Klingsor's Last Summer by Hermann Hesse

First published:Klingsors letzter Sommer, 1920 (English translation, 1970)

Type of work: Kunstlerroman

Time of work: c.1919

Locale: The countryside and small towns of Italy

Principal Characters:

• Klingsor, a famous painter
• Louis, his friend, also a painter
• Hermann (Tu Fu), Klingsor’s friend, a writer

The Novel

This loosely structured, episodic novella relates the last passionate, troubled, exhilarating summer of the middle-age Klingsor, a leading European painter. It begins with a preface, in which the narrator reports that Klingsor died in the fall. No one knows the circumstances of his death; there are rumors that he went mad and that he committed suicide. He was always known for his heavy drinking. The narrative then moves on to vivid, impressionistic snapshots of Klingsor’s life during that last, wild summer.

He is first seen at night, on the balcony of his studio, situated in the lush Italian countryside. He is strained by overwork, lack of sleep, and intense, voluptuous living. Still, he is accustomed to extravagance. He thinks of his girlfriend Gina, a girl half his age, and he studies the work he has accomplished during the day.

In the next episode, Klingsor receives a visit from his old friend, a fellow painter whom he calls Louis the Cruel or Louis the Bird. Together, they argue good-naturedly about the respective callings of work, art, and sensual enjoyment. Louis is a bon viveur, and he and Klingsor spend the day together in a nearby town with Louis’ beautiful woman friend. After some days pass, Louis leaves suddenly, as is his custom. He was always happier when traveling.

With a group of artistic friends, including the writer Hermann, whom Klingsor calls Tu Fu, Klingsor visits the village of Kareno. He walks through mountain paths and lush vegetation, with a view of lakes and forests. There is a philosophical discussion about death and the passage of time, and Klingsor reflects passionately on the need to live in the present. The group reaches a tiny village at the summit of the mountain path, where Klingsor is captivated by the sight of one of the local women. He later meets another sensual young woman whom he calls the Queen of the Mountain; he sees her through his visionary, artistic eyes. Continuing the journey, Klingsor is in good spirits; at dinner in a grotto he drinks wine freely, fondles the women, sings, and tells tales. It is a picture of bacchanalian enjoyment and excess.

After an interlude which includes a letter written by Klingsor to his friend Edith, the narrative restarts in late July. From this point, Klingsor’s awareness of death is mixed more insistently with his sense of the ecstasy of life. Tu Fu visits him with an astrologer from Armenia. Over the ever-present wine, they discuss ways of overcoming melancholy. The astrologer believes that it can be conquered and banished forever through one intensive hour of concentration. They discuss freedom of the will, the transcendence of time, and the approach of death.

The narrative then moves to an evening in August. Klingsor reflects on the fullness of his life and his many experiences. Yet he now hears the “music of doom.” He meets a peasant woman from the valley who remembers him as the famous painter. They make love.

Before the final, climactic episode, there are two diversions from the narrative. First, Klingsor writes a letter to Louis. In it, Klingsor says that he still feels creativity exploding within him; he must go on working because the world is inexpressibly beautiful. Second, a poem by Klingsor which he sends to his friend Tu Fu is included. Klingsor is waiting for death, but he mocks death by singing drunken songs far into the night.

The final episode describes the painting of Klingsor’s self-portrait in the first days of September. It was the crowning glory of his tempestuous summer. The narrator briefly flashes forward and describes how the portrait, after Klingsor’s death, has been seen by others. Some perceived tranquillity and nobility, others saw madness, and still others saw a confession or a self-glorification. It was not a naturalistic portrait. Returning to the present, the narrator describes the intense and ecstatic few days of painting. Sleeping and eating little, but drinking as usual, Klingsor had seen many faces in himself, from the child to the libertine, and finally to the doomed man who accepted his fate. Somehow, he managed to compress his entire life’s experience, with all of its differing shades, into his portrait. It was a terrible struggle, but he had faith that what he was doing had some universal significance beyond his small individual life.

When the painting was finished, he locked it in the unused kitchen, showed it to no one, and resumed his normal life. The story ends with Klingsor making a visit to town, buying fruit and cigarettes to give to his girlfriend. The reader is left to puzzle over the reason for the death reported in the preface, since the narrator chooses to give no explanation, except to say that the rumors of suicide or madness had no foundation.

