[percy-l] Percy & Hesse (posted for Rhonda McDonnell) - follow-up comment

Henry P. Mills III wppdirector at gmail.com
Thu Aug 4 09:44:14 EDT 2022


>From my end it doesn’t look like Henry had any more luck with the Hesse
catalog image than I did. So to clarify: according to the archives at
UNC-Chapel Hill, Percy had a marked-up copy of one of Hesse's novels --
*Steppenwolf*. The annotations in it were Percy's, so we DO know that's a
Hesse work he read. One might need to look at his annotations to get a
sense of what he thought!

Description of the novel: "Steppenwolf is the tenth novel by German-Swiss
author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first
translated into English in 1929. The novel was named after the German name
for the steppe wolf. The story in large part reflects a profound crisis in
Hesse's spiritual world during the 1920s." (wikipedia)

Best wishes,
Rhonda


[image: Percy-Hesse.png]

------------------------------
*From:* Percy-L: Henry P. Mills III <wppdirector at gmail.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 3, 2022 12:58:56 PM
*To:* Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion <
percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>
*Subject:* [percy-l] Percy & Hesse (posted for Rhonda McDonnell)

Chuck,
I confess to also being a bit of a “lazy" scholar, but one who knows my way
around search engines. I checked the Percy collection at UNC-Chapel Hill
and found the below reference to Hesse in Percy’s papers.

Hope this offers a satisfactory answer to the question of Hesse and Percy.
Thanks for bringing Hesse to our attention again, Jonathan, in sending the
LIR quotes (and Doug and Lauren for their Hesse discussion)!

Best,
Rhonda


On Jul 22, 2022, at 10:00 PM, Jonathan Potter <jopomojo at gmail.com> wrote:

>*From the ebook version of Love in the a Ruins:*

*	[images]*

>https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/2022-July/002550.html


On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 2:51 PM Doug Brown <wply1223 at gmail.com> wrote:

Michael,


First, if you were a teenager in the 70s, then you and I are roughly the
same age. I work in technology, so I often find myself surrounded by young
people. I tell them that I am both a time-traveler and immortal. A
time-traveler because I used to live in the 60s and 70s, and now I'm here.
Immortal because ... well ... all the evidence so far indicates so.


Charles Lowry's answer to your question is more thorough, but I'll add a
vague statement that I know Percy refers to Herman Hesse a couple of times
in Love in the Ruins. Unfortunately, I think both references I'm recalling
are not especially flattering to Hesse. I think the character Tom More (not
necessarily speaking for Percy) thinks of readers of Hesse (but not
necessarily Hesse himself) as being a bit too high-minded. Tom More makes
these kinds of observations once in conversation with his former wife and
once in reference to one half of the attendees at a "Pit" scene where
various psychiatrists present ideas in a somewhat competitive manner. But
it's worth pointing out that the character Tom More is notoriously
unreliable - and a bit grumpy.


Not much help, but there you go.


Doug Brown

Walker Percy Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life
<https://www.amazon.com/Walker-Percy-Loves-Wonderful-Plan/dp/B096LS1B7M>



On Sun, Mar 20, 2022 at 3:09 PM Lauren Berdy <lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com>
wrote:

To a cultured mind no scenery is

Ordinary.

And

Such a mind will prefer solitude in

An unassuming landscape.

DP lived on the bogue Fayala ( sp)

A porous and certain primeval

Relaxin and releasing

Also

He wasn’t scared to meet the

Crowd and suck crayfishes either

But

He wasn’t dipping into orientalists

He made fun of them with aunt

Emily’s Bagvagita. Too bad

Tom Merton and he never

Dialogued.

Doubt is too

catching.


Thank you,

Lauren


Sent from my iPhone


On Mar 20, 2022, at 2:34 PM, lowry.charles at gmail.com wrote:


I am no scholar, heaven knows, but in my laziness I have developed a
million labor-saving workarounds.  Although it is only a partial and not a
definitive answer to your question, I can report that Hermann Hesse does
not appear in the indices of the following books I have on my Percy shelf:


—Jay Tolson’s and Father Samway’s biographies of Percy

—John F. Desmond’s Walker Percy’s Search for Community

—Robert Coles’ Walker Percy, An American Search

—Jessica Hooten Wilson’s Reading Walker Percy’s Novels and Walker Percy,
Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence

—Lewis A. Lawson’s Following Percy

—Kieran Quinlan’s Walker Percy, The Last Catholic Novelist

—Lawson and Kramer, editors, Conversations With Walker Percy


Further affiant sayeth naught.


Sent from my iPhone


On Mar 20, 2022, at 12:53 PM, Michael Martin Serafin <
michael_serafin at hotmail.com> wrote:




When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I was a serious reader of Hermann
Hesse, the great German author. I learned about Hesse from an encouraging
essay by Kurt Vonnegut, also a favorite of mine at the time. Did Percy read
Hesse?


Michael Martin Serafin

Chicopee, MA.
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