Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    If the War Goes On
    If the War Goes On
    If the War Goes On
    Ebook184 pages3 hours

    If the War Goes On

    By Hermann Hesse

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    One of the most astonishing aspects of Hesse's career is the clear-sightedness and consistency of his political views, his passionate espousal of pacifism and internationalism from the start of World War I to the end of his life. The earliest essay in this book was written in September 1914 and was followed by a stream of letters, essays, and pamphlets that reached its high point with Zarathustra's Return (published anonymously in 1919, the year that also saw the publication of Demian), in which Hesse exhorted German youth to shake off the false gods of nationalism and militarism that had led their country into the abyss. Such views earned him the labels "traitor" and "viper" in Germany, but after World War II he was moved to reiterate his beliefs in another series of essays and letters.

    Hesse arranged his anti-war writing for publication in one volume in 1946; an amplified edition appeared in 1949 and that text has been followed for this first English-language edition. In his foreword Hesse describes the heart of the philosophy expressed here: "In each one of these essays I strive to guide the reader not into the world theater with its political problemns but into his innermost being, before the judgment seat of his very personal conscience." This faith in salvation via the Inward Way, so familiar to readers of Hesse's fiction, is persuasively set forth as the answer to questions of war and peace.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 22, 2013
    ISBN9781466835528
    If the War Goes On
    Author

    Hermann Hesse

    <p>James Kingsland is a science and medical journalist with twenty-five years of experience working for publications such as <em>New Scientist</em>, <em>Nature</em>, and most recently the <em>Guardian</em> (UK), where he was a commissioning editor and a contributor for its Notes & Theories blog. On his own blog, Plastic Brain, he writes about neuroscience and Buddhist psychology.</p>

    Read more from Hermann Hesse

    Related to If the War Goes On

    Related ebooks

    Politics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere

      May 22, 2019

      Turns out, no matter what remote place we wind up, we can’t escape ourselves. The post Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      E.F. Schumacher

      May 16, 2018

      E.F. Schumacher
      7 min read

    • Article

      Sounds of Silence

      Feb 9, 2017

      Sounds of Silence
      7 min read

    • Article

      On Certainty and On Doubt

      Sep 1, 2020

      On Certainty and On Doubt
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Myth Of Sisyphus

      Aug 10, 2020

      The Myth Of Sisyphus
      10 min read

    • Article

      Charlotte Joko Beck

      Nov 23, 2021

      Charlotte Joko Beck
      2 min read

    • Article

      Corona Communism?

      May 9, 2020

      As a famous philosopher, Slavoj Žižek is a rare creature. Unlike Socrates, to achieve this impossible status, Žižek did not have to die from a final drink of hemlock at the hands of his tormentors. Au contraire! Žižek has been a celebrity and symbol,

      2 min read

    • Article

      No Being, No Nonbeing

      May 18, 2021

      The Zen master asked the novice monk: “Tell me about your understanding of the Heart Sutra.” The novice joined his palms and replied: “I have understood that all the five skandhas are empty. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, an

      2 min read

    • Article

      Lizzie

      Jul 26, 2024

      (Available at Amazon) “Lizzie is a literary gem that deserves every one of its five stars and more. In this biographical novel, the author, a psychoanalyst, has written a masterfully crafted and profoundly immersive and exceptionally authentic portra

      3 min read

    • Article

      What A Good Horse You Are!

      Jan 24, 2023

      What A Good Horse You Are!
      4 min read

    • Article

      There Are No Selves

      Sep 6, 2021

      There Are No Selves
      1 min read

    • Article

      Art of War: The Legacy of Michael Herr

      Sep 26, 2017

      Dispatches is Herr’s final draft—he never came back and said, “What I meant was…,” or judged his experience against another’s, or said “I told you so.” I am envious of that ability to take himself out of the game. The post Art of War: The Legacy of M

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Enemies of Writing

      Jan 23, 2020

      The Enemies of Writing
      10 min read

    • Article

      Unsettling the American Dream: The Millions Interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen

      Oct 17, 2019

      I couldn't pay attention to that, not to write the novel I wanted to write. We can't let our work be driven by the anxieties around narrative scarcity. The post Unsettling the American Dream: The Millions Interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen appeared first o

      19 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ismail Muhammad

      Dec 10, 2017

      For me, 2017 was the year that journalism nearly supplanted fiction as my reading life’s dominant genre. I started the year in a state of alarm at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after he took office, I resolved to be a good, engaged citizen aft

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Spectacle of Cruelty: The Millions Interviews Phil Klay

      Jun 10, 2022

      "Simply showing the grotesque and cruel and darkly funny things that happen in war is not enough. One must have a moral vision." The post The Spectacle of Cruelty: The Millions Interviews Phil Klay appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Patrick Nathan

      Dec 18, 2017

      On January 1st, I wrote in my notebook that it was “time to renew my usual promises and take artificial, arbitrary steps toward bettering myself and living a different life.” I made a list of aspirations, which included things like “Return writing to

      4 min read

    • Article

      Meet The Author

      Dec 14, 2021

      What made you want to write this book? I kind of failed my father. He wanted me to read his diary about the last days of the war, when he was a 17 year old being sent to the Eastern Front, and I failed him. Then when he was dying he gave it to me ag

