Introducing Your You

Your You. You’re You.

II. Knulp. Hermann Hesse. (Knulp’s Dialogue with God.)

"See here, Knulp, aren't you a bit ungrateful? You make me laugh with your forgetfulness. We've remembered the time when you were king of the dance floor…”

“You childish fellow! Can't you see what it all means? Can't you see that you had to be a gadabout and a vagabond to bring people a bit of child's folly and child's laughter wherever you went? To make all sorts of people love you a little and tease you a little and be a little grateful to you?"

"Look," said God. "I wanted you the way you are and no different. You were a wanderer in my name and wherever you went you brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom. In my name, you did silly things and people scoffed at you; I myself was scoffed at in you and loved in you. You are my child and my brother and a part of me. There is nothing you have enjoyed and suffered that I have not enjoyed and suffered with you."

"Yes," said Knulp, nodding heavily. "Yes, that's true, and deep down I've always known it."

He lay resting in the snow. His weary limbs had grown light and his inflamed eyes smiled.

When he closed them to sleep a little, he still heard God's voice speaking and still looked into His bright eyes.

"So you've nothing more to complain about?" God's voice asked.

"Nothing more," Knulp nodded with a shy laugh.

"And everything's all right? Everything is as it should be?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Everything is as it should be."

God's voice became softer. Now it sounded like his mother's voice, now like Henriette's, and now like the good, gentle voice of Lisabeth.

When Knulp opened his eyes again, the sun was shining. It dazzled him so that he quickly lowered his lids. He felt the snow lying heavy on his hands and wanted to shake it off, but the desire to sleep had grown stronger than any other desire.