‘Iris,’ he said to her, ‘dear Iris, if only the world were differently arranged! If nothing at all existed but your beautiful gentle world of flowers, thoughts, and music, then I too would wish for nothing at all but to spend my whole life with you, to hear your stories and to share in your thoughts. Your very name does me good. Iris is a wonderful name, and I have no idea what it reminds me of.’

‘But you do know,’ she said, ‘that the blue and yellow sword lilies are called that.’

‘Yes,’ he replied with an uneasy feeling. ‘I know it very well and that in itself is beautiful. But always when I pronounce your name it seems to remind me of something else, I don‘t know what, as though it were connected with some very deep, distant, important memories, and yet I don’t know what they might be and cannot seem to find out.’

Iris smiled at him as he stood there at a loss, rubbing his forehead with his hand.

‘I always feel the same way,’ she said to Anselm in her light, birdlike voice, ‘whenever I smell a flower. My heart feels as though a memory of something completely beautiful and precious were bound up with the fragrance, something that was mine a long time ago and that I have lost. It is that way too with music and sometimes with poems – suddenly there is a flash for an instant as though all at once I saw a lost homeland lying below in the valley, but instantly it is gone again and forgotten. Dear Anselm, I believe we are on earth for this purpose, for this contemplation and seeking and listening for lost, far-off strains, and behind them lies our true home.’

‘How beautifully you put it,’ he said admiringly, and he felt an almost painful stirring in his breast, as though a compass hidden there were persistently pointing towards his distant goal. But that goal was quite different from the one he had deliberately set for his life, which disturbed him, for was it, after all, worthy of him to squander his life in dreams with only pretty fairy tales for pretext?

And one day Herr Anselm came back from one of his lonely journeys and found his barren scholar’s quarters so chilly and oppressive that he rushed off to his friend’s house, determined to ask beautiful Iris for her hand.

‘Iris,’ he said to her, ‘I don’t want to go on living this way. You have always been my good friend. I must tell you everything. I need a wife, otherwise my life seems empty and meaningless. And whom should I want for a wife but you, my darling flower? Are you willing, Iris? You shall have flowers, as many as we can find, you shall have the most beautiful garden. Are you willing to come to me?’

Iris looked him in the eye calmly and with deliberation; she did not smile, she did not blush, and she answered him in a firm voice.

‘Anselm, I am not surprised at your question. You are dear to me, although I had never thought of being your wife. But look my friend, I demand a great deal from the man I marry. I make greater demands than most women. You offer me flowers and you mean well by it. But I can live even without flowers, and without music too; I could very well do without many other things as well, if it were necessary. But one thing I cannot and will not do without: I can never live so much as a single day in such a way that the music in my heart is not dominant. If I am to live with a man, it must be one whose inner music harmonizes beautifully and exactly with mine, and his single desire must be that his own music be pure and that it blend well with mine. Can you do that, my friend? Very likely you will not become more famous this way or garner further honours, your house will be quiet, and the furrows which I have seen in your brow for many a year must all be smoothed out. Oh, Anselm, it will not work out. Look, you are so constituted that you always have to study new furrows into your forehead, constantly create new worries, and what I perceive and am, you no doubt love and find pleasant, but for you as for most people it is after all simply a pretty toy. Oh, listen to me carefully: everything that now seems a toy to you is life itself to me and would have to be so to you too, and everything you strive for and worry about is for me a toy, in my eyes is not worth living for – I shall not change, Anselm, for I live according to an inner law, but will you be able to change? And you would have to change completely if I were to be your wife.’

Anselm could not speak, startled by the strength of her will, which he had always thought weak and frivolous. He remained silent and thoughtlessly crushed a flower he had picked up from the table in his nervous hand.

When Iris gently took the flower from him, her action struck him to the heart, like a sharp rebuke – and then suddenly she smiled cheerfully and charmingly, as though she had unexpectedly found a way out of the darkness.

‘I have an idea,’ she said in a gentle voice, and blushed as she spoke. ‘You will find it strange, it will seem to you a whim. But it is no whim. Will you listen to it? And will you agree that it will decide about you and me?’

Without understanding her, Anselm stared at Iris with worry in his pale features. Her smile compelled him to have confidence and say yes.

‘I want to give you a task,’ Iris said, becoming immediately very serious again.

‘Do so, it is your right,’ Anselm replied.

‘This is serious with me,’ she said, ‘and it is my last word. Will you accept it as it comes straight from my soul and not quibble or bargain about it, even if you don’t understand it right away?’

Anselm promised. Then she said, getting up and giving him her hand: ‘Often you have said to me that whenever you speak my name you are reminded of a forgotten something that was once important and holy in your eyes. That is a sign, Anselm, and it is what has drawn you to tell me all these years. I too believe you have lost and forgotten something important and holy in your soul, something that must be reawakened before you can find happiness and attain what is intended for you. - Farewell, Anselm! I give you my hand and I beg you: go and make sure you find again in your memory what it is you are reminded of by my name. On the day when you have rediscovered that, I will go with you as your wife wherever you wish and have no desires but yours.

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from 'Iris' by Hermann Hesse