When Hesse described his work in the garden at Gaienhofen and later in Bern, he was very precise and hid nothing of the effort it cost him in sowing, fertilizing, and watering, along with the hard work of weeding. Hesse remarked that gardening was lovely when it represented a new task, undertaken off one’s own bat, but it was hard when it became an obligation or when one became a slave to it.
1Hesse, “Am Bodensee,” 29. In Bern he wrote “The House of Dreams,” an unfinished text that he polished for a long time and considered one of his best pieces in terms of style, turning his horticultural experience into a work of literature in an exemplary fashion. Actually, the garden in Bern was laid out symmetrically, but was not without its own charm. It contained a stone fountain, a maple grove, oak and beech trees, upon which time left its mark. By contrast the garden in the literary work is the result of the prudent and meticulous care poured into it by Neander, the main character (onto whom Hesse projected his future self—or the future self he wanted to be), who had seen much and had traveled extensively, getting to know people and countries, knew his duties and was recognized for them and so lived to a near-Biblical old age.
Neander senses that the time has come to slowly depart from the world, to unravel life’s tangled threads, and to reach to those few essential things that make up its endpoint. A large, enchanted garden is at the heart of this transition, one with ancient, magisterial trees, full of birds, and there are towering lilac bushes and luscious rose beds that are cared for, unceasingly, by the old man. The garden is like a fairy tale, and Neander is like a magician, the protagonist’s son says in the story. As the seasons change, so too does the garden, and with each change so too memories and premonitions of impending death alternate. Thus, the garden becomes a symbol of human destiny. When Neander lifts his gaze, seeing the outline of the mountains in the distance, he knows that the long struggle is over, the time of sacrifice, and an unappeasable, irreparable longing is upon him: “Ever since he had passed the peak of life, descending deeper into the valley of long shadows, his thoughts of fleeing from death had ceased. To him, where he came from and where he was going, seemed to be one and the same country.”
2Hermann Hesse, “Der alte Neander,” in Freude am Garten, 191.Whatever Neander was looking for, as he toiled in his garden, he would commune with nature. Obviously, Hesse identified with Neander, with a romantic tone creeping into his prose, only for it to quickly fade away again. Yet Hesse’s garden is no more of a romantic garden than Neander’s. Romantics did not dwell on reality when it came to gardens, to the trees, shrubs, plants, spaces, and walls that make them. Their garden was no physical place but one for the soul, it was not a space for reality but for poetry. For both Hoffmann and Eichendorff, their gardens were places for sorcerers and good-for-nothings, you traversed them, you observed them, and you dreamed about them. Hesse similarly traversed and observed them, but he knew very well that you also had to work in a garden. He was able to reconcile the duality of Classicism and Romanticism by adding a tireless zeal for practical work to Romanticism, a concept that is both ancient and very modern.