The snow roses are blooming and soon the catkins will herald the beginning of spring. What simply marks the beginning of a new growing season does not leave people with a residual connection to nature indifferent. The sight of the first bee of the year, the first butterfly, doesn’t move anyone. The sensitive feel the magic that lies within every beginning.
Each? When the German-Swiss writer Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) wrote the lines in his poem “Stages” that had become a catchphrase – “And there is magic in every beginning,
“The one who protects us and who helps us to live” – he had in mind less the small upheavals of life than the big ones, the steps on the age pyramid: These should be “traversed room by room, not clinging to any of them as if to a homeland.” Because: “As soon as we are at home in a circle of life and familiarly settled in, there is a danger of weakening.”
Hesse does not see this gradual process of a human life as ending with death (“Life’s call to us will never end… Well then, heart, say goodbye and be healthy!”).
We are wanderers on earth
Germanists see a relationship between Hesse’s poem and Nietzsche’s work “Human, All-Too-Human”. It says so. “Anyone who has achieved freedom of reason to some extent cannot feel other than as a wanderer on earth – even if not as a traveler towards an ultimate goal: because this does not exist. But he does want to watch and have his eyes open for it, what is actually going on in the world; that is why he must not attach his heart too tightly to every single thing; there must be something wandering within himself that takes joy in change and transience.”
Hesse himself, who had a colorful biography, is difficult to pin down. The German writer Volker Michels (80), who was responsible for the Hesse publications at Suhrkamp Verlag, said in an interview that he might not be classified as either a rebel, a Buddhist, a follower of the fatalistic Lao Tzu or a late convert to Christianity. “These are all stages, stations in his development.”
Perhaps Hesse was not entirely unfamiliar with the work of the Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), who wrote: “The whole of life is an eternal beginning once more.”
From the beginning, it’s all regarding the beginning
Many a beginning occurs with vehemence. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” the Bible says. Goethe’s Dr. Faust briskly retranslates the passage into “In the beginning was the deed.” Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Stone Age adventure film was titled “In the Beginning was Fire,” and Hoimar von Ditfurth’s science classic was titled “In the Beginning was Hydrogen.” All of this is put into perspective by the popular saying in Friuli, which says: “In the beginning the devil was also an angel.” And since “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” written by the British satirist Douglas Adams, it has been clear: “In the beginning the universe was create. That made a lot of people very angry and was widely seen as a step in the wrong direction.”
So it depends on the context when starting out. There is no magic in many beginnings: following a separation or a death, following a job loss or following an accident, an operation or following a serious illness (see interview below). But even if a start seems hardly possible at first glance, there are people who still find perspective. One remembers the rubble women following the Second World War.
Make a good start
Even today, every drastic beginning is more or less a big risk. It becomes smaller when there are people who accompany you and show solidarity. Imagine what it’s like for someone who is on the run and has to start over alone in a new home.
“The only joy in the world is starting. It is beautiful to live because to live is to begin, always, at every moment,” wrote the Italian writer Cesare Pavese. He took his own life at the age of 42.
It’s true that at some point in life you should make a good start with yourself, or as Oscar Wilde wrote: “Loving yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
Mysticism and Spirit appears in cooperation between OÖNachrichten and the Catholic Church in Upper Austria.
Author
Klaus Buttinger
Editor magazine
Klaus Buttinger
