For any literary teenager in the '60s, reading Kerouac's "On the Road" was a must. But immediately following that came Hermann Hesse's study of the Buddha's early life, "Siddhartha." It comes as no surprise, for Hesse was one of the major...
[more]For any literary teenager in the '60s, reading Kerouac's "On the Road" was a must. But immediately following that came Hermann Hesse's study of the Buddha's early life, "Siddhartha." It comes as no surprise, for Hesse was one of the major literary influences on the Beat generation ("Siddhartha" was
translated into English in the early '50s). A critic of bourgeois values, a Jungian, and always engaged in the mystical search, Hesse created a literature that was based upon the credo "Truth is lived, not taught."
Hesse's rebellion against formal education clearly illustrates this point. Born in 1877 in the Black Forest, Hesse dropped out of school early, declaring he'd be "a poet or nothing." His education began in earnest with an apprenticeship in a bookseller's shop. There, Hesse read voraciously on his own, soon trying his hand at writing poetry as well as criticism.
World War I brought him to Switzerland, where he settled for the rest of his life as a lifelong pacifist. The death of his father led him into Jungian psychoanalysis, and contributed to the novel "Demian." The book captured the attention of the leading philosophers and artists of the day, establishing Hesse as one of the major voices erupting in European literature.
With the publication of "Siddhartha" in 1922, Hesse was on his way to solidifying his theory of spirituality, which posited Eastern thought as a valid and necessary alternative to the values existing in Europe at the time. Hesse traveled to India (where his mother had been born as a missionary's daughter) and adopted much of Buddhism's transcendental philosophy. Gautama, Hesse writes, "had one single goal -- to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow -- to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience true thought..."
Soon, however, he began turning his attention to the problems this path encounters in society. 1927's "Steppenwolf" explores humankind's dual nature and the search for a true self. Steppenwolf struggles between his rebellious individuality and the bourgeois world around him. Hesse believed that we all have a doppelganger -- the trick was in uniting it with our core self. Duality is the dilemma of the artist, as well, who strives to retain a purity beyond the values of society. Hesse explored this theme further in "Narcissus and Goldman."
World War II created perhaps the greatest spiritual crisis for Hesse, as he saw his homeland overrun by a vicious dictator. He remained, as always, a pacifist, but couldn't help but condemn the atrocities occurring on his mother soil. "Magister Ludi and the Glass Bead Game" was the result. In the novel, Hesse posits his faith in the aesthetics of nature: beauty, he says, is the only true path to salvation. The novel helped to earn him the Nobel Prize in 1946. A heroic influence across the seas in the America which he never visited, Hesse died in 1962.
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