(no subject)
I'm reading Herman Hesse's "The Journey to the East," and I had to put these excerpts down lest I forget them. I'll get to my commentary later.
"When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream. In my case this feeling is strangely correct, for my happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre."
.........
"Something that I had observed several times during our journey, without having fully considered it, impressed me again during the days at Bremgarten, strangely and rather painfully. There were amongst us many artists, painters, musicians and poets. Ardent Klingsor was there and restless Hugo Wolf, taciturn Lauscher and vivacious Brentano- but however animated and lovable the personalities of these artists were, yet without exception their imaginary characters were more animated, more beautiful, happier and certainly finer and more real than the poets and creators themselves. Pablo sat there with his flute in enchanting innocence and joy, but his poet slipped away like a shadow to the river-bank, half-transparent in the moonlight, seeking solitude. Stumbling and rather drunk, Hoffman ran here and there amongst the guests, talking a great deal, small and elfish, and he also, like all of them, was only half-real, only half there, not quite solid, not quite real. At the same time, the archivist Lindhorst, playing at dragons for a joke, continually breathed fire and discharged energy like an automobile. I asked the servant Leo why it was that artists sometimes appeared to be only half-alive, while their creations seemed so irrefutably alive. Leo looked at me, surprised at my question. Then he released the poodle he was holding in his arms and said: 'It is just the same with mothers. When they have borne their children and given them their milk and beauty and strength, they themselves become invisible, and no one asks about them anymore.'
'But that is sad,' I said, without thinking very much about it.
'I do not think it is sadder than all other things," said Leo. 'Perhaps it is sad and yet also beautiful. The law ordains that it shall be so.'
'The law?' I asked curiously. 'What law is that, Leo?'
'The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long.'
'Then why do so many strive to rule?'
'Because they do not understand. There are few who are born to be masters; they remain happy and healthy. But all the others who have only become masters through endeavor, end in nothing.'
'In what nothing, Leo?'
'For example, in the sanitoria.'
I understood little about it and yet the words remained in my memory and left me with a feeling that this Leo knew all kinds of things, that he perhaps knew more than us, who were ostensibly his masters."