...about H.Hesse i am in two minds but i always liked his Siddharta
ABOUT THE STEPPENWOLF, to Mr. R.B., an English translation:
It would be impossible for me to leave your letter unanswered to. I see things approximatively like this: it isn't accurate to say that we cannot live after the principles that I have made myself the defender. I do not take fact and cause for constituted doctrines which would have definitive formulas, I am the man of becoming and metamorphoses and that is why it can be found in my books, next to the "Everyone is alone", other truths still; for example Siddhartha is in entirety a profession of faith in love and the same profession can be found in many other of my books.
You can certainly not demand of me that I show more faith in life that I have in it myself. At many occasions, I expressed with strength my conviction that a veritable life, truly worth living, is absolutely impossible in our era and in our intellectual milieu. Of this I am absolutely convinced. If, in spite of this I am still alive, if our time, with its atmosphere of lies, of cupidity, of fanaticism and barbarity have not killed me I owe it to two fortunate circumstances: firstly to the important heritage of affinities with nature that I have inherited, and secondly, that if I pose myself as an adversary of my era, it allows me to stay productive. Without this, I would not be able to live, and even with this, my existence resembles Hell often.
My position with regards to the world actually will not change much. I do not believe in our science, nor our politics, nor our way to think, to believe, to entertain ourselves, and I do not share a single ideal of our time. But I am not in spite of all this bereft of all faith. I believe in the laws of humanity, centuries old, and I believe that they will survive all the troubles of our era.
Showing the path in which we could maintain these human ideals that I hold for eternal and, at the same time, believe in the ideals, the objectives, the reassuring aspects of our era, that is impossible for me. I also don't have the slightest motivation to do so. On the other hand, I have adventured myself during all my life on paths which allowed me to transcend the limit of time and to live in the intemporal (I have often evoked these itineraries at some point jestingly and at others seriously).
When I meet young people who have read, for example, Steppenwolf, I often notice that they take very seriously that which, in this book, evokes the folly of our time, but that they see absolutely nothing that to my eyes is a thousand times more important and that which, anyway, they do not believe. It doesn't suffice to underline the little value we attach to things such as war, technique, passion for money, nationalism, etc. We must be able to replace the cult of contemporary idols with a belief. This is what I have always done: in Steppenwolf this belief is represented by Mozart, by the Immortals and by the Magic Theater; in Demian and in Siddhartha, other names represent these same values.
If we share the faith that Siddhartha professes for love and the one that Harry has for the Immortals, it is possible to live, I am certain. With the rescue of this faith, we can not only support life but also triumph over time.
I see that I am not able to express myself as I should. I am always a bit discouraged when I see that the truth which I believe and which appears distinctively in my books goes unnoticed to the eyes of my readers.
When you have received my letter, pick up any of my works again and see for yourself if there really isn't, here and there, the elements of a belief from which it would be possible to live. If you do not find any such thing, toss them away. If you find something, start from there to continue your research.
Recently, a young woman was asking me what I might have meant with the Magic Theater in Steppenwolf. She had been profoundly disappointed to see that, under the influence of a kind of drunkenness caused by opium, I turned myself scornfully and mocked everything. I told her that she would do well to read those pages again, more exactly, to read them again knowing that nothing I have ever expressed, under my eyes, has taken the shape of a character so essential and sacred than that evocation of the Magic Theater, image and symbol of what has most value and importance to me. Sometime after she wrote to me that she had understood.
I understand the sense of your question, Mr. B., and it is very possible that at this moment my books do not suit you at all, that you would be better off getting rid of them and overcoming the attraction that they have exerted upon you. On this point, I naturally cannot counsel you. I can respond uniquely of that which I have lived and written, and of my contradictions, my zigzags and my disorder. My task does not consist in giving others what is objectively the best, but of giving them what belongs to me proper (if only some pain, some complaint) and to do it in a way as pure and sincere as possible. - H. H.
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