Soul of the Age (44 page)

For the past fourteen days, I have been trying to get some rest here, but without much success. I have the same daily work load as I have at home, and also the same frustrations and disappointments. I am tired and am not getting much fun out of life, literature, or the entire works, which I now find quite meaningless. The end is nigh.

I wanted to let you know first about the prize. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you once again of my gratitude.

TO WALTER KOLB, MAYOR OF FRANKFURT

Montagnola near Lugano, September 30, 1946

I received your letter of September 16 yesterday, and I wish to thank both the city of Frankfurt and you for the Goethe Prize. For several reasons, which I have described for myself and my friends in the enclosed thank-you note, I had to overcome some inner resistance and objections before accepting this prize, even though I certainly appreciate the honor. The fact that the prize is being awarded by the city of Frankfurt, which I knew well in the period before 1914, has greatly influenced my decision, since my ties to your city
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used to be very friendly and cordial, and I regarded Frankfurt as one of my favorite German cities. I think with great sadness of everything it has had to endure.

As regards the material part of the prize, I would like to divide it up and present it to friends and relatives of mine in Germany.
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As soon as I hear that you are ready to distribute the funds, I shall send you the addresses and amounts.

I would have liked to write at greater length, but have been overburdened for a long time; my exhaustion is such that I am going to close my house three weeks from now and spend some time in a sanatorium.

TO FELIX LÜTZKENDORF
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[
October 25, 1946
]

I'm heading off tomorrow for a sanatorium, and my house will remain empty for several months at least. First, I want to thank you for your letter of October 10. It arrived at the same time as a letter from Thomas Mann, in which he says in his own way much the same things about the German mentality as I have been saying in mine, and your comments about your former colleagues in Germanistics provide further confirmation.

No, on the whole I don't expect anything good to come out of Germany, and never have. The rest of the world, which it had wanted to rape and dominate, is now finding Germany thoroughly indigestible, in intellectual terms as well. But I feel that the world is comprised not of nations but of people, and as far as people go, there are still many worthwhile individuals in your country. Even though I have been living outside Germany for thirty-four years now, I know a few dozen of them, and would rank them among the best anywhere. They are the ones who matter, it seems to me, especially their ability to work on the masses like salt and leaven and keep them under control. Here I am thinking far more of intellectual and moral life than actual political action.

I have been less taken up with the denunciatory letters that have come my way over the past months than with the various honors. Hesse evenings are being held in a series of cities and towns, talks as well; I receive copies of the formal addresses. Then there was the Goethe Prize, and Calw, my hometown, is producing a Hesse selection in two volumes, just those writings dealing with Calw and Swabia. Almost all of this is a burden, I find, what with the new letters, questions, misunderstandings, often also respectful letters from people who just yesterday still believed in the opposite. And I regard my utter inability to relate to this whole business as a sign that I have lived differently from most people, and relied almost entirely on my own resources, had no fatherland, no like-minded souls around me, no sense of community. I had roots in a homeland, but it was not close by, or even in the present era; my fatherland was called Castalia, and I discerned my saints and kings in the old Indians and Chinese, etc.

I shall feel disappointed and somewhat bitter as I die, but only in regard to my person, my private sphere, and the way I was embedded in the world. I have had to work for a people that reacts either with sentimentality and reverence or with animal-like brutality. Because of the language into which I was born, I have had to entrust my life's work to that people, and now feel disappointed and cheated. But taken as a whole and in a higher sense, my life and work have certainly been meaningful, and whatever is left of my work will survive. So, to that extent, I am not ending in bankruptcy.

My present relationship to the Germans is subject to all sorts of strange overlappings and sudden changes. For instance, some political friends of mine, who were proven martyrs under Hitler, have drifted away from me and I have been disappointed in them, whereas several former fellow travelers under Hitler have already won me over by means of a pure confession and repentance.

My next address is: c/o Dr. O. Riggenbach in Marin near Neuchâtel. If possible, pass this on to Suhrkamp as well.

Enough. I haven't written this long a letter for months, and shall not be able to do so again for some time.

NOTE TO HIS WIFE, NINON

[
Early November 1946
]

Monday morning

I have just got up, and wish to add a greeting. I have not seen today's mail yet; it's lying in wait; my eyes are completely exhausted.

Having this Stockholm thing
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hanging over my head is all I needed. If it comes about, then I would ask you to call Fretz right away and ask him if he would print something I could use to answer the new flood of letters, perhaps something on the lines of a postcard, with a picture of me on one side and a few words of thanks on the other. I would select the picture and write the text. To hell with the whole thing! Just in case, I shall write to the postal authorities today, saying that any telegrams which arrive should only be forwarded as letters.[ … ]

TO ISA, HIS DAUGHTER-IN-LAW

[
November 1946
]

Thanks for your letter with the two wonderful drawings. I am in Marin near Neuchâtel, but don't give anybody my address. The Nobel Prize has been quite a burden, and, of course, the peace I had been seeking here has been utterly shattered. There are still a few hundred letters from many countries lying around unopened, even though I have been working on the mail for fourteen days, and we must have spent some 200 francs on telegrams and phone calls. The Swiss Ambassador will represent me at the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm, but I still had to compose a little speech for the occasion.

There was something funny in the
Gazette de Lausanne.
They published a nice, humorous little essay about me, and there was a funny typo in it. They meant to say that I had grown up in a family of missionaries, but misspelled the word as “millionaires.”

Ninon is here again for a few days and can be of some help. But the crazy, continuous pain in my eyes and the headaches, which often go on all night, force me to keep to myself most of the time.

