Strange News from Another Star by Hermann Hesse

Modern-day fables for grown-ups

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in the Black Forest of Germany. He eventually emigrated to Switzerland and became a Swiss citizen. Hesse is best known for novels like Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and The Glass Bead Game, but he also published two volumes of short stories. His collection entitled Strange News from Another Star was published in 1919. The eight stories contained within were written from 1913 to 1918. Despite the book’s title, there’s no science fiction here. These tales do, however, exhibit a touch of fantasy like one would find in fairy tales or an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The stories here read like Aesop’s Fables if they were written for adults of the modern world. Hesse’s writing could be characterized as neo-romantic, meaning it is heavily influenced by, but slightly more realistic than, the old-school German Romantics like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and company. In these stories, Hesse never aims for a realistic portrait of what life was like in a specific region of Germany. Instead, he strives to express universal truths about human nature. Hesse’s fiction tends to take place in vaguely unspecified quasi-medieval settings that could be anywhere in Europe. Often his characters don’t even have names, they’re simply “the young man,” “the girl,” or “the old man.” Hesse frequently presents a utopian vision of a simpler life, one where intellectual pursuits and an appreciation of nature take precedence over the more realistically pressing concerns of earning a living. Within these idyllic surroundings, however, the characters act out dramas in which peace and contentment are disturbed by the darker forces of human nature and modern life, thus forcing the protagonist to embark on some sort of soul-searching quest.

In the title story, “Strange News from Another Star,” a citizen of one of such Hessian utopia makes a journey to our real world of post–World War I devastation, contrasting the paradise of peace that might have been with the death and destruction of modern Europe. Although the word “star” is used, there is no space travel involved. “Star” could easily be rephrased as “another country” or “another [metaphorical] world.” Hesse was a writer who was always searching and experimenting, and as a result, his experiments don’t always pay off. In “Hard Passage” and “A Dream Sequence,” for example, the stories start out well enough but then veer off into too much surrealism that obscures the moral of the story. “A Dream Sequence” is just that, a dream scene that feels as if it were lifted out of some novel and presented out of context.

The strongest entries in the collection appear at the end of the volume. In “Fuldam,” residents of the titular town gather for their annual fair, where a mysterious stranger appears who has the power to grant everyone one wish. In “Iris,” a young boy spends his time daydreaming, studying flowers, and observing the natural cycles of the seasons. When he grows into a man, he loses his childish spirit and grows dissatisfied with life. These two stories, and most others in this volume, successfully combine elements of romanticism, fantasy, and realism. If this book had been published a half century later in Latin America, the style might have been dubbed “magic realism.”

Hesse’s other collection of short stories, entitled Stories of Five Decades, was published after his death in 1972. It is a career retrospective of sorts, containing 23 stories from over the course of his long career. That volume is every bit as good as Strange News from Another Star. Though Hesse is best known for his novels, he was a quite masterful practitioner of the short story, as evidenced in both of his fine short fiction collections.

Stories in this collection

Augustus

The Poet

Flute Dream

Strange News from Another Star

Hard Passage

A Dream Sequence

Fuldam

Iris

The Fiction of Hermann Hesse

An overview

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) is the winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Black Forest region of Germany and wrote in the German language. Prior to World War I, Hesse, whose grandparents and parents had previously lived as missionaries in India, developed an interest in Indian culture and Buddhism. He made a journey to the East, visiting Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Burma, which later had a profound effect on his writing. After serving in the German military in World War I he settled in Switzerland and was granted Swiss citizenship in 1923. Both Germany and Switzerland claim him as one of their own.

As a young writer, Hesse was heavily influenced by the German Romanticist movement. This influence is reflected in the style of his earliest novels, which will strike today’s readers as rather conventionally told narratives of German life. As time progressed, however, Hesse’s writings became more modernist and avant garde, incorporating themes related to his interest in Eastern religion and his personal association with the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. It is these later, more experimental works, beginning with Demian (1919) that are now generally seen as Hesse’s essential works. In general, however, his earlier, more traditional novels are also quite good for their genre.

Listed below are the thirteen books by Hesse that Old Books by Dead Guys has reviewed. This is not a complete list of Hesse’s fictional works, but rather an ample sampling of the titles English-language readers are most likely to encounter in their local used bookstore. Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

    

Novels

Peter Camenzind (1904) - 3.5 stars
Hesse’s promising debut novel is a coming-of-age story about one young man’s search for love, happiness, and the meaning of life. The narrative is firmly grounded in the Romantic tradition of German writers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but already in this first book Hesse starts to show his individual style. Peter Camenzind exhibits many elements and themes common to Hesse’s later works, most notably its sensitive, introverted protagonist who feels like an outsider in modern society.

