Hermann Hesse - Blog Posts

News Box: Belle Époque

George Eliot wrote in the novel Middlemarch that youth is frequently the season of hope only in the sense that older generations are hopeful about younger ones. Lacking life experiences, young people, for all their physical vitality and cognitive advantages, find each struggle soul-crushing. Likewise, Age of Youth (available on Dramafever) peels back the rosy veneer of life in one's 20s to reveal the socioeconomic difficulties and family/personal tragedies that may afflict young adults without waiting for them to "grow up" first. Its oldest main character, college senior Yoon Jin-myung, already 28, is forever too busy making ends meet to properly experience the springtime of her life. Fake college student Kang Yi-na, 24, escapes from a near-death experience only to lead a wasted life hooking up with rich men in bars for an indulgent lifestyle out of survivor guilt. Princessy Jung Ye-eun (pictured above), 22, can hardly bring herself to break up with her atrocious boyfriend. Dirty-talking liar Song Ji-won, also 22, ironically seems to be the most well-adjusted and one of the wisest among the pack. Timid Yoo Eun-jae, only 20, may have been a murderess. With courage and companionship, though, it may still be possible to live life to the fullest, in spite of scars and missteps, making these truly beautiful years of their lives.

Below is a selection of literary references in the show:

Korean independence fighter Yun Dong-ju's poem anthology Sky, Wind, Star, and Poetry - Jin-myung's mother, giving up hope on her comatose son, underlines the last two lines of the work "A Dream Shattered." (A translation can be found here.)

Hermann Hesse's Demian - A German youth's quest for self-discovery and spiritual enlightenment.

Nikos Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek - A Greek intellectual befriends a foreman under his employment who has a fervent zest for life. Read together with (2) by Jin-myung and led to her decision to take some risks and live according to her wishes for a change.

Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies - A chick-lit novel on domestic abuse. Discussed by Ji-won while making up her mind about whether to disclose a truth.

This weekend drama has concluded its run last Saturday. Some episodes contain suggestive references.

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

Identity has a peculiar relationship with itself. According to art and literary theorists, the act of naming or otherwise describing something replaces the true nature of the object with a representation which accuracy and comprehensiveness are constrained by human limits. Yet in public consciousness, one may contend, this caricature tends to be mistaken for the real thing in the long run. Thus,…

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Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one

Hermann Hesse

I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.

Hermann Hesse, Demian

Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself….His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.

Hermann Hesse

She preferred most of all to live with flowers and music and to have a book, in quiet solitude

Hermann Hesse

And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Are we on the right road? Are we gaining knowledge? Are we approaching salvation? Or are we perhaps going in circles - we who thought to escape from the cycle?

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

"DEATH IS THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY"

- literary examples of death as tragic and beautiful in its terror

Ophelia, a beautiful, innocent girl created by Shakespeare, torn by emotions so much that in despair for her lost love, she throws herself into the arms of the river, drowning. This is clearly seen in Millais's painting. Despite her death, a young girl resists the influence of filthy water on the human body. Pale but healthy skin, rosy cheeks and pink lips desperately taking their last breath. A tragic moment captured in such a calm way. Ophelia remains forever beautiful and immortal in the eyes of the viewer.

"Perfume" by Patrick Süskind, a novel about a murderer who tries to capture the most beautiful smell. The smell of death in the form of perfume made from a young body. His victims are again little girls who die in a tragic, sometimes even parodic way, being brutally mercilessly harmed. But in the main character's eyes they still shine like stars in the sky, filling him with pure exhilaration. Especially that one woman who is his eternal inspiration.

Baudelaire creates something similar in the poem "the death of lovers". The couple on its deathbed is not concerned about the coming end. Their love seems to bloom even more, surrounded by fragrant flowers that fill their souls with peace and joy.

Finally, the story of Tristan and Isolde, another lovers, on whose grave a hawthorn grows. A symbol of their eternal love. From their dead bodies, corrupted by decay, something amazing in its beauty is created bearing witness to their everlasting connection.

It reminds me of the words of Edvard Munch: "From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity"

Writers, poets, whole literature itself create death in various ways. But showing it as a gateway to beauty is something particularly special. How death can it be glamorous, artistic and pleasing for our eyes. How to find it among tragedy, mourning, rotten skin and that disgusting smell of decay. And why show it this way at all?

"Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell" - Hermann Hesse

I'm re-reading Demian by Hermann Hesse.

(I'm having a mental breakdown)

It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.