In the texts examined in this essay, Hermann Hesse’s global impact has been revealed primarily insofar as his works can be read as an embodiment of the times, as an indicator of an intellectually elitist education, and as a foil for the relevant conceptual patterns. Moreover, in the new millennium, a tendency can be observed among American and German-language writers both to quote Hesse, to allude to his work, and to pick up impulses from his life and work that lead to literary texts of their own that cannot be assigned to the categories described thus far.
Adaptations in American Literature
In the 2004 collection
Lit Riffs, edited by Matthew Miele,
1Matthew Miele, ed., Lit Riffs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). authors were asked “to riff on a piece of music.” The resulting texts interpret the musical original in very different ways. David Ebershoff’s “Four Last Songs” are based on Richard Strauss’s songs of the same name, three of which set Hermann Hesse’s poems to music: “Frühling” (Spring), “September,” and “Beim Schlafengehen” (Upon Going to Sleep).
2David Ebershoff, “‘Four Last Songs’ inspired by the music and lyrics from ‘Four Last Songs’ by Hermann Hesse and composer Richard Strauss.” In Lit Riffs, 307–38. Like Hesse’s poems, the short stories of the same name play with the themes of death and farewell, but also liberation and detachment. They are linked by the central figure of the musically gifted Olive Darwin, who gradually causes the deaths of her three husbands and eventually dies an unnatural death herself. In the first story, “Spring,” she frees herself from her violent first husband; in the second, “September,” she poisons her cheating second husband; and in the third, “Upon Going to Sleep,” her third husband becomes an unwitting victim of her amateurish vegetable gardening by eating a castor root. In all three stories, there is a melancholy grounding that connects the stories to Hesse’s poems, which are in turn ironized by the context of everyday life on the one hand and murder on the other.
In contrast, a completely different adaptation is encountered in Andre Bagoo’s
Writing through Siddhartha from 2021.
3Andre Bagoo, Writing through Siddhartha (Talgarreg: Broken Sleep Books, 2021). In his experimental work, the Trinidadian author generates new textual patterns in the style of the composer John Cage. In his work
Writing through Finnegan’s Wake, Cage draws on James Joyce’s famous enigmatic novel of the same name, randomly selecting words, syllables, and letters from it, and reassembling them into five sound-poems which he himself performed on stage. Bagoo, for his part, draws on a template provided by the computer program
JanusNode. This program splits Hesse’s novel into individual fragments and arranges them alphabetically. Bagoo then selects individual elements from this pool, rearranges them, and focuses on Hesse’s meditative liturgical language, which actually leads the reader, and even more so the listener, to the core of the novel. Since Bagoo’s texts want to be heard, the author himself provides a spoken version of his text collages.
4For a link to the text collages, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81v9wFweh94.Adaptations and Sequels in German-Language Literature
An entirely original treatment of Hesse’s work is evident in Maren Bohm’s novel
Hermann Hesses wundersame Geschichte (2020, Hermann Hesse’s Wondrous Story), a sequel to Hesse’s
Narziß und Goldmund (Narcissus and Goldmund).
5Maren Bohm, Hermann Hesses wundersame Geschichte (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2020). Sequels or prequels of famous novels that achieved wide distribution and high sales figures are encountered again and again in literary history. However, this novel does not simply rewrite the story of
Narziß und Goldmund, but continues it. Inspired by the contrasts between the friends Narcissus and Goldmund, which has repeatedly driven readers and critics to speculation, Bohm’s sequel focuses on the figure of Narcissus.
