Hesse: The Wanderer and His Shadow

by Gunnar Decker

Against the horrors of Nazi dictatorship and widespread disillusionment with the forces of mass culture and consumerism, Hermann Hesse's stories inspired nonconformity and a yearning for universal values. Few today would doubt Hesse's artistry or his importance to millions of devoted readers. But just who was the author of Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian?

Gunnar Decker weaves together previously unavailable sources to offer a unique interpretation of the life and work of Hermann Hesse. Drawing on recently discovered correspondence between Hesse and his psychoanalyst Josef Lang, Decker shows how Hesse reversed the traditional roles of therapist and client, and rethinks the relationship between Hesse's novels and Jungian psychoanalysis. He also explores Hesse's correspondence with Stefan Zweig—recently unearthed—to find the source of Hesse's profound sense of alienation from his contemporaries.

Decker's biography brings to life this icon of spiritual searching and disenchantment who galvanized the counterculture in the 1960s and feels newly relevant today.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, German Literature

800 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Gunnar Decker is the author of numerous biographies, including works on Francis of Assisi, Vincent van Gogh, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ernst Jünger, and Georg Trakl. He is also a film and theater critic, and the editor of the journal Theater der Zeit.

Reviews

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography offers a thorough examination of Hesse’s works and life. Here is a creative man concealed within contradictions. He appears to have been on a lifelong search for that elusive connection between spirit and life. For him, as the title suggests, the dark does not disappear when illuminated. It just keeps moving farther away. At times Hesse would find a burst of unexpected color amidst the blowing debris on life’s pathways. I saw a frowning man with his arms wrapped tightly about him against the cold gusts of Pietism, Hitler’s Germany, and sadly, women. Women are the eternal stranger. Hesse and his three wives all moved in opposite directions. He only considered males to be his intellectual equal. A loner who went beyond craving solitude. He required it. He was a lover of nature. Here was where he sought solace and times of transcendence. Music also provided him with comfort, particularly Chopin. When his vision failed him the sounds of Chopin’s piano pieces, so pure and true, would transport him to his childhood. He’d recall the scent of sunlight on his skin and the vivid colours of wildflowers everywhere. This from a man who could not bear to be touched. A man in conflict until his death he was never able to completely free himself from his upbringing. He was raised in an extremely strict religious family. As a consequence he expressed shame and disapproval of many people and much in life. Until he hit old age he described the theatre and dancing as irresponsible acts - silly, immature and possibly insane. Yet he rejected the faith of his family and searched for a personal interpretation of the divine. He wandered away from a life of power and status and lived outside the rules and regulations of the times. Above all he was a believer in being true to yourself and nothing else. All answers could be found within. The keys to the kingdom, he was fond of saying, are in each of our hands. In the end he was a man apart from others. A friend, Andre Gide, wrote of Hesse “and so he left me standing there with no explanation or word of farewell.” This biography dissects all his novels, which includes Hesse’s copious notes. It was so intricate that I became fatigued reading it. However, if I were to re read them I’d have a distinctly different perspective after completing this 800 page work. His notes on The Glass Beat Game are extraordinary.

[withdrawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book eight months ago. Today I feel like writing a review. Details may be few and far between.

Later same day
Oops I wrote a long review in Apple Notes. Then I deleted it. Maybe another day.

In the interim, read Paltia’s review of this book. It’s probably better than mine anyway. (Don’t forget to “Like” hers.)

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hesse ist schon seit meiner Jugend einer meiner Lieblingsautoren. Es gibt Werke die mag ich unglaublich gerne, aber auch welche, die fand ich nur ok. Jedoch steckt in jedem Werk etwas autobiographisches. Dies wird durch "Der Wanderer und sein Schatten" nochmal deutlich. Der Autor berichtet über Hesses Leben und stellt dabei immer die Verbindung zu seinen Werken her. Zudem geht er zwar thematisch vor, hält sich aber so gut es geht an eine chronologische Abfolge. Dadurch kann man dem Buch sehr gut folgen und weiß immer an welchem Punkt in Hesses Leben man gerade ist.
Ich hätte gerne noch tiefere Einblicke in Hesses Gedankenwelt bekommen. Z.B. warum war er so depressiv und Lebensmüde? Doch vielleicht hat er das selbst nie so tiefgründig reflektiert.
Dieses Buch gibt einen guten Einblick in Hesses Leben und ich habe richtig Lust bekommen mich mit diesem neuen Hintergrundwissen nochmal an die Lektüre einiger seiner Werke zu machen.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

