Gertrude by Herman Hesse

Artwork by Riccardo G. Meneghello

"Kunst, Leben und Liebe."

In “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!”, a paper written in 1914, Hermann Hesse writes “The human culture arises from the ennoblement of bestial instincts into higher ones through modesty, imagination, and knowledge. That life is worthy of being lived is the ultimate content and comfort of every art, even though all praisers of life have had to die." This thought was directed to the stupidity of those intellectuals that, at the dawn of a tragically violent and destructive world war, were favoring the bellicose instincts of politicians, as Roberto Fertonani suggests us in the introduction to the Italian edition of “Gertrud”. One point seemed particularly interesting to me, and indissolubly related to the meaning and most important content of the book: art’s ultimate message is life’s worth of being lived. This point of view forced me to think, to connect the dots.

In the book Mr. Kuhn’s vulnerability, sensibility, and total ignorance of the true nature of love is the instrument through which Hesse brings us through a rediscovery of what seems to be the fuel of human experience: love. But love, as Kuhn discovers quickly, is not as simple as it seems, love is not directly associated with happiness, it’s an irregular object, which changes its appearance, its properties, its nature, destiny, effect.

Kuhn finds himself moved and confused by direct and indirect encounters with this entity in multiple passages of the book, and each of them reveals this complexity. Discussing with the broken-hearted mistress of his charismatic but tormented friend Mouth he asks himself:

“Was I truly a person so different from all of them, from Marion, Lotte, Mouth? Was this really love? I saw all those passionate individuals, staggering as if swept by storms, and writhing in uncertainty..." (1)

Then, just a couple of pages later, the life-changing meeting with Gertrude, the revelation that:

“With the rising surge of sounds, a surprised happiness carried me and lifted me above the sudden awareness of what love is. It wasn't a new feeling, but only a decisive clarification of ancient premonitions; it was a return to an ancient homeland.” (2)

And finally, the wise advice from his injured and unconsciously close to death dear father, that the love which binds two persons together in marriage is not the individualistic love of the young age.

“The love between young people and that of a long marriage are not the same thing. In youth, each one thinks of themselves and takes care of themselves.” (3)

But when you become old, you suddenly realize that somewhere there is an end to everything, and that all that’s done for yourself is vane. Once you realize this a new way of life starts, “life lived for the others”. And I believe this evolution is either cause or effect of a new way of love, the final choice we could call it, when the team mate to fight against all the pain and challenges of life is found and accepted, until the end of the game.

These three points of view are impressed in the three images I realized; what I believe to be the underlying meaning of Gertrud, which might appear as the simple story of a young, troubled man. Is not necessary to discuss, in my point of view, which one of the three depicts love, its true nature and sense, and which ones are impostors, generated by its misunderstanding or ignorance of it. If we agree that love is the most powerful fuel of human experience, desire, anger, fear, passion, then all forms of it are, from the most toxic and excruciatingly painful one, the unstable and doubtful, the carnal and physical, to the wise and mature pact of reciprocate protection. Life is not about happiness or sadness, is about both, negative and positive, is about love; all simply about love. “I would like to feel that pain and joy spring from the same source, are movements of the same energy, and beats of the same music, both beautiful and necessary.”

If this is true, and, as Hesse preached in 1914, and life is the content of art, then the same can be said about love. Art, every form of it, depicts love, tries to discover one of its thousand faces, its contact with human life and what it produces. Sometimes this can seem difficult to believe but I think it’s absolutely unavoidable.

Art and Love have another thing in common, something that off course can be said about architecture as well, as a form of art: they might have different faces, shapes and ways, but they are not difficult, not complicated in their true essence, they are sometimes easily recognizable, sometimes their presence is loud and clear, but I believe are totally impossible to explain, for humans at least; something which makes them somewhat divine, signs of the presence of a mysterious common energy which some like to call God.

Maybe the soft touch of two hands can remember us what’s everything is really <all> about.

Riccardo G. Meneghello (January, 2024)