Merinder's House

In 1935, Hermann Hesse wrote of his character Knulp, the Wanderer, “When talented … people like Knulp cannot find their place in the world, it is just as much the world’s fault as it is Knulp’s.”

In Hesse’s story, Knulp the vagabond returns “home” after a life on the road. He has spent years passing through the daily humdrum of friends and acquaintances and brightened their households for a few moments. Each time he moved on, he left them with a few lines of poetry or perhaps just a smile, and the light flickered away a while as he receded into the distance.

As he returns home, he is wracked with guilt for the son he has never taken the trouble to know, and for what he considers his “wasted” talents where he was once a gifted pupil. He holds a final conversation with God, who admonishes him for his doubts. “Can you not see, Knulp,” God adminishes him, “that you had to become a vagabond so that, everywhere you went, you could bring a little childish tomfoolery and a little laughter, so that people everywhere could love you a little… and feel a little grateful?”

Knulp had not been blaming himself because he was unhappy, but because the people he met had judged him by their own lives and told him that, by their standards, he had wasted his. None of them were as talented as he was as a young man. None of them understood Latin like he did or excelled at school, but they had somehow found their place in society, by chance or design. The fact that Knulp did not fit into that world was not entirely his own fault. It was also, to an extent, the fault of a society that could neither value nor find a place for his talents. Not until he was gone did people understand what they had lost.

Society has no functional hierarchy for some things, yet what use are gifts if they are used in the wrong way?