Hermann Hesse’s Morgenlandfhart

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesUnless otherwise indicated the source of quotations and references throughout this essay is Hermann Hesse, Gesammelte Dichtungen, in six volumes (Frankfurt, 1952). Hereafter only page numbers will be given for references to Die Morgenlandfahrt, which is contained in Vol. VI.Piktors Verwandlungen is not included in Gesammelte Dichtungen. lt was originally circulated as an illustrated manuscript in Hesse’s own hand. Bücherfreunde Chemnitz printed 700 copies for limited circulation, but not for sale, in 1925. The Suhrkamp edition of 1954 is a facsimile of the manuscript, and also includes four unnumbered pages of printed text.Carlsson (in Dank an Hermann Hesse [Frankfurt, 1952], p. 96) proposes that H. H. finally knows in triumph the “timelessness of hie idea.” But this is to introduce Hegel where he has no place.Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. I, Fr. 60.Seilergraben in Zürich may be the source of this street-name, as Morbio (5 km. east of Mendrisio, in Italian Switzerland) is the source of Morbio Inferiore.Hermann Hesse, Briefe (Berlin-Frankfurt, 1951), p. 36.Also sprach Zarathustra (Musarion ed., XIII, 11). Nietzsche’s image itself is a variation of Bhagavad Gita, VII, 7, and of Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, III, 7,1. Homer and Plato used kindred images: see Iliad VIII. 18 f., Laws, 644 and 803–44, and Theatetus, 155 D. Likewise Hölderlin in the poem called “Blödigkeit.” Hesse’s interest in Oriental thought dates from Gertrud (1910).A. Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (London, 1946), p. 61.It is appropriate that Albertus Magnus should number among H. H.’s judges. His Neoplatonism stressed the kenotic “Entwerdungsmystik” of Augustine, and his commentaries on Dionysius the Areopagite were treasuries for early Swabian religious thinkers (cf. H. O. Bürger, Die Gedankenwelt der großen Schwaben [Stuttgart Tübingen, 1951], pp. 71 ff.) Himself a Swabian, Hesse writes of the conquest of the empirical ego in its theological context in a letter dated Jan. 1933: das Sichweggeben oder, wie die deutschen Mystiker es einst nannten, das “Entwerden” (Briefe, p. 102).Die Unschuld des Werdens (Leipzig, 1931), II, 446.An account of the evolution of the monologic form in Hesse’s writings is given in the present writer’s dissertation, Hermann Hesse as Humanist (Diss. D. Phil., Oxford, 1954).Briefe, p. 170.Noten und Abhandlungen zum West-Östlichen Diwan, Jubiläums-Ausgabe, V, 247–8.Briefe, p. 73

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• From West to East and Back Again

  Open Access•P Roberts•Journal of Philosophy of Education•2008

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