Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys: Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Mircea

Eliade on the Terror of Modernity

Author(s): Kocku von Stuckrad
Source: Numen, Vol. 57, No. 1 (2010), pp. 78-102
Published by: Brill
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C?)

BRILL

Numen 57 (2010) 78-102

NVMEN
brill.nl/nu

Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys:

Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Mircea
Eliade on the Terror of Modernity
Kocku von Stuckrad
University of Groningen, Department of Religious Studies,

Oude Boteringestraat 38, 9712 GK Groningen, The Netherlands

c. k. m. von.stuckrad@rug. nl

Abstract
Against the background of fascism and the disasters of two world wars, during the first

decades of the twentieth century many European intellectuals were formulating nega
tive responses to "modernity" and to what they regarded as the decline of human civi

lization. Often, these intellectuals sought for alternatives to the modern conditio
humana and looked for solutions in religion, art, or philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche's

conceptualization of the Dionysian and the Orphic is of particular importance for

such a discourse of modernity. After introducing Nietzsche's contribution as a referen
tial framework, the article compares two representatives of this intellectual discourse:

Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade. At first glance, Hesse, the writer and poet, does
not seem to have much in common with Eliade, the scholar of religion and writer of
novels. Upon closer examination, however, there are remarkable similarities in their
work and their evaluation of the modern human condition. For Hesse, it was art,
music, and literature that provided the antidote against the predicaments of modern
culture. Eliade shared Hesse's search for an alternative to the modern condition and
found it in the pure religion outside of time and space, in the illud tempus of the homo

religiosus. For him, it was shamanism in particular that provided a model for a contact

with the absolute world of truth untouched by the "terror of history." The article
argues that these dialectical responses are part and parcel of the project of European
"modernity" itself, rather than representing an "anti-modern" claim.

Keywords
Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, Mircea Eliade, religion, literature, nature, art,
shamanism, ecstasy, intellectualism, fascism, war

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010

DOI: 10.1163/156852710X12551326520571

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. von Stuckrad / Numen 57 (2010) 78-102

Introduction
At the end of the nineteenth century, European culture found itself in
an accelerated process of transformation. In the realms of science, poli
tics, philosophy, art, society, and economy rapid changes challenged the
worldviews and interpretational frameworks that had been established

during Enlightenment and Romanticism. The optimistic teleological

expectations that had characterized the mindset of the larger part of the

nineteenth century made place for a much more sober evaluation of the

project of modernity. Public intellectuals were part of this discourse.

Having been introduced into European languages only in the late nine
teenth century, the term "intellectual" carried different connotations in
different countries; particularly in Germany and France the term was
linked to antagonistic interpretations of national cultures, paving the
way for the German Kulturkampf "during the first decades of the twen
tieth century.1 These differences notwithstanding, intellectuals through
out Europe were often united in their critical evaluation of "civilization"

and modernity. The catastrophic events of the two world wars rein
forced and intensified this utterly apocalyptic diagnosis of the "decline

of the West" (Spengler 1999 [1923]).2 As a response to war, fascism,

and totalitarianism intellectuals and artists erected imaginai landscapes
and utopias that would serve as a free port for the tormented spirit of
freedom, truth, and beauty.

It is these contexts that I want to engage here. Using Hermann Hesse

and Mircea Eliade as my main protagonists, I will demonstrate that

intellectual utopias and counter-worlds fostered interpretational frame

works that influenced both the academic study of religion and the
transformation of religious discourses in general during the twentieth
0 See Be?lich 2000; on the emergence of the concept of "intellectual" see Carey
1992; H?binger 2001 (with its use in Max Weber). On the specific type of intellectual
religion see Kippenberg 1989 (on Weber's notion of Intellektuellenweltflucht, or "intel

lectual escapism," see ibid.: 199-200).

2) The German Zivilisationskritik was a critique of technology and industrialization,
but at the same time it applied rules of technology to understandings of nature and the

interpretation of the modern conditio humana-, on these issues see Rohkr?mer 1999
who focuses especially on Walther Rathenau, Ludwig Klages, and Ernst J?nger. On
Oswald Spengler see Rohkr?mer 1999:285-293. On German reform movements see

Repp 2000.

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century. Over against a modernity that was interpreted as mirroring the

worst image of the conditio humana, these intellectual utopias set up a

land of truth and beauty in which the free spirit could find its dwelling
place. While Hermann Hesse projected these landscapes into the meta

physical realm of true art and music, Mircea Eliade prescribed the
"other world" of shamanism and the homo religiosus as antidotes against
the afflictions of his time. Both approaches have been influential and it

is not by chance that both Eliade and Hesse ? side by side with Joseph

Campbell and Carl Gustav Jung ? entered the pantheon of the so

called New Age movement.
To better understand the place of Hesse and Eliade within this devel
opment and within the triad of art, nature, and religion that informs
their contributions, it is important to provide a referential framework

for our analysis. And there is no better point of departure for us here
than the huge impact of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Triad of Art, Religion, and Nature

In the discourse that is the topic of this article, Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900) plays an important role. Nietzsche combines in his work
the heritage of Romantic philosophy with an existential questioning of

the human condition that was to become so influential in the twentieth

century.3 With his training as classicist Nietzsche was well prepared to

link philosophical considerations with the reception of ancient mythol
ogy. In this regard, his interpretation of the Dionysian was of particular
importance. As Max Baeumer remarks:
The tradition of Dionysus and the Dionysian in German literature from Hamann
and Herder to Nietzsche ? as it has been set forth for the first time from aesthetic

manifestoes, from literary works, and from what today are obscure works of natu

ral philosophy and mythology ? bears eloquent witness to the natural-mystical

and ecstatic stance of German Romanticists which reached its final culmination
in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Baeumer 1979:189)

3) That is why J?rgen Habermas gives his chapter on Nietzsche the title "Entering
Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Hub" ("Eintritt in die Postmoderne: Nietzsche als
Drehscheibe"; see Habermas 1998:104-29).

