Contrasting Gaienhofen and Montagnola

Hesse had not lost his pleasure in the simple things in life. He gave over the bigger room and spacious terrace with its wonderous views to his guests whilst he himself withdrew to a more modest corner, next to the stables, which were both a center point and meeting place in the garden. It was in Montagnola that he became a constant, tireless gardener and plant grower, surrounding himself with simple plants—various types of salad greens, canina roses, also known as dog roses, fruit trees, and sunflowers. He wrote about his gardening in a long poem, “Stunden im Garten” (Hours in the Garden), that he composed in a classical style in hexameters, based on Vergil’s Bucolica/Georgica, on the occasion of his sister’s sixtieth birthday. Every gesture, every action is described with the precision of a gardening manual and the soul of a poet.

Early every morning Hesse let his loving yet stern gaze wander over his estate. Then he set to work pulling up weeds, pruning, staking up weaker plants, tying up falling branches here and there. He was anxious to organize everything so that the utmost efficiency was prioritized. For example, he used the string from the bundles of books publishers sent him to tie plants back, and the books themselves for which he either had no use, or simply had multiple copies of, he put to good use in place of stones as the foundations for his paths. Each action was slowly undertaken. Hesse always opted for the slow route, one that did not miss out steps in between; rather he created a continuity each and every time. He made all mulch and fertilizers for the garden himself. He burned leaves, roots, and weeds, then he sieved the ashes and distributed them sparingly around the plants that needed them most. Whilst working and reflecting on the social upheavals of his time, he never missed an opportunity to think about different methods of gardening, particularly those that served the purpose of saving time. It was through his garden that Hesse was able to reconnect with his childhood and teenage years: “The scent of the carrot leaves darkly recalls my childhood …. Distant youth!”2Hermann Hesse, Hours in the Garden, trans. Rika Lesser (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), 23–25. “Und es mahnt mich der Duft des Karottenlaubes der Kindheit, …. /Ferne Jugend!” Hermann Hesse, “Stunden im Garten,” in Freude am Garten, 129–30.

Between spring and autumn, between youthfulness and old age, for Hesse there was no conflict, no caesura, and, just as the river in Siddhartha, the garden was a symbol of a flowing transition. In Siddhartha Hesse wrote that only shadows separated the boy from the man, the man from the old man. In fact, he had already written about this unity years before in Kurgast (A Guest at the Spa), articulating these thoughts through the ironic reflections of the “gouty” character (perhaps a caricature of himself). “Solely and simply for me life consists in a fluctuation between two poles, in a seesawing between two foundational pillars of the world.”3Hesse, Kurgast, SW 11:115–16. “Denn einzig und darin besteht für mich das Leben, im Fluktuieren zwischen zwei Polen, im Hin und Her zwischen den beiden Grundpfeilern der Welt.” Translation by Neale Cunningham.

This unity manifests itself in the flowing waters but also in the burning flames. When he burnt weeds and fallen branches—just as his friend Gunter Böhmer had depicted him in a drawing, arms outstretched, bending over the flames—Hesse was party to their metamorphosis. He created the ashes from which new life would rise, that in time would once again turn to ashes. He was simultaneously the priest and the servant of the mysterious process of returning to nature: “To me, for example, fire signifies (besides much else) / A chymic-symbolic cult in the service of the godhead: The reconversion of the Many into the One.”4Hesse, Hours in the Garden, 37. “Mir zum Beispiel bedeutet das Feuer (nebst Vielem, das es bedeutet) /Auch einen chymisch-symbolischen Kult im Dienste der Gottheit/Heißt mir Rückverwandlung der Vielfalt ins Eine.” Hesse, “Stunden im Garten,” 135–36.

Here then we can find one of the core themes of Hesse’s, which he described in his essay “On Butterflies” as the inkling of a hidden, sacred unity behind the great variety of species, a primordial mother behind every birth, a creator behind all creations. Even the clouds in the sky, floating along, mirror the restless search and indeterminable longing for unity and for diversity—for the weak, the yielding, which conquers the strong, in order to rebalance itself within nature. In depicting a Chinese man crouched down whilst the remnants of the plant world slip through his fingers, moving onwards to become ashes, Hesse gave expression to the view in which classical wisdom is mixed with the Taoist thinking of WuWei (effortless action), that is, to let things progress without interference, to accept what happens without wanting to alter what is, or to create doctrines.

Even when the changing of the seasons, the emergence and disappearance of colors, the sudden burst of fragrances gifted him earthly joy, breathing in such scents as those of the hyacinth or narcissus, or noticing the irresistible red of a carnation, he would allow such experiences to motivate his thinking about the greater laws that govern the world.

