There Is No Escape - Hermann Hesse (2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962)

 

Hermann Karl Hesse was born on 2 July 1877 in Calw, Germany.His interest in Eastern religion and Chinese philosophy, following a journey to India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, led to the publication of Siddhartha, a fictional account of a young man's journey toward enlightenment during the time of Buddha, and one of his best-loved novels.

The brilliant German-- Swiss poet, novelist and painter  is in  my  opinion is  one of the greatest writers of our time. Hesse gained a wide readership for his lyrical explorations of identity, spirituality, self exploration.and psychology in a time when other modernists were describing the dread, alienation, and absurdity of modern industrial society. As a young man, Hesse was an eager student of nineteenth century Romanticism, admitting his immense debt to major Romantic novelists and poets such as Goethe and Hölderlin.

Profoundly impacted by his parent’s Christianity, he said, “their Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me"

In 1946 Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Hesse’s exclamations on life continue to move and inspire me in so many unexpected ways. Hesse was a writer of fascinating extremes and contradictions, a spiritual bent, a lyrical style,  combined with a deep sensitivity . a sense of humor and a wealth of imagination. He died on 9 August 1962 in Montagnola, Switzerland.

 The following wonderful passage is from  a thoughtful collection of poems and travel prose that Hesse wrote in 1917, titled, Wandering. The book was translated in 1974 by James Wright.

"There ii no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. 

You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death.

Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. 

Don't try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. 

My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is — particularly the artist- particularly myself.

There ii no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. 

You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death.

Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. 

Don't try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. 

My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is — particularly the artist- particularly myself."