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. von Stuckrad I Numen 57 (2010) 78-102

When Nietzsche began to study Dionysus he could make use of inter

pretational frameworks of this god s role in the ancient world ? usually

in relation to Orpheus and Apollo ? that were well established in the

nineteenth century.4 The link between Orpheus and Dionysus was an
ambivalent one; some regarded Orpheus as a follower of the Thracian
god, some as his antipode because he took on the characteristics of
Apollo. Jane Harrison thus remarked: "Orpheus reflects Dionysus, yet
at almost every point seems to contradict him" (Harrison 1922:455).
In some sense, Orpheus is related to both divinities. "For Orpheus is
truly a reconciler of opposites: he is the fusion of the radiant solar
enlightenment of Apollo and the somber subterranean knowledge of
Dionysus," as Walter Strauss notes with reference to J. J. Bachofen and
K. K?renyi.5 Nietzsches own theory is ambivalent, as well: "on the one
hand we see in Socrates the opponent of Dionysus, the new Orpheus
who stands up against Dionysus";6 on the other hand, "the old cruel

pre-Homerian world [...] still draws its wavy furrow in Orpheus

Musaeus and their ascetic priestly atonement. On everything that is to
be found there the Dionysian stream builds forth" (Nietzsche 1999, vol.

VII:404, italics in the original; see also 1:121-2).

For Nietzsche, the tension between the Dionysian and what he con
ceptualized as the Apollonian became the major interpretational tool
for ancient history, and even for human culture as such. The basis for
this theory is laid out in Die Geburt der Trag?die aus dem Geiste der

Musik (1872), which was turned down by his fellow classicists but
which was enthusiastically embraced by the composer Richard Wagner.
Two years earlier, in his essay Die dionysische Weltanschauung, Nietzsche

for the first time used the opposition "Apollonian-Dionysian" for his
interpretation of Greek tragedy. Here, Dionysus represented untamed
nature, a wild and ecstatic cult that had come from "Asia" to Greece.
Nietzsche s description of this cult is worth quoting:
4) Nietzsche's claims that he was the first who would deal with Dionysus in a philo
sophical way were "intentional rhetorical exaggerations" (Baeumer 1979:166). On the

importance of Orpheus for Enlightenment discourses on nature and art, see von
Stuckrad 2003:66-75; on the context of Nietzsche's Dionysian interpretations, par
ticularly with regard to Victor Hugo, Rainer Maria Rilke, Erwin Rohde, and Thomas
Achelis, see von Stuckrad 2003:93-123.
5) Strauss 1971:18. It is by no means clear, however, whether this reflects the actual
historical situation in antiquity.
6) Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1:88. In this article, all translations from German are mine.

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Dionysian art [...] is based on the play with intoxication/ecstasy [Rausch], with
rapture [Verz?ckung. There are two powers in particular that trigger the self-for
gotten ecstasy [Rausch] of the naive man of nature ? the drive of spring and the
narcotic drink. Their impacts are symbolized by the figure of Dionysus. The prin

c?pium individuationis in both states is broken; the subjective disappears entirely

against the force of the general-human, even the general-natural that is breaking

forth. The festivals of Dionysus do not only create a bond between humans, they
also reconcile the human with nature. (Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1:554-5)

Hence, the conscious transgression of borders is a central characteristic

of Dionysian experience of the world. By giving up their individuality
the participants become part of the group community; at the same time
they experience the mystical power of nature. Enthusiastically Nietzsche

wrote:

In ever bigger droves the gospel of "world harmony" is rolling from place to place:

singing and dancing the human being expresses himself as a member of a higher,
ideal community: he has forgotten how to walk and to speak. Even more: he feels

enchanted and indeed he has become something else. Just as the animals talk and
the earth gives milk and honey, something supernatural is sounding out of him.

He feels as a god; what used to live in his imagination only, now he feels in him

self. (1:555)
For Nietzsche, the strength of Greek culture was the fact that the Greeks
did not simply give in to or run away from the existential threat of their

social and cultural world by the confrontation with the Dionysian cult

from Asia ? the "raw unleashing of the lower drives" that is "a pan
Hetarian animal life" (1:556) ? but that they brought the Dionysian
into a rational order. "It was the Apollonian people that put the all
superior instinct in the chains of beauty" (1:558). Greek rationality
(Geist) is a sublimation of the driving force of the Dionysian melting
with nature; the Greeks had cast their emotions into the form of the
tragedy, which would become the highest refinement of the conditio
humana. What started as a threat had developed into an enormous cul
tural power because it was dialectically turned into art.7 Consequently,
in Die Geburt der Trag?die Nietzsche exclaimed: "And forsooth! Apollo
7) The philosophy of nature as part of this dialectic, implying a philosophy of life, may

stem from Schelling; see Kein 1935.

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. von Stuckrad / Numen 57(2010) 78-102

83

could not live without Dionysus! The 'Titanic' and the 'Barbaric' in the
end were just as necessary as the Apollonian!" (1:40)

There can be no doubt that due to his antipathy against the bour
geois attitudes of the academic world Nietzsche had a strong preference
for the Dionysian. But ultimately he was looking for a synthesis on a

higher level.
In this composite Nietzschean deity, Apollo, it is true, more and more loses his
name to the other god, but by no means the power of his artistic creativeness, for

ever articulating but the Dionysian chaos in distinct shapes, sounds and images,
which are Dionysian only because they are still aglow with the heat of the prime

val fire. (Heller 1952:109)

In the Apollonian Nietzsche saw the rational clarity that comes from
the sphere of the dream ? together with ecstasy {Rausch) the second
basic condition of true art. "Apollo, as the god of all creational powers,
is at the same time the divinizing god. He, with his root meaning the
shining one,' the god of light, also rules over the beautiful appearance
of the world of fantasy" (1:27). This does not refer to the deceptive
appearance of dreams but to the clarity of sight that sees the truth
behind the veil. As an explanation, Nietzsche made use of Schopenhau
er's philosophy. In Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819), Schopen
hauer had described a "Will" that acts at a deep and hidden level in
history, and that as the ultimate mover of life is responsible for every
thing in the world. The Will, then, objectifies itself in the acting of
nature, as well as in the acts of human beings. It can be experienced
particularly in music because music is the direct objectification of the
World's Will in man.
Hence, Nietzsche extrapolated from an historical situation in antiq
uity ? to be sure, a situation full of imaginative projections ? the
basic condition of human existence. Dionysus becomes the Dionysian,

Apollo becomes the Apollonian.

