Hesse's third novel, and not one I particularly remember (from college days) as being enamored by. Basically a triangle of sorts, when a composer is torn between a melancholy and self-destructive opera singer, and the beautiful and delightful Gertrude. ( )
When I take a long look at my life, as though from outside, it does not appear particularly happy. Yet, I am less justified in calling it unhappy, despite all its mistakes.
Quotations
The wonderful clarity returned - the almost glasslike brightness and transparency of feelings - when everything appears without a mask, where things were no longer labelled sorrow or happiness, but everything signified strength and sound and creative release. Music was arising from the turmoil, iridescence and conflict of my awakened sensibilities . . . Whether I felt pain or joy, my discovered strength stood peacefully outside looking on and knew that light and dark were closely related and that sorrow and peace were rhythm, part and spirit of the same great music . . . but I knew it was my own music, born and experienced within me and never heard anywhere else before.
Of all the conceptions of pure bliss that people and poets have dreamed of, listening to the harmony of the spheres always seemed to me the highest and most intense. That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged - to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
Last words
Muoth was right. On growing old, one becomes more contented than in one's youth, which I will not there revile, for in all my dreams I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter.
'One of the defining spirits of our century.' -Ralph Freedman With Gertrude, Herman Hesse continues his lifelong exploration of the irreconcilable elements of human existence. In this fictional memoir, the renowned composer Kuhn recounts his tangled relationships with two artists- his friend Heinrich Muoth, a brooding, self-destructive opera singer, and the gentle, self-assured Gertrude Imthor. Kuhn is drawn to Gertrude upon their first meeting, but Gertrude falls in love with Heinrich, to whom she is introduced when Kuhn auditions them for the leads in his new opera. Hopelessly ill-matched, Gertrude and Heinrich have a disastrous marriage that leaves them both ruined. Yet this tragic affair also becomes the inspiration for Kuhn's opera, the most important success of his artistic life.
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:01:51 -0500)
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Wikipedia in English
