"On Little Joys", by Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse

On Little Joys

(1905)

GREAT MASSES of people these days live out their lives in a dull and loveless stupor. Sensitive persons find our inartistic manner of existence oppressive and painful, and they withdraw from sight. In art and poetry, after the brief heyday of realism, dissatisfaction has arisen everywhere, the clearest symptom of it being nostalgia for the Renaissance and Romanticism.

“What you lack is faith!” cries the Church, and “What you lack is art,” says Avenarius. They may be right. I believe what we lack is joy. The ardor that a heightened awareness imparts to life, the conception of life as a happy thing, as a festival — that is, after all, what dazzles and attracts us in the Renaissance. But the high value put upon every minute of time, the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy. With a wistful smile we read the idyls, the sentimental journeys, of past epochs. What didn’t our grandfathers have time for ? Once when I was reading Friedrich Schlegel’s elegy on idleness I could not help but think: How you would have sighed if you had had to work as hard as we do !

That this aggressive haste has influenced us detrimentally from our earliest schooldays is sad but inescapable. Unhappily, moreover, the increasing speed of modern life has long since done away with what meager leisure we had then. Our ways of enjoying ourselves are hardly less irritating and nerve-racking than the pressure of our work. “As much as possible, as fast as possible” is the motto. And so there is more and more entertainment and less and less joy. Whoever has witnessed a great celebration in a town or city or has visited the entertainment spots in a modern metropolis will retain in his memory a painful and displeasing impression of those feverish, distorted faces with their greedy eyes. This morbid pursuit of enjoyment, spurred on by constant dissatisfaction and yet perpetually satiated, is to be found in the theaters too, and the opera houses, in the concert halls and art galleries. To visit a modern art exhibition is hardly ever a pleasure.

The rich man is not spared these evils either. He might be but he cannot be. You have to conform, remain au courant, stay on top. No more than anyone-else do I have an infallible prescription against these abuses. I would simply like to recall an old and, alas, quite unfashionable private formula: Moderate enjoyment is double enjoyment. And: Do not overlook the little joys !

Well then — moderation. In certain circles it requires courage to miss a premiére. In wider circles it takes courage not to have read a new publication several weeks after its

appearance. In the widest circles of all, one is an object of ridicule if one has not read the daily paper. But I know people who feel no regret at exercising this courage. Let not the man who subscribes to a weekly theater series feel that he is losing something if he makes use of it only every other week. I guarantee: he will gain.

Let anyone who is accustomed to looking at a great many pictures in an exhibition try just once, if he is still capable of it, spending an hour or more in front of a single masterpiece

and content himself with that for the day. He will be the gainer by it. Let the omnivorous reader try the same sort of thing. Sometimes he will be annoyed at not being able to join in conversation about some publication; occasionally he will cause smiles. But soon he will know better and do the smiling himself. And let any man who cannot bring himself to use any other kind of restraint try to make a habit of going to bed at ten o'clock at least once a week. He will be amazed at how richly this small sacrifice of time and pleasure will be rewarded. The ability to cherish the “little joy” is intimately connected with the habit of moderation.

For this ability, originally natural to every man, presupposes certain things which in modern daily life have largely become obscured or lost, mainly a measure of cheerfulness, of love, and of poesy. These little joys, bestowed especially upon the poor, are so inconspicuous and scattered so liberally throughout our daily lives that the dull minds of countless workers hardly notice them. They are not outstanding, they are not advertised, they cost no money ! (Strangely enough, it is precisely the poor who do not know that the loveliest joys are always those that cost no money.)

Among the joys mentioned above are those granted us by our daily contact with nature. Our eyes, above all those misused, overstrained eyes of modern man, can be, if only we are willing, an inexhaustible source of pleasure. When I walk to work in the morning I see many other workers who also have just crawled sleepily out of bed, hurrying in both directions, shivering along the streets. Most of them walk fast and keep their eyes on the pavement, or at most on the clothes and faces of the passers-by. Heads up, dear friends! Just try it once — a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen anywhere. It does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or other the light of the sun always makes itself felt. Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed and you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes.

A stretch of sky, a garden wall overhung by green branches, a strong horse, a handsome dog, a group of children, a beautiful face — why should we be willing to be robbed of

all this ? Whoever has acquired the knack can in the space of a block see precious things without losing a minute’s time. Moreover, this kind of seeing is not tiring; on the contrary, it strengthens and refreshes, and not the eye alone. All things have their vivid aspects, even the uninteresting - or ugly ; one must only want to see. And with seeing come cheerfulness and love and poesy. The man who for the first time picks a small flower so that he can have it near him while he works has taken a step toward joy in life.

There was a girls’ school opposite the house in which I worked for quite a long time. A class of ten-year-olds had their playground on my side of the building. I had a great deal of work to do in those days, and at times I suffered from the noise of the children playing, but the amount of joy and lust for life that a single glance at that playground gave me is greater than I can express. Those bright clothes, those lively, merry eyes, those supple, sinewy movements heightened my delight in living. A riding school or a chicken run would perhaps have served the same purpose. Anyone who has once observed the play of light on an evenly colored surface, the wall of a house for instance, knows how easily contented, what a source of pleasure, the eye is. Let these examples suffice. Readers will certainly have thought of many other small joys, perhaps the especially delightful one of smelling a flower or a piece of fruit, of listening to one’s own or others’ voices, of hearkening to the prattle of children. And a tune being hummed or whistled in the distance, and a thousand other tiny things from which one can weave a bright necklace of little pleasures for one’s life.

My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys, and thriftily save up the larger, more demanding

pleasures for holidays and appropriate hours. It is the small joys first of all that are granted us for recreation, for daily relief and disburdenment, not the great ones.

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