Beneath the Wheel (1906) - 3 stars
A young boy, the most promising student in his rural town, is sent off to a seminary school where he flounders in the more competitive educational environment. Hesse intended this novel as a severe criticism of the German educational system, which he felt robbed boys of their youth and stifled their creativity in favor of rote learning and intellectual conformism. I liked this book for all the wrong reasons: Hesse’s naturalistic depictions of the monastery and its rural environs is a picturesque world I would want to live in.

Gertrude (1910) - 4 stars
One of the better works of Hesse’s earlier years, this novel stylistically straddles the line between German romanticism and impressionistic realism. An aspiring composer named Kuhn meets two people who change his life: a brash singer named Muoth who becomes his unlikely best friend, and the title character, with whom he falls in love. This is not a particularly innovative or ambitious novel by Hesse standards, but it is a compelling drama of art, love, and loss that rings true to life.

Rosshalde (1914) - 3 stars
This semi-autobiographical novel charts the deterioration of a marriage between a celebrated painter and his wife who live on an idyllic estate named Rosshalde. Hesse’s depictions of human emotion are authentic and moving, but the plot doesn’t really head anywhere except to a foregone conclusion, which just feels depressing and not remarkably compelling. This one is best reserved for only diehard Hesse fans.

Knulp (1915) - 4.5 stars
The title character in this brief novel is a lovable vagabond who tramps through the German countryside, relying on the kindness of strangers and living life one day at a time. This romantic life of wanderlust and adventure begins to wear on Knulp, however, as he grows older and starts to regret the choices he’s made in life. This is the best of Hesse’s earlier romantic novels, and one that marks his turning point into a more modernist style.

Demian (1919) - 3 stars
This is generally considered the jumping off point for Hesse’s later and greater works. Hesse introduces themes and imagery from the world of Jungian psychoanalysis into this coming-of-age story, resulting in the relating of many dreams and mystical visions. Demian may have been groundbreaking for its time, but I found it deeply flawed. Hesse fantasizes about a secret elitist brotherhood of misfits just waiting to accept intellectuals who don’t fit in, which comes across a bit juvenile and pretentious.

Siddhartha (1922) - 4 stars
Many novels can be described as “one man’s search for spiritual enlightenment,” but probably none more appropriately than this one. The story is set around 500 BC in India. Siddhartha is the son of a Hindu Brahmin who turns his back on his father’s teachings, renounces earthly possessions, and sets out on the road to find his own path to the meaning of life. Despite the title and the book’s setting, the protagonist is not Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), but rather another spiritual quester who meets the Buddha and draws inspiration from him.

Steppenwolf (1927) - 4.5 stars
Hesse’s best, in my opinion. Harry Haller envisions himself as having a dual personality. His inability to reconcile the human and animal halves of his nature leaves him depressed and filled with revulsion for his pointless, insignificant life, until he meets a mysterious woman who guides him on a bizarre psychoanalytic tour of his own mind. Hesse liberally departs from realism, using dreams and hallucinations to craft something that might be described as a stream-of-subconsciousness narrative. This is a fearlessly original work that dispenses timeless wisdom for the modern soul.

Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) - 4 stars
Set vaguely in the Middle Ages, this novel tells the story of the friendship between two monks who meet in a monastery. Their contrasting natures of philosopher (Narcissus) and artist (Goldmund) illustrate the dichotomy between pious intellectualism and the pleasures of the flesh, a recurring theme in Hesse’s work. The novel’s lofty themes are grounded in an earthy realism as the story focuses mostly on Goldmund’s spiritual quest to reconcile the flesh with the spirit. 

The Journey to the East (1932) - 1.5 stars
This brief book feel less like a novel than a rough sketch of one. The narrator tells of his membership in a mysterious, mystical organization called the League, and a historic Eastward pilgrimage they made to find enlightenment. Hesse treats the work like a kitchen sink in which to throw all manner of vague and trippy imagery. Many find this book profound, but I didn’t care much for it at all. Like a sketch quickly tossed off by Picasso, it has value in that it was created by a master, but it doesn’t compare to his masterpieces. 

The Glass Bead Game (1943) - 3.5 stars
Also known by the title Magister Ludi, this is a science fiction novel set in a utopian future. Mankind’s intellectual heritage is safeguarded by a secular priesthood who practice the art of the Glass Bead Game as a form of cerebral meditation. The world Hesse has created here is fascinating, but the story that plays out there is achingly slow and tediously repetitive. Hesse’s final novel is his quintessential book, summing up his life’s work, but that doesn’t mean it’s his best piece of writing.

