Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse Read Free Book Online Page B

evangelizing. At meetings of the Pietists he performed the role of stern if brotherly judge, and as a formidable exponent of Holy Scripture he also conducted inspirational sessions in the nearby villages, but otherwise he was just an ordinary craftsman with all the limitations of his kind. The pastor, on the other hand, was not only a clever and eloquent man and preacher but also an assiduous and careful scholar. Hans gazed with awe at the rows of books.
    The pastor came soon, changed his outdoor coat for a black house jacket, handed his pupil the Greek text of Luke and asked him to read it. This was quite different from what the Latin lessons had been like. They read just a few sentences, translating them faithfully word by word, then his teacher developed from seemingly unpromising examples a clever and convincing demonstration of the spirit peculiar to this language, and discussed how and at what time the book came to be written. In a single hour he introduced Hans to an entirely new approach to learning and reading. Hans received an intimation of what tasks and puzzles lay hidden in each line and word, how thousands of scholars and investigators had expended their efforts since the earliest times to unravel these questions, and it seemed to him that he was being accepted into the ranks of these truth-seekers this very hour.
    The pastor lent him a dictionary and a grammar and he continued to work for the rest of the evening. Now he began to realize across how many mountains of work and knowledge the path to true science leads and he was prepared to hack his way through without taking any short cuts. Shoemaker Flaig, for the time being, slipped his mind.
    For a few days this new revelation absorbed him completely. Each evening he visited the pastor and every day true scholarship seemed more beautiful, more difficult, more worthwhile. Early in the morning he went fishing, in the afternoon to the swimming hole; otherwise he stayed in the house. His ambition, diminished during the anxiety and triumph of the examination, had reawakened and would not let him retreat. Simultaneously he again felt that peculiar sensation in his head, felt so often during the last months, which was not precisely a pain but a hurried, triumphant pulsation of hectically excited energies, an impetuous desire to advance. Afterwards, of course, he would come down with a headache, but as long as this febrile state lasted, his reading and work moved forward at a lightning pace and he could read with ease the most difficult construction in Xenophon, one which usually took him fifteen minutes. Then he hardly needed a dictionary but flew with sharpened understanding across the most difficult passages quickly and happily. This heightened activity and thirst for knowledge also coincided with a proud sense of self-esteem, as though school and teachers and the years of study lay far behind him and as though he were already taking his own path toward the heights of knowledge and achievement.
    All this came over him again, and again he slept fitfully and dreamed with a peculiar clarity. Thus, when he awoke in the night with a slight headache and could not fall back to sleep, he was overwhelmed by an impatience to forge ahead and by a great pride when he considered how far ahead of his companions he was and how the teacher and the principal had treated him with a kind of respect, admiration even.
    The principal had taken genuine satisfaction in guiding and observing the growth of this ambition which he himself had kindled. It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child’s talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes