Free Soul of the Age by Hermann Hesse

of Belvedere and the image of Goethe rather than the products of our aged civilization. I’m certain that there will be no Bellamy state 35 anywhere in the twenty-first-century. Won’t people in later ages regard our epoch as the mythical age of titanic machines, and then confuse it later on with the legend of the tower of Babel—won’t the historians and anthropologists of those later centuries view our era as a pathological curiosity? As you can see, I don’t have the time or energy to present my ideas logically and develop them with any consistency. But you can sense that I’m tired of living under present conditions and am trying to head with fluttering wings toward a better spot, some place with sunshine and mountain air, far away from the valleys with their club meetings, factories, agricultural crises, Zola novels, encyclopedias, rhyme dictionaries, as well as all the pettiness and nastiness. Although there is now a plethora of ambitious plans and ideas for the future, the people themselves have actually diminished in stature; they’re stuffed to the gills with emancipatory ideals, popularized philosophies, and de luxe edition or paperback literature; it’s fashionable to dabble in fortune telling and to serve up the greatest thoughts as after-dinner treats; everything is debased: art, knowledge, all human achievements, especially language, and the corruption of the latter is always a symptom of decay. Words like “beautiful,” “good,” “luminous,” “pure,” “bad,” “ugly,” etc., have virtually disappeared, and it isn’t easy for the phrasemongering feuilletons to satisfy the jaded tastes of the masses. Everything has to be “demonic,” “phenomenal,” “striking,” “exhibiting great genius,” “wildly beautiful,” “madly in love,” “magically beautiful,” “awful,” “fairylike,” “delightful,” “wildly painful,” etc. They are busy coining massive quantities of new compounds, the most amazing tragelaphs 36 ; they torture the deflowered language from one bridal bed to the next, and even expressions that seem strikingly original in Gaudy and Heine come across as absurd and silly in Voss, Jensen, and all those other epigones. How far removed they are from the blithely straightforward and naïvely authentic inventions of Goethe, the Master—for instance, his description of the farmer plowing up the treasure:
    and finds a golden roll
    frightened, delighted in a wretched hand. 37
    (As always in letters, I’m quoting from memory.)
    I’m sure you understand what I mean. I think Germanists should be engaged in something more productive than chasing around anxiously after “foreign words” with a spear and a knife; that is hardly what our modern literati really need. And besides, those older foreign words are not Greek, or Latin, or French, they are international. While I don’t use words like “Korridoren,” “Palais,” “Souterrains,” “Fauteuils,” etc., I deliberately use words like “classical,” “antique,” “Renaissance,” “Germanicism,” “epigone,” etc., etc., and it takes a person with Latin to describe certain things in such a fine, clear, and pregnant manner, with such ingenious simplicity, as, e.g., tertius gaudens, 38 etc.
    Well, I have touched upon all sorts of things, but don’t have the time to develop anything properly. Please take my stammering to heart and write me another delightful letter soon! With the very best wishes!
    TO JOHANNES AND MARIE HESSE
    Tübingen, March 7, 1896
    Papa’s note about Mother’s trip came as a complete surprise to me. I’m really eager to hear how it went. But I fear it may be quite a strain on her. Don’t keep me in this uncertainty!
    Last Sunday I spent a few hours at