the enchanter

The following is my journal #1 on Gertrude, a novel I'm working on as my English ISU...I need your help, ANYONE that has read this novel is ALWAYS welcome to drop a message, please (can you tell I'm desperate?). No one seems to have read it.. and I am suffering from lack of inspiration and insight. Or, you can simply make general comments on it. There are 3 more to come!

Chapter 1

I have been wondering, what it is about this book that has gripped me so strongly from the beginning. Compared to other novels filled with adventure and excitement, this novel is seen to be boring, written in a calm, rather dry and humourless tone. Despite its dry tone, however, this novel succeeds to captivate and absorb the reader into the story. One such passage is as follows:

When a person has arrived at a stage in life when he accepts
the inevitable with equanimity, when he has tasted good and bad
to the full, and has carved out for himself alongside his external life,
an inner, more real and not fortuitous existence, then it seems my
life has not been empty and worthless. Even if my external destiny
has unfolded itself as it does with everyone, inevitably and as decreed
by the gods, my inner life has been my own work, with its joys and
bitterness, and I, alone, hold myself responsible for it. (p.5)

I guess, it’s the insight and wisdom that are so convincing to me; the sense of introspection and the candour in which the narrator tells his story somehow make the story sound so private, and at the same time, very real.
There is not much information about the narrator’s current situation; the story is told in past tense, and in such an introspective manner that it could only be from the perspective of a much aged man. I am struck by the similarities between the main character Kunn and me—the first chapter almost sounds as though my much older self is telling the story, looking back on my life: that he wanted to be a poet when he was younger; yet when he was about six or seven years old, he realized that he was “destined to be most strongly affected and dominated by music”. His life “has been turned to one key-note and directed solely to one star”, without essentially changing. Presently I see my life following a similar pattern. Yet at the same time, I do not wish to have such a dismal outlook on life.

The character sounds like a person who is inwardly passionate and driven; determined, and very focused and one-sided, as his life has been. He also sounds critical and extremely insightful, and yet when speaking of music, almost poet- or dreamer-like.

Oh, music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently,
inwardly only; you steep your being in it; it takes possession
of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in
you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you;
it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light
and gives wings to the benumbed! …For each pleasing harmony or
clearly combined notes, perhaps in one chord, charms and delights
the spirit, and the feeling is intensified with each additional note; it can
fill the heart with joy and make it tremble with bliss as no other
sensual pleasure can do. (p.6)

Nevertheless, he never sounds so happy, but gloomy and dark, and most of all — desperate. Breathlessly desperate, so much so, and that perhaps that is why his story so strongly reaches into my heart. To me, noting the absolute dominance that music has over his life, the foremost reason why he is not happy seems to be that he has never produced a melody in which its beauty satisfies the core of his being (“…And how can I upbraid people and grow angry when I, myself, with all the goodwill in the world have not been able to make a song and any sweet music out of my life! … I am really aware of an imperative urge, of a thirsting desire for one pure, pleasing, essentially holy sound and its fading away, but my days are full of mischance and discord and wherever I turn and wherever I strike, there is never a true and clear echo.(p.7)”).

Having provided such an introduction about himself and his life, he now turns to tell the story of a woman; which was the only reason he began his story in the first place. It is the story of a woman, who has enough power to penetrate his loneliness and draw a confession (which is supposed to be the story he is about to tell) from him. Someone “who stands above everything” and to him “is like a star or a sacred symbol”. I am left to ponder who this woman could be, adored and revered by such a sombre and humourless man as he?

Chapter 2

Having had his passion for studying music suppressed by his parents, who do not trust Kunn’s potential as a musician and do not regard highly of a musician, he finally enters School of Music with high hopes and aspirations; what awaits him is, nevertheless, a dark period of depression and self-degrading realizations. The way Hesse describes Kunn’s state during this period is remarkable.

I commenced this new phase with great expectations and
was convinced that I would be a good scholar at the School
of Music. However, this did not prove to be the case….I did
not think of giving in, but I was disillusioned and disconcerted.
I now saw that with all my modesty I had considered myself
some kind of a genius and had considerably underestimated
the toils and difficulties encountered along the path to an art…
I learned to mistrust my sensibilities entirely and no longer knew
whether I possessed any talent. So I became resigned, humble
and sad. I did my work very much as I would have done in an office
or in another sphere, diligently but without pleasure. (p.10)

And then, one day, a life-changing accident happens: Kunn loses his leg while tobogganing with a girl he is infatuated with. This incident is significant in two ways: it changes the scale of life on which he lives, and it grants him the concentration and productive insight to express himself through writing his own music. It is a contradictory and rather ironic event: it deprives him the joy of youth; the loss of youthful happiness, however, becomes a path that leads him to become a productive artist. Life’s sorrows and anguish transform into his main source of inspiration. His first period of true inspiration and creation, comes during his convalescence after the accident.

The story so far has provided lots of insight into the main character Kunn. His struggle to become an artist is understandable, for he and I share the same dream and therefore I sympathize very much with the difficulties he faces.

Question 1: What kind of personality does the narrator (who is also the protagonist of the story) possess, and on which grounds do you define his personality so? What impact has “music” had on his life?

The narrator is a grave, insightful person with the maturity to look back on his life and introspect. The tone in which he tells his story is very calm and reticent. While there is little humour in it, there is such serious candour, proving his personality to be genuine and discreet.
Music is what has defined and shaped his entire life; his life has only revolved around his dreams and aspirations for music, and music has been his life. Music is the ultimate source of consolation and bliss for him, but it remains a painful and agonizing part of his life so long as he does not write a melody that satisfies him.