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Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse was born in Germany in 1877 and died in Switzerlanf in 1962. In 1911 he made a journey to Ceylon and Indonesia. Here he got acquainted with the far eastern religions, and from them were inspired to write the little story about Siddhartha" which was published in 1922. Hesse emigrated to Switzerland in 1912, but returned to Germany and served as a volunteering soldier on german side in the first world war. Later he developed a strong reluctance against the military and the nationalsocialism. He was rewarded the Nobel Prize in 1946. During the sixties and seventies he became a some kind of cult writer in the american youth culture, and the rock band Steppenwolf took its name after his most famous novel.

"Siddhartha" (1922)

is a short story from the time when the enlighted Gotama Buddha lived and walked around in India. Siddhartha and Govinda are two young men in search of enlightenment and wisdom. They join a group of samans, that is wandering mendicant friars. They meet the enlighted Gotama, and Govinda decides to follow him, while Siddhartha decides to follow his own path. Up to then he has lived as an ascetic and friar and regarded his physical surroundings as something inferior, something that hides the real truth, which is to be found beyond and behind. Now he tears himself loose from this way of regarding life, and starts instead finding joy in looking at earth and sky, plants and animals, colours and sounds. He goes in for living the way ordinary people live. He meets the beautiful curtisane Kamala who teaches him the secrets of the art of love, and he is taught how to earn money by the merchant Kamaswami. He becomes a rich man. But deep down he is still a saman, a human used to survive in the utmost poorness. Deep down he regards his new life, the money-making and everything as a game, which he despises. He develops a need to play dice, and in that game he loses all his money and wins it back, several times. One day he dsicovers that he no longer finds the same joy in looking at earth and sky, colours and sounds. The very same day he leaves everything, his house, his money, Kamala and everything, og goes out into the forests again. There he meets the ferryman Vasuveda who lives at the bank of a big river. Even though he is only a ferryman, Vasuveda turns out to be wise man. His wisdom he has achieved by listening to the river. The river actually knows everything worth knowing. Siddhartha settles with Vasuveda, he also becomes a ferryman, and learns to listen to wisdom of the river.

This was the first book I read that gave some insight in "eastern wisdom" and subsequently it led to my interest for Zen-buddhism and Taoism, which I still hold to be far more advanced philosophies than Christianity and Islam with their emphasis on sinfall, heaven and hell etc.

"Steppenwolf" (1927)

("Not for anybody, just for crackbrained")

"Steppenwolf" was published in 1927, nine years after the end of the first world war and twelve years before the beginning of the second. The main character, Harry Haller, is very conscious about this, he is strongly against the war, and talks a lot both about the war that has been and the one he knows will come. But he is surrounded by a society that still romantizes the war. All in all Harry Haller sees this society as something strange and alien, he feels a deep contempt for its institutions, the church, the army and other authorities. In the face of the dominant culture he feels only tiredness and depression. He is an outsider and a deeply unhappy person. He rents a coupple of rooms in a boarding-house, where he spends his days reading his books and pondering about his existence. He is very concerned about important cultural people like Goethe, Mozart, Bach and Nietzche.

So, Harry Haller is a lonely and unhappy outsider. Besides that, he also regards himself to split between being a spiritual being and a lonely wolf, an animal disguised as a human being.

He meets a woman who takes part in the night life of the city, and knows a lot of people of the kind that Harry has regarded superficial and inferior, people enjoying jazz music and dance. This woman forces Harry to learn himself to dance foxtrot and join her to a carnival, activities Harry finds disgusting, but which he reluctantly let himself be persuaded to take part in. Little by little he realizes that this woman, in spite of being so different from him, also shares his reluctance against the society that surrounds them. But she has got a very different attitude towards it, and helps him to see life in a more playful way. So he throws himself into the carnival and the pleasures it can serve. And when the carnival comes to an end, they continue to The Magic Theatre where Harry is exposed to a series of caleidoscopic thetarical experiences, not only as a spectator but in a high degree also as an actor.