Footpath following the Trail of Hermann Hesse. 루가노(Lugano)

Footpath following the Trail of Hermann Hesse.

루가노(Lugano). 스위스(Swiss)

 

www.hessemontagnola.ch/walking-tours

 

 

 

 

Itinerary 1 (about 2 ½ hours)

① Museum Hermann Hesse

On glowing days, I wandered through the villages and chestnut woods…

 

On glowing days, I wandered through the villages and chestnut woods, I sat on the folding stool and attempted to preserve with watercolors something of the abundant magic. on warm nights, Isat until late bythe open doors and windows of Klingsors villa and tried, with a bit more experience and more sensibly than I could with paintbrush, to sing with words the song of this unheard summer…

 

Memory of Klingsor’ssummer,1938

 

② View of the San Salvatore

Above the nearest mountains, their greens and reds harmonizing with white villages, bluish ridges peered…

 

Above the nearest mountains, their greens and reds harmonizing with white villages, bluish ridges peered; and beyond, paler and bluer, more and more ridges. Very far away and unreal rose the snow-capped crystalline peaks. Above the acacias and chestnut trees the mighty rocky wall and humpbacked summit of Monte Salute [Monte San Salvatore] emerged, reddish and light purple…

 

Klingsor’s last summer, 1920

 

③ Abbondio Cemetery (Grave)

But in all these years spent in Montagnola I went through so many pleasant, indeed wonderful periods…

 

Nearly forty years ago, in my search for a shelter, I discovered Montagnola for the first time and I rented a small flat… At that time I was a man in “his best years”… and Montagnola was not such a poor and worn-out village as others in this area, nevertheless it was unpretentious, small and quiet… So many years have elapsed, and today I am no more a man in his best, not even good, years, but one of the old, weak, somewhat silly men in the village who hardly ever leaves his piece of land and who even bought a nice small place in the graveyard of St. Abbondio. Montagnola is no longer a country village. It is now a suburb and there are four times more people living there than at any time… But in all these years spent in Montagnola I went through so many pleasant, indeed wonderful periods, from Klingsor’s shining summer up to now, and I owe much to this village and its landscape. I have always tried to express my gratitude in different ways… I grew trees, some shrubs, a bamboo thicket on the borders of the woods and a variety of flowers, hoping that, even if Ihaven’t become a Ticinese, the ground of St. Abbondio will welcome
me in a friendly way, as have the palazzo of Klingsor and the red house on the hill, during these long past years.

 

 Forty years in Montagnola, 1960

 

④ Forest, Canvetto

One edge of the wood stood softly in the last light, bright chestnut trunks against black shadows…

 

At sunset – after a whole afternoon spent painting in the sun and the wind near Manuzzo and Veglia – a tired Klingsor reached a small, sleeping Canvetto, in the woods over Veglia… It was that glorious hour,with the daylight still glowing everywhere but the moon already gleaming and the first bats dipping in the green, shimmering air. one edge of the wood stood softly in the last light, bright chestnut trunks against black shadows. A yellowcottage softly radiated the daylight it had absorbed, glowing gently like a topaz. The small paths, pink and violet, led through meadows, vine�yards, and woods. Here and there an acacia twig had already yellowed. The western sky hung golden and green above the velvet blue mountains.

 

Klingsor’s last summer, 1920

 

⑤ Grotto Cavicc

We are sitting outside the grotto, on a small terrace over the wood’s steep slope. To get here, you have to climb loosesteps, and there is hardly any room for a couple of tables...

In the woods, on the shaded side of the hill, you can find the grotti, the village cellars where wine is kept, a small fairy-town amidst the trees, a sequence of stone-house fronts, two-slope roofs, looking deprived of their back side, as walls and roofs blur with adjacent slope where the cellars are, bored in the living rock. There, in gray casks, wine is kept; last fall’s and last year’s wine only,  as nobody lets it age. It is a delicate wine, light in taste and in its red color,fresh and sourish, genuine; tasting of the juice and the thick skin of the grapes.
We are sitting outside the grotto, on a small terrace over the wood’s steep slope. To get here, you have to climb loose steps, and there is hardly any room for a couple of tables.
The trunks of the old, gigantic trees – chestnuts, planes, acacias –rise massively, soaring high. Amidst the branches, a small portion of the sky is visible. I often stood still for hours in this wood, in the rain, and not even a rain-drop would wet me. We remain here, in the dark, in complete silence, I and a couple of foreign artists who live here. The light red wine in front of us, in small blue and white stripped earthen cups. Below our island-like terrace, a reddish light flickers from the lamp hanging from the cellar door.

 

Summer evening in Ticino, 1921

 

⑥ Glade (Formerly rock cellar forest-glade)

So, I was sitting with my folder on my lap. Trying to catch and put on paper, a small corner of the wood...

 

So, I was sitting with my folder on my lap, trying to catch and put on paper, a small corner of the wood, a dozen bent chestnuts, winding next to the other like gigantic snakes twisted together, and among them, tall and thin, stood the light-brown trunks of the acacias, with their confused mess of branches and leaves at the top. Below them you could see stones, ferns, a tangle of roots, and among the trees, bored in the rocks, a door made of planks, flanked by two stoned
pillars, worn by time, the entrance door of a cellar, closing the deep, black den

 

My neighbour Mario, 1928

 

⑦ Vicolo di Ligüna (View of the Monte Lema)

...the wood is all blue and white of ever�greens, anemones and strawberry flowers and, through the new green, the lake sparkles, fresh and sweet.

