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A review by lookhome
Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse
4.0
The Impression Of A Moment.
While Hesse's Rosshalde may not be as well known as Steppenwolf or the Glass Bead Game, it remains a beautifully told and elegiac take on art, art making and the modern family unit.
It is story about free will and choice.
It is about loss, love and the strength to move on.
It is about time, its passage and its subjective experience.
It is a mature novel about generational alienation, social estrangement and conscious art making.
It is an exploration of not only art for art's sake, but art making as a balm for the torn or ripped asunder soul.
Only John Berger writes about art making in such a poetic-realist fashion.
Read this and be transported into not only a specific time and place, but a specific way of thinking about experience, memory and the conscious act of choosing your life and actively looking forward to living and learning from its consequences.
Dead Alive by Arnold Bennett is also recommended though very different in tone, it explores art making and its relation to a well-lived life in a similar fashion.
Quotes from Rosshalde:
'He had discovered long ago that the prettiest and most interesting things are the very ones that cannot be known or explained' (11)
'The deep, potent hypnosis of resignation had been broken, and through the breach poured the unconscious instinctual forces of a life long curbed and cheated" (62)
'Today I'm satisfied if I can turn out a good picture, I don't see problems anymore, in any case not philosophical problems. If I had to tell you. why I'm a painter and why I spread paint on canvas, I should say: I paint because I have no tail to wag' (71)
'It was strange and sad, but no more strange and sad than all human destiny: this disciplined artist, who derived his power to work from the deepest truthfulness and from clear uncompromising concentrations, this same man in whose studio there was no place for whim or uncertainty, had been a dilettante in his life, a failure in his search for happiness, and he, who never sent a bungled drawing or painting out of the world, suffered deeply under the dark weight of innumerable bungled days and years, bungled attempts at love and life/ Of this he was not conscious. For years he had not felt the need to see his life clearly. He had suffered and resisted suffering in rebellion and resignation, but then he had taken to letting things ride and saving himself for his work. With grim tenacity, he had almost succeeded in giving his art the richness, depth, and warmth that his life had lost' (73)
'In those hours Veraguth knew nothing of weakness and fear, of suffering, guilt, and failure in life. Neither joyful or sad, wholly absorbed by his work, he breathed the cold air of creative loneliness, desiring nothing of the world he had forgotten... He gave no thought to what his picture expressed. That lay behind him; it had an idea, an inspiration; now he was concerned not with meanings, feelings, or thoughts, but with pure reality.' (74)
'What remained in him was his art, of which he had never felt as sure as he did now. There remained the consolation of the outsider, to whom it is not given to seize the cup of life and drain it; there remained the strange, cool, and yet irresistible passion to see, to observe, and to participate with secret pride in the work of creation. That was the residue and the value of his unsuccessful life, the imperturbable loneliness and cold delight of art, and to follow that star without detours would from now on be his destiny" (153)
While Hesse's Rosshalde may not be as well known as Steppenwolf or the Glass Bead Game, it remains a beautifully told and elegiac take on art, art making and the modern family unit.
It is story about free will and choice.
It is about loss, love and the strength to move on.
It is about time, its passage and its subjective experience.
It is a mature novel about generational alienation, social estrangement and conscious art making.
It is an exploration of not only art for art's sake, but art making as a balm for the torn or ripped asunder soul.
Only John Berger writes about art making in such a poetic-realist fashion.
Read this and be transported into not only a specific time and place, but a specific way of thinking about experience, memory and the conscious act of choosing your life and actively looking forward to living and learning from its consequences.
Dead Alive by Arnold Bennett is also recommended though very different in tone, it explores art making and its relation to a well-lived life in a similar fashion.
Quotes from Rosshalde:
'He had discovered long ago that the prettiest and most interesting things are the very ones that cannot be known or explained' (11)
'The deep, potent hypnosis of resignation had been broken, and through the breach poured the unconscious instinctual forces of a life long curbed and cheated" (62)
'Today I'm satisfied if I can turn out a good picture, I don't see problems anymore, in any case not philosophical problems. If I had to tell you. why I'm a painter and why I spread paint on canvas, I should say: I paint because I have no tail to wag' (71)
'It was strange and sad, but no more strange and sad than all human destiny: this disciplined artist, who derived his power to work from the deepest truthfulness and from clear uncompromising concentrations, this same man in whose studio there was no place for whim or uncertainty, had been a dilettante in his life, a failure in his search for happiness, and he, who never sent a bungled drawing or painting out of the world, suffered deeply under the dark weight of innumerable bungled days and years, bungled attempts at love and life/ Of this he was not conscious. For years he had not felt the need to see his life clearly. He had suffered and resisted suffering in rebellion and resignation, but then he had taken to letting things ride and saving himself for his work. With grim tenacity, he had almost succeeded in giving his art the richness, depth, and warmth that his life had lost' (73)
'In those hours Veraguth knew nothing of weakness and fear, of suffering, guilt, and failure in life. Neither joyful or sad, wholly absorbed by his work, he breathed the cold air of creative loneliness, desiring nothing of the world he had forgotten... He gave no thought to what his picture expressed. That lay behind him; it had an idea, an inspiration; now he was concerned not with meanings, feelings, or thoughts, but with pure reality.' (74)
'What remained in him was his art, of which he had never felt as sure as he did now. There remained the consolation of the outsider, to whom it is not given to seize the cup of life and drain it; there remained the strange, cool, and yet irresistible passion to see, to observe, and to participate with secret pride in the work of creation. That was the residue and the value of his unsuccessful life, the imperturbable loneliness and cold delight of art, and to follow that star without detours would from now on be his destiny" (153)