Introduction1. The Brahmin's Son
2. With the Samanas
3. Gotama
4. Awakening
5. Kamala
6. Amongst the People
7. Samsara
8. By the River
9. The Ferryman
10. The Son
11. Om
12. Govinda
In the 1960s, especially in the United States, the novels of
Hermann Hesse were widely embraced by young readers who found in
his protagonists a reflection of their own search for meaning in a
troubled world. Hesse's rich allusions to world mythologies,
especially those of Asia, and his persistent theme of the
individual striving for integrity in opposition to received
opinions and mass culture appealed to a generation in upheaval and
in search of renewed values.
Born in southern Germany in 1877, Hesse came from a family of
missionaries, scholars, and writers with strong ties to India. This
early exposure to the philosophies and religions of Asia-filtered
and interpreted by thinkers thoroughly steeped in the intellectual
traditions and currents of modern Europe-provided Hesse with some
of the most pervasive elements in his short stories and novels,
especially Siddhartha (1922) and Journey to the East (1932).
Hesse concentrated on writing poetry as a young man, but his first
successful book was a novel, Peter Camenzind (1904). The income it
brought permitted him to settle with his wife in rural Switzerland
and write full-time. By the start of World War I in 1914, Hesse had
produced several more novels and had begun to write the
considerable number of book reviews and articles that made him a
strong influence on the literary culture of his time.
During the war, Hesse was actively involved in relief efforts.
Depression, criticism for his pacifist views, and a series of
personal crises-combined with what he referred to as the "war
psychosis" of his times-led Hesse to undergo psychoanalysis with J.
B. Lang, a student of Carl Jung. Out of these years came Demian
(1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the
orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing
world of sensual experience. This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse's
subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927),
and Narcissus and Goldmund (1930). Hesse worked on his magnum opus,
The Glass Bead Game (1943), for twelve years. This novel was
specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1946. Hesse died at his home in Switzerland in
1962.
Calling his life a series of "crises and new beginnings," Hesse
clearly saw his writing as a direct reflection of his personal
development and his protagonists as representing stages in his own
evolution. In the 1950s, Hesse described the dominant theme of his
work: "From Camenzind to Steppenwolf and Josef Knecht [protagonist
of The Glass Bead Game], they can all be interpreted as a defense
(sometimes also as an SOS) of the personality, of the individual
self."
Joachim Neugroschel (translator) has won three PEN translation
awards and the French-American translation prize. He has also
translated Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Sacher-Masoch's Venus
in Furs, both for Penguin Classics. He lives in Brooklyn, New
York.
Ralph Freedman (introducer), Professor Emeritus of Comparative
Literature at Princeton University, is acclaimed for his
biographies Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis, and Life of a Poet:
Rainer Maria Rilke.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
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