In summer 1870, with the revaluation of the stylistic characteristics of art ? the

Apollonian and the Dionysian ? into metaphysical powers of life, Friedrich

Nietzsche made the decisive step in his intellectual biography. From now on he
held the key in his hand that he thought he could use to understand the trade
secret of cultures, their history, and future. (Safranski 2000:59)

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Or, as Walter Kaufmann puts it: "For Nietzsche a meta-historical per

spective was at stake" (Kaufmann 1982:178).

We have seen already that Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer and other
Romantics, found the essence of the world in music. Music was the link

to the ultimate primordial reality which he now tried to conceptualize

with the Dionysian. While in antiquity the Apollonian refinement of
the wild rage and the sublimation of the animal drive in man was the
task of the tragedy, in his own epoch Nietzsche found a similar task
realized in the musical dramas of Richard Wagner. Wagners projects
offered a true experience of art and an antidote against the increasing
intellectualism and commercialization of music in the nineteenth cen

tury (see Kruse 1987:287-293; Safranski 2000:79-103). Of course,

this experience of music must not be mixed up with simple pleasure of
listening; it means listening to the "ventricle of the World s Will" ("Herz

kammer des Weltwillens"; see Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1:135). This music
does not aim at superficial beauty but at making contact with the "mon

strous" ("das Ungeheure") and the "deep." To his close friend Erwin
Rohde Nietzsche wrote on 28 October 1868, after having listened
to the overture of Wagner's Meistersinger. "Every fiber, every nerve
twitched; for a long time I haven't had such a long-lasting feeling of

rapture [Entr?cktheit]" (Nietzsche 1923:58). "Entr?ckung" "Extase"

"Rausch": these are the three terms that not only for Schopenhauer and

Nietzsche but subsequently also for Rohde and others became the mas

ter key for interpreting Greek "irrationalism" (see von Stuckrad

2003:96-116).

Shortly after his experience with the Meistersinger Nietzsche got in

touch with Wagner and began to present the latter s music ? until the
end of their friendship in 1878 ? as the quintessential example of the
Dionysian-Apollonian initiation. In Die Geburt der Trag?die he wrote:
"The tragedy sucks the highest orgiastic feeling of music into itself"

("Die Trag?die saugt den h?chsten Musikorgiasmus in sich hinein";

1:134) ? a sentence, by the way that predates the notion of "peak
experience" by almost one hundred years. In contrast to those who stick
to the surface of music and stylize that experience as a "pleasure of art"

{"Kunstgenuss") ? a species of bourgeois people he was to meet at the

Bayreuther Festspiele ? Nietzsche addresses those who, like himself,
have "music as their native language":

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. von Stuckrad / Numen 57(2010) 78-102

To those real musicians I pose the question whether they can imagine someone
who would be able to perceive the third act of'Tristan and Isolde' without any aid
of text and image, simply as an incredible symphonic movement, and who would
not breath out his life in a cramp-like spreading of all wings of his soul [ohne unter

einem krampfartigen Ausspannen aller Seelenfl?gel zu verathmen] ? Someone who

put his ear at the ventricle of the World's Will, who felt the raging desire for being

[das rasende Begehren zum Dasein] as a roaring river or as a most sublime creek
pouring into all veins of the world ? and who would not immediately break?
Someone who would endure to hear, in the poor glass cover of the human indi
vidual, the echo of countless cries of lust and pain from the 'wide space of the
worlds' night' ? and who would not at such a shepherd s round-dance of meta
physics flee inescapably to his original home? [Er sollte es ertragen, in der elenden

gl?sernen H?lle des menschlichen Individuums, den Wiederklang zahlloser Lust- und
Weherufe aus dem ?wetten Raum der Weltennacht" zu vernehmen, ohne bei diesem
Hirtenreigen der Metaphysik sich seiner Urheimat unaufhaltsam zuzufl?chteni]

(1:135-6)

These sentences mark the red thread that links Romanticism to early
twentieth-century German literature, such as Thomas Manns Tod in

Venedig and Hermann Hesse s Das Glasperlenspiel, a link that I will

explore in the next section. It is important to note that Nietzsche in his
later works tried to overcome the closeness to Romantic metaphysics by

accepting only the "will for power" (" Wille zur Macht" the continua
tion of the "raging desire for being") as the basic motive of all being.
But with this tactic Nietzsche could not solve the problem that he him
self ontologized as a category what was not verifiable empirically. "He
gives the monstrous a face, and what is more: he pushed a causa prima

under it. This is exactly what Nietzsche wanted to avoid" (Safranski

2000:300-1, with reference to Nietzsche 1999, vol. VI:97).
Although there can be no doubt that Nietzsche gave important new
impulses to the philosophy of the late nineteenth century, he stood
with one foot in the Romantic tradition. This is also true for the
Orphic discourse of the time. With his combination of art, music, and
the look into the "true reality" beyond the deceptive surface Nietzsche
walked well-trodden paths. An example of this is his description of the
"two worlds" that he derived from his interpretation of the Pre-Socrat

ics ? a world of deception on the one hand, and an invisible "real"

world on the other. The real world, however, must not be interpreted
idealistically, but as the working of the ultimate real. Here, Heraclites'

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duality, as Hubert Cancik notes, "is lifted in a polar monism' " (Cancik

1995:76).

The role of nature also belongs to this discursive texture. I have

already noted that the Dionysian festivals marked a reunion of the
human with primordial nature.8 In his fourth Unzeitgem??e Betrach
tung Nietzsche elaborated this aspect. About the music of the "German
masters" he wrote:
This music is a return to nature, and at the same time it is purification and trans

formation of nature; because in the soul of the most loving human beings the
necessity for such a return emerged, and nature that is transformed into love is
sounding in their art (Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1:456, italics original).