In the story which is set in the period of political upheaval in the Federal Republic after 1968, more precisely in the years 1972 to 1973, two young people decide to fake a manuscript with the title Narziß ohne Goldmund (Narcissus without Goldmund) which Hesse supposedly, out of caution, did not publish in politically explosive times, but hid in a secret place. With outstanding success, in composing their fake manuscript they make use of very different thoughts and themes from various texts by Hesse, and finally try to sell it to the Suhrkamp publishing house. The fictional manuscript pursues allusions in Hesse’s novel, picks up on themes such as Narcissus’s commitment to the persecuted Jews, and develops its own plot, which continues beyond Goldmund’s death. Motifs, themes, and episodes are expanded, allusions and details are unfolded and developed independently, freely invented events are added, and quotations are taken up and placed in new contexts. On the one hand, these strategies create a kind of authentic Hesse sound; on the other hand, these allusions tease the experienced Hesse reader into recognizing quotations and themes that permeate the novel.
In a completely different approach, in his novel
Immer nach Hause (Always Homewards, 2016), Thomas Lang attempts to capture Hesse’s years on Lake Constance and in Bern until his move to Montagnola in an artist’s biography that focuses equally on Mia and Hermann Hesse. However, the espied intimacies, embellished episodes, and anticipatory anachronisms do little to encourage a more intensive examination of Hesse’s life and poetry.
6Thomas Lang, Immer nach Hause (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2016).A novelty in the reception and impact of Hermann Hesse in the German-speaking world is offered by the anthology
Inspiration Hermann Hesse: Eine Hommage in Geschichten (Inspiration Hermann Hesse: A Homage in Stories, 2022).
7Helga Esselborn-Krumbiegel, ed., Inspiration Hermann Hesse: Eine Hommage in Geschichten (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2022). Contributions from Birgit Birnbacher, Volker Braun, Ann Cotten, Sigrid Damm, Dietmar Dath, Raphaela Edelbauer, Josef Haslinger, Elke Heidenreich, Navid Kermani, Ursula Krechel, Andreas Maier, Adolf Muschg, Christoph Peters, Leif Randt, Silke Scheuermann, Monique Schwitter, Jens Sparschuh, Antje Rávik Strubel, Alain Claude Sulzer, Hans Ulrich Treichel, Josef Winkler, Iris Wolff, and Feridun Zaimoglu. Inspired by Hesse, German-language writers wrote autobiographical narratives, thematically focused essays, and fictional stories especially for this volume. These stories, several of which follow
Unterm Rad,
Der Steppenwolf, and
Das Glasperlenspiel, gain their inspiration directly from Hesse’s work itself. One example may be representative of others, although each story displays a habitus all of its own. In Raphaela Edelbauer’s surreal tale “Karmische Wunder” (Karmic Miracles), the Magic Theater of
Steppenwolf becomes the scene of a metamorphosis. In 1925 in Zurich, the first-person narrator follows his childhood friend into his house, which was built for the sole purpose of making Lamarck’s theory of evolution through approximation tangible. In various rooms, he experiences his own transformation to the point of complete fusion with his host. Escaping the horrors of the Magic Theater, he finally finds himself under a lantern like Harry Haller in his encounter with the hawker who advertises the Magic Theater and slips him the “Tractat vom Steppenwolf” (Treatise on the Steppenwolf).
* * *
Hermann Hesse’s global impact in literature started with his enormous success first in the United States and later also in Japan and the German-speaking countries. In times of social upheaval, young people in particular initially found their intuitive search for self-realization strengthened by Hesse’s books. Not in school, but “on the street” and in cliques they met Hermann Hesse, shared their experiences, and chose him as their guru. Authors like Tom Wolfe or T. C. Boyle, who were often part of these movements themselves or later looked back on them, saw in Hesse an advocate of “self-will,” a representative of the times. Only subsequently did a multi-layered image of Hesse emerge through reception and canon formation. Once the poet had become part of the culture of remembrance, the treatment of his works became more differentiated: Hesse was no longer seen solely as an “advocate of the individual,” but also as an ingredient of civic education. In addition, impulses are increasingly gaining in importance that unconventionally develop his modes of thought into conceptions of the ego and vary his figurations, constellations, and atmospheres across nations and time. In this way, Hesse’s works not only remain alive in the global literary tradition, but at the same time decisively shape it.