Refusal — Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse From Poetry, Volume I Albanian version by Eda Zari

Refusal

In response to several questions asking why I do not take the side of the communists:

Better to be struck dead by a fascist than to become a fascist myself. Better to be struck dead by a communist than to become a communist myself.

We have not forgotten the war. We know how intoxicating it is when drum and kettledrum are beaten. We are deaf to it now; we will not be carried away when you seduce the people with the old narcotic.

We are no longer soldiers, nor reformers of the world. We do not believe that through our own nature “the world must be healed.”

We are poor; we have suffered shipwreck. We no longer believe the pretty phrases with which we were whipped and ridden into war. Your people too, red brothers, are magicians who lead toward war and gas.

Your leaders too are generals: they command, shout and organize. But we — we hate all that. We no longer drink that poisonous liquor. We do not want to lose heart and reason, nor march beneath red or white flags.

Better to perish alone as “dreamers,” or die beneath your brothers’ bloodied hands, than taste the happiness of party and power and, in the name of humanity, shoot at our brothers.

Translated into Albanian by Eda Zari. All rights reserved.