But we should not conclude that Nietzsche is arguing for a Romantic

understanding of nature that looks for an emotional unity with the love

of the cosmos. For him, nature needs purification through music

because in its basic state nature is pure dreadfulness.9 Although the
"deeper human beings [...] in all periods have felt pity with animals
exactly because they suffered from life and yet did not have the power
to turn the thorn of pain against themselves and to understand their life

metaphysically" (1:377), this compassion is more the pain that comes

from the awareness of man's own animal condition, an awareness of the

fact that the human being only in rare and distinguished moments is
able to transcend the "horizon of the animal":
It is as if man is intentionally formed back and is cheated out of his metaphysical

precondition; even as if nature, after having longed for man and having worked
on him for so long, now shudders back from him and prefers to go back into the
unconsciousness of the drives. O, nature needs understanding but is terrified of
the understanding that it actually needs. (1:378-9)

8) Habermas, who discusses the continuities as well as the discontinuities between

Nietzsche and the Romantics, says with regard to Nietzsche's understanding of art:
"Art opens the way to the Dionysian only at the price of ecstasy ? at the price of pain

ful de-differentiation, the overcoming of the individual's borders [Entgrenzung, the

melting with an amorphous nature both inside and outside" (Habermas 1998:117).
On the reception of this discourse in modern Western shamanism see von Stuckrad

2002.

9) That is why Nietzsche in his first Unzeitgem??e Betrachtung strongly attacks David

Friedrich Strau? (see Nietzsche 1999, vol. 1:193-200).

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. von Stuckrad I Numen 57 (2010) 78-102

87

Even if we sometimes may think that it is "more necessary not to gather

our thoughts" (1:379), Nietzsche points out that a memory of that state
of understanding is still present within us. That memory can be regained

through the influence of distinguished people. "These are the real

human beings, those not-any-longer animals, the philosophers, artists, and
saints\ at their appearance and due to their appearance nature, which

never jumps, makes its only leap ? that is a jump for joy" (1:380, ital
ics original). Consequently, nature comes to its teleological destination

in human consciousness, even if that consciousness remains broken

because of the impossibility to really contain the monstrous in it.

This conception had an enormous impact in the twentieth century.

Though simplifying matters a bit, Safranski is right when he concludes:

"Nietzsche's 'Dionysus,' Heidegger's 'Being' ['Sein], and Adorno/Hork

heimer's 'nature' are different names for the same thing ? for the mon

strous [das Ungeheure]" (Safranski 2000:360). But with reference to the

cultural discourse of modernity we can add another dimension of

Nietzsche's impact, namely the ambivalence of the post-Enlightenment

philosophy that Odo Marquard described as follows:

In the context of the depotentialization of transcendental philosophy the decline of the
aesthetic approach, i.e. the disenchantment of the Romantic nature, means the empow

erment of the instinct nature. As a consequence of this fate of the transcendental

approach reason and Self are bowing to exactly that non-Self which they wanted

to conquer the most. (Marquard 1987:209, italics original)

By way of conclusion, we can say that Friedrich Nietzsche had a marked

influence on the shamanic-Orphic discourse of modernity because he
offered a new interpretational framework to the reception of ancient
Greek mythology. His concept of the ecstatic Rausch by means of music,
the function of the ego that transgresses its boundaries and enters the

absolute and the monstrous, ultimately becoming the Self, and finally

his philosophy of nature provided subsequent generations with a key

for interpreting the metaphysical dimensions of reality, music, and sha

manism. These interpretational schemes entered the intellectual dis

course of the first half of the twentieth century; their traces can be seen

in literature, as well as in the academic study of religion.

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Hermann Hesse and the Laughter of the Immortal

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) belongs to the leading intellectuals who
explicitly reflected on the societal, political, and cultural transforma
tions that shook Europe during the first half of the twentieth century
Throughout his mature work, Hesse wrestled with the consequences of
totalitarianism and fascism and tried to find an antidote against the
horrors of his time. It is particularly in Der Steppenwolf 'and in his late
masterpiece Das Glasperlenspiel that he formulated his utopia of purity,

beauty, and truth. An analysis of these novels will reveal how Hesse
contributed to the dialectical discourse of terror and the search for eter

nal truth that united many intellectuals of his generation.

Der Steppenwolf
In his novel Der Steppenwolf, first published in 1927, Hermann Hesse
presents the life of an intellectual who is trying to find an exit from a
world that is ruled by superficiality, terror, and loneliness. The protago

nist, Harry Haller ( . H., maybe a reference to Hermann Hesse him

self), finds inside his own soul the truth of the world which he has

to accept ? despite the longing for death and his disgust for the
"surface" ? before he can ultimately enter the world of perfection and
immortality. Hermine who, like Harry, has "one dimension too much,"10

becomes the mirror of his own soul, the dangerous depths of which he
consciously has to plumb before he can put the pieces of his personality
together again and to enter the land of eternity. About this understand

ing he says:
My soul breathed again, my eye saw again, and for a few moments I glowingly

began to understand that I only have to pull together the shattered world of
images, that I only have to turn my Harry Haller Steppenwolf life into a complete

picture, in order to enter the world of images myself and to become immortal.
Wasn't this the goal that every human life attempted to reach?11

10) Hesse 1974:165; see also p. 183. One may compare this notion with the poem
"Entgegenkommen" that is printed in Das Glasperlenspiel. In that poem Hesse ironi
cally suggests to simply cut one dimension to avoid the danger of understanding the
deeper truth: "Denn sind die Unentwegten wirklich ehrlich, / Und ist das Tiefensehen
so gef?hrlich, / Dann ist die dritte Dimension entbehrlich" (Hesse 1972:473).
n) "Meine Seele atmete wieder, mein Auge sah wieder, und f?r Augenblicke ahnte ich

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89

The home of the soul ? and here Hesse writes in a Platonic way ? is
beyond space and time. As Hermine points out:
It is the realm beyond time and deception [Schein]. There we belong, there is our
home, there our heart yearns for, Steppenwolf, and therefore we long for death.

