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Terminal Sanctity or Benign Banality: The Critical Controversy Surrounding Hermann Hesse

Although more than a decade has elapsed since Hermann Hesse's death, no generally accepted critical concensus on the man or his art has yet emerged. In fact, most current estimates of the author appear irreconcilably polarized between extravagant adulation and excessive detraction. Admittedly, this dichotomy is not the only difficulty plaguing Hesse criticism; yet its elimination would go a long way toward curing his ailing literary reputation. The contemporary Hesse debate, which resembles a tug-of-war between literary hagiographers and iconoclasts, has demonstrable historical antecedents, going back to World War I and its aftermath. With the publication of his wartime essays, especially the first, "O Freunde, nicht diese Tonel" (1914), Hesse became, almost overnight, the enfant terrible of German letters. His pacifistic appeals to nonviolent humanism stirred up a jingoistic hornet's nest and touched off a campaign of vilification in the chauvinistic press, which resulted in a partial boycott of his works by book dealers and readers. Then, while shrill wartime invectives were still ringing in his ears, he found himself abruptly elevated to unprecedented esteem after the 1919 publication of Demian. Germany's postwar youth greeted this novel with such enthusiasm that its author was swiftly adopted as a spokesman for the new generation and, to some extent, as its spiritual guide. It should be noted, however, that Hesse's meteoric rise to popularity was based chiefly on the sociological and political climate of the time. Among the young, who were bewildered and distressed by the topsy-turvy world inherited from their elders, was widespread disenchantment with the older generation, with prevailing authority, and with traditional standards of value, all of which were blamed for the chaos in the country. Consequently, they turned to Hesse, in whose writings-or perhaps I should say-into whose writings they read affinitive sentiments with which they could identify. The principal object of their concern was not his art per se, but whatever personally meaningful data they could extract from his work. In other words, his admirers ignored the central question of aesthetic merit no less than his adversaries. It is this World War I dispute which established an unwholesome pattern of appraisal that, mutatis mutandis, has haunted Hesse ever since. The issue of the poet's talent or lack of it becomes peripheral and his work is gauged