Tag: literature

I consider it a real manifestation of God in my life to have gotten rid of hundreds of pages of interpretation of Pessoa’s life “through a Freudian lens,” a martyrdom to which I would fatally submit myself in order to know a little more of the poet’s life. Then I learn of the existence of this recently published brick of a thousand pages by Richard Zenith, which already in its first lines points out the conclusions of the Freudian biographer João Gaspar Simões. According to him, “nostalgia for lost childhood and the pure happiness it represented is the key to understanding the man and his work.” What a shame of these disciples of Freud! What a shame! And what is incredible is that they do not blush when they pour out such frighteningly shallow and predictable conclusions. There are, for Freud’s disciples, only two causes for all human manifestation: childhood and desire. Nothing beyond these is possible, and everything can be infallibly justified by them. So a man who manifests in life the religious vocation, obviously, be he whatever monk or saint, does so out of frustration at not being able to relate to women, or out of unresolved sexuality. An artist, on the other hand, has to celebrate himself through debauchery; he makes art out of the need to express unresolved childhood traumas. In every white-headed gentleman there is, naturally, an inner pervert that constitutes his essence… What a shame! what a shame! It is amazing to note the poverty of psychoanalysis! And thank you, God, thank you very much for freeing me from the insults that I would have to confront because of the appreciation I have for the enormous Portuguese…

Hermann Hesse’s intellectual trajectory is admirable. The “posthumous writings of Joseph Knecht”, especially “The Three Lives”, are like a synthesis of a lifetime dedicated to study, of a long immersion in the highest philosophies of the East and the West; a synthesis of the great religions and the great understandings of reality, starting from the simplest to the most complex elements, from practical morals to abstractions of thought. And to see such lines coming from the author of Demian… Not a few have tried to harmonize East and West in the last century; but very few have done it with the beauty achieved by Hesse.

This beautiful novel is an admirable attempt to synthesize what is the highest and noblest in human existence. If we analyze it carefully, we see that virtuosity, in its multiple faces, has been carefully distributed among the characters and the plot of the novel. A difficult task! and therefore worthy of the greatest appreciation. Structurally, the work is interesting for providing us with some very predictable lines and leaving some gaps in the story. This makes us reflect on the need for surprise when there is a harmonious whole expressing a deep and powerful message. In a narrative entirely steeped in this harmony, how much is to be gained by surprise? We notice in the work the honorable effort to give voice to the ineffable, to express through the simplicity and complexity of silence, music, and the starry sky, as if these elements needed no more than their own presence to tell us what they have to say. Joseph Knecht’s life ends in a scene of unforgettable symbolism: every detail contributes to the central message of the work. The radiant beauty of the landscape, the contrasts between youth and old age, instinct and rationality, health and disease, the simultaneously humble and courageous act of the schoolmaster who challenges and allows himself to be swallowed up by nature, all these, taken together, seem to tangent the complexity of life. For some reason, springs to mind the image of Hermann Hesse flying high, very high, in the same years when an army of authors was throwing literature into depravity…

One cannot help but be struck by the nobility, by the beauty of an education led by a man of integrity and talent, since wonderful results can be derived from it. This is, however, of such rarity that those who come across a real example can only lose themselves in idealizations about how everything would be better if everyone had opportunities identical to those of a select few enlightened ones. And then confront it with the real world… but let the regrets remain for another day: those who honor this noble vocation deserve the highest recognition.