[...] O Harry, we have to toddle through so much dirt and nonsense to come
home! And we have nobody to guide us, our only guide is homesickness. (Hesse

1974:168)

Thus, Hermine lets Harry Haller see "the sacred beyond, the eternal,
the world of everlasting value, of divine substance" C'[d]as heilige Jen
seits, das Zeitlose, die Welt des ewigen Wertes, der g?ttlichen Substanz";
1974:169). It is this world on which his life is focused and yet he can
reach it only by acknowledging that the world s horrors are his own and

by learning to laugh about them. The "laughter of the immortal" ("das

Lachen der Unsterblichen"), particularly the laughter of Mozart,

becomes the icon of the souls return to its eternal home. "And eternity'

was nothing else than the redemption from time, a kind of return to
innocence, a retransformation into space" (1974:169). These sentences
reveal the close links between Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade, two

intellectuals who longed for an escape from history into the eternal
land of truth. Alluding to the political reality in Germany and to the
increasing radicalization after World War I, already in 1927 Hesse lets
his protagonist prophecy:
Two thirds of my compatriots read this kind of newspapers, read every morning
and every evening these tunes, and every day they are worked on, warned, incited,

made unhappy and angry. And the end and aim of this all is another war, is the
next, coming war that will be even more dreadful than this one. (1974:129)

The fictitious editor of the Steppenwolf makes clear in his introduction

that the "illness of the soul" {Seelenkrankheit) that tortures Harry Haller
is "not the quirk of an individual but the sickness of the time itself, the
gl?hend, da? ich nur die zerstreute Bilderwelt zusammenzuraffen, da? ich nur mein
Harry Hallersches Steppenwolfleben als Ganzes zum Bilde zu erheben brauche, um
selber in die Welt der Bilder einzugehen und unsterblich zu sein. War denn nicht dies
das Ziel, nach welchem jedes Menschenleben einen Anlauf und Versuch bedeutete?"

(Hesse 1974:155).

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neurosis of the generation Haller belongs to, and that affects by no

means only the weak and inferior individuals but especially the strong,

most intelligent, most gifted." Therefore, the Steppenwolfis "a docu

ment of the time" (1974:27).
Harry Haller embarks on a journey through the imaginary world of

his interior self. The novel uses the image of the "magic theater" to
allude to that journey. The theater is shown to Harry by Pablo, a musi
cian who is superficial at first sight but who actually belongs to those
artists that have ascended to immortality. Pablo addresses Harry in an
interesting way:
You are longing to leave this time, this world, this reality, and to enter into another

reality that is more suitable for you, a world without time. Do that, dear friend, I
am inviting you. In the end, you know already where this world is hidden, that it
is the world of your own soul you are searching for. Only inside of yourself this

other reality exists that you are yearning for. I can give you nothing that would
not already exist inside yourself, I can open for you no other room of images than

that of your soul. (1974:190-1)

The outer landscapes in the Steppenwolfare mirrors of inner landscapes.12

Very similar to the concepts prominent in modern esotericism ? there

fore it is small wonder that Hermann Hesse is highly esteemed by

the so-called New Age movement ? we see a tendency to regard the
exterior world as deceptive surface and to construct the internal parallel

worlds as the ultimate realm of truth and understanding. "The premise

is that the unconscious holds the answer to all questions," as Wouter J.

Hanegraaff (1996:255) notes. With reference to the movement of

transpersonal psychology he concludes that those worlds of angels and
demons can be seen as realms of the human unconscious; "this collec
tive unconscious is in turn identified as an objective transpersonal realm

accessed in the holotropic mode of consciousness. This is how the 'gods'

that seemed to have been banned from heaven reappear ? without los
ing any of their power ? from the depths of the human psyche" (Hane

graaff 1996:252).

12) For other examples of this literary motif ? from Karl Philipp Moritz's Anton Reiser

to the "NewWave" in Science Fiction ? see von Stuckrad 2003:257-63.

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To be sure, Hesse ? or Eliade ? did not take the step of the transper

sonal psychologists. Harry Haller's interior worlds cannot serve as a

model for the collective unconscious, quite the contrary: they represent
the world of the spirit, or Geist, that is only accessible to people "with

one dimension too much." Therefore, the appropriation of Hesse by

the New Age movement is ultimately based on a misinterpretation. But
the Steppenwolfis a good example of the Platonizing line of tradition in

Western culture that assumes the existence of parallel worlds and

engages their mutual relation and mirroring.13 It is this Reich des Geistes

that Hesse envisioned as the antidote to the terror of history.

Das Glasperlenspiel
In his late masterpiece Das Glasperlenspiel, published in 1943, Hesse
brought this line of thought to fruition. After having worked on the

novel between 1930 and 1942, Hesse himself regarded The Glass Bead
Game as the sum of his writings. That he dedicated the work to the
"Oriental Travelers" {Morgenlandfahrer) makes it clear from the outset
that the author addresses the transhistorical community of intellectual
seekers, artists, and musicians that were the heroes of earlier works such

as Der Steppenwolf or Die Morgenlandfahrt (1932). The Glass Bead

Game is a symbol of the highest form of intellectual realization, in
which the "cult of music" plays a significant role. "With this cult of
music (cin eternal transformations the secret power of song is greeting

us here on earth' ? Novalis) the Glass Bead Game is closely related"

(Hesse 1972:15). Programmatically Hesse notes as the "editor" of the

book:

The pose of classical music means: knowledge of humanity's tragedy, acceptance

of the human fate, bravery, cheerfulness! Whether this is the grace of a minuet by
H?ndel or Couperin, or the sensuality that is transformed into a tender pose such

as with many Italians or with Mozart, or the quiet, composed acceptance of dying
such as with Bach, there is always a 'despite,' a courage for death, a knightly man
ner, a sound of superhuman laughter in it, of immortal cheerfulness [von unsterb

licher Heiterkeit]. Such should be the sound of our Glass Bead Game, as well as
of our entire life, activity, and suffering. (1972:44; see also pp. 84, 347, 418?9,

and 518)

13) On the Platonism in Das Glasperlenspiel see also G?tz 1978.