Fond regards to you and the children, your father, Hesse

TO THOMAS MANN

Marin près Neuchâtel, November 19, 1946

I wish to thank you very heartfeltly for your congratulations and also for your role in bringing about the Stockholm decision;
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I wish I could do so in a letter worthy of you and the occasion. But for some time now, my little flame has been flickering, and often seems to have gone out completely, and so you will have to content yourself with this. This year has brought me several fine gifts I had been hoping for: In the summer my two sisters spent a few weeks with us, and we were able to feed, clothe, and comfort them until they had to go back to dark Germania. I was awarded the Goethe Prize. Then they hanged the most horrible and evil enemy I have ever had, Rosenberg by name, in Nürnberg. November saw the award of the Nobel Prize. The first of these events, the visit of my sisters, was truly wonderful, the only one that seemed truly real to me. The others have not penetrated through to me yet. I have always perceived and digested the setbacks more quickly than the successes, and it was almost a shock the way I was besieged by journalists from Sweden and elsewhere, who were skulking about like real detectives—they had not been given my address. But, of course, I am gradually seeing the positive elements in this piece of good fortune, and my friends, and especially my wife, have taken a really childlike pleasure in the whole thing, which they have celebrated with champagne.
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My old friend Basler
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is also delighted, and many old readers of mine are perhaps glad to find out that their weak spot for me was more than just a vice. If my health eventually improves, all this will seem quite funny. I shake your hand, and think of the day long ago when I first met you in Munich, at the hotel where the Fischers were staying, in about 1904.

I hope you have received the little book with my essays.
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They are harmless enough, but at least my point of view and attitude have always been the same.

DUPLICATED TYPESCRIPT, ENCLOSED WITH SOME LETTERS TO FRIENDS

On the 10th of December, the anniversary of Nobel's death, the Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm. We ought to have been in Stockholm, and Ninon decided that she definitely wanted to spend the day with me and celebrate it in some way or other. So we invited Dr. Riggenbach and his wife to a festive evening meal, either in Neuenburg or at some nice guesthouse in the area, whichever they preferred. They accepted, but on the eve of the occasion made a counterproposal, which involved postponing the meal we had planned and spending the evening of December 10 at their place. I agreed without suspecting anything; I thought the Riggenbachs were simply not keen on going out to celebrate. We arrived at their place, Ninon and I, on the evening of the 10th, and from the outset everything looked a little different and more festive than usual. They didn't show us into the living room, as they usually do before dinner, but into one of the large, formal, tall-ceilinged rooms belonging to the management. There was a large fire burning in the fireplace, and we were seated on a sofa beside it, then Frau Doktor disappeared. We sat there on our own, and a small choir of about five women and girls and three men appeared, including the doctor and Trautwein, who had trained the choir. They sang the song “Often in the circle of beloved ones” in three parts. I sat there and was a little embarrassed, then I went over and shook hands with each singer and thanked them. We were barely seated again when one of the high doors at the other end of the room opened, and a four-year-old blond girl with red cheeks came in, behind her a second, somewhat bigger, and so on, each one a little bigger than the one before, six children, then two bigger ones at the end of the line, Monika and Christoph, the doctor's children.

Each one gave me a present and recited a verse composed by Frau Doktor. The smallest one brought a small basket of fir cones for my oven, the next, the chef's child, a plate with baked goods, which her father had baked, then a little jar of jam, made from the oranges from the little orange trees in front of the director's apartment. Finally, Christoph presented a huge sheet of beautiful drawing paper, and in a little verse he apologized because the sheet was not quite as big as the Spalen-Tor in Basel.
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I praised the children and thanked them and they got some of the cookies; then Dr. Riggenbach came with Christoph and played in two parts (two violins) “How beautiful shines the morning star” and something from
Figaro.

Whereupon we all sat down to eat, and the singers and children, except for the doctor's, took their leave. We had a lavish meal in the beautiful dining room on beautiful old porcelain. The table was covered with flowers, red primroses, trout, chicken, beautiful wine, etc. During the second course the old servant Léon came with a tray and said that some more telegrams had arrived for me. The doctor opened and read them—he and his wife had devised every one—some were funny, some serious, some very beautiful. One, with pictures, was supposed to have come from King Gustav of Sweden. One came from heaven and was signed by Knulp, another arrived from the arch at Mount Sinai and was penned by the last European,
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one came from Baden and brought tidings and greetings from the Dutchman,
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etc., and there was a beautiful one from Turu, the rainmaker's son.
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These wonderful people showered us with gifts and feted us, and I was more moved than I could ever have been by the Stockholm ceremony.

RESPONSE TO LETTERS REQUESTING HELP
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[
1947
]

I am receiving so many hundreds of letters asking for help that I shall have to use these printed lines to reply, especially since I am no longer capable of doing much work and am also continually overburdened.

There is no way I can consider the countless pleas for foodstuffs and other gifts of that nature from people whom I don't know. I have great difficulty meeting the obligations that I have already undertaken in this regard—for the past two years I have been supporting a number of people in Germany whom I cherish, by sending them packages regularly. It costs several hundred francs a month to support these people, and I cannot expand that circle.

None of these supplicants realizes that, as the author of books in the German language, I am also very much affected by the massive German bankruptcy. I entrusted my entire life's work to Germany and was cheated out of it. I have not received a penny from my German publishers for many years, and have little hope that the situation will change during my lifetime.

During the period of German megalomania, my books were partly banned, partly suppressed in other ways. And the remainder—all the inventory and composed type, etc.—has been completely destroyed by bombs together with the publishers, Fischer-Suhrkamp.

It's true that I have brought out a series of my books in new Swiss editions over the last few years. But Switzerland is small, an absolutely tiny market; it is only possible to do small printings here, and the books cannot be exported either to Germany or to Austria.