Hermann Hesse

[RevolverNo9]

Last year I got into Hermann Hesse in a big way, having read Narzis & Goldmund, Steppenwolfe, The Glass Bead Game and Siddharta. Anyone read him and have any views about the themes or anything else?


(Narzis & Goldmund is my favourite by the way!)

[RevolverNo9]

No-one's heard of him!!? Oh well, you all better give him a read then.

[freegirl]

I've heard of him in the bookpresentations that students are forced to give in germanclass.... :P

[RevolverNo9]

:) That's good.

He's preoccupied with the attempt of reconciliation within the individual. Can ascetic and worldly be brought to peace? The conflict between material and mind is seen in The Glass Bead Game where within nations pedagogical provinces are created where the elite of the academic cream are discovered at an early age and sent to school in Castalia, where they spend their whole life in academia, philology, maths and -above all- music being the highest discipline. Then they play the Game, a sort of dialectical discourse where players react to each other with the whole arena of scholasticism. To this end every piece of knowledge is classified by a symbol. The protaganist forsees the risk present towards the province - that it can not remain rarified as the world of politics brew.

In Narzis and Goldmund the former is a beautiful, restless, adventurous soul who leaves the monastry in the times of the Holy Roman Empire to seek sights, cities and women. He finds this and too plague, murder and desperation. His most close and intimate older friend Goldmund remains at the monastry in study and contemplation.

Sidhartta is Hesse's tale of the son of a bramhin and his journey towards enlightenment, written in an almost biblical style. Crucially he has to go through a period of sybiritic living before he can return to the path. The author was fascinated by Eastern philosophy. He believed that the individual had to make changes within themselves.

Steppenwolfe follows the humanisation of Harry Heller, who can only identify himself as part man, part wolf of the steppes. He shakes off his introversion as a meeting with a girl leads to him being dragged into the bohemian underworld of interwar Germany. Soon a highly sexually charged menage-a-trois develops between the two and a Spanish trumpeter, Pablo. The novel discreetly descends into surreality culminating in 'The Magic Theatre', a strange world of doors leading to the most both bemusing and beautiful hallucinogenic events. Along with Demian this made him a big hit with the psychedelic generation who adopted him in the 60s.

So... there we are.