Hermann Hesse

How Heavy the Days

How Heavy the Days - meaning Summary

Loss Renders Days Heavy

The poem expresses a speaker’s profound desolation after discovering that love can end. Ordinary comforts—fire, sun, human warmth—no longer console; the world feels bare, cold, and merciless. Even the distant stars seem indifferent. The poem centers on emotional numbness and isolation brought by loss, emphasizing how the realization that love is mortal collapses previously sustaining sources of light and warmth in the speaker’s life.

Read Complete Analyses

How heavy the days are. There's not a fire that can warm me, Not a sun to laugh with me, Everything bare, Everything cold and merciless, And even the beloved, clear Stars look desolately down, Since I learned in my heart that Love can die.

Translated by James Wright
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