Paths to the Future

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SOURCE: “Paths to the Future,” in Hermann Hesse's Futuristic Idealism: The Glass Bead Game and its Predecessors, Herbert Lang/Peter Lang, 1973, pp. 45–53.

[In the following excerpt, Norton examines the future as a significant component of idealistic projection in Hesse's writing.]

Hesse's novels of the 1920's and early 1930's—Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Journey to the East—continue to draw the consequences of the new outlooks which arose from his personal crisis of the war years. Like Demian they focus on the problems of the creative individual and his way to self-knowledge. At the same time, as also prefigured in Demian, they explore ways to establish relationship with that which lies beyond the individual without compromising his need for distance and perspective in his observation of the world. In this exploration there is movement from the specific to the general and a linking of the temporal with the transtemporal which is reflected in both structure and theme.1 From works which, as various commentators have noted, have a basically closed, rounded-off form, there is seen a progress toward open endings where previously unknown possibilities beckon. Although the future does not appear as a clearly defined plot setting in these novels it is a very significant component of idealistic projections which, as we have seen, received their original impetus from his individuational precepts and were now to be given further substance and extension.

SIDDHARTHA (1922)

Despite its atmosphere of seeming serenity and perfection, Siddhartha depicts, as does Demian, an early stage in the development of Hesse's new ideals. It again gives evidence of his struggle for awareness of unity but goes farther than its predecessor in its exploration of the qualities of spirit and of life that may serve as prerequisites for personal rebirth and growth. In this sense Siddhartha is clearly future-oriented, although the future as a separately stated theme is not prominent. On one level of meaning, of course, Siddhartha can be interpreted as basically the recounting of an attempt to conquer fate and time through mystical transcendence. Such an interpretation is substantiated by Hesse's description of the wisdom which Siddhartha has attained toward the end of his story, during his sojourn as ferryman at the side of the symbolic “river of life.” He now sees all antinomies—temporality and eternity, suffering and happiness, good and bad, youth and age—as mere illusions. Differentiations or problems of the “real” world and of its times are of no significance here since they have no existence apart from the all-embracing unity and simultaneity which his contemplation of the river has taught him: “The world … is not imperfect or on a slow path to perfection; no, it is perfect at any given moment … All little children have their old age already within them, all nursing babies have their death within them, and all those who are dying have eternal life” (III, 726). Hans Meyerhoff has characterized the mystical aspects of such an attitude insofar as it concerns time: “Mysticism thus involves a denial of time both in experience and in nature. It does not distinguish one from the other, but declares both of them to be illusory and unreal from the point of view of the mystic experience which discloses a transcendent, eternal order of Reality.”2

However, in order to come to grips with the broader import of this novel, one should also consider Siddhartha's mystical experience in its relationship to the context of vital tensions, growth, and change in which it has its place. The following words from Hesse's diary of 1920 concerning the novel's inception suggest that much more is involved in this novel than merely the depiction of inner unity and peace of mind:

How amazingly and frighteningly long it takes for a person to learn to know himself even a little—and how much longer to affirm his existence, and, in a sense which surpasses egoism, to come to terms with himself or even to tolerate himself! How he has to keep at himself, fight with himself, loosen knots, cut knots, tie new knots! When he has finally finished his task, when complete insight, complete harmony, complete and perfect serenity and affirmation are attained … then he smiles and dies; that is death, that is the fulfilment of the “Never,” and the willing entrance into formlessness in order to be reborn. That is as far as I am able to spin this thread. The idea of never being reborn, genuine Nirvana, the bliss of having attained one's goals and being extinguished has never been entirely comprehensible for me in its full, genuine sense—that is, not in the sense of mere weariness and yearning for rest—; inexhaustible material for meditation! When Siddhartha dies he will not wish for Nirvana but for a new cycle, new form, rebirth.3

