The most sustained exploration of the concept of the “world author” has been undertaken by Rebecca Braun. It is worth considering the development of her arguments to determine to what extent Hesse (who is never mentioned in her research) might fit her paradigm and understand the reasons why he might not. Braun set out the scope of her enquiry on “the rise of the world author” in 2015.
1Rebecca Braun, “Introduction: The Rise of the World Author from the Death of World Literature,” Seminar 51, no. 2 (2015): 81–99. Using the example of Franz Kafka, she explains the author’s enduring worldwide success in terms that could just as easily apply to Hesse: “His [Kafka’s] writing appears to be located in a specific social context, but at the same time it resonates far beyond it. In an unsettlingly accurate and familiar way, his texts both capture and challenge apparently universal human experiences within the developed, literate world” (85).
Then again, as Braun reminds us, being “in the right place at the right time” is not enough for an author to gain global significance. What is required is a “universalizing gesture” that makes their message widely applicable (in Mann’s case, the adoption of the role of the “representative,” in Hesse’s case, one might argue, the role of the “outsider”). In subsequent publications, Braun narrowed in on the concept. In her introduction to a handbook on “World Authorship,” she sets out to find “the human element in world literature.”
2Rebecca Braun, “Introduction,” in World Authorship, ed. Tobias Boes, Rebecca Braun, and Emily Spiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 1. And yet, when it comes to an author’s ideas and the challenges they set for their readers to examine themselves and the way these readers relate to the world, her focus remains on the surface criteria of the way books travel and the agents involved in this process. At the same time, her comments on the “illusory” distinction between elitist “high” culture and the categories of “celebrity” and “popularity,” so often denigrated as “low” culture, reveal the complex interrelations between multiple factors involved in the creation of a “world author” over time. She rightly observes that “public figures need a public” and argues: “[…] the more authors directly affect the way a large number of people think and act, the less they are in control of how they in turn are thought about and acted upon by this broad public” (32). But she shies away from the question of how the public responds to authors and their texts.
3In the case of Hesse, we can mention the sites of pilgrimages (Calw, Gaienhofen, Montagnola), the (web)sites of discussion and debate, and the thousands of letters written to Hesse by his readers.Braun’s enquiry into the role of the world author culminated in 2022, when she explored the mechanisms that make bestselling authors famous well beyond their lifetimes, and the way literature fits into a complex society’s endeavors to understand itself, through four distinctive “modes of authorship,” namely, the “celebratory,” the “commemorative,” the “utopian,” and the “satirical” mode.
4Rebecca Braun, Authors and the World: Literary Authorship in Modern Germany (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). Once again, while Thomas Mann figures prominently, Hermann Hesse is never mentioned, even though we could make the case that the latter managed to fit all four modes over his lifetime: from being feted as a (neo)romantic genius, to being the object of commemoration in museums and national archives, to being the creator of utopian realms in his later works such as
The Journey to the East and
The Glass Bead Game, to being a satirist in shorter narratives such as
The European,
If the War goes on,
A Guest at the Spa, and
Journey to Nuremberg.
Indeed, as this volume demonstrates, Hesse must be seen as a “quintessential world author.” The fact that he is not, at least in the eyes of some scholars of world literature, has a lot to do with Hesse’s reticence to seek the limelight and play the role of a celebrity, in spite of his global success. A case in point is his reaction to literary prizes. As a Swiss citizen since 1924, he had fought in vain against German physical and cultural barbarism and did not trust the accolades showered upon him after the end of World War II, for example, the Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt am Main in 1946. In terms of the author persona, Hermann Hesse was the opposite of his friend Thomas Mann—instead, he was an increasingly reclusive intellectual who abhorred public speaking in preference to direct yet at-arm’s-length communication with his readers. On the other hand, following Hesse’s death, a sustained marketing campaign by the Suhrkamp Verlag that sought to build on his popularity in the United States catapulted him onto the global stage in ways that no other German writer, not even Thomas Mann, was able to match. Indeed, one could argue that Hesse’s support for his publisher Peter Suhrkamp after World War II and his subsequent influence on the publisher’s “European” outlook created a symbiosis that afforded him a platform unattainable to most other German-language authors since.
5See Ingo Cornils, “A Model European? Hermann Hesse’s Influence on the Suhrkamp Verlag,” German Life and Letters 68, no. 1 (2015): 54–65. Siegfried Unseld’s (Suhrkamp’s successor) decision to buy back the rights to the US translations and organize new and better translations broadened that platform. It certainly made a huge difference to Hesse’s global reach, even though, as Christopher Newton as well as Shrikant Pathak and Girissha Tilak demonstrate in their chapters in the present volume, elements of serendipity, affinity between the text and the translator, and surprising overlaps between author intentions and reader expectations have led to unforeseen consequences decades later that changed the trajectory of his impact.
Overall, this volume seeks to make a substantial addition to the vast library of existing Hesse research. It does so in terms of its scope and ambition, but also by challenging some deeply embedded stereotypes. The product of a sustained collaboration across continents that in itself reflects its central premise, it examines Hermann Hesse’s global impact in the past, in the present, and in the future. Its core questions address what we may call the “universal” element in his works. Why is it that we perceive Hesse as a “global” writer whose texts reach and affect individual readers transculturally? Why do his readers consider them to be of personal relevance? The contributions to this volume prove that Hesse does not appeal to the lowest common denominator among a global readership. Instead, he fearlessly explores themes that refer to the non-material side of human existence, asking serious questions to which readers respond to individually in different cultures. For them, Hesse’s texts offer an oasis of calm, authenticity, and spirituality: not ignoring but rather facing our many crises, a mental terrain on which profound meaning can be communicated.