Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946.
Other best-known works of this poet, novelist, and painter include The Glass Bead Game, which, also known as Magister Ludi, explore a search of an individual for spirituality outside society.
In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Young Germans desiring a different and more "natural" way of life at the time of great economic and technological progress in the country, received enthusiastically Peter Camenzind, first great novel of Hesse.
Throughout Germany, people named many schools. In 1964, people founded the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis, awarded biennially, alternately to a German-language literary journal or to the translator of work of Hesse to a foreign language. The city of Karlsruhe, Germany, also associates a Hermann Hesse prize.
What an enchanting and mesmerizing book! This book contains several essays, mostly travel essays written throughout Hesse鈥檚 life, and as a newcomer to Hesse鈥檚 work, I fell in love with his luscious prose, his penchant for sentimentality, and the humor instilled in his stream-of-consciousness writing style 鈥� I particularly enjoyed A Guest at the Spa, a recounting of his first visit to Baden to soak in the hot springs and 鈥渃ure鈥� his sciatica 鈥� I was laughing out loud at his description of his Dutch neighbors in the hotel, the pathetic experiences eating alone in the dining room with the other solitary guests, and the boredom he felt as he tried to fill his days with outings to the town and walking around the hotel grounds 鈥� I also enjoyed Journey to Nuremberg, how he hesitated to travel and visit friends and accept invitations to publicly read his poems 鈥� the polarity of his personality - he loved to see his friends, but he needed to balance that with his time alone - is something I could completely relate to - if I just make the effort to talk myself out of the house then I am usually very happy to visit 鈥�
What makes these essays so unique is how he completely makes his writing very personal 鈥� his narrative voice is so strongly his own 鈥� he has a tendency to be long-winded, but I enjoyed his mental excursions as he wove together all the silken strands of his poetic thoughts 鈥�
This is my introduction to the works of Hermann Hesse, and I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys forays into the minds of creative geniuses, to learn how artistic eccentricities manifest into inspired compositions and flowing narration 鈥� truly a book to be enjoyed 鈥�
After avoiding what I saw as a Hermann Hesse fad--and a Kurt Vonnegut fad and other such things--during high school, I finally broke and tried one his novels around the time of graduation. I liked it. I liked it a lot--enough to start picking up everything available by the author, reading the books during breaks from college--or, on one occasion, while travelling by bus to the District of Columbia for an anti-war demonstration.
This collection of a dozen autobiographical pieces came up relatively late during the reading frenzy, after most of his translated novels and at least one biography had been read. Consequently, I got more out of it than would have been the case if it had been read earlier.
On the copy from the shelf behind me I find a note next to the piece entitled "For Marulla" (a 1953 essay written, apparently, on the occasion of the death of a sister, when he was about 76). It simply says "touching". Much of Hesse's writing is like that.
A nice collection of short autobiographical stories of different periods in Hesse's life. They include stories of his childhood and school days, a story about his grandfather, stories of his travels including India and a fairly long story about his time spent at a spa for treatment for sciatic pain which evidently was made into a short book because one of his autobiographical stories is about a man confronting him twenty-five years later about the book. A fairly entertaining and, at times, candid look at Hermann Hesse, one of my all time favorite writers.