Of significance in illuminating this other side of the novel is the fact that Hesse makes the knowledge of real life and real time an integral part of his plot. Siddhartha's career as a merchant and his apprenticeship in love with the courtesan Kamala are shown to have had in their own way an importance for him which is equal to that of his former experiences as a world-denying Samana: “Now he … realized that his secret voice had been right, that no teacher could ever have given him salvation. For that reason he had had to go into the world, lose himself in lust and power, women and money, become a merchant, gambler, drinker, and man of greed, until the priest and Samana in him were dead. … He had died, and a new Siddhartha had awakened from his sleep” (III, 692). Despite the negativity of this particular description of the developmental process, there is implicit in it the belief that each person in his progress toward maturity must inwardly and deeply experience the full course of life and time, whether that course in its external traits seems good or bad.4 Thus the recognition either of antinomies or of unity cannot be a product of cerebral or mystical processes alone, abstracted from ordinary creatureliness. Nor, as his Jungian experience had taught Hesse, can one side of any polar relationship be said to be more important than the other. A balance must be sought and maintained. This principle seems to be the key to his exposition of the personal characteristics of Gotama and Siddhartha. There are strong indications that Hesse intended in this novel to project a future synthesis between an Eastern, world-denying, highly spiritualized Buddha (Gotama) and a dynamic, searching Western Buddha (Siddhartha) who sees that the way to the mysteries of transformation must first lead through the world and its times. Hesse gives a hint of his intention to depict two different Buddha figures in remarks from his diary of 1920 concerning a book by Oskar Schmitz entitled Dionysisches Geheimnis (Dionysian Mystery) in which are described, he says, inner experiences that are almost exactly like his own:

The experience of the War, the neurosis itself … then the awakening of the individual, the dawning recognition: But I am a god, I am Atman, nothing can happen to me; and finally the conscious study of Buddha together with Buddhistic practices, in the process of which, however, Schmitz conceives of a European, Dionysian Buddhism. And in this again there is something very strange. What the hero of the Schmitz book experiences as his ‘Dionysian mystery’ is exactly what I wanted to express, although in completely different manner and form, in my ‘Siddhartha,’ the first part of which … is finished and which I have not succeeded in continuing, because I really wanted to depict something in it which I to be sure knew and sensed, … but did not yet really possess inwardly. This is exactly what Schmitz described in his book!5

The apparent contrast between the two Buddha figures in Siddhartha is most clearly seen in a conversation between Govinda and Siddhartha near the end of the novel:

‘To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it, may be the affair of great thinkers. But my [Siddhartha's] only concern is to be able to love the world, not to scorn it nor to hate it and me, but rather to be able to regard it and myself and all living things with love and admiration and respect.’ ‘I understand that,’ said Govinda, ‘but this is exactly what the exalted one [Gotama] recognizes as a deception. He teaches good will, forbearance, compassion, tolerance, but not love. He forbade us to let our hearts be attached by love to earthly things.’

(III, 729)

Other passages single out further differences: Gotama's more sublimely passive, ritualistic behavior based on tradition, in contrast with Siddhartha's rebellious and unconventional spirit, to which nature and earthliness had made essential contributions.6 However, in the further course of his conversation with Govinda, Siddhartha insists that the obvious differences between himself and Gotama cannot shake his conviction that in their essence they are united (III, 729). Govinda, who as follower and intimate of both Buddhas has the function of a symbolical “shadow” common to both, then has a vision in which he is able to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, to see multitudes of human figures flowing into and merging with one another in a successive but also synchronous coming and going, and finally to observe upon Siddhartha's face “the same calm, fine, impenetrable, perhaps kindly perhaps scornful, wise, thousand-fold smile that he had seen a hundred times with awe on the face of Gotama Buddha. Govinda knew that this was the way that those who are perfect smile” (III, 731–732).

Siddhartha's journey toward apotheosis is represented structurally by a division into three segments which can be equated with the three stages of individuation. Also, insofar as they represent human progress, they can be equated with time concepts which reflect the steps in Hesse's artistic career seen from the viewpoint of the early 1920's: 1) The youthful, innocent, and unknowing stage (the past) symbolized by Siddhartha's years as Brahmin and Samana; 2) Loss of innocence and direct engagement with the confusion and corruption of life (the present), i.e. Siddhartha's years as merchant and lover of Kamala; 3) Attainment of spiritual maturity and wisdom (the future) as represented by Siddhartha's passage over the river into an increasingly idealized and exalted state of being. The transition from each stage to the next is marked in the plot by a symbolical death, as has been noted above in regard to Siddhartha's decision to give up his life as a Samana (“He had died, and a new Siddhartha had awakened,” III, 692). In his next transition his “death” is suggested by the long sleep which preceded his final crossing of the river—a sleep that was “nothing but a long and deep speaking of OM, a thinking of OM, and a submersion into and complete union with OM, with the nameless and perfect” (III, 684).