Short Stories

Klingsor’s Last Summer (1920) - 3.5 stars
This volume includes one short story, “A Child’s Heart,” and two novellas, “Klein and Wagner” and “Klingsor’s Last Summer.” Published about the same time as Demian, these short works also mark the transition from his rather traditional romantic novels to his more avant garde psychological and spiritual literature. These are fine works but nothing that stands out as among Hesse’s best writings.

Stories of Five Decades (1972) - 4 stars
This collection contains 23 short stories by Hesse that were originally published from 1899 to 1948. The well-selected contents cover a fascinating array of diverse subjects and styles, including realistic scenes of German life, historical fiction, mythic fairy tales, and hints of science fiction. Not every story is a winner, but overall the volume provides a panoramic overview of Hesse’s breadth of interests and recurring themes.

  

Stories of Five Decades by Hermann Hesse

A diverse array of thought-provoking short fiction

To English-language readers, German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse is primarily known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific poet and writer of short stories. Over the course of his career, the Nobel laureate published several volumes of short stories, but only a sampling of his short fiction has been published in English translation in volumes such as Klingsor’s Last Summer, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, and Stories of Five Decades. The latter collection, first published in 1972, contains 23 stories translated by Ralph Mannheim, perhaps the 20th century’s most acclaimed translator of German literature. As the title indicates, the selections in Stories of Five Decades cover a broad time span, including works originally published from 1899 to 1948.

Whether written in the Romantic style of his early career or the more modernist style of his later works, fans of Hesse’s novels will feel right at home in the introspective atmosphere of these stories. Hesse often sets his fiction in idyllic, almost monastic settings, where his protagonists are free to devote themselves to music, poetry, or nature. His interests in Jungian psychology and Eastern mysticism often express themselves in trippy dream sequences and fantastical events. Conflict, when it occurs, is less due to outside forces than to interior turmoil within the mind, or between two opposing minds. “Inside and Outside,” for example, follows the relationship between two educated friends, one devoted to science and the other to magic. The later story “Edmund” continues the theme with a professor and student who study world religions, one as an objective observer of ceremony and ritual, the other as a willing participant. In “Dream Journeys,” a frustrated writer struggles to find a medium between literature and dreams, while in “Robert Aghion,” an English missionary weighs Christian and pagan beliefs.

Hesse frequently expresses a disdain for the modern world and its arts. He harkens back fondly to the Romantic Era, the Middle Ages, and ancient times. Today’s artists and writers, in Hesse’s view, futilely struggle to achieve the heights of the “great poets” of the past. The modern world is a realm of violence, noise, and insanity that only deserves to be lamented or satirized. In “An Evening with Dr. Faust,” the title character devises a means of hearing sounds from the future, only to find that his future (our present) is chaos and madness. The 1907 story “The Wolf” is a realistic look at a wolf’s struggle for survival in a harsh world, man being its greatest adversary. Here Hesse celebrates primordial nature while expressing regret over dubious “civilization.” In his 1927 story, “Harry, the Steppenwolf,” a companion piece to Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf, a wolf held captive in a zoo becomes an anthropomorphic symbol of nonconformity and dissent. Other stories that express reservations about modernity are “The City,” a wonderful biography of a fictional city that points out the transitory insignificance of mankind, and “Walter Kömpff,” in which the title character finds his life confined by the strictures of a capitalist society.

The 23 entries in this collection cover a fascinating array of diverse subjects and styles, including realistic scenes of German life, historical fiction, mythic fairy tales, and hints of science fiction. Some stories come across as incomplete sketches, a few feel like scenes pulled out of context, and a couple might be considered failed experiments. Nevertheless, fans of Hesse’s novels will enjoy this collection. The overall effect is like paging through the sketchbook of a master artist. The well-selected contents give the reader an impressive panoramic view of the author’s wide breadth of interests and prodigious depth of talent.

