I discovered that one of my favorite authors, Hermann Hesse, wrote a novella about one of my favorite saints, Francis of Assisi, and it’s never been translated into English. Using the original German version and an Italian translation, I have been slowly translating the novella Franz von Assisi (1904), with the help of AI. This is not an authoritative translation, just mine. I will be sharing it with you, in serialized form, each month in the Chronicle.
Francis of Assisi
by Hermann Hesse
Translated by Daniel DeForest London
Prologue
A Soul Touched by the Seraphic Flame
Since ancient times, there have always been exceptional individuals who did not seek glory for themselves through spectacular deeds or magnificent works of art. However, these gifted souls still impacted generations to such an extent that they were praised enthusiastically by all. Their names and personalities were on everyone’s lips and even after centuries, they were never forgotten. Their lasting impact was not made through books they published or speeches they delivered but rather through the lives they lived. Indeed, their lives were true masterpieces that reflected the brilliant radiance of the divine with an undeniable clarity.
Even if they had not completed a single work of art, their lives alone would reveal them as marvelous virtuosos of the heart. They conducted their lives with the skill of an architect designing a palace or cathedral, not with arbitrary whim or fickle temper but with a clear, vivid, and unified vision. They were mighty souls on fire, consumed by a potent thirst for the infinite. Their restless spirits found no solace apart from their radical and wholehearted devotion to the eternal and perennial wisdom that transcended the customs of their day and the knowledge of their contemporaries.
They were poets, saints, miracle workers, sages, and artists, each according to their own special nature and gift. However, they were alike in their ability to see the seed of the eternal in this brief earthly existence; and they each strove with fierce desire and death-defying passion to marry heaven and earth in their hearts and to ignite their mortal lives with the seraphic flame. In this way their lives were unbound by the deadly limitations of time and temporal infirmities; and their legacies now stand as a monument and miracle within the memory of humankind.
Every exceptional life lived in this way is nothing other than a return to the Garden of Eden and a refreshing gift from the very paradise of God. These great dreamers and heroic souls always refused to drink from spiritually murky waters. They never tolerated illusions or facades or false images. Rather they passionately pursued, with insatiable urge, the pure source and true essence of all. Like the trees and wild animals who seem to have an unmediated link with the divine, these souls ardently desired to speak directly to God rather than through images and symbols and empty shadows.
And in so doing, they have helped bring us all closer to God and to the mystery at the heart of creation, which they have interpreted for us with holy inspiration. They rediscovered the essence of the interior life since they opened themselves up so freely and nakedly to the wildness of the heavens and the earth, like Adam and Eve before the Fall, while the rest of us believe we can only live within the safe shell of our domesticated ideas and inherited habits.
Such souls, who have achieved true enlightenment, are often judged to be mad; and to many, they will always be considered incomprehensible and foolish. But to those who take them seriously, their lives gush forth with a passionate energy like a stream bursting out of a gorge; for in truth, their lives are the embodiment of a celestial dream and the expression of our desire for eternity and the incarnation of every earthbound creature’s longing to join our destiny with the stars.
…
In that distant era that we call the Middle Ages (or in Latin, aevium medium), the people had fallen prey to increasingly hostile forces, and countries were groaning under the shadow of violence and wars. Bloody conflict raged between emperors and popes, cities fought with tyrants, and the nobility found themselves frequently in bitter dispute with the people. And the Roman Catholic Church, as the mistress of the world, was more concerned with armaments, alliances, excommunications and censures than with the peace of souls. A profound fear and distress arose among the people.
In several places, new teachers and communities emerged and defied the severe persecutions of the Church, fueling contempt among the people and trying to attain some utopia through violent means. There was no real leadership or security anywhere, and it seemed that despite its outward splendor, West civilization was bleeding to death.
Then it happened in Umbria that a young, unknown man decided, with deep humility, to live his life as a simple and liberated follower of the Savior, and that companions followed him, two or three at first, but later a hundred and then thousands, and that from this humble man in Umbria a light of life and source of renewal emanated a brilliant ray across the earth that still shines even today.
This man was Giovanni Bernardone, called Saint Francis of Assisi, a dreamer, a hero and a poet. He left us only one single poem, but instead of written words and verses he has given us the memory of his simple and pure life, which surpasses many of the greatest poetic works in its beauty and quiet grandeur. Whoever narrates this remarkable life of his need not add any further words or considerations, and from these I will gladly abstain.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 