Klingsor's Last Summer
Author | Hermann Hesse |
---|---|
Original title | Klingsors letzter Sommer |
Language | German |
Publisher | S. Fischer Verlag |
Publication date | 1920 |
Publication place | Germany |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
Followed by | Siddhartha |
Klingsor's Last Summer is a novella by Hermann Hesse.
Written over the course of a few weeks in July and August 1919, it was published in December 1919 in the Deutsche Rundschau. It was later published (by S. Fischer Verlag) in a volume which included Kinderseele and Klein und Wagner.
Plot
The story is an account of the final months of the life of Klingsor, a forty-two-year-old expressionist painter. A lover of poetry, a heavy drinker, and a womanizer, he spends his final summer in southern Switzerland, torn between sensuality and spirituality and troubled by feelings of impending death.
Character list
- Klingsor
- Louis the cruel
- Ersilia
- The Queen of the mountains
- The Armenian astrologer
- Edith