--A Poet Or Nothing at All

Book excerpt: With the publication of his Gedichte in November of 1902, Hermann Hesse "arrived" as a literary figure in the German-speaking world. However, relatively little is known about the years immediately preceding this breakthrough. Through a great deal of "detective" work the author has succeeded in personally locating dozens of Hesse's previously unknown letters and manuscripts. These have been skillfully interwoven in this book along with a lively and most readable account of this crucial phase of Hesse's life from ca. 1899 to 1903. During this period Hesse worked as a bookseller in Basel, where he formed important friendships and creative alliances with writers, publishers, and journalists, described here for the first time. Moreover, during those years he devoted himself almost exclusively to the composition of "neo-Romantic" poetry, most notably his Notturni, handwritten sets of eight or more poems which he sold as unique collections. Two dozen of these poems are published here for the first time in the original.