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for If the War Goes On

    4/5

    36 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The two World Wars of the 20th century were unfathomably polarizing. There were those who believed war was necessary to defeat either national or global enemies, and those who believed acts of agression and war were counter to our enlightened place in history. Hermann Hesse, in If the War Goes On, is vehemently against war. In this collection of 27 essays, Hesse explores his own feelings about war and also the experiences of living through both great calamities.Hermann Hesse’s writing won him the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature for pieces that “exemplify the classical human ideals,” and those ideals are on display in his nonfiction. While most of the pieces are reactions to World War I, we see his vivid pacificism grow when the World War II starts thirty years later. One strange facet of the writing, however, is that he very seldomly condemns the Nazis for their actions. Much of his focus is on the larger idea of war itself and how that turns innocuous feelings of nationalism into a deadly frenzy. Hesse calls on those fighting to examine what they are doing and what that means not only for their future, but also future generations.I rather enjoyed this collection. While the book itself is a little dated, the feelings aren’t. The translation is very crisp and tries to capture a lot of Hesse’s original energy. This is one of those books I would come back every five years or so for a bit grounding or perspective. This collection comes from a great era of anti-war writing and shouldn’t be passed up. An invigorating read.

      2 people found this helpful

    Book preview

    If the War Goes On - Hermann Hesse

    O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

    September 1914*

    THE NATIONS are at each other’s throats; every day countless men are suffering and dying in terrible battles. In the midst of the sensational news from the front, I have recalled, as sometimes happens, a long-forgotten moment from my boyhood years. I was fourteen. One hot summer day I was sitting in a schoolroom in Stuttgart, taking the famous Swabian state examination. The subject of the essay we were to write was dictated to us: What good and what bad aspects of human nature are aroused and developed by war? What I wrote on the subject was based on no experience of any kind and accordingly the result was dismal; what I then as a boy understood about war, its virtues and burdens, had nothing in common with what I should call by these names today. But in connection with the daily events and that little reminiscence, I have lately thought a good deal about war, and since it has now become customary for men of the study and workshop to vent their opinions on the subject, I no longer hesitate to express mine. I am a German, my sympathies and aspirations belong to Germany; nevertheless, what I wish to say relates not to war and politics but to the position and tasks of neutrals. By this I mean not the politically neutral nations but all those who as scientists, teachers, artists, and men of letters are engaged in the labors of peace and of humanity.

    We have been struck lately by signs of a ruinous confusion among such neutrals. German patents have been suspended in Russia, German music is boycotted in France, the cultural productions of enemy nations are boycotted in Germany. Many German papers propose to carry no further translation, criticism, or even mention of works by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, and Japanese. This is not a rumor but an actual decision that has already been put into practice.

    A lovely Japanese fairy tale, a good French novel, faithfully and lovingly translated by a German before the war started, must now be passed over in silence. A magnificent gift, lovingly offered to our people, is rejected because a few Japanese ships are attacking Tsingtao. And if today I praise the work of an Italian, Turk, or Rumanian, I must be prepared for the possibility that some diplomat or journalist may transform these friendly nations into enemies before my article goes to press.

    At the same time we see artists and scholars joining in the outcry against certain belligerent powers. As though today, when the world is on fire, such utterances could be of any value. As though an artist or man of letters, even the best and most famous of us, had any say in matters of war.

    Others participate in the great events by carrying the war into their studies and writing bloodthirsty war songs or rabid articles fomenting hatred among nations. That perhaps is the worst of all. The men who are risking their lives every day at the front may be entitled to bitterness, to momentary anger and hatred; the same may be true of active politicians. But we writers, artists, and journalists—can it be our function to make things worse than they are? Is the situation not already ugly and deplorable enough?

    Does it help France if all the artists in the world condemn the Germans for endangering a beautiful piece of architecture? Does it do Germany any good to stop reading English and French books? Is anything in the world made better, sounder, righter when a French author vilifies the enemy in the crudest terms and incites his army to bestial rage?

    All these manifestations, from the unscrupulously invented rumor to the inflammatory article, from the boycotting of enemy art to the defamation of whole nations, have their source in a failure to think, in a mental laziness that is perfectly pardonable in a soldier at the front but ill becomes a thoughtful writer or artist. From this rebuke I exempt in advance all those who believed even before the war that the world stopped at our borders. I am not speaking of those who regarded all praise of French painting as an outrage and saw red when they heard a word of foreign origin; they are merely continuing to do what they did before. But all those others who were more or less consciously at work on the supranational edifice of human culture and have now suddenly decided to carry the war into the realm of the spirit—what they are doing is wrong and grotesquely unreasonable. They served humanity and believed in a supranational ideal of humanity as long as no crude reality conflicted with this ideal, as long as humanitarian thought and action seemed convenient and self-evident. But now that these same ideals involve hard work and danger, now that they have become a matter of life and death, they desert the cause and sing the tune that their neighbors want to hear.

    These words, it goes without saying, are not directed against patriotic sentiment or love of country. I am the last man to forswear my country at a time like this, nor would it occur to me to deter a soldier from doing his duty. Since shooting is the order of the day, let there be shooting—not, however, for its own sake and not out of hatred for the execrable enemy but with a view to resuming as soon as possible a higher and better type of activity. Each day brings with it the destruction of much that all men of good will among the artists, scholars, travelers, translators, and journalists of all countries have striven for all their lives. This cannot be helped. But it is absurd and wrong that any man who ever, in a lucid hour, believed in the idea of humanity, in international thought, in an artistic beauty cutting across national boundaries, should now, frightened by the monstrous thing that has happened, throw down the banner and relegate what is best in him to the general ruin. Among our writers and men of letters there are, I believe, few if any whose present utterances, spoken or written in the anger of the moment, will be counted among their best work. Nor is there any serious writer who at heart prefers Körner’s patriotic songs to the poems of the Goethe who held so conspicuously aloof from the War of

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1