Beyond Power and Ideology (Written by Roberto Minichini, February 2026)

The spring of 1948 in Montagnola existed for me long before I was born. It came into being through reading, through meditation, through that interior continuity by which imagination enters history without violating it. This narrative belongs consciously to imaginative literature. It does not claim factual presence. It claims a different kind of truth, the truth of a meeting that unfolds in the space where thought crosses time. I arrived in that invented yet coherent spring as a guest of silence. The hills were green, the lake steady, Europe still carrying the moral exhaustion of war. Hermann Hesse walked beside me along a narrow path bordered by low stone walls and scattered flowers. He was already a Nobel laureate, yet he carried no triumph in his posture. His concern, as he soon made clear, was not recognition but integrity. In this literary construction I served as his personal astrologer. The role was not theatrical. I did not bring charts to impress him. I brought a language of symbols intended to clarify tendencies of character and cycles of crisis. Astrology, in this narrative, functioned as a discipline of reflection. It allowed us to speak about destiny without fatalism and about freedom without illusion. We sat at a wooden table outside his house. A few books rested nearby, Goethe and Novalis, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching. Their presence was not decorative. They formed a silent tribunal of minds that had wrestled with the relation between spirit and authority. Hesse opened a copy of one of his own works and then closed it again, as if to say that authorship is never immunity. Our conversation began with a simple question. Can literature survive proximity to power without losing its depth. Hesse spoke first. He had witnessed how regimes attempt to appropriate writers. Some demand celebration. Others demand silence. Both seek control. The writer becomes useful only when his language aligns with political expectation.

I responded that ideology functions through simplification. It reduces the complexity of the human being to a role within a collective narrative. It transforms ethical dilemmas into slogans. When a novelist accepts this reduction, even unconsciously, his characters cease to surprise him. They become representatives of positions rather than bearers of interior conflict. Hesse considered this and asked whether complete withdrawal from political life was possible. I answered that the issue was not withdrawal but sovereignty. A writer may address political themes. A philosopher may analyze institutions. The essential question concerns the source of judgment. Does thought originate in independent reflection, or does it originate in loyalty to a faction. We turned then to the psychological dimension. Power does not only threaten through censorship. It seduces through relevance. The promise of influence can be more dangerous than the threat of repression. To be invited to shape opinion, to become the moral voice of a movement, to feel necessary within a historical struggle, these experiences can intoxicate even the most disciplined mind. In that imagined afternoon, I drew an astrological chart not as prediction but as metaphor. I described a configuration in which the desire for recognition stands in tension with the demand for authenticity. Every intellectual life contains such tension. The temptation to speak in order to be heard can displace the responsibility to speak only what one has truly examined. Hesse listened without defensiveness. He recognized the pattern not only in himself but in the broader literary culture of his time. We spoke of propaganda. It operates by repetition and emotional intensification. It narrows language to maximize impact. Literature, by contrast, requires ambiguity and patience. A novel must allow contradictions to coexist. A philosophical argument must tolerate doubt. Propaganda seeks certainty and mobilization. Literature seeks understanding and transformation. The discussion deepened into a moral argument. If the writer becomes an instrument of ideology, he contributes to the deformation of conscience. Readers begin to expect affirmation rather than exploration. They approach books not to encounter complexity but to confirm identity. In such a climate, the intellectual climate contracts. Public discourse becomes polarized. Nuance appears as weakness. Hesse suggested that the responsibility of the writer resembles that of a hermit within society. Not isolated from events, yet inwardly independent. I extended the metaphor. The philosopher must cultivate an interior tribunal where ideas are examined without fear of exclusion. Astrology, in this symbolic framework, serves as a reminder that cycles of collective enthusiasm eventually collapse. Aligning oneself too closely with a movement risks being carried down with its inevitable excess. As the light shifted across the valley, we addressed the future. Would later generations understand the necessity of distance from power. Would they resist the integration of art into ideological machinery. I admitted that the risk would persist. Every era invents new forms of mobilization. Every generation produces intellectuals willing to trade complexity for influence. The narrative does not resolve with dramatic revelation. Instead, it culminates in a shared decision. Within the space of this imagined spring, we affirmed that literature and philosophy must guard their autonomy with vigilance. Engagement with society remains necessary. Submission to power remains unacceptable. The difference lies in the origin of thought and the discipline of conscience. When I left Montagnola in the logic of imagination, the year remained 1948 and I returned to my own time. The meeting survives only as narrative, yet its argument continues. Through fiction, I constructed a dialogue in order to explore a real tension that confronts every serious writer and thinker. The freedom from ideology and propaganda is not a romantic posture. It is a demanding practice that requires solitude, courage, and intellectual honesty.

 

Roberto Minichini, February 2026