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The Glass Bead Game offers a direct way to the revelation of eternal
truth. At times, this is turned into highly esoteric language:
Suddenly I understood that in the language, or at least in the spirit of the Glass
Bead Game, in fact everything meant everything, that every symbol and every

combination of symbols did not lead to this place or that place, not to single
examples, experiments, or proofs, but into the center, into the secret and the
interior of the world, into primordial knowledge [ Urwissen]. Every change from
major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a mythos or a cult, every clas
sical, artistic formulation was, as I understood in the flash of that moment, con
sidered really meditatively, nothing else than the direct way into the interior of the

world's secret, where in the movement of inhaling and exhaling, between heaven
and earth, between Yin and Yang the sacred is happening eternally [sich ewig das

Heilige vollzieht] .14

It is impossible to discuss the many dimensions of Das Glasperlenspiel

in detail here.15 What is important for my argument is the fact that

Hesse imagined the world of the Glass Bead Game as a powerful alter
native to the intellectual situation of the modern world in general, and
the totalitarian and fascist political climate of his time in particular.
Hesse acknowledged that fact in a number of letters. To Salome Wil
helm he wrote on 27 January 1947: "I was sufficiently protected against
the actual reality as long as I worked on the Glasperlenspiel, as long as I

could retreat into this work as into an inviolable magical space [...]"
(Michels 1973/1974, vol. 1:275). Eight years later he confessed:
In order to create a space in which I could find refuge, refreshment, and courage
to face life, it was not sufficient to conjure up a bygone past and to depict it lov

ingly [...]. Despite the sneering present times I had to make visible the realm of
the spirit and the soul as existent and undefeatable; thus, my poetry became a
utopia, the image was projected onto the future, the terrible present was banned
into an endured past. [Ich mu?te, der grinsenden Gegenwart zum Trotz, das Reich
des Geistes und der Seele als existent und un?berwindlich sichtbar machen, so wurde

meine Dichtung zur Utopie, das Bild wurde in die Zukunft projiziert, die ?ble

h) 1972:125. See also the poem Das Glasperlenspiel, included in the novel, that
expresses the same idea and that ends with the verses: "Sternbildern gleich ert?nen sie
kristallen, / In ihrem Dienst ward unserm Leben Sinn, / Und keiner kann aus ihren

Kreisen fallen, / Als nach der heiligen Mitte hin" (1972:484).

15) For the background and interpretation of the novel see particularly Michels
1973/1974; Pfeifer 1977; Bard 1996:93-154; Seeger 1999; Zimmermann 2002.

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. von Stuckrad I Numen 57(2010) 78-102

93

Gegenwart in eine ?berstandene Vergangenheit gebannt.] (Letter to Rudolf Pann

witz from January 1955; Michels 1973/1974, vol. 1:296)

Repeatedly in his letters, Hesse referred to the intellectual line of

thought that was particularly strong in German Romanticism and that
built on the Platonic tradition, envisioning the "land of truth" as the
ultimate place of human knowledge.16 But the concretization of this
utopia in novels such as Der Steppenwolf 'and Das Glasperlenspiel was
only possible against the background of the Hitler regime and the expe
rience of exile ? both literally and metaphorically.17 Hesse envisioned
as "Castilla" the intellectual community of the Glass Bead Game; he
projected the Utopian Castilia into the future as the ultimate escape
from the present history.

Such an interpretation of the present conditio humana and the search

for a realm of truth, beauty, and consolation was shared by many intel
lectuals of Hesse's generation. The exiled poet remained in contact with
these intellectuals, from Thomas Mann18 to Carl Gustav Jung and other
members of the Eranos circle.19 Therefore, it is not surprising to find
16) Referring to the Glasperlenspiel, Hesse wrote that "there are two or three dozen
people for whom my idea was not only fun and pleasure but some sort of air for life
[Lebenslufi], consolidation, and religion [Religi?nchen]; and for those few people [the
book] was written ? and particularly for myself" (letter to Ernst Morgenthaler from

May 1934; Michels 1973/1974, vol. 1:89). See also Hesse's letter to Carl Gustav Jung
from September 1934 (ibid., vol. 1:95-7). In a letter to Helene Welti (dating 28
December 1934) Hesse refers directly to the Romantic authors Novalis, Schelling, and
Baader (ibid., vol. 1:100) which once more demonstrates the intellectual framework
that I am using for my interpretation.

17) On Das Glasperlenspiel as an Exilroman see Bartl 1996:142, with a revealing com
parison between Hesse's novel and Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. For the argument
of the present article, I also refer to Robert Ellwood's conclusion that "the fundamental
motif of Eliade's life, certainly after 1945, but really all the way through, was the theme

of exile" (Ellwood 1999:97).

18) Thomas Manns role in this discourse is beyond the scope of this article. On his
ideas of Kultur vs. Zivilisation, his speculations about "the new generation beyond
modernity" (1909) and his vision of "an Apollonian ecstasy" (1914) see Be?lich

2000:162-191.

19) On Hesse's friendship with C. G. Jung ? Hesse underwent an analysis with Jung

in 1920 and he was actively involved in the Asconan counterculture ? see Noll
1994:233-8 ("Hermann Hesse's Initiation into Wotan's Mysteries"). On the Eranos
circle, see Wasserstrom 1999 and Hakl 2001.

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94 . von Stuckrad I Numen 57 (2010) 78-102

many parallels between Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade, to whom I

now turn.

