Story Share: The European Herman Hesse

From:
The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse
Translated and with introduction by Jack Zipes
1995 Bantam, NY, NY.


An excerpt:

The splendid tournament lasted many days since each group would frequently interrupt its fame and run off to watch another group.  And every marvelous performance was loudly applauded by the spectators.  How many wonderful things there were to see!  All of God's creatures displayed their latent talents.  The richness of life revealed itself.  How they laughed, applauded, crowed, clapped, stamped and neighed!

The weasel ran wonderfully, and the lark sang enchantingly.  The puffed-up turkey marched splendidly, while the squirrel was incredibly nimble in climbing.  The mandrill imitated the Malayan, and the baboon, the mandrill. Runners and climbers, swimmers and pilots competed tirelessly, and they were all unbeatable in their way and were given due recognition.  There were animals that employed magic to perform wonders, and animals that could make themselves invisible.   Many distinguished themselves by looking like grass, wood, moss, or stone, and others among the weak drew applause and caused the laughing spectators to flee horrible odors.  Nobody was left out.  Nobody was without talent.  Birds' nests were woven, pasted, entwined, walled up.  Predatory birds could detect the tiniest things from scary heights.

And even the humans did their things in a superb way:  the big African ran easily and effortlessly on a high beam.  The Malayan made a rudder with three twists of a palm leaf and steered and turned on a tiny plank.  That was worth watching.  The Indian hit the smallest target with a light arrow, and his wife wove a mat out of two kinds of flax, which drew great admiration.  Everyone was silent for a long time and stared as the Hindu appeared and did some magic tricks.  Then the Chinaman demonstrated how one could triple the wheat harvest thru hard work by pulling out the very young plants and them planting them in the same intermediate spaces.

The European, who was not very popular, had aroused the resentment of his kin many times because he found fault with them and judged them with harsh condescension.  When the Indian shot down a bird from up high in the blue sky, the white man had shrugged and asserted that one could shoot three times as high with twenty grams of dynamite!  And when the people challenged him to prove it, he had not been able to do it, but he responded, of course, that if he had this and that and some ten other things, he could certainly do it.  He had also mocked the Chinaman and said the replanting of young wheat could certainly be accomplished thru endless hard work, but such slavish work would definitely not make people happy.  The Chinaman, however, had been roundly applauded when he maintained that people are happy when they have something to eat and pay their respects to God.   Here too, the European had simply laughed and sneered.

The merry tournament continued, and in the end all the humans and animals revealed their talents and artistic abilities.  The impression they left was great and joyful.  Even the patriarch laughed into his beard and said praisingly, "May the water subside and may a new life begin on this earth, for each colorful thread in God's robe is still present, and nothing is lacking for the foundation of infinite happiness on earth."

The only one who had not performed a feat was the European....