Volume 11, Number 4 · September 12, 1968
Hesse vs. Hesse
By D.J. Enright
The Novels of Hermann Hesse
by Theodore Ziolkowski
Princeton, 375 pp., $7.50
Narcissus and Goldmund
by Hermann Hesse, translated by Ursule Molinaro
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 315 pp., $5.95
Demian
by Hermann Hesse, translated by Michael Roloff, translated by Michael Lebeck
Harper & Row, 171 pp., $4.50
The Journey to the East
by Hermann Hesse, translated by Hilda Rosner
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 118 pp., $4.50
Beneath the Wheel
by Hermann Hesse, translated by Michael Roloff
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 192 pp., $4.95
'Zwei Seelen wohnen ach! in meiner Brust.' And very convenient it is for the writer; for one soul can bleed on the sleeve while the other gets up to other things in other places. It is not that the breast needs to be a specially large one to entertain two souls, but rather that those among whom the two-souled move may have to be remarkably broadminded and long-suffering. Perhaps prepared to suffer long and very painfully indeed. I will not dwell on the lowest and most horrifying depths to which double-souledness can sink—Hans Magnus Enzensberger's exemplum of the concentration-camp commandant who plays Schubert sonatas when off-duty will suffice—for Herman Hesse was obviously a good man, a good-hearted man, who recognized the onset of Germany's Faustianity at a very early date and removed himself to single-souled Switzerland.
Review, 3188 words
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