Knulp
Knulp (subtitle Three stories from the life of Knulp ) is a short story by Hermann Hesse , published in 1915 by S. Fischer Verlag . The three stories about a tramp, which Hesse wrote between 1907 and 1914, are part of his " tannery " tales.
content
Early spring
It's mid-February and the weather is terrible. Knulp, released from the hospital and feverish again, slips into the home of the white tanner Emil Rothfuß in Lachstetten. The journeyman's bed is free. With the Gerber Knulp years ago is on the roll have been. He does not want to commit to the duration of his visit yet - it is very important to him to be able to freely dispose of his next day. At the same time, he asks for an entry in his little hiking book, with whose previous bookkeeping he has foreshadowed the impeccable course of an apparently busy life.
After a day of bed rest, he sneaks out of the house and already strolls through the city in the evening to talk to some of the people he meets. Later, while having a little chat from window to window, he met Bärbele, a young girl from the Black Forest who only started work in Lachstetten a week ago. Knulp gains your confidence through a skill - artificial whistling .
The next morning he turns to the town extensively. He refreshes old, loose acquaintances and tries to talk to the craftsmen everywhere. Since he knows a little about all trades and knows their technical language and their distinctive signs, he is always happy to be mistaken for one of theirs. An old friend Knulps, Schlotterbeck, the large master tailor who settled in Lachstetten, envies Knulp because he lives so carefree into the day. Knulp advises the tailor that he should be happy to have these children, and he tells him that he himself has a two-year-old son who, however, was adopted by strangers after his mother's death because of hidden paternity. He has no contact with him and can only see him from a distance on occasion. On his further walk through the town he learns some local news and tells news from other places. He is happy about the loose tie that connects him as an old friend with the life of the settled. He also learns where the dance will take place in the evening and, with a lot of persuasion, manages to invite Bärbele to join. That is far more interesting to him than the intrusiveness of the life-hungry tanner woman whom he knows how to escape. He also turned down an invitation from the Rothfuß couple, who would like to spend the evening with Knulp, with a cheap excuse. Instead he goes to the dance floor with Bärbele through the mild evening. Knulp and Bärbele dance together. He brings her almost to her door afterwards. Everyone kisses everyone goodbye. That evening, Bärbele heard - Knulp is a have-nothing. She gives him a coin from her small wallet. Knulp feels the spring and has to hike. In the intact memory of the vagabond, already trained in Latin school when he was a child , the topology of the landscape around Lachstetten with all overnight accommodations etc. is reliably preserved.
My memory of Knulp
The narrator is on tour with Knulp in the hot summer. In a farming village, Knulp amuses a few young girls with his jokes and arts. The narrator holds back. The two wanderers climb over the cemetery wall. Knulp breaks off a cemetery flower and puts it on his hat. Knulp philosophizes in the grass. The beautiful is always fleeting. Before they spend the night outdoors, Knulp tells one of his dreams. It is about the inaccessibility of what was once familiar. He left his parents and his childhood sweetheart. Unfortunately there is nothing more he can do about it. He ponders the diversity of souls. What he considers to be the main thing in himself, perhaps his soul in particular, his parents find irrelevant. Many qualities could be inherited by parents, but not the soul. Everyone has their own.
Knulp greets the new day with high spirits by singing about the sun. The two hikers are funny all summer day. When the sultry evening comes, the narrator becomes more and more cheerful and Knulp more and more quiet. The next morning the narrator wakes up late and Knulp is gone. The narrator is seized by the loneliness that Knulp was talking about all along. Everyone is alone with themselves.
The end
In October, on the march to his birthplace Gerbersau, Knulp is approached by a former bank neighbor from the Latin school. This country doctor Dr. Machold realizes: Knulp has lung disease and does not belong on the street. Dr. Machold copied von Knulp at the time. Now he wants to return the favor. So he takes Knulp home and puts him to bed, because Knulp's disease is at an advanced stage. Dr. Machold wants to get Knulp a place in the Oberstetten Hospital, but Knulp wants to go to his place of birth. Dr. Machold threads that. Before the carriage ride to Gerbersau, Dr. Machold know why the talented Knulp did not use his gifts in a demanding job, but only used them for himself. Knulp corrects that others would have enjoyed his jokes too. Knulp can answer the question why he left Latin school at the time. At almost 13 years old, he loved Franziska. Franziska, who was two years her senior, did not like a student. Knulp really wanted to be her sweetheart and left Latin school. Franziska took another. From then on it went downhill with Knulp. Although he still had acquaintances and love affairs, he could no longer rely on a person's word or bind himself with a word. He had experienced a lot of freedom and beauty, but was always alone.
