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Klingsor's Last Summer

Hermann Hesse

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May 06, 2019 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: in-german, europe, author-man, a-reviewed, genre-fiction, z-read-2019, genre-litfic, theme-weimar, publdate-1910s, genre-novella

Well, ho-hum. I didn’t think I’d say this about a book (novella; in German “Erzählung”) by Hermann Hesse whose Steppenwolf I loved as a teenager, and some of whose others I’ve loved over the years. Certainly, the author knows how to create images with the German language. He likes long, dreamy sentences; this book has lists of intense colours - Zinmnobergrün, Kobaltviolett, Englischrot - the words alone are delicious and suited to a story about a painter (from the description, an Expressionist, Well, ho-hum. I didn’t think I’d say this about a book (novella; in German “Erzählung”) by Hermann Hesse whose Steppenwolf I loved as a teenager, and some of whose others I’ve loved over the years. Certainly, the author knows how to create images with the German language. He likes long, dreamy sentences; this book has lists of intense colours - Zinmnobergrün, Kobaltviolett, Englischrot - the words alone are delicious and suited to a story about a painter (from the description, an Expressionist, like Marianne Werefkin). The preferred mode is to invert the sentence order, never putting the subject first, but starting with an adjectival attribute or a preposition — which you can do in German. In addition, the sentences often leave out the article of a subject; again, a thing you can do. The effect is one of universalising things and of turning things into proper nouns.

A flavour:
“Durch steilen finstern Wald bergan, an Zweig und Wurzel geklammert, quoll man hinweg, den Heimweg suchend. Lichter Waldrand ward erreicht, Feld geentert, schmaler Weg im Maisfeld atmete Nacht und Heimkehr.” (p. 59)

My clumsy translation: ‘Through steep dark woods up the mountain, clinging to branch and root, one did surge onward, seeking the way home. Light forest edge was reached, field entered, narrow path in the corn field breathed night and homecoming.’

I am also partial to Hesse’s New Age spirituality.

So why only two stars?

I now notice much more the a) masculinising dismissal of women and b) the Eurocentric exoticisation or dismissal of the non-Western.

a) The protagonist, the painter Klingsor, is an unreflective entitled man for whom all women are there to be sexually available. Women are described as beautiful and pretty, pliant and flirty, naive and horny, while the men get to be tormented artists, clever poets, wise gurus and friends. A flavour:

“Er küßte sie, die sich lachend zurückbog, auf den offenen, starken Mund, zwischen Sträuben und Widerreden gab sie nach, küßte wieder, schüttelte den Kopf, lachte, suchte sich freizumachen.” (p.88)

My clumsy translation: ‘He kissed her, she who bent back laughing, onto her open strong mouth, between reluctance and resistant talk she submitted, kissed back, shook her head, laughed, sought to free herself.”

This is basically non-consensual or dubiously consensual, and it jarred.

b) There is overt denigration of the war-tired West (and historically, this is interesting; the novella was first published in 1919). But the celebration of the East retains the Orient as a place of mystery and Otherness, and ultimately, the tormented Western man is the more interesting.

Format: Suhrkamp always does nice paperbacks that open flat nicely, with a good-weight paper and in this case, particularly large clear typescript. I was frustrated at the lack of acknowledgement of who designed the cover. ...more

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