The Poet
Hermann Hesse
There
is a story told about the Chinese poet Han Fook, who, as a young
man, had been inspired by a wondrous urge to learn all he could and
become perfect in everything that was in any way related to the art
of poetry. At that time he was still living in his hometown on the
Yellow River and by his own wish had become engaged to a young
woman from a good family, with the help of his parents who loved
him dearly. The wedding date was soon to be set on a day that
promised to be auspicious. Han Fook was then about twenty years
old. He was a handsome and modest young man, pleasant in his
manners and well rounded in his education. In spite of his youth,
he had already made a name for himself with many an excellent poem,
and he was known in the literary circles of this region. Without
being exactly rich, he could nevertheless expect to have enough
money to lead a comfortable life, and this money would be increased
through the dowry of his bride. Moreover, since this bride was very
beautiful and virtuous, nothing whatsoever seemed to be missing to
complete the young man’s happiness. Nevertheless, he was not
entirely content, for his heart’s desire was to become a perfect
poet.
One evening while the festival of lanterns was
being celebrated on a bank of the river, Han Fook happened to be
wandering alone on the other side. He leaned against the trunk of a
tree that protruded over the water and looked at the thousand
lights swimming and shimmering in the reflection in the river. He
saw men and women and young girls on boats and barges greeting on
another. They were dressed in festive costumes and beamed like
beautiful flowers. He heard the faint murmuring of the glittering
water, the melodies of the singers, the hum of the zither, and the
sweet tones of the flute players. And high above all of this, he
saw the blue night hover like the arch of a temple. The young
man’s heart pounded while he stood there as a lonely spectator,
and he became enraptured by all this beauty. Yet as much as he
longed to cross the river and become part of everything, to be near
his bride and his friends and enjoy the festivities, he also
desired just as passionately to absorb all of this as a keen
observer and to capture it in a totally perfect poem: the blue of
the night and the play of light on the water, as well as the
enjoyment of the people and the yearning of the silent onlooker
leaning against the trunk of the tree on the bank. He sensed that
there would never be a festive occasion or any pleasure in the
world that would make him feel entirely at ease and cheerful. Even
in the midst of life he would remain solitary and, to a certain
degree, a spectator and stranger. He felt, among other things, that
his soul was formed in such a way that compelled him to feel the
beauty of earth and the strange longing of the outsider at the same
time. He became sad about that, and as he pondered this matter, he
came to the conclusion that true happiness and deep fulfillment
could be his only if he were to succeed one time in capturing the
world so perfectly in his poems that he would possess the world
itself, purified and eternalized, in these images.
Han Fook hardly knew whether he was still awake
or had fallen asleep when he heard a slight rustling and saw a
stranger standing next to the trunk of the tree. The man was old
and venerable and dressed in a violet robe. Han Fook stood up
straight and greeted him with the respect due to wise and
distinguished men. But the stranger only smiled and recited a few
verses that expressed everything that the young man had just felt
so perfectly and beautifully and in such exact accord with the
rules of the great poets that the young man’s heart stood still in
amazement.
“Who are you?” he exclaimed with a deep bow.
“You who can peer into my soul and recite such poems that are more
beautiful than any I have ever heard from my teachers?”
Once again the stranger smiled the smile of a man
of great accomplishment and said, “If you want to become a poet,
come to me. You’ll find my hut at the source of the Great River in
the northwestern mountains. My name is Master of the Perfect
Word.”
Upon saying this, the old man stepped into the
narrow shadow of the tree and disappeared. Han Fook searched for
him, and when he could find not a single trace of the man, he
became completely convinced that everything had been a dream caused
by his fatigue. He rushed over to the boats on the other side of
the river and joined in the festival, but between conversations and
the sound of flutes, he continued to hear the mysterious voice of
the stranger. Han Fook’s soul seemed to have abandoned him and
gone away with the old man, for he sat there with dreamy eyes, cut
off from the cheerful people who teased him for being in
love.
