Bach, Hesse & Keats

Here is a summary of the recent weekly Section for Literary Arts & Humanities meeting of the local group in Fair Oaks, CA. This meeting occurred on September 19, 2020 via Zoom.

“Human beings travel many paths. Whoever pursues these paths and makes comparisons will discover curious figures  – figures that appear to belong to a grand mysterious script that can be found everywhere: on wings, eggshells, within clouds, snow, crystals and mineral formations – on freezing water, in the depths and heights of mountains – plants, animals, human beings – in the lights of heaven, on cracked fragments of amber and glass, in the iron filings gathered by magnets, and in the marvelous alignments of chance. Observe!”— Novalis; The Apprentices of Sais

Meeting Summary

Well, our meeting had three parts: Announcements, Presentations, Artistic Offering. This summary is a bit lengthy because we covered a lot of ground.
As far as Announcements go:

• We will continue to meet with Zoom on a weekly basis until the end of 2020. Then we will take stock. On December 12 or 19, for those who can attend, we’ll have some kind of celebration or retrospective of our work this year. We have been meeting weekly each Saturday on Zoom since the end of March. Almost all our meetings this year have been on Zoom. I believe we had two or three in-person meetings at the beginning of the year when we looked closely at the poetry and artwork of William Blake.
• Because we meet so often, these summaries of the meetings have arrived with a greater frequency than ever anticipated. The local Section work here in Fair Oaks has accumulated a growing archive of meeting summaries (which go back a few years now), and I am looking for a better way to share our local activities with members and friends. I am on track to launch a website for our local group by the end of the year.
• We discussed briefly how we can contribute toward the anniversary year 2023 in commemoration of the Foundation Stone Christmas Conference. We will return to this discussion later. I briefly discussed the book that Arie in Canada is working on with Christiane.
• We will continue to work on Hesse and Novalis until the end of the year, with excursions and digressions, of course. I will send out a PDF of The Apprentices of Sais to meeting participants, and we will weave this book into our work during the autumn.
• The Fairy Tale or “Märchen” Initiative will continue as a sub-group whose inspiration for working comes directly from our weekly Section work with Novalis over the past six months. This group has an artistic emphasis, and it will include more than so-called fairy tales in its work. I will report on the progress separately in future updates. A link to one of the group’s most recent videos is at the end of this email.
• The Faust Branch has calendared a Section presentation for November 18. This will occur on Zoom, of course.

Lecture / Presentation Summary

Gayle and I gave presentations that complemented one another thematically.

I started off by discussing the cello suites and lute suites of Bach, which have been occupying my attention recently. In these suites, as in much of Bach’s music, Bach achieves a magical balance (to use a term from Novalis) in which the music “hovers” between the sacred and secular — denying neither, honoring both, finding revelation in balance. I used this example to draw attention to how important music was for Hermann Hesse. Although the novel we are reading includes only examples from the visual arts, those familiar with The Glass Bead Game and Steppenwolf will have encountered musical references in those books. In Steppenwolf, for example, Hesse makes much of the “Immortals” — prominent among the said company is Mozart.

The music of Mozart, like the music of Bach — like much of the humanist literary tradition that we inherit from the Renaissance — strives for a “hovering” balance (the word “hover” as Novalis uses it) — balance such that the world of the senses is not lost for love of the spirit and the world of the spirit is not lost for love of the world of the senses. I made reference to our previous work with Goethe and to the famous closing lines of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, a poem that I hope we can spend more time with in the future, since it stands so importantly at the beginning of the literary tradition we are studying:

“A life so ennobled that God is not robbed of the soul through fault of the body, and which can obtain the world’s favor with dignity, that is a worthy work.” 

I suggested that we resist the temptation to read Hesse’s novel in a topical way — but rather that we play with it as a fairy tale, parable, or a drama in the tradition of Schiller —  or even, to use the word in its older sense — as “Romance.” I referenced past meetings in which Terry loved to share his understanding of the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — in which “romance” and “adventure” indicate the Grand Adventure of Becoming Human. Does either character in Hesse’s novel meet the mark? Narcissus entertains, one might argue, a Mephistophelian role in respect to the awakening of Goldmund. Goldmund, once awakened to the “siren call” of the Grand Adventure, then ventures forth into the world, for better or worse, sallying hither and yon, and facing various trials, often in the style of two other famous lover/philanderers, Gawain and Faust.

Although Goldmund lacks Faust’s characteristic cruelties, he also lacks Gawain’s martial panache. Goldmund is an artist — but a very undisciplined one, to be sure! Never sticking to the task. Always “back sliding” — as Master Niklaus might complain — and not living up to his talented potential, really. But is this a fault? Recall that for Novalis, the calling to become a Poet is also, in truth, the calling to the Grand Adventure — it is not a summons to scribble verse. It is a summons to Wake Up! To discover one’s wyrd — to use an older Anglo Saxon term. Compare, again, to Parzival. Compare also Goldmund’s many love affairs to Goethe’s activities — or, if that is not your cup of tea — then think of the ending of Faust and of the scenes in Part 2 of that play that concern us with “the Mothers.” True, one problem with Hesse’s novel: it’s too much of a boy’s book. But Hesse is in grand company, is he not? Consider the scenes in Klingsohr’s Fairy Tale in Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the role of the “mother” and the feminine in that “fairy tale.” And then read Goldmund’s final words:

“But how will you die when your time comes, Narcissus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.”

Why Bother?

E. M. Forster’s famous motto “Only Connect” is useful here. What do we do when we “study” literature? Well, along with perhaps (maybe) awakening to the Grand Adventure of Becoming Human: we compare and we contrast and (hopefully) make connections — if things go accordingly as they should, we might even learn to “think” like a poet, in the sense that Novalis uses the word: we might learn to think with metaphor, to balance contradictions artfully — or following the words of Keats, we might learn a capacity for what Keats famously called “Negative Capability”

“Several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason — Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.” — From a letter written by Keats in December, 1817

I mention Keats here because we featured Keats at the end of our meeting last night. As mentioned earlier, it is helpful to read the word “Poet” here with all the magical idealist connotations for human becoming that Novalis helps us to understand.

“Look,” [said Narcissus to Goldmund], “I am superior to you only in one point: I’m awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them. For you to learn that about yourself is the potential reason for your having met me. In your case, mind and nature, consciousness and dream world lie very far apart. You’ve forgotten your childhood; it cries for you from the depths of your soul. It will make you suffer until you heed it.” — Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“Conscience is the innate mediator of every man. It takes the place of God upon earth, and is therefore to many the highest and the final.”

“Where are we going then? Always toward home.” — Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Part 2