Hard to come by in English, this novella from the early part of Hesse’s writing career is an little-known gem.
“Written in 1915, its subtitle is “Three Scenes from the life of Knulp”, and as this suggests it consists of three episodes that shed some light on the character. Knulp the man is in fact a tramp. On one level he can be seen as a happy-go-lucky itinerant, who never settled on any one form of employment, just as he could never settle in one place. Rather than a settled orderly life of work and domesticity, he prefers to wander from town to town, making friends along the way and generally approaching everyone and every situation with an open and optimistic outlook. Hesse is keen to emphasise this aspect of his character’s nature. Indeed, Knulp is told by someone late on in the book (and I won’t say by whom because that’d be a giveaway for those who haven’t read it), “you were a wanderer…and wherever you went you brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom”. In other words this wanderer’s presence serves to bring a little light and levity into the lives of the people he encounters, a carefree and happy counterpoint to the humdrum workaday lives of those he encounters.” You can read more from this excellent review here.
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