The carriage ride to Gerbersauer Spital starts. Knulp lets himself be driven to his place of birth, but stays away from the hospital. Instead, he goes to the places of his childhood - recognizes what is still there, mourns that which has disappeared irretrievably. After he learns that Franziska is no longer alive, he leaves the city. A stone knocker he meets - they also know each other from earlier - reminds him that he will have to answer for his life when it comes to death, and that despite his talents nothing has come of him. Knulp is hoping for a God who will not ask him why he did not become a magistrate, but who welcomes him, the child's head, in a friendly manner.
It drives the vagabond back onto the street. For two weeks he circled Gerbersau on foot. When winter falls with blowing snow, it comes to an end with Knulp. He is dead tired and spits blood. In his mind he stands before God and speaks to him incessantly. Knulp complains about the futility of his failed life and thinks it should have ended earlier. God reminds him of many happy, beautiful times. Knulp also regrets his wickedness towards Lisabeth, whom he has in front of his eyes with their boyfriend. God opposes that she was never angry with him and also received many beautiful things from him, which outweighs the pain inflicted on her. Knulp had to be a light footer and a vagabond to be able to carry a piece of childish folly and childish laughter everywhere. Could he ever have found his way into the life of a master craftsman and that of a family man?
God takes his side and welcomes him:
“Look,” said God, “I couldn't have used you any other way than what you are. You hiked in my name and always had to bring the sedentary people a little homesick for freedom with you. You have done stupid things in my name and been ridiculed; I myself am mocked in you and have been loved in you. You are my child and my brother and a piece of me, and you have not cost anything and suffered nothing that I did not experience with you. "
"Yes," said Knulp, nodding his head heavily. "Yes, it is like that, I actually always knew it."
Testimonies
- Stefan Zweig : "(...) the Knulp , this lonely late bloom of a romantic world, seems to me an immortal piece of small Germany, a picture of Spitzweg and at the same time full of pure music like a folk song."
- Hermann Hesse, in a letter to a reader in 1935: “In contrast to some fashion programs, I do not consider it the poet's task to establish norms for life and humanity for his readers and to be omniscient and authoritative. The poet represents what attracts him, and figures like Knulp are very attractive to me. They are not "useful," but they do very little harm, much less than some useful ones, and it is not my business to correct them. Rather, I believe: if talented and inspired people like Knulp cannot find a place in their environment, the environment is just as complicit as Knulp himself. "
- According to Theodore Ziolkowski , Knulp's “absolute freedom is always connected with a feeling of guilt”. Knulp wanted to bring "a little homesickness for freedom" into the everyday life of the "normal", the dutiful. But in the end Knulp had to realize with resignation that he had achieved “nothing really valuable” for “ordinary people”.
Book editions
- Knulp. Three stories from Knulp's life. (= Fischer's library of contemporary novels. 6th series, volume 10). Fischer, Berlin 1915.
- Knulp. Three stories from the life of Knulp. With drawings by Niklaus Stoecklin . Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich 1944.
- Knulp. Three stories from Knulp's life. With 16 stone drawings by Karl Walser . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1963. (= Library Suhrkamp . Volume 75). 21st edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-01075-1
- Knulp. Three stories from Knulp's life. (= st 1571). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-38071-0 .
literature
- Reiner Poppe: Peter Camenzind. Under the wheel. Knulp. (= King's explanations and materials. Volume 17). 8., revised. Edition. Bange, Hollfeld 1999, ISBN 3-8044-1621-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Heimo Schwilk: Hermann Hesse. The life of the glass bead player. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-05302-0 , p. 119.
- ^ Gunnar Decker: Hermann Hesse. The wanderer and his shadow. Biography. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23879-4 , pp. 218 and 253.
- ↑ Hermann Hesse: Knulp. Three stories from Knulp's life. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-38071-0 , p. 123.
- ↑ 1923 in Neue Freie Presse , quoted from: Siegfried Unseld : Hermann Hesse. Work and impact history . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-458-32812-2 , p. 61.
- ↑ Quoted from: Unseld: Hermann Hesse. Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 58.
- ^ Theodore Ziolkowski: The writer Hermann Hesse. Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-518-04748-5 , p. 206.