A behemoth, a magnum opus! Five stars for the sheer effort this biographer put in for 800 pages on Hesse. It covers his life and literary analysis of his all of his works

Now. Hesse. I went into this thinking Hesse was one of my favorite authors, and that hasn’t necessarily changed but now has a giant asterisk. I am forever inspired by his timeless writing, his ideas coming from the tumultuous time that was Germany/Switzerland from WW1, WW2, and beyond. Much of his later prose was in reaction to being a German and watching the third reich come into power. In the way that Hesse warned far and wide against nationalism, visualizing an alternate reality for the future in the Glass Bead Game (with his hidden symbols, refraining from outright condemnation of the Nazis. This embodies his canonically paradoxical spirit). He maintained the voice of the individual, the spirit, the mystic who worshipped nature. That pervasive narration of “the outsider” seeking answers to reality through internal reflection, as opposed to militaristic ideologies, has meaning in todays world as well.

HOWEVER. This man had nooo respect for women. Women were objects for pleasure, to keep house, and to read to him when his eyesight failed. No single
Woman exists in the intellectual elite of his novels. Or really just at all, besides Hermine in steppenwolf. And she was literally just the alter ego of the main male character, a reflection of sorts. So this gets a massive BOO from me. To think that as an avid reader of Hesse he would have no respect for me as a women “intellectual” is sickening. The way he treated his three wives was so hard to read. And also he just kept leaving his kids with other people to raise since they kept bothering him when he was writing?

So I don’t really think Hesse was always a great person. Though he did take in a lot of German refugees throughout the second war and avidly corresponded with his fans (not cheerfully, but this man responded to almost every letter). In this day and age, can we love an authors work when the respect we have for him as a person has just greatly faltered?

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

'That’s the way it is: the reader of the final stage isn’t actually a reader any more. He scorns Goethe. He has no need for Shakespeare. The reader of the final stage no longer reads a thing. What’s the point of books when he has now the whole world within himself?'

[Stephanie McGuirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive textbook on Hesse's life. Not always the most riveting read, and it does have typos and confusing time jumps. But it ultimately does the job in a very balanced way. Hesse is shown to be interesting, smart, and compassionate, yet also deeply flawed and troubled. Would recommend to big Hesse fans.

[William T · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that this is an important book and one I recommend. Of course, as I am reading many books at the same time, I am finishing this rather slowly. I have no regrets about taking up the significant task of reading through this book, but I must suggest that the author spends an inordinate space speculating on what were Hesse's beliefs, motivations and anguishes. Of course, this is what we want on one level, but on another, we need the biographer to not cross a line into too much personal interpretation.

Having objected thus, I still conclude that my life is better for having begun and almost finished this fine biography

[Mark Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hesse's writing was highly influential, at least in affective dimensions, when I in my 20's. I looked forward to receiving this biography, which has been out for awhile, to rekindle my enthusiasm for the work -- not necessarily the man, though I was curious enough to buy the book.

There's plenty here to satisfy that urge. Hesse had a highly intentional, rich life during a turbulent period that marred a critical period of his personal and professional development (World War I). It makes for a fascinating read. You can get a sense for this from his Wikipedia page (of course I read the English version).

What is a bit jarring, though, is the presentation of inferred psychological states, viewpoints and opinions as fact. Here's a tame example:

All three were on the run from their former lives. They had how no idea how the future would turn out. They were banking on the mercy of a spirit of salvation, on true friendship.

Plausible, but there's a lot of literary license-taking here.

On the other hand, this treatment of inference as fact leads to some prose that is dramatically heightened. It makes for lively if lofty reading even when credulity is stretched.

For example, from the same passage (p. 477), consider:

So what was the common bond between Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in 1920? The blows that fate had dealt them over the war years just past had knocked all the exuberance out of both of them, and life weighed heavily on them. Their conversion was not meant rhetorically, but was vital to their survival. Praying together was the only point of fixity they could still identify in an age driven by a frenzy of destruction.