A few days later, Han Fook’s father prepared to
summon his friends and relatives to set the date of the wedding.
But the bridegroom opposed this and said, “Forgive me if I seem to
neglect the duty that a son owes his father. But you know how great
my desire is to distinguish myself in the art of poetry, and though
some of my friends may praise my poems, I know quite well that I’m
still a beginner and have a long way to go. Therefore I beg you to
let me go off by myself for a while to devote myself to my studies.
It seems to me that I’ll be kept from doing such things when I am
obliged to take charge of a wife and home. Right now I’m still
young and without obligations, and I’d like to live awhile just
for my poetry, from which I hope to gain pleasure and fame.”
This speech astonished Han Fook’s father, and he
replied, “You must indeed love poetry more than anything else if
you want to postpone your wedding for it. Or has something come
between you and your bride? If so, tell me, so that I can help to
reconcile you or provide you with another bride.”
However, the son swore that he still loved his
bride just as much as he had loved her before and would continue to
love her in the future. They had not quarreled in the least. Then
Han Fook told his father that a master had appeared to him through
a dream on the day of the festival of lamps, and his greatest wish
in the world was to become his student.
“Very well,” said his father. “I shall grant
you one year. During this time you may follow your dream, which was
perhaps sent to you by a god.”
“It might even take two years,” Han Fook
replied hesitantly. “Who can know?”
Though saddened by all this, his father let him
go. In the meantime the young man wrote a letter to his bride, said
farewell, and departed.
After he had wandered for a very long time, he
reached the source of the river and found a bamboo hut in an
isolated spot. In front of the hut sat and old man on a woven mat.
It was the same old man whom he had seen by the trunk of the tree
on the riverbank. He was sitting and playing a lute, and when he
saw the guest approach with reverence, he did not stand up; nor did
he greet the young man. Rather, he only smiled and let his agile
fingers run across the strings, so that a magical music floated
like a silver cloud through everything else in sweet astonishment
until the Master of the Perfect Word set his small lute aside and
entered the hut. Han Fook followed him in awe and stayed with him
as his servant and student.
One month passed, and Han Fook came to despise
all the songs that he had previously composed, and he erased them
from his memory. And again, a few months later, he erased the songs
that he had learned from his teachers at home. The Master rarely
spoke to him. He taught Han Fook the art of lute playing in silence
until the student was completely saturated by music, to the very
core of his existence. One time, Han Fook composed a small poem
describing the flight of two birds on a fall evening, and he was
pleased with it. He did not dare to show it to the Master, but he
did sing it one evening by the side of the hut. The Master clearly
heard it, but he did not say a word about it. He merely played
softly on his lute, and the air soon became cool, and dusk rapidly
descended. A sharp wind arose, although it was the middle of
summer, and two herons, tremendously intent on migrating, flew
through the sky, which had just become gray. All this was so much
more beautiful and perfect than the verses of the student that Han
Fook became sad and silent and felt worthless. Each time Han Fook
wrote a poem, the old man did the exact same thing. After a year
had passed, Han Fook learned to play the lute almost perfectly,
although he continued to regard the art of poetry as more difficult
and sublime.
Two years later, the young man felt an intense
longing to see his parents, his bride, and his native land, and he
asked the Master for permission to travel home.
The Master smiled and nodded. “You are free,”
he said, “and you can go wherever you want. You may come back, and
you may stay away, just as you like.”
