A Poet Or Nothing At All: The Tübingen and Basel Years of Herman Hesse

by Richard C. Helt

Overview

"... recommended to graduates and faculty" - Choice

"It is an extraordinary tale of dedication in the face of the severest parental disapproval, financial hardship and ill-health. Helt tells it well, drawing extensively on primary sources such as letters, diary entries and the like, and demonstrates the extent to which Hesse subsumed all his efforts to conducting his apprenticeship ... A readable and informative volume, which usefully augments our knowledge of the rigorous years of a major modern writer." - Journal of European Studies

The most original, new work on Hesse in many years and the definitive study of the young Herman Hesse, offering much previously unknown material such as his "neo-Romantic" poetry of which two dozen are published here for the first time in the original.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571810755
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	10/01/1996
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Richard C. Helt is Professor and Head of German, Department of Modern Languages, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction

PART I: CALW AND TÜBINGEN (1877-1899)

Chapter 1. Chronology
Chapter 2. Parents, Son and School

Chapter 3. The Tübingen Years: Not Quite "Breaking Away"

• Bookseller and Privatstudent
• A Poet Emerges

Chapter 4.  Social Life and First Successes

• "Lulu," the Summer of 1899, and Leaving Tübingen

PART II: BASEL (1899-1903)

Chapter 5. Chronology

Chapter 6. Adjusting to Basel and New Freedom

• A Basel Cénacle

Chapter 7. Elizabeth

• Taking a Critical Look at Basel: Das Rathaus

Chapter 8. New Contacts, New Poetry - The Notturni, the Gedichte
The Waldpfarrer and his friends

Chapter 9. The Last Cénacler, Ludwig Finckh
The Notturni and the Gedichte

Appendices

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"... recommended to graduates and faculty" - Choice

"It is an extraordinary tale of dedication in the face of the severest parental disapproval, financial hardship and ill-health. Helt tells it well, drawing extensively on primary sources such as letters, diary entries and the like, and demonstrates the extent to which Hesse subsumed all his efforts to conducting his apprenticeship ... A readable and informative volume, which usefully augments our knowledge of the rigorous years of a major modern writer." - Journal of European Studies

From the Publisher