While I don't find this a book for the general reader, it is still quite full to the brim with Hesse's signature wisdom, contradiction, and confusion; written at various points in the author's long life, the essays intermingle with one another in intriguing, sometimes bewildering, ways. Here he contradicts what he said in the last essay, there he adds an interesting perspective to his previous injunction or reflection, and there he casts doubt upon his own ability to record himself in any meaningful way whatsoever. But even amidst the tempest in a teapot, we gain great clarity into why Hesse bothered writing at all (for, later in life, he would've rather painted). At the end of "A Guest at the Spa", which is by far the best essay in this collection, he states his purposes explicitly, simply, beautifully:
"If I were a composer, I could without difficulty write a melody for two voices, a melody that would consist of two lines, of two rows of tunes and notes that correspond with one another, complement one another, fight with one another, limit one another, but in any case at every instant, at every point in the sequence, have a most profound interrelationship and reciprocal effect. And anyone who can read music could read off my double melody and always see and hear with every tone its counter-tone, its brother, its enemy, its opposite. Now it is just this, this double voice and constantly advancing antithesis, this double line, that I would like to express in my own medium, in words, and I work myself to the bone trying and do not succeed. I am always attempting it and if anything at all lends tension and weight to my works, it is this intensive concern for something impossible, this wild battling for something unattainable. I would like to find expression for duality, I would like to write chapters and sentences where melody and counter-melody are always simultaneously present, where unity stands beside every multiplicity, seriousness beside every joke. For to me, life consists simply in this, in the fluctuation between two poles, in the hither and thither between the two foundation pillars of the world. I would like always to point with delight at the many-splendored multiplicity of the world, and just as constantly utter a reminder that oneness underlies this multiplicity; I would like always to show that the beautiful and the ugly, the bright and the dark, sin and holiness are always opposites just for the moment, that they constantly merge into each other. For me the highest utterances of mankind are those few sentences in which this duality has been expressed in magic signs, those few mysterious sayings and parables in which the great world antitheses are recognized simultaneously as necessary and as illusion. . . . This is my dilemma and problem. Much can be said about it, but it cannot be solved. To force the two poles of life together, to transcribe the dual voices in life's melody will never be possible for me. And yet I will follow the dark command within me and will be compelled again and again to make the attempt. This is the mainspring that drives my little clock."
In short, the man was trying to wrestle life into the written word: something every author attempts (most unconsciously), and every author fails to achieve. Anyone familiar with writing in any capacity knows that words will always fall short. And yet, what is more human than the endless and continual attempt?
[And I simply have to comment on the marginalia of the book's prior owner; for some reason, they've only ever highlighted passages in which Hesse's wife is mentioned. That, and where females crop up here and there. So, I'm a bit confused; maybe this was a text in a feminist critique course? Who knows.]
(This 欧宝娱乐 entry seems not to record the translator, Denver Lindley)
A careful selection of well-composed autobiographical essays, amounting to far less than a full recounting of Hesse's life -- of this we can be sure because he alludes in passing to many events which are kept private. This is a feature rather than a flaw, however, and the discretion shown in the composition makes the volume more useful than a simple chronological collection of all Hesse's autobiographical writing. The editor's introduction, however, was overlong.
I found Hesse to be at his most charming when discussing his childhood, with _Childhood of the Magician_ and _Life Story Briefly Told_, with their whimsical fantasy elements, being the most poetic pieces. He captures something of a rebellious and playful spirit which is easy to relate to. The greatest part of the later works is _A Guest at the Spa_, a very comic piece about a Hesse being bored out of his mind while taking the waters at Baden. I agree with Hesse's later judgement of _Journey to Nurembourg_ as being strictly inferior to it, despite being written at and about around the same time -- _Journey_ is very painfully lacking either the good humour of earlier work or the self-critical insight of _Steppenwolf_. Of the remaining short pieces, _On Moving to a New House_ is probably the best.
I find Hesse a confusing character. At times he is shockingly relatable, as if lifting something from my memory, and then in the very next paragraph he can write something so entirely alien to me that I wonder how we can even communicate. Nonetheless, you see his development as a writer very clearly displayed in this collection, the transition from the flowery to the introspective, as well as the inevitable and solemn decay revealed in the content if not in the style of the last compositions in the '50s.
