(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?
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"The most beautiful things, I think, give us something else beside pleasure; they also leave us with a feeling of sadness or fear." "Why?" "I mean that a beautiful girl wouldn't seem so beautiful if we didn't know that she has her season and that when it's over she'll grow old and die. If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity, I'd be glad, but all the same I'd look at it with a colder eye. I'd say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn't have to be today. But when I know that something is perishable and can't last for ever, I look at it with a feeling not just of joy but of compassion as well." "I suppose so." "To me there's nothing more beautiful than fireworks in the night. There are blue and green fireballs, they rise up in the darkness, and at the height of their beauty they double back and they're gone. When you watch them, you're happy but at the same time afraid, because in a moment it will all be over. The happiness and the fear go together, and it's much more beautiful than if it lasted longer. Don't you feel the same way?"
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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 deserves the aforesaid compliment.
P.S. For my German readers I have this audiobook of "Knulp" in German!
