Hermann Hesse Pictor's Metamorphoses-皮克托变形金刚

作者：Hermann Hesse

书名：Pictor's Metamorphoses《皮克托变形金刚》

简介：If it wasn't written in spring of 1922, a full sixteen years before Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, one might have thought that “Pictor's Metamorphosis” was the product of a pleasant acid trip!

Hermann Hesse wrote “Pictor's Metamorphoses'’ a couple of months after he finished Siddhartha. He dedicated it to Ruth Wenger, whom he was courting at the time. The short fairytale display Hesse's lifetime fascination with fairytales, fantasy and the dream world.

Hesse made the short fairytale into a limited edition watercolor book with beautiful illustrations. He gave copies to Ruth, distributed a few copies to a small circle of friends and offered a few copies for sale to local bookshops and donated the proceeds to charity.

Ruth Wenger met Hermann Hesse in 1919 in Ticino while she was spending the summer with her parents in the south of Switzerland. She was 21 years old at the time, Hermann was 42. For Hermann, it was at first sight, he immediately proposed a marriage. Ruth had her doubts.

Ruth felt that both their interests and character peculiarities were too different. Later, they saw each other again in Basel, where Ruth studied singing, flute and piano. Hesse continued his courtship and divorced his first wife, Maria Bernoulli in 1923.

Ruth relented and the couple got married on January 11, 1924. Their marriage lasted three years and they got divorced in 1927.

Most critics agree that "Pictor's Metamorphoses" is an allegorical account, in fantasy form, of Hesse’s love affair with Ruth. The painter, entering the paradise of Ticino, first lives alone as a tree and then, recognizing his mistake, reenters the natural cycle of transformations by attaching himself to a beautiful young woman.

It is significant that, apart from the limited edition, Hesse did not allow this work to be published until a facsimile edition of an early version was brought out in 1954. The original German title of the fairytale is "Piktors Verwandlungen"