Hesse was far from alone in the creative yet sometimes naive elucidation of the garden as the symbol of peoples’ feelings and destinies. On the contrary—he linked it into a much-used topos in German literature around the beginning of the twentieth century, one not always but often symbolized by restlessness, the obscure, and the mysterious. Abandoned, mysterious, and silent—this describes Georg Trakl’s garden, when, as the evening gloom descends, the poet has a premonition about his demise. This is also how gardens in Gertrud Kolmar’s works are populated by creatures of the night, where, all of a sudden, signs of savagery and death stir, when it becomes a metaphorical place of failed or unfinished lives. By contrast, Stefan George’s gardens were not at all like this. They were immobile and composed like paintings, yet they were also products of the mind, located in sublime coldness, far removed from life. They are far removed from both Hesse’s real and fictional gardens. There is nothing dark and threatening in his. In describing them, in depicting the colorful flowers, to animate them into life, Hesse made use of rhyming verses, applying simple rhythms not dissimilar from folksongs, while the associations that the colors evoked in him were equally elemental.

Hesse’s cheerful and unencumbered view of nature was similar to that of another great garden lover—the genial essayist Rudolf Borchardt, who was born in the same year as Hesse, had a comprehensive humanistic education, and led a life that in certain aspects, such as the fact he left his native Germany, seeking a life in southern states and in the countryside, reminds us of the author of Siddhartha. In his famous book The Passionate Gardener, the fruit of direct experience and literary and historical knowledge of different eras and cultures, Borchardt portrayed the intrinsic and universal natures of the garden and the deeply rooted relationship between plants and the soul, which can be justifiably called Goethean.

Hesse also thought about how things came into being and passed away, about the great cyclical processes of the natural world as he looked out from his terrace as day turned to night, as the color of the flowers darkened until the night finally swallowed them up in its darkness. These are the consoling thoughts of old age, that the end harbors the seed of new beginnings, sunset brings with it the promise of the morning to follow, and sunrise the promise of a new day. As he writes in the poem “Stufen” (Stages):

Hesse knew that gardening is a simple, humble, and constantly repetitive job. Yet the bent-over posture of the gardener points to something of the religious, to the celebration of a ritual. In the repetition lies a passion and in the humbleness a joy, a thought cheerfully inspired by the Holy Francis of Assisi, which admittedly was also not far removed from Eastern philosophy. Hesse was, as we have seen, no imaginative gardener. His plants were modest, his hands did not operate any complicated tools, nor did he invest in costly materials. His principle was to follow, but not to force nature, that you should not hurry it. Hesse warned against the artificial and exaggerated, he was against the “instant garden,” as certain horticultural proponents advocated.

In the essay “Kleine Freuden” (On Small Pleasures), Hesse sang the praises of all things small and humble—the very small pleasures and enjoyments that modern life threatens to take leave of: “Amongst these pleasures, above all, are those that daily contact with nature opens up to us. Our eyes, if you will, much misused, and overstrained by modern life, also have an inexhaustible capacity for enjoyment.”7Hermann Hesse, “Kleine Freuden,” in Kleine Freuden: Verstreute und kurze Prosa aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Volker Michels (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 9. He recommends that we set aside for once the big emotions that churn up the soul, the delight of the big event, so to say, and be satisfied with the humble, simple things in day-to-day life, with the little pleasures that bring comfort.

This humble self-description and the self-effacing, quiet tone of his message repeatedly led to superficial judgments by critics of his works. In Germany especially he has been accused of having a reactionary attitude, a limited, provincial mentality, and of lacking political commitment. His innovative and forward-looking approach, his welcoming attitude to therapeutic activities, and his understanding of the misdirected modern soul was discovered by his approving readers rather than by scholarly research.

In his view of the garden as at once a place of work and meditation, as a center for individual expression, and as an image of the cosmos, in this fusion of our own cultural values and those of others, principally from the Far East, there lies an undeniable topicality. When it comes to describing the virtues of gardening, Hesse formulated them better in prose than poetry. The fragment “Der alte Neander” (The Old Neander) is superior to the bucolic verses of “Hours in the Garden,” but all his writings dedicated to nature and gardens, irrespective of their stylistic qualities, remain a complex and unquestionably original part of his oeuvre.

What earned him the disparaging judgment of the critics is precisely what has earned him the adoration of the masses, namely his ability to combine literature and life, the poetic imagination with the everyday concerns of people. That and the fact that he, without deploying empty phrases, depicted a model of ethical behavior which helped people to live and to survive the times of war, societal turmoil, and upheaval.