Pictor's Metamorphoses, Hermann Hesse

Picture by Michael Stacey

Pictor's Metamorphoses
(Tr. Spa-Eng. from a review by Ambar)

 "I want to find an expression for the duality (...) Because life is just this, the fluctuating between two poles, the oscillation between the two pillars which support the world. I would gladly show the infinite variety of the world and remember that at the bottom of this truth there is a unity". 

 This was written by the Nobel Prize author in 1923, in Spa Psychology. However, he had already expressed the same thought, when he wrote a great little literary gem: Pictor's Metamorphoses. This is a short story, fifteen pages, illustrated with drawings by Hesse's own hand, painted images, evocative and refined, that value even more his level. In this work, the author reveals the bipolarity of unity, through the style and grace that characterize him. It refers to a swinging dance of matter, a game of opposites inherent in each element, object or person, for which there is a corresponding, that other half that somehow relates to a soul mate. So if this double unit is not completed, it is impossible to achieve a degree of happiness. His absence would lead us to a circular and fruitless search. The path is long, full of observations, mistakes and obstacles.

 Fluctuations determine a journey where patience and hope will be the generator and renewal mobile of energy to arrive at destination. The result of this search, in the best case, will result in the meeting with the other half and thus the merger with it. A dialectical fusion kind that from the beginning was established between man and nature, then between animals and inanimate beings to conclude with the fusion of man and woman: the Origin of life. All this on one level, a bird can become a stone, a flower in a multicolored bird and anything can happen, even the stone can operate as a talisman with magical powers to turn wishes into reality. Pictor dreams of becoming a tree and immediately the roots take the place of his lower limbs. While the tree appears strong, imposing, it is alone and abandoned, without possibility of moving, always fixed in the same place for centuries, without any hope of exploring the world. Just as he becomes aware of his metamorphosis, he realizes that his dream was a mistake. Statism does not lead to happiness, but rather to solitude and death. At the moment Pictor sees a girl in front of him, he feels a strong desire to embrace her, to join her, but he cannot. Nevertheless, she seems to read his message among the branches, like a whisper from the foliage. She rubs the magic stone and does not hesitate to join him. Finally together, Pictor and the young woman are part of the trunk, merged in a symbiosis of love. 

 Poetry and legend come together to give us the stamp of a creator who was a landmark in world literature, proving once again that opposites are necessary: ​​light and shadow, moon and sun, like a couple or as in the "twin stars shining in the firmament". A simple and moving story, always in force, which offers us a legacy of love, a caress for the mankind; perhaps, to rescue us from the boredom, mediocrity and indifference of the historical moment in which we live.