Klingsor's Last Summer: Analysis of Major Characters
"Klingsor's Last Summer: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex lives and personalities of key characters in a narrative centered around Klingsor, a 42-year-old painter living in the Italian countryside. Born in 1877, Klingsor is depicted as a passionate and troubled artist, grappling with themes of mortality and the duality of spirituality and sensuality. He is characterized by his heavy drinking, womanizing, and an intense work ethic, leading to questions about his moral standing as either a scoundrel or a naïve child. Klingsor fears the legacy he will leave behind and reflects on the meaning of his life and art, culminating in an abstract self-portrait that symbolizes his existential struggles.
The narrative also introduces Louis the Cruel, Klingsor's friend and fellow painter, who embodies a similar hedonistic lifestyle and an urge for freedom through travel. Hermann, a poet affectionately referred to as Tu Fu by Klingsor, adds another layer to the exploration of life’s transitory nature and the inevitability of death, drawing inspiration from the poetry of both Tu Fu and Li Po. Together, these characters represent a rich tapestry of artistic and philosophical reflections on existence, inviting readers to ponder the balance between life’s pleasures and its fleeting moments.
Klingsor's Last Summer: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Hermann Hesse
First published: Klingsors letzter Sommer, 1920 (English translation, 1970)
Genre: Novella
Locale: Italy
Plot: Bildungsroman
Time: c. 1919
Klingsor (KLIHNG-zor), a famous forty-two-year-old painter born in 1877. He lives in Castagnetta in the Italian countryside. He loves the poetry of Li Po and, on occasion, calls himself Li Po, much as he calls his friend Hermann by the name Tu Fu. Klingsor is a heavy drinker and a womanizer. His work habits are just as intense as his carousing. The question is asked whether he is a scoundrel and profligate or a silly child. He himself feels that spirituality and sensuality are of equal value. He is aware that he lives only for the moment and that, therefore, he is not troubled by questions of mortality. Klingsor suffers from feelings presaging his impending death. Once, in a conversation, he expresses his fear that after he is gone, he and his work will be discussed in terms similar to those used for the classics. He imagines his obituary in a city newspaper to read: “outstanding painter, expressionist, great colorist, died on the sixteenth of this month.” His last completed work is a self-portrait that is abstract and expressionistic. Critics well-disposed toward his work say that the portrait shows the wild and childlike man of their age: dying European man. This man is sick of vice and decadence but at the same time wants to die and is enraptured by the knowledge of his doom, submitting to his fate, beast and sage. When Klingsor is done, he locks the painting away in an unused room.
Louis the Cruel, also called the Bird and the Glutton, Klingsor's friend and also a well-known painter. Louis loves to travel and lives in railroad cars. He always leaves abruptly to go on the road again: His knapsack is his studio. He is a bon vivant, like his friend Klingsor. He has a female friend for whom he sends while he is in Castagnetta, telling her that he is dying as a means of impelling her to come to him. Louis mirrors Klingsor in his sensualism as well as in his spiritualism.
Hermann, a poet whom his friend Klingsor calls Tu Fu. Hermann is blond and has an astrologer friend whom he introduces to Klingsor. The latter tells Klingsor that his stars stand oddly. Hermann loves the carousel and children. Tu Fu's and Li Po's poems, of which Hermann is as fond as his friend Klingsor, tell of the transiency and death of everything except for the eternal Mother from whom humankind came.