Here a decisive step is being taken beyond present and ordinary human existence into a utopistic realm of sorts, identifiable with the future to the extent that it represents a self-fulfilment yet to be achieved. As if to emphasize the potential links between Siddhartha's current state of being and this realm, Hesse scattered through his plot brief references to his anticipatory moments of awareness of it. For example, in a contemplative moment during his association with Kamala he ruminates over his life and describes his intuiting of a better fate awaiting him: “Then [in childhood] he had felt in his heart: ‘A way lies before you to which you have been summoned; the gods await you.’ And again as a youth, when the ever-ascending aim of all his contemplation had led him above and beyond the crowd of fellow-strivers … when every attained bit of knowledge aroused only a new thirst and pain: ‘Go further, go further! You have been summoned’” (III, 679).7 Then, in the final segment of his story, an application to humanity in general is made. Here Hesse indicates the old Siddhartha's increased understanding and sympathy for the “childishly human” in man, as he describes Siddhartha's self-humbling attempts to win his son's affection and also his general attitude toward the people whom he ferries across the river. He has now become less “clever and proud” in his bearing and more “warm-hearted, curious, and concerned toward others,” willing even to concede that he as a man of thought might be equally childish in his own way and indeed inferior to them in many ways (III, 715–716).

Hesse's effort thus to link human life with the eternal and the ideal finds its summation in his statement that Siddhartha finally was able to comprehend that true wisdom “was nothing but a readiness of the soul, a capability, a secret skill of being able at any moment in the midst of life to think the thought of unity, to feel unity and to breathe it in” (III, 716). Through such readiness and skill the external experiences of life become interiorized and magically transformed. From this perspective the most idealized future seems very close and attainable, however imperfect one's present state may be: “In the sinner is found here and now the future Buddha; his entire future is already there, your task is to honor in him and in yourself and in everyone the Buddha who is becoming, who is possible, who is hidden” (III, 726).

There are obvious ambiguities and ambivalences in Hesse's idealism as expressed in Siddhartha, but they seem more intentional than accidental. He postulates an imprecisely defined goal which at one time is infinitely distant from ordinary experience and conventional time, but at another time is directly accessible to man's reason and will. Such oscillations between the ideal and the real, the magical and the rational became so much a part of Hesse's way of thinking, especially after his acquaintance with Jungian psychoanalysis that the probing of the complementary relationships between these and other apparently antithetical concepts became one of his most important aims. As a vehicle for exemplifying Hesse's beliefs, Siddhartha's plot and its message partake of roughly equal portions of allegory, myth, and human biography. It proposes that one is able, after struggling to find his own way in life and to understand and accept both the demon and the angel within himself and mankind, to rise by means of mystical perception to a level of being in which divinity and oneness are no longer merely glimpsed in blissful moments, but enjoyed as prolonged experiences. Thus Hesse undertakes to link immediate, ephemeral realities with truths that are eternally present, and to link the human future with the millennium.

Notes

  1. Cf. Gerhart Mayer, “Mystische Religiosität und dichterische Form,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, IV (1960), 458.

  2. Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1955), pp. 61–62.

  3. “Tagebuch, 1920,” Corona, III (1932), 195.

  4. Siddhartha's thoughts on the value of experience are described as follows: “It is good to experience for oneself everything that it is necessary to know. As a child I learned that worldly desires and wealth are not good. I have known this a long time, but only now have I really lived it” (III, 691). See also III, 708–709.

  5. From an unpublished portion of Hesse's diary of 1920, by kind permission of the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach am Neckar.

  6. Hesse says about Gotama: “With a secret smile, quietly, calmly, not unlike a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore his garment, and placed his feet like all of his monks, according to exact prescription. But his face and his step, his silently lowered glance, his quietly hanging hand … spoke of perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an eternal calm, in eternal light, in inviolable peace” (III, 637). Gotama is also represented as promising salvation to those who follow him—a doctrine that Siddhartha cannot accept (III, 638). In further contrast with Gotama, Siddhartha makes the impression of being, despite his obvious holiness, an unconventional, rather odd person (III, 730). Hesse's intentions in regard to the two figures may be hinted at by his choice of names for them. Gotama, the family name of Buddha, might well represent the sources and the conventions from which the worship of Buddha grew, while Siddhartha as given name could suggest the addition of new and more individualistic traits to the traditional conception of Buddha.

  7. For other similar passages see III, 619, 626, 643, 651–652.

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