Pictor's Metamorphoses by Hermann Hesse Page A

contrary, they made her very sad. It all now seemed like a badly played farce. Pure of heart, she wondered how all these people could be so narrow-minded and foolish, thinking only of themselves, esteeming and loving her only for her pretty face. These young men seemed like so many poor, misguided moths, reeling around a tiny flame, while she had important matters to discuss. How sad and ridiculous, all their talk about Beauty and Youth and Roses; they surrounded themselves with colorful stage sets, made entirely out of words, while the whole bitter truth of life strangely passed them by. On her simple, girlish soul the truth was plainly and deeply inscribed: the art of living inheres in learning both sorrow and laughter.
    The poet Lauscher lay on his bed only half-asleep. It was a sultry night. Rash, fragmentary, feverish thoughts boiled up in his forehead and vaporized into dreams that swiftly paled; still, the extreme sultriness of the August night and the stubborn, tormenting buzzing of a few crane flies did not escape his consciousness. The crane flies tormented him most. Now they seemed to sing:
    Perfection,
    Today you’ve peered in my direction …
    and now the Song of the Dream-harp. Suddenly he remembered that by now the lovely Lulu had held his poem in her hands and knew of his love. That Oscar Ripplein had serenaded her and that in all likelihood Erich, too, had confessed his love this evening was no secret to him. The poet’s thoughts were filled with his beloved’s enigmatic temperament, her strange unconscious tie to the philosopher Turnabout, to the Saga of Ask and to Hamelt’s dream, her strangely soulful beauty and her gray, commonplace lot in life. That the whole narrow clique of the cénacle was drawn to her as to the lodestone, and that he himself—instead of taking his leave and traveling—with each passing hour found himself more and more inextricably enmeshed in the web of this romance, all this made him feel as if he and the others were merely figments of some humorist’s imagination, or characters in some grotesque fable. His aching head throbbed with the notion that he and Lulu and the whole tangle of events were all textual fragments from one of the old philosopher’s manuscripts, powerless and with no wills of their own; hypothetically, tentatively recombined elements in an ongoing experiment in aesthetics. And yet everything in him violently opposed such an unhappy cogito ergo sum; he pulled himself together, got up, and walked over to the open window. Thinking it over clearly, he recognized the hopeless absurdity of his lyrical declaration of love. He felt and understood that, at bottom, the lovely Lulu did not love him but found him laughable. Sadly he lay down on the ledge of the window; stars shone out between wisps of clouds, a breeze blew across the dark crowns of the chestnut trees. The poet decided that the next day would be his last in Kirchheim. The spirit of renunciation, both sad and uplifting, penetrated his tired, uneasy mind, which had been so befuddled with the dream of the previous day.
    7
    W HEN L AUSCHER WENT DOWN to the tavern early the next morning, Lulu was already busy with her chores. The two of them sat down to drink a cup of steaming hot coffee. Lulu seemed remarkably changed. An almost queenly radiance illuminated her pure, sweet face, and a singular kindness and intelligence looked out of her lovely eyes, which had grown even deeper.
    â€œLulu, you have become even more beautiful overnight,” Lauscher said admiringly. “I didn’t think such a thing possible.”
    Smiling, she nodded. “Yes, I’ve had a dream, a dream…”
    Across the table, the poet questioned her with a look of astonishment.
    â€œNo,” she said, “I cannot tell it to you.”
    At this moment the morning sun came in the window and shone through Lulu’s dark hair, proud and golden as a halo. Attentive with sad joy, the