Schön ist die Jugend, Hermann Hesse

In these three short stories, written between 1907 and 1909, Hermann Hesse sets out to evoke a specific period of life: youth, and in particular his own, with Hesse as both author and protagonist. There are homecomings of young people who have stayed away from their homeland for too long, confrontations with old memories and past loves, but also with new and drastic changes. Nostalgia, isolation, and regret shape Hesse’s many-layered message. On one hand, youth is “the flower of life,” its finest phase. On the other, Hesse’s взгляд is deeply self-critical: years of hopes and expectations, but also illusions. It is not a linear time, but the undulating motion of memory, cradling disillusioned children who became adults at the wrong moment.

Youth is Beautiful is a bittersweet farewell, a pause between the returns of a man too young and the departures of a child too old. And what lies in between? A great author, not contemporary, yet profoundly relevant.

It will be a mirror for the young, a memory for the older, and a parable of life: it will never be the right moment, and yet, there it is.

edited: Emilia S.