Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite writers, Hermann Hesse. Over the years I've read lots about his irrelevance, about his rise in popularity during a time of wild-eyed, romantic enthusiasm, which has since dimmed in what I believe he would characterize as the shadow of lost dreams. He always considered himself a poet first and foremost and we have only 3 slim volumes of verse in English. In recent years, I have reread the major works and am happy to report that, unlike the wild-eyed romantic enthusiasm of an entire generation, they have not dimmed. He lived through tumultuous times and here is a short poem of his, translated by the incomparable James Wright, that captures the dark times through which we are currently passing as well as it does his own:
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Evil Time
Now we are silent
And sing no songs anymore,
Our pace grows heavy;
This is the night, that was bound to come.
Give me your hand,
Perhaps we still have a long way to go.
It's snowing, it's snowing.
Winter is a hard thing in a strange country.
Where is the time
When a light, a hearth burned for us?
Give me your hand!
Perhaps we still have a long way to go.
Hermann Hesse
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For more on Hesse, with a short, brilliant poetry excerpt, check out today's Writer's Almanac. Pictured at the beginning of this post is one of the excellent covers for Hesse's works by Milton Glaser.
best,
Don
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