The Generation and Accumulation of Spiritual Capital among Individuals and Communities of Readers
In my final section, I explicate examples of the generation of spiritual capital among individuals and communities of Hesse readers that have been captured and documented in epistolary exchanges. In this respect, Samuel Rima suggests that the motivation for participating in the formation of spiritual capital is frequently sparked by an “intercultural experience,” which involves “mutual exchange.”
1Rima, Spiritual Capital, 251. Emphasis in the original. The long, ongoing reception of Hesse’s works in Japan, which commenced in 1909 with the translation of the story “Meine Erinnerung an Knulp” (My Memory of Knulp), which had been published in the magazine
Neue Rundschau in February 1908, provides a number of examples of the awakening of spiritual intelligence and the potential for the accumulation of spiritual wealth in the sense of the intercultural experience proposed above by Rima. This process is illustrated, for example, by a young female Japanese student’s letter to Hesse, which she wrote in 1951 after having read
Aus Kinderzeiten (From Childhood) and
Die Verlobung (The Engagement) in classes at university:
The words that come from your profound insight into life attract me and often move me almost to tears. As you well know, there are many keen readers of your works here, especially amongst younger people. The wonderful, romantic depictions capture us deeply und transplant us straight away into a South German world. Sometimes I feel as if you were an old Japanese poet, a Japanese haiku poet, a type of atmospheric Japanese poem.
2I. Hagiwara, Letter to HH, June 21, 1951, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Cunningham, Hermann Hesse and Japan, 230.The young reader’s strong emotional response to the reading of the texts is coupled with a keen sense of intercultural transcendence. She is transported imaginatively to the Black Forest and Hesse’s hometown Calw, while Hesse is creatively transfigured in her mind into the form of a Japanese haiku poet such as the famous Edo period poet Matsuo Basho (1644–1694). Another letter, from a young Japanese professor, provides further evidence of how Hesse’s work is able to generate spiritual capital among both individual readers and communities of readers.
My dear, venerable friend, Hermann Hesse, I am a twenty-eight-year-old Japanese man, a professor of the German language and a poet. I am a sincere admirer of your art and your personality: my inner, profound happiness and my belief in humanity are the result of your holy, peaceful soul and its liberating, gladdening voice. I read your works “Unterwegs” and “Siddhartha” with joy and appreciation. Now I am reading “Camenzind” together with my students. Please believe me, my distant friend. Your faithful Toshiko Katayama.
3T. Katayama, Postcard to HH, 1927, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Cunningham, Hermann Hesse and Japan, 195–96.Germanist Gabriele Lück has highlighted similar responses in her examination of readers’ letters to Hesse. For example, American Roger M. wrote: “I can only express my admiration and gratitude, for I believe that your works have helped me to comprehend a little better how a person is to conduct or even understand himself in this confusion of life.”
4Undated letter, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Gabriele Lück, An Hermann Hesse: Der Leser als Produzent (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), 168. Similarly an American student in 1959 felt moved by
The Journey to the East to write a poem the first verse of which reads as follows: “All men may make it, / Few men do. / The journey is forever, / There is no rest. / Who are the brave ones? / Stand and be seen.”
5Lück, An Hermann Hesse, 141.These examples show how Hesse’s texts can stimulate the production of spiritual and artistic riches. Rima writing about the formation of spiritual capital and mutual intercultural exchanges states it thus: “These exchanges, and meetings of life-worlds, are no longer merely abstract concepts ‘over there somewhere’ or statistics in an economic report but they become, very often for the first time, actual, personal, and reciprocal.”
6Rima, Spiritual Capital, 251. We see how Hesse’s works are able to unlock creativity and, importantly, spiritual values in his readers which can unfold in social and cultural relations.