“

Why do I once again turn to writing?
Beloved, one mustn’t ask such a clear question,
For the truth is, I have nothing to tell you,
All the same, your dear hands will touch this note.

[quote above from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe]

Young Werther’s inquiry as to why one writes a love letter reveals a paradoxical dimension inherent in any amorous correspondence: a letter is like a signifier that can convey an amorous message even though it may be empty or say nothing at all. It is the instrument of a tactile extension just as it transmits the language of devotion. Roland Barthes, distinguishes, in fact, between two forms of love notes: there is the amorous correspondence, where one seeks to “defend positions, insure conquests, [and thereby] articulate the image of the Other in various points that the letter will try to touch,” and there is the love letter proper, where one is purely affectionate, engaging the Other in a “relationship, not a correspondence.” The enterprise of writing amorously can thus be “both empty (encoded) and expressive (laden with a yearning to express one’s desire).” A note sent to the object of one’s affections is a deliberate extension of one’s language, an attempt to touch the Other (“as if my words were fingers”) despite the message conveyed: the irreducible “I love you.” In a letter, words need say nothing at all, “save that it is to you that I tell this nothing” and, paradoxically, it is via this “nothing” that one overcomes the Other’s absence.

“When I was younger I dated older women because they knew what love is. Now that I’m older I date women young enough to have not forgotten it.”

“At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front. He was however, found unfit for combat duty, but was assigned to service involving the care of war prisoners. In September 1914, Hesse wrote an essay entitled “O Friends, Not These Tones” (“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne”), which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on November 3. In this essay he appealed to German intellectuals not to fall for patriotism. He called for subdued voices and a recognition of Europe’s common heritage. What followed from this, Hesse later indicated, was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland, “The attempt…to apply love to matters political has failed.”