Artists monumentalized

The neglect of Goethe on this blog this summer is due to my summer reading of Hermann Hesse in connection with a review I am writing of the English translation of a German biography of Hesse. Goethe comes across over and over in Hesse's writings, and hundreds of times in the biography. I estimate that the figures most frequently referred to by Hesse and that serve as touchstones for him are Goethe, Novalis, Nietzsche, and Mozart. This past day I have been reading "Klingsor's Last Summer," which Hesse wrote in 1919, when he had moved to Ticino. Hesse was apparently subject to frequent mood swings, and this story captures the volatility of the character of the artist Klingsor. In one scene, he and his friend, a fellow artist named Louis the Cruel (Louis der Grausame), have gone on an outing that leads them to the garden of an inn where they enjoy fish, rice with mushrooms, and peaches with maraschino cherries. (Hesse is big on the details of food and drink.) Naturally, lots of wine is drunk. The subject, as is often the case with Hesse, is civilizational decline. Goethe and Schiller come up in the discussion. (I quote here the German, as the English translation of the new biography has not yet appeared.)

Es fällt mir ein, daß jetzt da die zwei Maler sitzen, die unser gutes Vaterland hat, und dann habe ich ein scheußliches Gefühl in den Knieen, wie wenn wir beide aus Bronze wären und Hand und Hand auf einem Denkmal stehen müßten, weißt du, so wie der Goethe und der Schiller. Die können schließlich auch nichts dafäur, daß sie ewig dastehen und einander an der Bronzehand halten müssen, und daß sie uns allmählich so fatal und verhaßt geworden sind ...

He goes on to curse all the professors who periodize and transform great artists and writers into monuments.

The Goethe and Schiller monument in the above photo is in Syracuse, New York. It was produced in 1911, based on the original by Ernst Rietschel.