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Hermann Hesse:
Stufen
Wie jede Blüte welkt und jede Jugend
Dem Alter weicht, blüht jede Lebensstufe,
Blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend
Zu ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern.
Es muß das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe
Bereit zum Abschied sein und Neubeginne,
Um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern
In andre, neue Bindungen zu geben.
Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
Der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.
Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten,
An keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen,
Der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,
Er will uns Stuf' um Stufe heben, weiten.
Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
Und traulich eingewohnt, so droht Erschlaffen,
Nur wer bereit zu Aufbruch ist und Reise,
Mag lähmender Gewöhnung sich entraffen.
Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
Uns neuen Räumen jung entgegen senden,
Des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden...
Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!
Die Jakobsleiter (Mose/Genesis 28: 11-19):
William Blake hat im (oberen) Bild die Jakobsleiter sogar (und im metaphorischen Sinn korrekt) als Spirale gezeichnet. Aber er war ja auch ein Mystiker, so wie der Yeats (siehe linke Links)...
Und das untere Bild? Ja, das ist alt-koptisch und zeigt die DNA: Engerln, Engerln samma alle!
Ich soll mit den blöden Witzen aufhören und lieber anständige Bilder zeigen? Naja, ich versteh' schon. Bitte sehr, gnä' Frau...
Jacob's Ladder (Detail)
Raffaello Santi, 1483-1520
Jacob's Ladder (Detail)
Adam Elsheimer, 1578-1610
Jacob's Ladder (Detail)
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1696-1770
For higher-quality reproductions of or more information on the last three paintings, please visit that most marvellous of websites, the
Web Gallery.
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Hermann Hesse:
Steps
Like ev'ry flower wilts, like youth is fading
and turns to age, so also one's achieving:
Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading
in one's own time, and must not last forever.
The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,
prepared to part and start without the tragic,
without the grief - with courage to endeavor
a novel bond, a disparate connection:
for each beginning bears a special magic
that nurtures living and bestows protection.
We'll walk from space to space in glad progression
and should not cling to one as homestead for us.
The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;
it lifts and widens us in ev'ry session:
for hardly set in one of life's expanses
we make it home, and apathy commences.
But only he, who travels and takes chances,
can break the habits' paralyzing stances.
It even may be that the last of hours
will make us once again a youthful lover:
The call of life to us forever flowers...
Anon, my heart! Do part and do recover!
Hesse's "steps" are similar to one or another of Yeats's "gyres" (educationally upwards spiralling metaphors), as well as to Jacob's Ladder (seen on the left) and many "Eastern" images of "Tao".
These mental landscapes are situated on the same side of the brain as Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, or James Joyce's Dublin, or T.S. Eliot's Wasteland. Except that those two-plus Nobel prize winners describe their scenery more convolutedly learned and less romantically inclined than the former two.
Steps and spirals and ladders and steep mountains make great metaphors for the "Inner Path" - in theory. In practice they require bootstrap acrobatics. And there is a thermodynamic cost to them.
Hesse suffered severe bouts of depression throughout his tortured life: His "recuperation of the heart" shows up more in his poems (his hope) than in his life (his experience). But poems are not life as it is; poems are life as it could and perhaps even should be. Even way-out poems are ways out (in Hesse's case, out of a religiously stifling childhood and education)...
Though what counts - here as elsewhere - is the poem, not the poet. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not in the chef. Even if there is a bit of theosophy mixed into the dough, together with a dash of Victorian spirits - all prettily iced over by congenial prosodial confectionary, of course.
But hand it to Hesse: His transfigured finger still rests on the pulse of time, just as it did in the Sixties.
Are you still looking across our currents, Siddharta? Are you still roaming our steppes, Steppenwolf?
The "Steps" of Hermann Hesse - or "Stages", as Bertram Kottmann calls them, and with good reason - are as trying to translate as to translate. (Sorry about my punny tongue:) To talk the talk you have to have walked the walk. Or, as expressed with an Eastern twist to keep it modern, you can only learn what you already know. So, go and walk a mile in my shoes...
But what I really wanted to say is that Bertram helped me greatly by his comments, and also by contributing the essence of lines 7 to 10. Thanks, Bertram! You have truly safeguarded the estate of a great (and tragic) compatriot of yours!
And to Karla (Bertram's trusted and beloved wife) I want to say: Do not worry! Although it is as difficult for me as for anybody to accept, what counts in the end is the translation, not the translator. See, here is that famous pudding all over again. And Bertram's spice and spirit has raised it from common custard to culinary experience! (Or so we both like to think. Ah, these men...)
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