Pictor´s Metamorphoses

Report from Normalia

...We are quite simply inmates of an enormous asylum full of madmen. And the question of whether it is we or the others who are the madmen constitutes the principal subject matter of the philosophies and speculations of our men of genius. We others, we who are older and more detached, are of the opinion that it would be pointless to distress ourselves with questions that cannot be answered, and it matters little to determine whether one is crazy or normal, whether one is the monkey in the cage or the gawking member of the Zoological Gardens who stares through the bars from the outside; rather, it is more proper and fitting to see Existence as a game, one far from problem-free, but genuinely meaningful and charming, and to be glad of the many good and beautiful things we can experience while playing it.

_____________________


In a decaying civilization, one that is diseased with a lack of sense and slowly dying, for individuals as well as for the community as a whole, there is no other medicament and nourishment, no other source of strength that enables one to go on, than the encounter with that which, in spite of everything, gives meaning to our lives and our actions and justifies us. And in the recollection of a whole lifetime of holidays and gatherings, in listening to the sounds and stirrings of the soul-even as far back as the colorful wilderness of childhood, in gazing into beloved eyes long since extinguished, there is demonstrated the existence of an intelligence, a unity, a secret center we have circled around - now consciously, now unconsciously - all our lives. From the pious Christmases of childhood, redolent of wax and honey in a world seemingly sane, safe from destruction, incapable of believing in the possibility of its own destruction, through all the changes, crises, shocks, and reevaluations of our private lives and of our age, there still remains a core, a sense, a grace residing in no dogma of the church or of science, but in the existence of a center around which even an imperiled and troubled life can always find itself anew, from just this innermost core of our being, a belief in the accessibility of God, in the coincidence of this center with the presence of God. For where He is present, yes, even the ugly and apparently meaningless may be borne, because, for Him, seeming and being are one and inseparable, for Him everything is meaning.




Hermann Hesse

eastward

one paradox, however, must be accepted and this is that it is necessary to continually attempt the seemingly impossible. i agree with Siddharta, our wise friend form the East, who once said:
"words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. and yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another".

"he who travels far will often see things
far removed from what he believed was Truth.
when he talks about it in the fields at home,
he is often accused of lying,
for the obdurate people will not believe
what they do not see and distincly feel,
inexperience, i believe,
will give little credence to my song."

the journey to the east.
hermann hesse.

Eva

..."Love must not entreat," she added, "or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract....
Another time she told me a very different story, concerning a lover who's love was unrequited. He withdrew completely within himself, believing his love would consume him. The world became lost to him, he no longer noticed the blue sky and green woods, he no longer heard the brook murmur; his ears had turned deaf to the notes of the harp: nothing mattered anymore; he had become poor and wretched. Yet his love increased and he would rather have died or been ruined than renounce possessing this beautiful woman. Then he felt that his passion had consumed everything else within him and become so strong, so magnetic that the beautiful woman must follow. She came to him and he stood with outstretched arms ready to draw her to him. As she stood before him she was completely transformed and with awe he felt and saw that he had won back all he had previously lost. She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and sparkled with joy in his soul. He had loved and had found himself. But most people love to lose themselves.

Hermann Hesse

Among Thieves

"I can see that your thoughts are deeper than you yourself are able to express. But since this is so, you know, don't you, that you've never liked what you are thinking and that isn't good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think."

Demian, Hermann Hesse

two realms

i cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. if it were possible i would reach farther still- into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond them into distant ancestral past.

novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man´s life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. i am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist´s is to him- for this is my story; it is the story of man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. yet, what a real human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men- each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature- are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. if we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storyteling would lose all purpose. but every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world´s phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. that is why every man´s story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. in each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemeer is nailed to the cross.

few people nowadays know what man is. many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that i will die more easily once i have completed this story.

i do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. i have been and still am a seeker, but i have ceased to question stars and books; i have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. my story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

each man´s life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. no man has ever been entirely and completely himself. yet each one strives to become that- one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best as he can. each man carries the vestiges of his birth- the slime and eggshells of his primeval past- with him to the end of his days. some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. some are human above the waist, fish below. each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. we all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. but each of us -experiments of the depths- strives toward his own destiny. we can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.

demian, hermann hesse.