Stories in this collection

The Island Dream

Incipit vita nova

To Frau Gertrud

November Night

The Marble Works

The Latin Scholar

The Wolf

Walter Kömpff

The Field Devil

Chagrin d’Amour

A Man by the Name of Ziegler

The Homecoming

The City

Robert Aghion

The Cyclone

From the Childhood of Saint Francis of Assisi

Inside and Outside

Tragic

Dream Journeys

Harry, the Steppenwolf

An Evening with Dr. Faust

Edmund

The Interrupted Class

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Klingsor’s Last Summer by Hermann Hesse

A trio of turning points

The book Klingsor’s Last Summer is a collection of short fiction by German author Hermann Hesse, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature. The volume includes one short story, “A Child’s Heart,” and two novellas, “Klein and Wagner” and “Klingsor’s Last Summer.” All were written in 1919 and previously published in German literary journals before being published together as a collection in 1920. At about the same time, Hesse published his novel Demian, which was a real turning point in his career, and the short works included in Klingsor’s Last Summer likewise mark his transition from rather traditional romantic novels to the more avant garde psychological and spiritual literature for which he is better known today.

In the opening story, “A Child’s Heart,” a young boy experiences his first taste of transgression, guilt, and rebellion when he steals some forbidden figs from his father’s dresser drawer. Here Hesse crafts a brilliant piece of psychological realism in which he perfectly captures the emotional turmoil in the child’s mind. It calls to mind incidents from the reader’s own youth when seemingly insignificant events could escalate into causes for gut-wrenching despair and remorse. After so much boyhood sturm und drang, however, the father’s eventual response to his son’s sin feels anticlimactic and the ending seems unsatisfyingly inconclusive.

In the second entry, “Klein and Wagner,” a businessman named Klein embezzles money from his employer and abandons his wife and children, fleeing to Italy. He later admits that the reason he fled was because he had been having fantasies about murdering his family. He even has an obsessive fascination with a killer named Wagner about whom he once read a news item. The first chapter of this story is riveting, but it never lives up to its initial promise. Klein is a fine portrait of an outsider, from an author who specializes in outsiders, but as often happens in Hesse’s books this outsider is rescued by a benevolent lover who seems more fantasy than reality. The novella then morphs into a Jungian study of internal conflict, similar to Demian, with many references to sex and death. It would have been better had Hesse stuck to the less flighty and more realistic tone of the story’s initial scenes.

“Klingsor’s Last Summer” concerns an aging painter. Though only 42, Klingsor somehow knows that his death is imminent, so he sets out to live the remainder of his life to the fullest through wine, women, food, travel, and making art. Over the course of the story his values vacillate between spiritual enlightenment and pleasures of the flesh. The narrative consists primarily of interactions between the artist and his friends, in which they all relentlessly speak in metaphor. Frequent topics include whether one should fear death and whether the making of art is a pointless pursuit. Hesse throws in many references to Eastern philosophy, but there is so much competing imagery it often adds up to a confusing mess. At times, he seems to think the very mention of the word death yields instant profundity. The story contains so many odd nicknames and quirky references it often feels like a private joke that Hesse wrote for a circle of close friends. The result is that “Klingsor’s Last Summer” is the least successful entry in the collection that bears its name.

With the possible exception of “A Child’s Heart,” these three works are satisfactory but nothing remarkable by Hesse standards. Unless you are a diehard fan and Hesse completist, you’d be better off sticking with his novels.

Stories in this collection

A Child’s Heart

Klein and Wagner 

Klingsor’s Last Summer

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Knulp by Hermann Hesse

The freedom of a vagabond life, but at what cost?

Knulp is a novel by German author Hermann Hesse, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is a short book, about 120 pages in paperback, that can easily be read in a couple hours. The title character is a vagabond who tramps through the German countryside, depending on the kindness of others for a meal and occasional bed or working at odd jobs as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Through his travels he has made many friends, and in just about every town he visits he can count on running into past acquaintances who are happy to see him. It is also suggested that this attractive youth has no trouble with the ladies and has had his fair share of brief love affairs. All enjoy the company of Knulp, for through him they receive a breath of fresh, liberated air that allows them to vicariously live their own fantasies of wanderlust through him. As his youth slips away, however, Knulp becomes worn down by the hardships of life on the road and begins to regret the choices he’s made in life. He wonders if his many and varied adventures merely add up to a wasted life.

Anyone who has ever read Hesse’s 1930 novel Narcissus and Goldmund will immediately recognize Knulp as a prototype for Goldmund. Both lead the vagabond’s life, living for the moment, taking love where they find it, and pleasing others with their good looks and warm demeanor. Knulp, however, doesn’t carry all the religious baggage that Goldmund totes around, and Knulp’s sexual adventures are only hinted at while Goldmund’s are explicitly depicted as quasi-spiritual experiences. Of the two, Knulp is the more realistic, and the one with which it is easier for the reader to identify. One can’t help but envy Knulp’s lack of restrictions and responsibilities, but Hesse charts the character’s course with an even hand, examining the drawbacks and disappointments of the wanderer’s life as well as its benefits and joys.

