Free Soul of the Age by Hermann Hesse Page B

yet I myself have to admit that I regard most of my lyrical sighs as a sort of bridge, which should lead me toward a place up on high, near the sun, where I can finally become a poet. Yet you’re wrong if you think it’s impossible to “write away” one’s pain; a goodly amount of poison is left behind in the verses, and in any case poetry makes fluid the pain, which often oozes considerately out of the most awkward trochees. I would ask you to think of my lyrics as essays that employ images and meters. Moreover, although I want to be many things, I have no wish to become a Romantic. In my best lyrics I sing about a country, the land of my dreams, that lies beyond the point where almost all of us are stuck—digging our spurs in vain into those old nags, philosophy and poetry—and that is perhaps “beyond Good and Evil.” But I still hope that the time will come when I shan’t have to fiddle around with rhymes, either because Pegasus himself has taken a leap or because that barrier has disappeared. By then, I think I shall indeed be a poet. But I shan’t be satisfied with merely being a singer until I have reached the frontier—my growing wings should carry the songs that far—from whence they can set forth in new but natural forms and go their own way, effortlessly, displaying all of their original force. Only then will the singer have managed to become a creator.
    I feel as if the murmurs of the sea and the jungle ought to make the covering that has me enveloped in such darkness burst and thus allow me to blossom and extend myself and compose a redeeming lyric. Then I would no longer care whether Cotta or Brockhaus 43 published my lyrics, since our dear old literary world today would seem like Golgotha when contrasted with my ideal of what poetry should be. One of my lyrics goes
    â€” You leave me alone —
    The wind is driving the roses away
    And solitude I need not shun,
    For I am ever the hot sun.
    Strange, ever since my school days I have been condemned to solitude, and have only come to terms with it recently. I cannot make friends, maybe because I’m too proud and am not interested in wooing anybody, and for the last three years I have been doing everything alone, thinking, singing; when I’m having a drink, out walking, or at home, I feel as though there were a circle drawn around me which moves as I do and cannot be crossed. I have been alone now for two, three months every single evening and all day Sunday. I’m not turning into a hypochondriac, since I work strenuously every day, but that shadow or “nightmare” which you criticize in my lyrics may stem partly from my odd life. My letters are probably sufficient evidence that I can be communicative, empathic, cheerful, even chatty, and this correspondence with you is just about my only active relationship.[ … ]
    I’m glad that you keep a place for my letters alongside those of your dear bride, and I regard this with delight as a sign that my rough edges won’t deter you from being my closest friend and counsel—thank you! As for my rough edges, think of the beautiful verse:
    The earth is round, and that is neat,
    For had it corners and peaks
    Where would we rest our feet?
    But since it’s round and we are tall,
    For fear there is no call at all;
    Were we of similar stature,
    We’d be hurtling through nature.
    God preserve us from that! Amen. Yours, from your currently rather whimsical
    Â 
    TO HIS SISTER ADELE
    [ May 1896 ]
    But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill, to behold the flame of Starno’s tower. The flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda. 44
    I’m reading some of the Ossian poems. They’re an odd mixture of robust humanity and sentimental pathos, and taste like a delicate pancake garnished