Mircea Eliade and the Escape from History

Much has been written on Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Romanian

author and intellectual, who became one of the most influential schol
ars of religion in the twentieth century.20 Eliade s oeuvre is characterized

by a remarkable plurality of genres, comprising academic, literary, and

biographical publications. Because the genres are intertwined they

should not be studied separately. It was Eliade himself who noted that
such an "oscillation between research of a scientific nature and literary
imagination"21 had always been of crucial importance for him.
This oscillation partly originates in the very topic that can be seen as

the center of gravitation of Eliadean thinking ? a metaphysical inter

pretation of history that often transgresses the boundaries of academic
argumentation.22 Already in his small study Le mythe de V?ternel retour:

arch?types et r?p?tition (1949), on which he started to work in May

1945 when Europe faced the horrors of the Second World War, he
argued for the generalization of archaic concepts of history. In the pref
ace to the French edition that he wrote in 1952 he expressed his convic

tion that "it is justifiable to read in this depreciation of history (that

is, of events without transhistorical models), and in this rejection of

profane, continuous time, a certain metaphysical Valorization of

human existence" (Eliade 1965:ix). There can be no doubt that this is a
reaction to the horrors of twentieth-century Europe that Eliade experi

enced directly. In his search for an escape from history into the Mud

20) Of the innumerable publications on Eliade, I only mention Dudley III 1977; Ell
wood 1999:79-126; Rennie 2001; Allen 2002; Rennie 2007. On Eliade's Romanian
roots see Ricketts 1988; on the discussion about his fascist inclinations and involve
ments see Junginger 2008, particularly Part II.

21) From an essay published in 1978, quoted from Carrasco & Swanberg 1985:19.
22) This position is part of a larger development during the first decades of the twenti
eth century, usually discussed under the slogan of the "crisis of historicism." Space does

not allow me to elaborate on Eliade's links with this development in historiography

and intellectual culture that was particularly strong in Germany. On the German con
texts see Oexle 2007 and Laube 2004; see also Raulff 1999.

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95

tempus ? described in Cosmos and History and other works ? he joined

the Eranos circle and corresponded in friendly terms with Carl Gustav
Jung, Henry Corbin, and other intellectuals of his generation who were

looking for "religion after religion" (Wasserstrom 1999).

During the same years Eliade also worked on his large study of sha

manism, which was published in French in 1951. Mac Linscott Rick

etts, a follower of Eliade and biographer of his Romanian years (see
Ricketts 1988; cf. McCutcheon 1997:83-4), provides the information
that Eliade interrupted the writing of that book on 21 June 1949 in
order to start working on a novel. The novels Romanian title Noaptea

de S?nziene ("The Night of St. John") alludes to this date (Ricketts

1982; see also Noel 1997:30-8). The summer solstice was a turning
point not only for the author but also for the protagonist of this long
novel that was published in English as The Forbidden Forest. The plot
that focuses on the main character Stefan begins on this date of the year
1936 and ends exactly twelve years later with Stefans "escape" from his
tory, when he and his lover Ileana are killed in a car accident. Between
these dates the novel tells the story of a group of Romanian intellectuals

trying to keep up the realm of truth and beauty within the chaos of

World War II and its destructive face. The narrative is not without
nationalistic overtones of a Romania that experienced fresh impetus
between the world wars. Stefan ? writer, philosopher, and painter ?
has a characteristic gift to perceive the hidden dimensions of the ulti
mate truth behind the deceptive superficial world of history.
The entire novel circulates around the topic of history and time, of

imaginative spaces and mysterious synchronicities, and of predestina

tion and fate. From the outset it is clear what is at stake for Stefan: "To

escape from Time, to go out of Time. Look well around you. Signs
come to you from all sides. Trust the signs. Follow them..." (Eliade
1978:25). This time is plagued by persecution, war, and destruction;
but beyond the outer history there is a cosmic time without limits. And

for some people, like Anisie ? saint, magician, and "emperor" ? it is

only the time of the planetary cycles and the phases of the sun and the

moon that is important.

He accepts no time other than cosmic time, and he especially rejects historic time;

for example, the time during which parliamentary elections take place, or Hitler s

arming of Germany, or the Spanish Civil War. He has decided to take account

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only of the time in which cosmic events occur [...]. He's content to exhaust the
significance of each of these phenomena, living thereby an uninterrupted revela
tion. [...] For him Nature begins to become not only transparent but also a bearer
of values. It's not a case of a regression, let's say, to the animal-like state of primi
tive man. He's discovered in Nature not that absence of the Spirit that some of us
seek, but the key to fundamental metaphysical revelations ? the mystery of death

and resurrection, of the passage from non-being to being. (Eliade 1978:69)

Anisie is the protagonist's metaphysical teacher, giving him lectures

about the essence of time and of history that will have an apocalyptic
end for humanity in the near future. "Another war will follow this one,

and then another, until nothing of all that has been will remain, not
even the ruins!" (Eliade 1978:313). But this, Anisie says, is only part of
the truth.
[F]or historic man, for that man who wants to be and declares himself to be exclu
sively a creator of history, the prospect of an almost total annihilation of his his

toric creations is undoubtedly catastrophic. But there exists another kind of

humanity besides the humanity that creates history. There exists, for instance, the

humanity that has inhabited the ahistoric paradises: the primitive world, if you
wish, or the world of prehistoric times. This is the world that we encounter at the
beginning of any cycle, the world which creates myths. It is a world for whom our

human existence represents a specific mode of being in the universe, and as such
it poses other problems and pursues a perfection different from that of modern

man, who is obsessed by history. (Eliade 1978:313, italics original)

At this point it becomes clear that Anisie represents Eliade's conviction

that humanity has to transform into a new epoch and that such a trans
formation can happen only after a return to the mythical illud tempus.

But maybe he felt like Stefan who held a somewhat softer position: "
too dream of escaping from time, from history, someday,' Stefan had
replied. 'But not at the price of the catastrophe you forecast [...]' " (Eli

ade 1978:314).

In The Forbidden Forest, Eliade introduces a concrete way to escape

from historical time into mythical non-time. Already in his childhood
days the clairvoyant Stefan knew a secret chamber that initiates called

Sambo, This room "was above us, somewhere overhead on the second
floor" (Eliade 1978:74). When Stefan dared to open the room he was
struck by an experience of enlightenment.