The Characters

Klingsor is to some extent an autobiographical figure. He was born, like Hermann Hesse, in 1877, and he embodies some of the conflicts of Hesse’s own life. Hesse also took up painting. Impulsive and intense, Klingsor prides himself on being totally receptive to life, living more fully and perceiving the world more richly than the next man. In his youth, he had been a manic-depressive; his spells of ecstasy were followed by pain and deprivation. It was like a continual cycle of death and resurrection. Yet he had dared to do new things, even though he knew that the intensity with which he lived would burn him out shortly. His creativity had flamed too violently, too overwhelmingly, for it to endure. He does not believe in tomorrow and acts as if every day were his last. He fails not because of the poverty of his spirit, but because he reaches for too much, wanting what the world cannot give.

Klingsor is also the archetypal romantic. He places enormous importance on his feelings. He wants to experience every emotion fully, even negative ones, which he does not believe are bad. To wrong even one feeling, he writes to his friend Edith, is to extinguish a star.

He knows the futility of all of his enterprises. Life is short and irrevocable and his preoccupation with death, which he both wants and fears, becomes more pronounced as the summer passes. As the Armenian astrologer puts it, he sits singing in his burning house.

His friend Louis, the only other character who is portrayed in any depth, is a reflection of the sensual side of Klingsor’s personality. He is also a famous painter, the only man who fully understands Klingsor’s art and whose own is its equal. He is a wanderer and a sensualist who would sooner have his favorite girl on his lap than spend his time painting. We only paint when we have nothing better to do, he teases Klingsor. He believes that painting reduces and limits nature and does not enhance it. Klingsor sees the force of Louis’ argument, but, typically, he wants both worlds—the pure creativity of the mind as well as the joys of the senses. Both are equally valuable in his eyes as long as the burning intensity of life and love is in both.

Other characters, including a number of sensual women (Klingsor is an incorrigible womanizer) flit in and out of the narrative. A doctor friend remarks on death and prompts Klingsor to affirm the paradise of the moment, more precious because it is never to return. Tu Fu, the writer, pops up from time to time with some appropriate verses on death. Yet, appropriately enough for a man who wishes to absorb all things into himself, the focus always remains on Klingsor.

Critical Context

Klingsor’s Last Summer was the collective title given to the three stories which Hesse published in one volume in 1920. The others are Kinderseele (A Child’s Heart, 1970) and Klein und Wagner (Klein and Wagner, 1970). The title story is by far the richest of the three, and it has received the most critical attention.

The story contains strong autobiographical elements. Hesse sometimes described his own calling as that of a magician, and Klingsor is the name of a powerful magician in Wolfram von Eshenbach’s medieval romance Parzival (c.1200); the name also occurs in Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800), a work which Hesse admired.

Klingsor’s search for simultaneity, for the annihilation of time, is common to many of Hesse’s heroes. In Siddhartha (1922; English translation, 1951), for example, the protagonist eventually learns that there is no such thing as time, and this is a crucial aspect of his enlightenment. Goldmund in Narziss und Goldmund (1930; Death and the Lover, 1932; better known as Narcissus and Goldmund) also resembles Klingsor in his belief that the purpose of art is “to save what little we may from the linked, never ending dance of death.”

Klingsor’s Last Summer was followed two years later by Siddhartha, another story about the search for the self. Like Klingsor’s Last Summer, Siddhartha affirms the value of both the material and spiritual aspects of life. Stylistically, however, the romantic extravagance of the earlier story is replaced with a simple classical structure, and the final outcome is also very different. Siddhartha succeeds where Klingsor fails; he wins serenity through a quiet contemplation of life, whereas Klingsor’s intoxicated moments of illumination are accompanied by self-torture and fear of death. Klingsor actively attempts to force life into his own mold, while Siddhartha waits and is passive.

Klingsor’s Last Summer represents an intense, idiosyncratic attempt to conquer the forces of psychic chaos in one romantic, dizzy, sensual assault. Hesse was soon to declare that this was not the answer, but when viewed as a stage on the journey, the story has its value. It vividly captures the torments and frustrations of the self as it attempts to push beyond its boundaries and capture the transcendental harmony of the world.

Bibliography

Field, G.W. Hermann Hesse, 1970.

Heiney, Donald. Review in The Christian Science Monitor. LXIII (December 30, 1970), p. 9.

Henel, E.G. Review in Library Journal. XCV (October 1, 1970), p. 3304.

Hill, Susan. Review in New Statesman. LXXXII (September 10, 1971), p. 340.

Rose, Ernest. Faith from the Abyss: Hermann Hesse’s Way from Romanticism to Modernity, 1965.