They were also bonded with Hesse by common spiritual themes: the demonic and exorcism; libidinous urges and asceticism; the sacred and the increasing banality of mass culture; the task of the intellectual between social criticism and the timeless evocation of meaningfulness; the monastic life, religion, and atheism; the question of the cultic in religion, action, and contemplation, the idea of the artist as narcissist; Protestantism and Catholicism: the role played by sacrifice for faith; guilt and atonement; the creation of heretics by institutions; the neuroses of modern humans; pantheism and mysticism . . .

Some "bondage" indeed!

On the other hand, there's some semi-literate literary criticism.

Rilke called the aim of art that proceeds from piety understood in such a way "the new life, the vita nuova." And it was this profoundly secret wish to have the capacity to change one's own life through the act of writing that Rilke identified in Hesse as well. He expressed this idea in an image that was very pathos-laden but highly apposite in all its resonant ambiguity: "His words kneel." Similarly he also maintained: "It is as if his words were made of metal and read very slowly and heavily." Yet Rilke also remarked on the shortcomings of Hesse's prose. A great deal of abstraction had found its way into the book, he claimed, and these elegant formulations had not blended well with the rest of the material. Here Rilke was ad dressing the fact that Hesse's style in An Hour Behind Midnight comes across as extremely aloof-sometimes bordering on the kind of "arts and craft” esthetic he despised. Rilke identified in this "a certain Sunday-best language. . . yet the author seems to have actually felt too few Sundays; many words appear just too new and unused for that." Nevertheless, the work was very unliterary, by which Rilke meant: "In its best passages it is vital and idiosyncratic. His reverence is sincere and profound. His love is great and all emotions in the book are pious: it is on the verge of art."60 This was a truly prophetic designation of the position from which Hesse wrote and which he would henceforth defend throughout his whole life . . .

Which likely helped attract the attention of the twenty-something me.

[Lit Folio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give this biography a 3.5 rating for its exhaustive research and details, but what shines in this regard fades in getting into the spirit and soul of this unusual writer. I read most of Hesse's books from the age of 17 to my early 20's. DEMIAN was such a pivotal, transforming work at that tender age; I recall spending nights talking with like-minded friends about how mystical it all was. Then came STEPPENWOLF, followed by one of my all time favorites, MAGISTER LUDI. I could go on and on about the rich spiritual depths of Hesse's inner journey as conveyed in his novels. Perhaps I was expecting a different sort of biography, but this work was too engrossed in details I found superfluous. I find that any biography of this author should be more on things like his friendship with Thomas Mann (who really talked the Nobel committee into granting his friend that coveted prize) and the author's inner depths more than on the rather pedestrian, peripatetic details of his life.

One minor aspect I became a wee bit annoyed with was the author's description of Rudolf Steiner--a most misunderstood figure. In here, Decker states that Hesse seemed to believe Steiner was some kind of guru--and a lousy one at that! Well, as a reader of R. Steiner's material some 20+ years, the last thing Steiner wanted to be was some guru. As far as women being his acolytes, many men, to this day, are avid readers of this misunderstood genius' work, I can tell you that. All this aside, this is a very exhaustive read on details that simply were not all that important when it comes to this unusually gifted author.

[Odyssée Littéraire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hesse – Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (von Gunnar Decker)

Biographie, 2013



Die intensive Auseinandersetzung mit der Biographie von Hermann Hesse hat mich in den letzten nachhaltig begleitet. Gunnar Decker erlaubt einem in seiner sehr sorgfältig recherchierten Biographie tief in die Gedankenwelt Hesses einzutauchen und seine inneren Kämpfe nachzuvollziehen. Einerseits fühlte ich mich Hesse dadurch nahe, als würde ich seinen Lebensweg mitverfolgen. Andererseits gab es Momente, in denen mir Hesse als Mensch fremd erschien, seine Entscheidungen und Ansichten mich auf Distanz hielten. Diese Ambivalenz, das gleichzeitige Gefühl der Annäherung und der Entfernung, hat die Lektüre für mich zu einer besonders intensiven Erfahrung gemacht. Hesse bleibt für mich eine faszinierende, aber auch widersprüchliche Figur, der man sich nie vollständig nähern kann, ohne auch auf Distanz zu stoßen.

Ich kann jedem Hesse-Fan diese Biographie nur wärmstens empfehlen.

[Kinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

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