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97

And just then, at that moment I understood what Sambo was. I understood that
here on earth, near at hand and yet invisible, inaccessible to the uninitiated, a
privileged space exists, a place like a paradise, one you could never forget in your
whole life if you once had the good fortune to know it. Because in Sambo I felt

I was no longer living as I had lived before. I lived differently in a continuous

inexpressible happiness. I don't know the source of this nameless bliss. (Eliade

1978:75)

In this timeless mythical room of sacred cheerfulness ? quite compa

rable to Hermann Hesse's notion of unsterbliche Heiterkeit ? Stefan
was no longer able to move his tongue; he did not feel any hunger or
thirst and he "lived, purely and simply, in paradise" (ibid.).
As an adult Stefan hired an additional secret room in his hotel where
he could work as a painter. He created mystical pictures, drawn on the
canvas but invisible for others, and it is by means of art that he again

entered that ecstatic mystical state. "Painting, I had no past" (Eliade

1978:58). At this secret place, time had a different quality. "When I
returned home, sometimes very late at night, I seemed to be returning
from a journey to a distant place. I seemed to have come from another
city where the customs were different and where I met other kinds of
people" (ibid.). This mode of time, Stefan added, felt more real to him
than the time at home or at the Ministry.
Clearly, Sambo is a literary adaptation of the topics of ascent of the
soul, the contact with the "other world," the motif of the journey, and

the function of art and ecstasy that Eliade engaged in his academic
book on shamanism which he was working on at the same time. What

is more, the primacy of ascent, making the issue of descent to the

underworld a secondary one in his understanding of shamanism, has a

clear parallel in his shamanism study. As Daniel Noel puts it: "The
escape from history sought by Stefan is an escape upward, reversing the
'fall' into history"23

23) Noel 1997:32. Noel continues: "[I]t is only the elevated spaces of the novel's world
that offer any hope of a way out of the history that so tormented Stefan, Ileana, Biris,

Anisie, and the other characters ? as it tormented their creator and his fellow Roma
nians in the period between 1936 and 1948" (ibid.'3A). For a critical response to Noel
cf. von Stuckrad 2003:134 note 283.

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von Stuckrad I Numen 57(2010) 78-102

The novel culminates dramatically with the death of the lovers Stefan

and Ileana. The car accident was predetermined long before, but their
love triumphs over death. Eliade lets the novel end with the sentence:

"He had known that this last moment, this moment without end,

would suffice" (Eliade 1978:596). Hence, the Orphic dimension of the

triad of love, art, and death is a prominent element of The Forbidden
Forest, as it was part and parcel of Eliade s interpretation of shamanism.

It is noteworthy that in his academic book on shamanism Eliade

called Orpheus a "'Great Shaman: his healing art, his love for music
and animals, his 'charms,' his power of divination. Even his character of
'culture hero' is not in contradiction to the best shamanic tradition."24

After having reviewed a number of parallels in the ancient world ?

from Hermes Psychopompos to Er the Pamphylian ? Eliade argued
that the " 'situation of man' remains constant."

The enormous gap that separates a shaman's ecstasy from Plato's contemplation,
all the difference deepened by history and culture, changes nothing in this gaining
consciousness of ultimate reality; it is through ecstasy that man fully realizes his
situation in the world and his final destiny We could almost speak of an archetype

of "gaining existential consciousness," present both in the ecstasy of a shaman or

a primitive mystic and in the experience of Er the Pamphylian and of all the other

visionaries of the ancient world, who, even here below, learned the fate of man

beyond the grave. (Eliade 1972a:394)

Anisie in The Forbidden Forest could not have summarized Eliade's posi
tion more precisely. These sentences by far transgress the limits of his
toric or scholarly argument. They reflect Eliade's existential questioning

of the human condition after World War II. The Orphic myth was a
blueprint for his presentation of shamanism as a technique that is most
suitable even for modern mankind to renew its bond with the ultimate
reality in ilio tempore

24) Eliade 1972a:391; see also Eliade 1972b:34 where he addresses the "ecstatic experi
ences of Orpheus" that were " 'shamanic in type."

25) On Eliade's interpretation of shamanism see von Stuckrad 2003:129-135. This

applicability of shamanism to modern seekers is a major reason for the fact that
Eliade ? via Carlos Casta?eda and Michael Harner ? became an influential source
of religious practice in modern Western shamanism; see von Stuckrad 2003:passim and

Znamenski 2007:165-203.

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. von Stuckrad I Numen 57(2010) 78-102

Conclusion
The discourses that I have engaged in this article reveal the strong anti

n?mi?n character of European modernity. Rather than describing

Nietzsche's, Hesse's, or Eliade's response to modernity as an "anti-modern"

critique, it makes more sense to interpret their reaction as an inherent

dialectic of the discourse of European modernity. Despite some ten

dencies in eighteenth-century Enlightenment to prioritize rationality
and science, the fascination for an ecstatic approach of ultimate truth
and the search for a science that would include the living ontological
dimensions of nature have remained as prominent as before, albeit in a
new form. This dialectic also generated the interpretational framework
of art, nature, and religion that we see at work in Nietzsche, Hesse, and
Eliade. Nietzsche's revaluation of ancient myth in the light of modern
philosophy served as a blueprint for intellectuals in the first half of the
twentieth century The traumatic experiences of two world wars, inter
preted as a radicalization of the problematic status of humankind, fos
tered the search for an alternative utopia in which beauty, truth, and
eternal bliss would prevail.

With Hermann Hesse and Mircea Eliade ? perhaps less so with

Friedrich Nietzsche ? we also see that these utopias can take on a con
crete form as a "land of truth" and knowledge that can be accessed
directly While Nietzsche envisioned such a land metaphorically through
the experiential dimension of music and the Dionysian in general,
Hesse and Eliade pictured a visionary landscape in which the true phi
losophers dwell. Hesse's Kastilien and Eliade's Sambo are concrete places
of refuge for the tormented modern intellectual.

References
Allen, Douglas. 2002. Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. New York: Routledge.
Baeumer, Max. 1979. "Nietzsche and the Tradition of the Dionysian." In James C.

O'Flaherty et al. (eds.), Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition. Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 165?89.
Bartl, Andrea. 1996. Geistige Atemr?ume: Auswirkungen des Exils auf Heinrich Manns
"Empfang bei der Welt", Franz Werfeis "Stern der Ungeborenen" und Hermann Hes

ses "Das Glasperlenspiel". Bonn: Bouvier.

Be?lich, Barbara. 2000. Wege in den 'Kulturkrieg: Zivilisationskritik in Deutschland

1890-1914. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

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