Hesse no es un tipo simpatico. En algunos aspectos, resulta incluso despreciable. Apenas una o dos menciones de sus 3 esposas, como quien habla de la criada que de alguien a quien ama y con quien a tenido hijos, a los que tampoco menciona. Solo existe el mismo. Al menos, se proclam贸 contra ambas guerras mundiales denunciando a su pa铆s, con las graves consecuencias que eso le conllevo. Y furibundo anti nazi y opuesto al nacionalismo aleman. Si esto le redime o no, no lo s茅, pero al menos a mis ojos le mantienen dentro de la raza humana.
"I consider reality to be the last thing one need concern oneself about, for it is, tediously enough, always present, while more beautiful and necessary things demand out attention and care. Reality is what one must not under any circumstances worship and revere, for it is accidental, the offal of life. And it is no wise to be changed, this shabby, consistently disappointing and barren reality, except by our denying it and proving in the process that we are stronger than it is"
Narra sus batallas de adolescente, las relaciones con su padre, critica la Alemania nazi y a Europa, se refiere a la religi贸n y al Oriente, y muestra las profundas crisis del ser humano ante la historia. Algunas de las cosas que dice el libro: El que es obstinado obedece a otra ley, a una sola, absolutamente sagrada, a la ley que lleva en s铆 mismo, al "propio sentido". El psicoan谩lisis es algo muy importante para mi. La constante relaci贸n con lo pret茅rito, con la historia, con lo antiguo y lo primitivo era lo que hac铆a posible una vida intelectual. primero tuve que perder todo el respeto de s铆 mismo, no ten铆a otra cosa que hacer que hundir la mirada en el caos hasta el final, con la esperanza tan pronto viva, tan pronto moribunda, de volver a encontrar m谩s all谩 del caos naturaleza, inocencia. Toda persona despierta y verdaderamente consciente anda una o varias veces este angosto camino. Permitir vivir su vida a lo poco que hab铆a en m铆 de verdaderamente vivo y fuerte ... eso era la vida, eso era dios. Si fuera posible que un hombre eligiese personalmente una religi贸n, yo sin duda me hubiese adherido por deseo 铆ntimo a una religi贸n conservadora: a Confucio, al brahmanismo, o a la Iglesia de Roma. Hasta 1930 escrib铆 algunos libros, despu茅s volv铆 la espalda a este oficio para siempre. Nadie encuentra una oscuridad cada vez m谩s profunda que aquel que observa sus sensaciones m谩s fugaces y busca el origen de toda excitaci贸n. El alma de Europa est谩 negra de culpa y cr铆menes sin expiar. Los pueblos sojuzgados de los pa铆ses tropicales est谩n ante nuestra civilizaci贸n como acreedores de derechos m谩s antiguos e igualmente bien fundados que la clase trabajadora de Europa. Para m铆, la selva tropical sigue siendo, al menos simb贸licamente, la patria de la vida. Todo el Oriente respira religi贸n, como el Occidente respira raz贸n y t茅cnica. Tambi茅n en nosotros se notaba la "paz podrida". Los mejores est谩n callados. El hombre que ha encontrado el valor de ser 茅l mismo y ha o铆do la voz de su propio destino no tiene ya el m谩s m铆nimo inter茅s en la pol铆tica. Son dif铆ciles de soportar los tiempos sin creaci贸n. La m谩s peque帽a obra de arte, un dibujo a l谩piz con seis trazos o un poema de cuatro l铆neas, intentan audaz y ciegamente lo imposible. El budismo me parece cada vez m谩s una especie de reforma india. Desde el principio de la guerra han deseado a su propio pueblo la derrota con el coraz贸n sangrante y muchas veces la muerte para s铆 mismos. La historia de este sector del pueblo alem谩n no ha sido a煤n escrita. La cultura humana nace de la sublimaci贸n de los impulsos animales en otros m谩s espirituales, por el pudor, la fantas铆a y el conocimiento. Acept贸 los grandes premios de los 煤ltimos a帽os, el Premio Goethe, el Premio Nobel y el Premio de la Paz, pero no se someti贸 al ceremonial ni fue a recibirlos a Francfort o Estocolmo.