(better still, buy a copy and keep it in your backpocket)
It's said that it's better to give than to receive, but a gift you buy yourself lets you do both, which is what I did when I picked up this slim copy of Hermann Hesse's novella "Knulp" at Vinnies. They must not have known what treasure they were giving away because its sticker price was one lousy dollar.
Someone recently gave me the ultimate compliment by saying, "I wish I had met you sooner, but I'm glad it happened at all." Back then I was not the person I am now, and that person may not have liked me, just as I may not have appreciated Hermann Hesse's "Knulp" as much as I do now.
The pleasure of 'Knulp' isn't in the plot, which is slight, but in the weight of truth and human understanding that thickens the writing. It makes for a remarkable and deeply affecting reading experience, as it asks the big questions: What should we do with our lives? What is a life well lived? How do we resolve the tension between duty and freedom?
Knulp is always on the road, never quite belonging anywhere. He wanders from town to town, touching people's lives only briefly and then quietly disappears again as if in a puff of air. What he leaves behind is nothing more than a memory; a small recollection, like a melody we once heard years ago and somehow forgot. The novel reaches a final powerful climax when God reveals to Knulp that the purpose of his life was to bring a little nostalgia for freedom into the lives of ordinary men:
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"Let well enough alone," said God. "What's the good of complaining? Don't you see that whatever happened was good and right, that nothing should have been any different? Would you really want to be a gentleman now, or a master craftsman with a wife and children, reading the paper by the fireside? Wouldn't you run away again this minute to sleep in the woods with the foxes and set traps for birds and catch lizards?" Again Knulp started off, unaware that he was staggering with weariness. He felt much happier now and nodded gratefully to everything God said. "Look," said God, "I wanted you the way you are and no different. You were a wanderer in my name and wherever you went you brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom. In my name, you did silly things and people scoffed at you; I myself was scoffed at in you and loved in you. You are my child and my brother and a part of me. There is nothing you have enjoyed and suffered that I have not enjoyed and suffered with you."
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I have often suspected that by bringing 'a little nostalgia for freedom' into the lives of some of the people I met, I may have upset them and not been the kind of person that deserved the aforesaid compliment.
P.S. For my German readers I have this audiobook of "Knulp" in German!