So the student set out on his journey and
traveled without resting until one morning he stood and watched the
sunrise on the bank of the familiar river and looked across the
arched bridge at his native city. He snuck unnoticed into the
garden of his father, who was still sleeping, and he heard his
father’s breathing through the window of the bedroom. Then he
stole into the orchard near the house of his bride. After he
climbed to the top of a pear tree, he saw her standing in her room
and combing her hair. When he compared all that he was now seeing
with the picture that he had painted of it in his homesickness, he
realized that he was very much destined to become a poet, and he
saw that the dreams of a poet contain a beauty and charm that are
sought in vain in the real things of the world. And he climbed down
from the tree and fled from the garden across the bridge and out of
his native city. When he returned to the high mountain valley, the
old Master sat just as he had before, in front of the hut on his
modest mat, and played the lute with his fingers. Instead of
greeting Han Fook, the Master recited two verses about the
blessings of art, and the student’s eyes filled with tears upon
hearing such profundity and harmony.
Once more, Han Fook remained with the Master of
the Perfect Word, who now gave him zither lessons since he had
mastered the lute, and the months melted away like snow before the
west wind. Two more times Han Fook was overcome by homesickness.
One time he left the mountains secretly at night, but before he
reached the last bend in the valley, the nocturnal wind blew across
the zither hanging near the door of the hut, and the tones flew
after him and called him back in such a way that he could not
resist. The other time he dreamed that he was planting a young tree
in his garden. His wife stood nearby, and his children were
watering the tree with wine and milk. When he awoke, the moon was
shining into his room, and he got up in an agitated state and
looked at the Master slumbering next to him with his gray beard
softly trembling. At first Han Fook was overcome by bitter hatred
toward this man who, so it seemed, had destroyed his life and had
robbed him of his future. He was about to pounce on the Master and
murder him, but the wise old opened his eyes and instantly smiled
with a sad fine gentleness that disarmed the student.
“Remember, Han Fook,” the old man said softly,
“you are free to do whatever you please. You may return to your
home and plant trees. You may hate and kill me. It doesn’t
matter.”
“Oh, how could I hate you!” exclaimed the poet,
tremendously moved. “It would be like hating heaven
itself.”
And he remained and learned to play the zither,
followed by the flute, and later he began to write poems under the
Master’s guidance. Slowly he grasped that mysterious art and
learned how to say seemingly plain and simple things in such a way
that they stirred the soul of the listener like the wind on the
surface of the water. He described the coming of the sun as it
hesitates on the edge of the mountains, and the soundless darting
of fish when they flee like shadows underwater, and the swaying of
a young willow in the spring wind. And when people heard his words,
it was not only the sun, the play of fish, or the whispering of the
willow that they depicted. It seemed that heaven and earth chimed
together for one moment in perfect harmony, and the listeners would
think with pleasure or pain about something that they loved or
hated—the boy about his games, the young man about his lover, and
the old man about death.
Han Fook lost track of the years that he spent
with the Master at the source of the Great River. If often seemed
to him as though it had been only yesterday that he had entered the
valley and been received by the old man playing the lute. It also
seemed as if all the times and ages of humankind had faded and
become unreal.
Then one morning he awoke alone in the hut, and
no matter where he searched and called, he could not find the
Master. Autumn seemed to have arrived overnight, and a rough wind
shook the old hut. Great flocks of migratory birds flew over the
ridge of the mountains even though it was not their time to do
so.
Han Fook took the little lute with him and
traveled to his native land. Wherever he met people, they addressed
him with the proper greeting for old and distinguished men. When he
came to his home city, he learned that his father, his bride, and
his relatives had died, and other people were living in their
houses. That evening the festival of lanterns was celebrated on the
bank of the river, and the poet Han Fook stood across the water on
the darker bank, leaning on the trunk of the old tree, and when he
began to play the lute, the women sighed and looked into the night,
delighted and anxious, and the young girls called out to the lute
player, whom they could not find anywhere. None of them had ever
heard such sounds from a lute before, they exclaimed loudly.
Meanwhile, Han Fook smiled. He looked into the river where the
reflections of the thousand lanterns were floating, and just as he
could no longer distinguished between the reflections an real
lanterns, so he found in his soul no difference between this
festival and the first one, when he had stood there as a young man
and had first heard the words of the strange Master.
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