Knulp and Wandering: The Plight of the Bohemian Way
Hesse had established himself, as a compelling and attractive writer, before WWI. The publication of such Hesse classics and primers as Peter Camenzind, Under the Wheel, Gertrude, From India, The Prodigy andRosshalde placed Hesse at the forefront of a thoughtful and emerging German and European romantic tradition and ethos. But, dark clouds were emerging at a variety of levels in Hesse’s life: tensions at home with wife and family and WWI were demanding their exacting due. Hesse saw all too keenly, given his sensitive temperament, the imposing challenges before him. It is understandable, from a certain perspective, why the need for a certain escape from such growing responsibilities can and might occur. When life becomes too overwhelming, there is a tendency to go to places in which the sky is clear blue, there are no dark clouds and much is calm and peaceful--such is, in some ways, the naively sweet yet worth the reads of Knulp and Wandering.
Ralph Freedman suggests that Hesse in Knulp “developed the figure of the perennial wanderer--literally the sensitive hobo-who could stand out as the vagabond par excellence (p. 140). Knulp does, in many ways, anticipate some of the American Beat writers that emerged after WWII, Kerouac’s On the Road, for example,a decades later version although perhaps not as tender and elusive as Knulp. There is a definite sense in which Hesse in Knulp is pondering both the appeal yet end destination of those who are ever on the road, uprooted, unrooted and committed to nothing other than the next step of being on the trail of life. The 3-part life story and biography of sorts of Knulp tracks and traces his life from that of a seemingly gifted person, his departure from what he might have been if he had continued his schooling, painful and disappointing life experiences, his longing for a home and settling but never making the decision to do so. Knulpwas published in 1915 and is divided into three sections or tales: 1) Early Spring, 2) My Recollections of Knulp and 3) The End. Needless to say, the young Knulp of the early spring phase has a winsome, winning and delightful charm to him. He has turned aside from the expected demands in his life and has chosen to live as he wishes and wants—there is a spring-like budding and blossoming in this tale but also consequences of making such decisions and living them. The young Knulp certain appeals to the childlike within and what Blake might call the “songs of innocent”. The next section of the short story walks the interested reader into, increasingly so, the “songs of experience”, life demanding its inevitable due and exacting wage. “My Recollections of Knulp” walk the reader to Knulp in midlife stride, Knulp now living into the troubling reality of his earlier decisions made. The midlife phase tends to be more layered and complex, the fresh and bountiful scenery, fruit and air of “Early Spring” now fading in Knulp’s summer and emerging autumn years. “The End” brings Knulp’s final years to a conclusion, alone and deserted, assistance from an old doctor friend initially received, Knulp takes to the road again and dies penniless, snow frozen and starving, the temptation of the early spring season, once absolutized and made a vocation, ending in a tragic and painful way. Who has not seen Knulp’s in their lives? Hesse certainly understood the temptation and Hesse poignantly described, in Knulp, the end of such decisions and journey of those who make a vocation of ever wandering and a commitment to nothing but wandering.
There is a sense in which Wandering is a companion missive to Knulp although the end is not so sad and sobering. Wandering, unlike Knulp, is a series of short reflections and sketches of a wanderer of sorts who makes a walking pilgrimage from Switzerland, over an alpine pass, and into Italy, WWI now over. Each short reflection and poem ponders significant life issues and does so in a tender and probing way and manner. The short book begins with the wanderer leaving what he has known and been and heading alone southward to the lure of Italy (a common European and German literary destination). The wanderer is ever the outsider, watching, observing yet ever moving on. The final chapter, “Evenings”, like Knulp, portrays the wanderer, like a spectator in a play, watching the drama of life but refusing to be committed to acting on the stage. The wanderer, therefore, is torn between longing for some sort of meaningful life and a commitment to place and people and yet refusing to make the decision that will ground him. The wanderer, ever the reflective and uncommitted skeptic, impotent and ever in the maze of his insights yet paralyzed by them. Wandering was published in 1920, Hesse feeling the brunt of many a German nationalist having turned on him, the literary elite suspicious of him, his marriage ailing, his children with friends and relatives, his life, in many ways, in a turbulent and painful place. The wanderer, like Knulp, remains the lone romantic individual, unheard and misunderstood by the bourgeois, philistine and thoughtless classes of the time. The question for Hesse of which Knulp and Wanderer were provisional answers was this: how is the sensitive artist and political oppositional thinker to respond to opposition, indifference and those close to the bone relationships unraveling? Is the answer merely to isolate oneself and leave society and family behind, be committed to observing the unpredictable and much ado about nothing in much of life? Idealism once betrayed can and often does lead to cynicism or a form of realism in which life is hard and painful, hence only by being alone and isolated can one not be hurt and betrayed again. And yet such a stance of indifference and skepticism creates its own difficult dilemmas.
Those who retreat into their private worlds of inner reflection and, at times, meaningful insights, but disconnect themselves from other people and community, predictably so, often become depressed and disoriented, solipsism and nihilism their tempting companions on the journey. Hesse has certainly probed such a path hiked in these two small books (worth many a read), but his deeper and more mature thinking and writing go further and are more nuanced than Knulp and Wandering. It is to these more thoughtful novels we now turn as Hesse ever grows in his nuanced probes in the journey of life.
It is probably of some significance to note that twenty-two of Hesse’s fairy stories written 1904-1918 was published, edited by Jack Zipes, as The Complete Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (1995). The shorter and earlier version was published in 1919 in German as Strange News from Another Star (translated into English in 1972). Many of these, broadly speaking, fairy tales, highlight the trying and difficult nature of growing into wisdom, depth and maturity. It is in this sense that the fairy tales are a companion and corrective to what might seem a rather thin and subtly indulgent life journey as embodied in Knulp and Wandering, the life of the detached wanderer and bohemian. A thorough immersion in the fairy tales will reveal a meditative breadth and depth in Hesse’s life and writings not necessarily discovered in Knulp-Wanderingand, such fairy tales both antedated Knulp-Wandering and many were written about the same time.
Thanks you Mr Dart
Excellent essay
Thanks Andrew
Posted by: Andrew Robinson | January 17, 2020 at 09:13 PM