm enclosing a carbon copy.

You won't be very pleased with the piece. But reading your book has reminded me once again of a postwar phenomenon, which I have often noticed before: the indifference of young people to moral issues. I felt that I needed to criticize this attitude, which your book conveys all too clearly, because you yourself have not done so. One feels pity for these young people, who are often very likable but have a basic flaw. They have no sense of responsibility, fail to uphold any values of their own, and go around accusing other people of guilt and baseness, which they detect in everybody but themselves. Seducing girls or boys is the only contribution they have to offer. They're annoyed at the mess their fathers, government ministers, etc., have made, but they themselves just sit around twiddling their thumbs. They don't feel any responsibility toward a world they did not create. Yet they're surprised by the lack of change. They're now getting older and are beginning to burden themselves with an ever-increasing sense of guilt, the guilt they used to reserve exclusively for the older generation.

Dear Herr Kunze, please share the following ancient wisdom with your generation: Acting morally is only justified and worthwhile if one is prepared to accept one's own responsibility, not just for the wretched state we call life but also for death and all one's sins, original sin in other words, and this means one can no longer attempt to pin all of the guilt on others. In refusing to admit any guilt and blaming everything on your fathers, you young people are actually imitating their wartime behavior, since they blamed everything on the Russians, the Italians, the Kaiser, or the Jews. You haven't learned anything at all and don't intend to either—Latin, geography, or math would be such a chore.

I had to say this to somebody of your generation. It was in 1914—i.e., the time of my awakening—that I first realized how abominable a state the world was in and how virtually universal the tendency was to pin all responsibility for this state of affairs on other nations, classes, or political parties. I have been preaching the following message ever since: “Before any progress can take place, a person, class, or people must first try to discover its own guilt and put its own house in order.” This applies just as much to the youth of the postwar era as it did to previous generations. If young people aren't willing to chip in, if they insist on adopting a superior attitude from the outset and expect others to take care of everything, they are thereby crossing out their own names in the Book of Life. I can no longer blame the decent, if rather stupid soldiers of 1914, or their fathers, for all the problems of our age, and to me the mental and physical lethargy of the younger generation represents a greater evil.

But I have also tried to suggest the beauty of your book.

Please use the piece any way you wish, either the whole thing or just excerpts. You have my permission. As I said, I hope it appears in Basel, but I cannot be sure, and if not, your publisher can quote those lines, if he finds them useful. It would be a pleasure to be of some use to you and your book.

TO WILHELM SCHÄFER
225

Zurich, November 1930

Your kind letter arrived too late, since I asked 0. Loerke the day before yesterday to go ahead and announce my resignation.
226

I have something to add: More than two years ago, I asked the selfsame Loerke (whom I really like, by the way) to suggest a way out of the Academy for me, since I never felt I belonged there. Loerke didn't bother answering. But now that your words have given me sufficient cause to repeat my request,
227
he has replied, although his answer is not yet to my satisfaction. But I hope this entire affair will soon be over. My dear friend, could you bear with me for another two minutes? I have no wish to elaborate on the reasons why I cannot remain in the Academy. What are “reasons” anyhow? Bad air could be enough to drive a person away. For years now, I have been listening in on the chatter of this debating club through the reports. I disliked the majority of the motions, and the few I liked were immediately defeated. I was amused to see Molo
228
presiding over this assembly of German writers—i.e., a man who cannot write a decent German sentence. And there were other irritations as well. My life is not easy, and can no longer carry a useless burden, which has begun to torment me. I really have to get out.

After being elected to the Section, I declined the offer of membership on the grounds that I was Swiss. But they refused to accept my reasoning, and since there was a scandalous fight going on in the Academy at that time over Arno Holz, I wanted to be nice and collegial, and tacitly accepted membership. As I mentioned before, about a year later I asked Loerke to help me leave. He never answered. Since then, I haven't been on good terms with the society, and then you, my dear friend, gave me a welcome opportunity to resign.

One more minute, please. I would ask you to reread first the lines you wrote about purely “passive” members and then rethink your most recent argument. You said earlier that those who never speak up and aren't willing to lift a finger don't deserve to be members, and you claim in your letter today that my resignation (i.e., that of a silent and indifferent member) would “destroy” the organization. I have little faith in your letter, but have no trouble believing what you said to those of us who are “passive” members. If the Academy, or Section for Literature, wants to justify its existence, it will first have to weed out all the lukewarm members, then focus on the goals it is genuinely committed to, rather than on the usual blather. Those who question the raison d'être of the institution and merely consider themselves reluctant appendages will have to leave. So I'm actually doing the Section a favor, and am glad I shall soon have severed my first affiliation ever with an “official” organization.

I wish the Section all the very best, and I cannot claim my reasons for resigning are particularly rational. I think the atmosphere is bad, that's all. But I also have some hunches. In the next war, the members of this Academy will constitute a sizable proportion of the ninety or a hundred prominent figures who, as in 1914, consent to spread state-sponsored lies among the people about the critical issues they have to confront. I'm not laying claim to any particular authority in political and moral matters, except insofar as I go my own way and obey my own laws. That is why I'm withdrawing from the Section, as I have done in the past by dropping several pleasant affiliations. You don't really believe my resignation will burden the Section with anything more than a slight, temporary inconvenience. People will say: “Oh yes, Hesse, he was always damn sensitive and terribly unsociable,” and then things will revert to normal. I think that's more or less what will happen.