Hesse's Warren

It's Albuquerque. I missed the "open mic" night of the accordion club and fell back on Jack Zipes's translation of The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse.

Wanting to share The Three Linden Trees led me to a copy of the story on this blog. 

After The Trees, I read The Beautiful Dream, written in 1912. 

Recalling that Hesse had traveled to India around that time led to the Hindustan Times and an article that mentions Martin Kämpchen.

Excerpt from Hindustan Times:

"Like his protagonist Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse himself was on a spiritual quest when he travelled to India in 1911. Despite his strictly Protestant upbringing in Calw in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, India seemed to be a natural choice for him, explains German scholar Martin Kämpchen, who is currently based in Santiniketan, West Bengal, India and has written several books on Hesse and European Indologists."

Martin, of course, came next. In the EARLY LIFE section of the wiki article it says

"It was a dissertation on comparative religious study of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century Indian mystic-saint and Saint Francis of Assisi, the 11-12th century Italian saint that brought him to Santiniketan in 1980. He took an instant liking to the place and has never since left it for a long period at a stretch."

As a Geographer, I had to see where Santiniketan is and what there might be about it to make it attractive to Herr Kämpchen.

Checking Google Satellite, I noticed Bhitey Homestay. It's near the University and the reviews are favorable. I texted asking about rates. As Michelle likes to say, "You never know."

Further down in the Hindustan Times article is:

"Hesse set off on his journey in 1911, expecting to visit Java, Bali and Sri Lanka, followed by a trip to southern India, from where he would sail back home to Europe. But a severe stomach ailment after his trip to the Indonesian islands rendered him immobile, and he had to give up his plans to go to southern India.

Hesse's journey left him amazed but disappointed, explains Kämpchen, as the author did not find that idealized version of India during his trip to Indonesia or Sri Lanka (which in Hesse's view were part of India)."

I think it's in Jack Zipes's Introduction that he describes Hesse's disappointment as stemming from a feeling that the religions of India, including Buddhism, had succumbed to commercialism.

Fantasy Bats

It's not alot diff being here in Albuq. I'm spending almost an equal amount of time resting.

But there's something, a growth, a bat, an earwig, blocking my right eardrum and the left seems to be sympathizing so I'm almost deaf. This is a boon since it's the noise of the city that annoys the most. 

The increase in isosorbide boosted my energy but on the third day of revelry and frolic, I "collapsed," and spent all day, yesterday, in bed....and had no difficulty falling asleep around 10 pm.

(I know this is boring as hell if you're here for "entertainment." I prided myself on sticking to tales of barroom brawls and pix of lovely women whilst relegating the mundanities to a separate journal. But it became too much and I've succumbed to keeping it all in one place.)

For most of the past year I've had to rest after each of The Three Bs....morning bidness, breakfast, bath; breakfast usually taking an hour or so to recover from and likewise the bahth. This morning I slept an hour and a half.

At times, resting, without sleep, is sufficient. It's then, when The Warrens of The Web beckon, that strong signal is important. A conjunctive condition, the deteriorating memory, makes everything new; so when I found Hesse's Fairy Tales in my bookcase (a 2008 gift from Michelle), it was as if it was our first time.

The Bantam Book (1995), paperback edition, is illustrated with David Frampton's woodblock prints. Wondering if David was related to Peter, I searched online....which led to Anne Nydam's, October 25 2023, blogpost:

Fantasy Bats.

If you go there, to FB, you'll see the print (below) of Miyamoto Musashi waving a sword at a bat. 

Musashi's odd grip.

Having forgotten David, I recalled Keaton, son of the Scipio, Utah mechanic who installed Phoebe's new fuel pump, and his interest in swords. As we'd talked, Keaton had, at one point, allowed as how he'd studied kendo and, as if he thought me unfamiliar, he made an iconic, downward, double-handed gesture. After Keaton, I tangented into the Musashi tunnel. 

It seems Musashi was a rōnin whose two-sword technique eventually resulted in saint-hood (similar to the British tradition of bestowing knighthoods, the Japanese recognize exceptional individuals with saint-hood). 

Musashi's method, as recounted in this Wiki article, was based on using one hand. Taking it further, he expanded (purportedly from combat) to the use of a sword in each hand.

Besides the almost heretical one-hand sword technique, Musashi espoused a philosophy of education for martial artists that included calligraphy and painting. Here is one of two "masterpieces" cited in the Wiki article.

Perhaps, if you read the Wiki article, you'll note the slight inference of incredulity that a samurai would care about writing and painting. This is, I think a suggestion of bias on the part of the article's author. In my readings -- that've coincided with over 40 years of studying Asian martial arts -- I've seen a number of references to the flower-arranging and poetry-writing skills evinced by high-level warriors. (Just yesterday I read of Cosmic Chambo's interest in Noh theater.)

In a closer-to-home example, when I asked Michelle how her grandparents met, she told of how, as an officer in the U.S. military, her grandfather was expected to know how to dance. It was at the studio where he went to learn that he met his future bride.

So, despite the lack of interest in the general (Uhmerikin) populace for dance, given the recognition of the skill's importance, and considering the competitiveness between the branches of the military and the nationalism of the day, it seems queer (may we now use that word?) there aren't major competitions.

 Can you envision -- perhaps during the half-time entertainments uv Der Foosball -- The Navy Seals vs The Buckingham Palace Guards?

Or, as with break-dancing's debut into The Olympics next year, we would watch enrapt as our military's finest vied with similar contingents from around the globe. Of course, with today's inclusive zeitgeist, each dancer would be accompanied by their partner-of-choice selected from the full spectrum of ethnicities & genders. Something to look forward to!

I never did find out if David & Peter are related.

From *The Glass Bead Game*

  THE POEMS

OF KNECHT'S

STUDENT YEARS  

Stages

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.


Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.


Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

                                                                <3!      I love you.    <3!

The Glass Bead Game

I'm rereading The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. In the Introduction there's mention of Andre Gide's praise. From Wiki I learned...

An inspiration for writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Gide received the Nobel for Literature in 1947. His obituary in The New York Times described him as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti."^[1]

But THIS stuck out...

"Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay, is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'"^[27] Gide wrote in his Journal in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental."

Of course, having surmounted the obstacles, one can comfortably retire to one's car.


This too, about Dorothy Bussy.

Home is wherever I am

Uber den Himmel Wolken ziehen,
Uber die Felder geht der Wind,
...Irgendwo uber den Bergen
Musse meine ferne Heimat sein.

Hermann Hesse, Poems (1902)

Across the sky the clouds move,
Across the fields, the wind,
...Across the mountain, far away,
My home must be.