Gertrude: A Novel by Hermann Hesse

Author:Hermann Hesse [Hesse, Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2012-12-21T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

THAT LIFE IS DIFFICULT, I have often bitterly realized. I now had further cause for serious reflection. Right up to the present I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge. My life has been miserable and difficult, and yet to others, and sometimes to myself, it has seemed rich and wonderful. Man’s life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

The gloom, the comfortless darkness, lies in the inevitable course of our daily lives. Why does one repeatedly rise in the morning, eat, drink, and go to bed again? The child, the savage, the healthy young person does not suffer as a result of this cycle of senseless automatic activities. If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that makes everything else appear so dark, perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, cloying and oppressive. I do not know. I have not traveled very far in thought and philosophy.

However, I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should seek escape from it.

A few days after my father’s funeral—I was still in a state of bewilderment and mental exhaustion—I found myself walking aimlessly in a suburban street. The small, attractive houses awakened vague memories in me, until I recognized the house and garden of my old teacher, who had tried to convert me to the faith of the theosophists some years ago. I knocked at the door and he appeared, recognized me and led me in a friendly manner into his study, where the pleasant smell of tobacco smoke hovered around his books and plants.

“How are you?” asked Mr. Lohe. “Oh, of course, you have just lost your father. You look wretched. Has it affected you so deeply?”

“No,” I said.

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