HESSE, Hermann.

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Typescript of "Drei Gedichte" (Three Poems), signed and with artwork in ink and watercolour. Three poems by Hesse in typescript, each decorated with a watercolour by him, and including a manuscript title page signed and illustrated by Hesse with an ink floral wreath. This charming unification of art and poetry is one of Hesse's bildermanuskripte ("picture manuscripts") he privately circulated from around 1918 onwards. "Relatively few of these paintings have been reproduced" (Mileck, p. 68).The three poems are "Papierlaternen im nächtlichen Garten" (published in 1929, better known under the title "Lampions in der Sommernacht"); "Bei der Nachricht vom Tod eines Freundes" (1930); and "Verfrühter Herbst" (1949). These typescript versions each show occasional textual variations from that published in the Gesammelte Schriften (1958), including the title change of the first poem. In "Verfrühter Herbst", the less assured reading "Wir fühlen" ("We feel") seen here is a variant of the more certain "Wir wissen" ("We know"): "Wir fühlen: eines von den nächsten Wettern / Bricht unserm müden Sommer das Genick" ("We feel: one of the next storms / Breaks the neck of our tired summer").The watercolour illustrating "Verfrühter Herbst" possibly shows Lake Lugano in the Ticino canton of Switzerland, where Hesse lived for most of his life after the Second World War. The other watercolours are a colourful floral scene and decoration. For Hesse, nature "was a poignant reminder of man's mortality, a

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