Hermann Hesse - Beneath the Wheel

Beneath the Wheel

by Hermann Hesse

Originally titled Unterm Rad

Translated by Michael Roloff

a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

Hermann Hesse's spiritual autobiography, Beneath the Wheel, is a touchstone in the Nobel Prize-winning author's lifelong examination of the conflict between self-affirmation and self-destruction. Based on his own experience, his second novel attacks an educational system that fosters intellect and ambition at the expense of emotion, soul and instinct. Beneath the Wheel tells with compassion and tenderness a story that is true for our own age, with all the poetic and lyrical qualities that have made Hesse an outstanding literary figure of the twentieth century. It is the key to all his later works.

Hans Giebenrath -- scholar, grind, pride of his little town -- wins a state competition and has the chance to be educated. At school he meets Hermann, his antithesis -- a free poetic soul -- and the friendship destroys him. Returning home, Hans joins with an old chum and sees, to his horror, what society will turn him into.

This novel has been called Hermann Hesse's "spiritual autobiography." In telling the story of a boy's inability to come to grips with the demands of a terrifying bourgeois society, Hesse returns to his major theme of the duality of man's nature. Hermann escapes through art and a rejection of the system; Hans is crushed beneath the wheel.

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BENEATH THE WHEEL

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PRINTING HISTORY

Translated from the German, Unterm Rad, originally published in

1906 From Gesammelte Schriften,

Copyright 1953 by Hermann Hesse, Montagnola

Farrar edition published June 1968

2nd printing ...... October 1968

Bantam edition published October 1970

All rights reserved.

Translation 1968 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

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Chapter One

Herr Joseph Giebenrath, jobber and middleman, possessed no laudable or peculiar traits distinguishing him from his fellow townsmen. Like the majority, he was endowed with a sturdy and healthy body, a knack for business and an unabashed, heartfelt veneration of money; not to mention a small house and garden, a family plot in the cemetery, a more or less enlightened if threadbare attachment to the church, an appropriate respect for God and the authorities, and blind submission to the inflexible laws of bourgeois respectability. Though no teetotaler, he never drank to excess; though engaged in more than one questionable deal, he never transgressed the limits of what was legally permitted. He despised those poorer than himself as have-nots and those wealthier as show-offs. He belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and every Friday went bowling at the Eagle. He smoked only cheap cigars, reserving a better brand for after-dinner and Sundays.

In every respect, his inner life was that of a Philistine. The "sensitive" side of his personality had long since corroded and now consisted of little more than a traditional rough-and-ready "family sense," pride in his only son, and an occasional charitable impulse toward the poor. His intellectual gifts were limited to an inborn canniness and dexterity with figures. His reading was confined to the newspapers, and his need for amusement was assuaged by the amateur theatricals the Chamber of Commerce put on each year and an occasional visit to the circus. He could have exchanged his name and address with any of his neighbors, and nothing would have been different. In common with every other paterfamilias in town, and deeply ingrained in his soul, he also had this: deep-seated distrust of any power or person superior to himself, and animosity toward anyone who was either extraordinary or more gifted, sensitive or intelligent than he.

Enough of him. It would require a profound satirist to represent the shallowness and unconscious tragedy of this man's life. But he had a son, and there's more to be said about him.

Hans Giebenrath was, beyond doubt, a gifted child. One gathered as much simply by noting the subtle and unusual impression he made on his fellow students. Their Black Forest village was not in the habit of producing prodigies. So far it had not brought forth anyone whose vision and effect had transcended its narrow confines. Only God knows where this boy got his serious and intelligent look and his elegant movements. Had he inherited them from his mother? She had been dead for years and no one remembered anything special about her, except that she had always been sickly and unhappy. As for coming from the father, that was out of the question. For once it seemed that a spark from above had struck this old hamlet which, in the eight or nine centuries of its existence, had produced many a stalwart citizen but never a great talent or genius.

A trained observer, taking note of the sickly mother and the considerable age of the family, might have speculated about hypertrophy of the intelligence as a symptom of incipient degeneration. But the little town was fortunate in not having anyone so trained in its midst; only the younger and more clever civil servants and teachers had heard uncertain rumors or read magazine articles about the existence of "modern" man. It was possible to live in this town and give the appearance of being educated without knowing the speeches in Zarathustra . The town's entire mode of existence had an incurably old-fashioned character; there were many well-founded and frequently happy marriages. The long-established and well-to-do citizens, many of whom had risen from the rank of artisan to manufacturer within the last twenty years, doffed their hats to the officials and sought their company, but behind their backs spoke of them as pen-pushers and poor bureaucrats. Yet they had no higher ambition for their sons than a course of study that would enable them to become civil servants. Unfortunately, this was almost always a pipe dream, because their offspring often had great difficulty getting through grammar school and frequently had to repeat the same form.

There was unanimous agreement about Hans Giebenrath's talents, however. Teachers, principal, neighbors, pastor, fellow students and everyone else readily admitted that he was an exceptionally bright boy -- something special. Thus his future was mapped out, for in all of Swabia there existed but one narrow path for talented boys -- that is, unless their parents were wealthy. After passing the state examination, he could enter the theological academy at Maulbronn, then the seminary at Tubingen, and then go on to either the minister's pulpit or the scholar's lectern. Year after year three to four dozen boys took the first steps on this safe and tranquil path -- thin, overworked, recently confirmed boys who followed the course of studies in the humanities at the expense of the state, eight or nine years later embarking on the second and longer period of their life when they were supposed to repay the state for its munificence.