One can look at Hesse’s career as being split into two phases, beginning with his “traditional” period, in which he wrote what nowadays seem relatively conventional novels built upon the tradition of German Romanticism. This is followed by his “modern” period, beginning with his novel Demian. In his more modern works, Hesse breaks away from tradition to forge his own style and incorporate themes of Eastern religion and psychoanalysis into his writings. Knulp was the last novel Hesse published before Demian, so it can be seen as the end of his “traditional” period, but the book definitely shows signs of modernism as well, both in its unconventional format—a triptych of stories from different narrators—and in its questioning of modern life. Knulp reads as if Hesse were influenced by the novels of Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, who often featured vagabond protagonists, as in his “Wanderer Trilogy” of Under the Autumn Star, A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, and Look Back on Happiness. Hamsun is more of a brutally frank modernist, however, while Hesse does a better job of capturing the romantic appeal of wanderlust, solitude, and communion with the natural landscape, as evidenced in books like Peter Camenzind, Beneath the Wheel, Siddhartha, and the aforementioned Narcissus and Goldmund.

Having read Hesse’s later novels a long time ago, I have only recently begun to plumb the depths of his early back catalog. Though modernist works like Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game get all the attention nowadays, I am continually surprised by the emotive power and keen psychological sensitivity of Hesse’s early novels. In a previous review I called his 1910 novel Gertrude “perhaps the best of early Hesse,” but I spoke to soon because Knulp surpasses it.
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Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse

A promising debut
Peter Camenzind, the debut novel of Nobel Prize-winning author Hermann Hesse, was originally published in 1904. It is a coming-of-age story about a young man’s search for love, happiness, and a purpose to his life. At this early stage in Hesse’s career, his writing clearly shows the influence of German romanticism. The novel’s title character and protagonist, for example, grows up in a scene right out of a Caspar David Friedrich painting—an alpine village surrounded by rugged and majestic mountains beset by brutal storms and avalanches. While building upon the literary tradition of writers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, however, this is no Sorrows of Young Werther, as Hesse avoids romantic excesses and ventures toward the more modernist style that would characterize his later and better-known works.

In this first novel one will recognize many elements and themes common to Hesse’s later works. Though Peter is atypical of Hesse’s heroes in that he possesses a robust and powerful physique, he is intellectually inclined and has no interest in farm or factory work. He goes off to a university (reminiscent of the boarding school in Beneath the Wheel or the cloister school in Narcissus and Goldmund) where he develops an enthusiasm for scholarly pursuits. As is often the case with Hesse protagonists, Peter follows an artistic calling, but instead of music (as in Gertrude) or painting (as in Rosshalde), Peter’s chosen vocation is literature. Among his classmates he is an outsider, but he forms one very strong and intense male friendship (see Beneath the Wheel, Demian, The Glass Bead Game, and others). When that friendship is taken away from him (Beneath the Wheel again), Peter becomes disillusioned with life and decides to wander the countryside, looking for some sort of spiritual epiphany (much like Siddhartha or Goldmund).

Love is a common theme throughout the book, but not necessarily romantic love. Peter searches for a love that will make life worthwhile. This first manifests itself in love for woman, at which Peter is not very successful. Alcoholism is another recurring theme in the book, as Peter continually turns to drink as a distraction from the lack of love and meaning in his life. As the book progresses, however, Peter begins to realize that the one love in his life that he could always count on is his love for nature. While nature provides him with a source of spiritual contentment, he realizes that he will never be truly happy until he develops a love for humanity. Peter’s spiritual quest is very engaging, and Hesse imparts some valid wisdom, but the lifestyle which ultimately brings Peter contentment will probably strike many readers as not very appealing.

Hesse’s novels often feature intelligent, sensitive introverts who feel like outsiders in society. I suspect that those who read his books, myself included, tend to be those who see themselves in a similar light. Such readers will easily be seduced by the monastic or nomadic lifestyles of Hesse’s heroes. How wonderful it would be to devote oneself to study in the secluded libraries of a utopian center of learning, or wander the roads of Europe on foot, sleeping in fragrant meadows and taking life as it comes. By no means am I being facetious, for this is exactly what I enjoy about Hesse’s novels. His characters have the time to philosophize and self-actualize, while many of us do not. This only proves that the alienation and disconnect that Hesse felt with modern society is still alive and well today. By Hesse standards, Peter Camenzind is a good novel, not great, but it is an admirable start to what would prove to be an illustrious literary career.
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