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by Herman
Hesse
It was my destiny to join in a great experience. Having had the good fortune to belong to the League, I was permitted to participate in a unique journey.... One of the characteristics of the Journey to the East was that although the League aimed at quite definite, very lofty goals during this journey (they belong to the secret category and are therefore not communicable), yet every simgle participant could have his own private goals. Indeed, he had to have them; for no one was included who did not have such private goals, and every single one of us , while appearing to share common ideals and goals and to fight under a common flag, carried his own fond childhood dream within his heart as a source of inner strength and comfort. This expedition to the East was not only mine and now; this procession of believers and disciples had always and incessantly been moving towards the East towards the Home of Light. Throughout the centuries it had been on the way towards light and wonder, and each member, each group, indeed our whole host and its great pilgrimage, was only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal striving of the human sprit towards the East, towards Home. It was not unusual for us to be mocked at and disturbed by unbelievers, but it also happened often enough that priests blessed us and invited us to be their guests, that children enthusiastically joined us, learned our songs and saw us depart with tears in their eyes; that an old man would show us forgotten monuments or tell us a legend about his district; that youths would walk with us part of the way and desire to join the League. The latter were given advice and apprised of the first rites and practices of novitiates. P.14 There were wonderful festive days each time we encountered other parties of the League's hosts on our way; sometimes we then formed a camp of hundreds, even thousands. The expedition did not , in fact proceed in a fixed order with participants moving in the same direction in more or less closed columns. On the contrary, numerous groups were simultaneously on the way, each following their own leaders and their own stars, each one always ready to merge into a greater unit and belong to it for a time, but always no less ready to move on again separately. Some went on their way quite alone. I also walked alone at times, whenever some sign or call tempted me to go my own way. P 22 It was very pleasant whenever we met one of these groups, to attend their feasts and devotions and to invite them to ours, to hear about their deeds and plans, to bless and know them on parting; they went their way, we went ours. Each one of them had his own dream, his wish, his secret heart's desire, and yet they all flowed together in the great stream and all belonged to each other, shared the same reverence and the same faith, and had made the same vow! P23 I, whose calling was really only that of a violinist and story-teller, was responsible for the provision of music for our group, and I then discovered how a long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength. P 24 Yet our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times. P27 And so we League brothers traveled throughout the world without motor-cars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past, the future and the fictitious into the present moment. P28 Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability and that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action. [Cf: Usually expressed in metaphor,(the burning bush, the resurrected Christ, the reincarnated essence of being), belief challenges the imagination to conceive and embrace a universe larger than what we immediately perceive. It engages a community in a collective imaginative act, one of the most powerful ways of binding a people into a shared identity. - Fenton Johnson "Beyond Belief" Harper's 9/98 ] Since I wrote the forgoing, I have pondered over my project again and again and tried to find a way out of my difficulty[in conveying the true story of the League's Journey to the East]. I have not found a solution. I am still confronted by chaos. But I have vowed not to give in, and in the moment of making this vow a happy memory passed through my mind like a ray of sunshine. It was similar, it seemed to me, quite similar to how I felt when we commenced our expedition; then also we undertook something apparently impossible, then also we traveled apparently in the dark, not knowing our direction and not having the slightest prospects. Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability and that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action. I shuddered at the recollection of this sentiment, and at the moment of this blissful shudder everything became clear, everything seemed possible again. P54 I will be mindful of the first principle of our great period, never to rely on and let myself be disconcerted by reason, always to know that faith is stronger than so-called reality. p54 Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have no stronger hunger than to forget. P59 "It was only possible for me to do", he said, "because it was necessary. I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide. The book was written under this pressure and brought me the expected cure, simply because it was written, irrespective of whether it was good or bad. That was the only thing that counted. And while writing it, there was no need for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most, here and there another close war-comrade, and I certainly never thought then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war. While writing it I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three of four people with mutilated bodies-that is how the book was produced." p59 [Leo says:] "That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy- a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier." P75 [Leo says:] "The defendant did not know
until this hour, or did not really believe, that his apostasy [desertion]
and aberration were a test. For a long time he did not give in. He endured
it for many years, knowing nothing about the League, remaining alone, and
seeing everything in which he believed in ruins. Finally he could no longer
hide and contain himself. His suffering became too great, and you know
that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. Brother
H. was led to despair in his test, and despair is the result of each earnest
attempt to understand and vindicate human life. Despair is the result of
each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding
and to fulfill their requirements. Children lie on one side of despair,
the awakened on the other side. Defendant H. is no longer a child and is
not yet fully awakened. He is still in the midst of despair. He will overcome
it and thereby go through his second novitiate. We welcome him anew into
the League, the meaning of which he no longer claims to understand. We
will give back to him his lost ring, which the servant Leo has kept for
him." P 111-112
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