KNULP. Drei Geschichten aus dem Leben Knulps
Zürich: Fretz und Wasmuth, (1944). Niklaus Stoecklin. First Edition thus. Hardcover. Light blue cloth with printed paper labels on the front cover and spine, in the original dustwrapper. With 16 full-page illustrations by Niklaus Stoecklin. These three stories were first published in 1915. Laid in is a very personal two-page TYPED LETTER SIGNED in pencil on both sides of a 5-7/8" x 8-1/4" sheet by the Nobel Prize winner presenting the book to his correspondent, George Goetz, who has signed his name at the top of the title page and noted the gift. Here is a Google translation of the letter:
"Your letter of December 27 arrived yesterday. The post brought it to my house through deep snow and a fiercely blinding sun, along with your kind words and greetings, and it did not miss its target; it gladdened, warmed, and strengthened my heart. If it weren't for the miracles of love, how could we continue to live?
The poor situation I have been in for the past 5 months can only be described from the outside, for it was external causes, everyday biological demands, that I proved unable to cope with. Inwardly, the beginning was certainly earlier and more significant: it was the day I wrote the last few lines of Knecht's life and completed this work. I was then poorer by a friend and comrade with whom I had lived for 12 years; A door had closed through which I had been able to enter the timeless at any time for many years; a source of play and joy was blocked off, a refuge destroyed. But this only had its full effect more than two years later, on a ridiculous occasion. On September 1st, Mem pulled out all my upper jaw teeth and made a denture. And although I was quite patient with everything, it became apparent that I was delaying an effort of adjustment that I no longer had the strength for. And with that, everything else began to slide. My worries became three times as heavy, everything beautiful and cheerful fled and wasted away. This had to be overcome, and it hasn't been yet. Strangely, my friend Romain (who was 11 years older than me) had to undergo exactly the same dental operation around the same time and died shortly afterward.
The Baden poems have [?]; nothing more was written during this time. Now, as every year at this time and well into spring, the gout is quite active again and paralyzes almost all of my fingers. At least we have sun, which heats two of our rooms quite nicely every morning until around 2 o'clock.
Dear Mr. Goetz, thank you for the gift of your letter. I would also like to give you something, and will try the Knulp." Very Good in a Good dustwrapper. Item #022075
From the estate of George Goetz, a Danish Jew living in Sweden because of persecution. He maintained a correspondence with Hesse, only recently discovered, from 1939 to 1951. Their letters discussed everything from the trivial to Hesse's work and its place in Nazi Germany. One common point of interest was the German-Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner (Goetz would later become President of the International Constantin Brunner Institute.). This book, as well as several other titles inscribed to Goetz, were discovered with the letters and is now being offered for public sale for the first time.
Price: $1,000.00