 

Alas, I shall never be able to sit again at the borders of the beautiful woods over Liguno [Ligüna] ,my favourite spot where I could paint: a foreigner has bought lawn and wood and has fenced it with wire; now,where ash-trees used to tower, his garage is going up. To make up for it, green paths of grass shimmer among the vineyards, fresh as always, and under the dry leaves I hear, as usual, the rustling of the blue-greenish lizards, the wood is all blue and white of ever-greens, anemones and strawberry flowers and, through the new green, the lake sparkles, fresh and sweet.

 

Visit to Nina, 1927

 

 

⑧ Bellevue

... but painting is marvellous; it makes one happier and more patient. Afterwards one does not have black fingers as with writing but red and blue ones.

 

When the war finally came to an end for me too, in the spring of 1919, I withdrew into a remote corner of Switzerland and became a hermit ［...］. Writing no longer gave me any real joy.

But a human being must have some joy; even in the midst of my distress I asserted that claim. I could renounc Justice, Reason, Meaning in life and in the world; I had seen that the world could get along splendidly without these abstractions - but I could not get along without some bit of joy, and the demand for that bit of joy was now one of those little flames inside me in which I still believed, and from which I planned to create the world anew for myself. Often I sought my joy, my dream, my forgetfulness in a bottle of wine, and very often it was of help; praised be it therefore. But it was not enough. And then, behold, one day I discovered an entirely new joy. Suddenly, at the age of forty, I began to paint. Not that I considered myself a painter or intended to become one. But painting is marvellous; it makes one happier and more patient. Afterwards one does not have black fingers as with writing but red and blue ones.

Life story briefly told, 1925

 

⑨ Casa Camuzzi

That beautiful and odd house meant a lot to me and was in many ways, the most original and pretty house I have ever owned or lived in…

 

…I then found Casa Camuzzi in Montagnola where I settled in during May 1919… I lived in that house, which would be the last of my houses, for twelve years, the first four years permanently, afterwards only in the hottest periods of the year.

That beautiful and odd house meant a lot to me and was in many ways, the most original and pretty house I have ever owned or lived in… I mention this house and its garden in Klingsor and in others of my works.
I have painted and drawned this house dozens of times, following its confused and whimsical shapes; in particular during the last two summers, as a farewell, I have again caught all the views from the windows and from the terrace, and from many of the corners and the beautiful ruins lying in the garden. A copy of a baroque hunting castle, the folly of a Ticinese architect, built nearly seventy-five years ago, my Palazzohas had, besides me, a long series of tenants, but nobody had settled in there for such a long period, and nobody, I believe, loved it as I did (even laughing at it) or took it as his elective home.

 

Moving in a new house, 1931

 

 

⑩ Commemorative stone honoring his 100th Birthday

Once again I prepare myself for setting it up. once again for “the rest of my life”, and this time it will probably be so.

 

 

Therefore in the last few years, it had come to my mind, every now and then, but never seriously, the idea of perhaps moving into a new house, buying a new one or renting it, or even having one built, to have in our old age a more confortable and wholesome shelter.
It was merely a dream, a fantasy, nothing more. All of a sudden, the dream came true: during an evening at “The Arch” in Zurich, it was then spring 1930, wewere talking; our conversation fell on houses and buildings, and my desireof a house was mentioned too.
Suddenly, my friend B. looked at me, laughing, and said: “You will have your house.” That was, to me, the joke of an evening among friends. But the joke became a reality, and the house we
dreamt about as a joke is nowhere, extraordinarily nice and big, at my disposal for the rest of my life. once again I prepare myself for setting it up. once again for “the rest of my life”, and this time it will probably be so.

 

Moving in a new house, 1931

 

 

⑪ Casa Rossa

I became, once again, sedentaryagainst all expectations. I finally owned a small piece of land, not as owner but as sharecropper for life

 

I became, once again, sedentary against all expectations. I finally owned a small piece of land, not as owner but as sharecropper for life. We had our house built on it, and not long after we had moved in, I already found myself living an interlude of country-life, familiar to me thanks to many memories. I had no intention of flinging myself again into it with addiction and frenzy; I wanted to take this new life in a lazy way,rather than work I would search for peace, rather than tilling woods or sowing and planting, I would spend time dreaming next to the bluish smoke of the autumn’s fires.
Nevertheless I had already bedded out a beautiful hawthorn, and shrubs, trees, and many flowers, and spent those days at the end of summer, early autumn, those fantastic days, almost completely amid green, in the garden, with easy jobs, like trimming the young hedge, preparing the soil for spring seeds, cleaning the paths and the fountain, and, while working, I always kept a small firegoing, a fire of weeds, of dry sticks or brambles, of chestnut husks, still green or already dry and dark.

 

Autumn day in Ticino, 1931

 

Itinerary 2 (about 30 minutes)

 

 1. Museum Hermann Hesse

 9. Casa Camuzzi

10. Commemorative stone honoring his 100th Birthday

11. Casa Rossa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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