Hermann Hesse

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Hermann Hesse

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1tros
Editat: jul. 7, 2015, 1:39 pm


Hermann Hesse - An inward journey

http://dw.com/p/1Fp1c

2Randy_Hierodule
jul. 8, 2015, 9:23 am

I must have read those Bantam paperbacks to pulp in high school. I'd cut class and hide in a corner of the library. After I discovered what the kids in the woods were doing with their illicit free time, I lapsed into Kerouac.

3tros
jul. 8, 2015, 9:30 am


I read steppenwolf 50 years ago or so, not sure if I've read anything else.

4Randy_Hierodule
jul. 8, 2015, 10:52 am

Demian was my favorite, some sort of avian-psyche metaphor: "the bird flies to god. That god's name is Abraxas".

5tros
jul. 8, 2015, 11:34 am


steppenwolf and hunger were very early favorites.

6kswolff
jul. 8, 2015, 11:56 am

I remember reading Hermann Hesse in high school and college; in and around my Beatnik Phase. There's also a great satiric portrait of Hesse in Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.

I enjoyed Steppenwolf, Beneath the Wheel, Demian, and Narcissus and Goldmund The Glass Bead Game is on my TBR List and I recently picked up Crisis, his First World War-era poetry collection.

7paradoxosalpha
jul. 8, 2015, 12:19 pm

I read The Glass Bead Game (and posted a review) earlier this year. Steppenwolf is on my TBR pile.

8rolandperkins
jul. 8, 2015, 3:42 pm

Hesse is the only writer I can think of
who wrote BOTH one of the best* books
I ever read - - AND one of the worst**!

*In case you canʻt figure it for yourself
my "Best" is Steppenwolf and my
"Worst" Demian.

9DavidX
Editat: jul. 15, 2015, 1:57 pm

Steppenwolf was a favorite of mine in college some thirty years ago. I've reread it a couple of times over the years. The Glass Bead Game has been languishing in my tbr pile for ages and I have long entertained intentions to read Narcissus and Goldmund and Demian. Though I'm not sure if anything can compare to the vivid experience of the first time I read "Steppenwolf".

10kswolff
jul. 15, 2015, 10:33 am

While digging through my library, I found my cache of Hermann Hesse vintage paperbacks -- examples here:

https://bookshopsiouxfalls.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dsc08220.jpg

I'd say one of the initial attractions for Hesse were from these paperbacks, the images a combination of implied sensuality and enigmatic mysticism. Plus they were cheap and relatively easy to find. Back in the day before David Bowie's Rykodisc catalog was still in print and The Internet was still a new phenomenon.

Not sure the exact genealogy, but either Hesse led to me to The Beats or vice versa, with digressions into Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, and Theodore Roszak (Roszak's Making of a Counterculture was an influential text in my early development and my appreciation for The East as spiritual inspiration/raw material/exoticism.)

Apart from a couple poems in The Crisis, it's been a long time since I've read any of his stuff.

11poetontheone
jul. 22, 2015, 12:21 am

I read most of Hesse's major novels in the last ten years through my teens and early twenties. I loved every single one. Glass Bead Game might be his most fully realized and "best" work. However, I'm partial to Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and my absolute favorite Hesse novel is Demian. It might be my favorite novel overall just because it spoke to me more deeply than any novel I'd ever read. It was one of those reading experiences where the words on the page articulated thoughts and feelings I thought no one else experienced or knew in quite the same way. I know it sounds a bit corny. Regardless, I recently got a large Abraxas tattoo on my arm in honor of the novel.

12paradoxosalpha
ag. 6, 2015, 9:59 am

So I just started reading Steppenwolf, and when I mentioned it to my Other Reader, she said "re-reading, you mean?" When I said, no, reading for the first time, she said she felt shocked, betrayed even, that I had not read this book in my youth.

Then, strangely enough, I read the 1961 "Author's Note," where Hesse speculates that much readerly misunderstanding of his intentions as a writer in this novel was "by reason of the fact that this book, written when I was fifty years old and dealing, as it does, with the problems of that age, often fell into the hands of very young readers."

13BillsProtennoia
ag. 13, 2015, 7:05 pm

12: nice find.

I have only read The Glass Bead Game, and that well afrer adolescence. I remember liking it, but neglected to lursue Hesse further since I bought all the scuttlebutt about him being best appreciated by dewy youth. This is in a way license to finally get to Steppenwolf.

14paradoxosalpha
set. 10, 2015, 10:42 am

I posted my review of Steppenwolf this morning.

15elenchus
Editat: set. 10, 2015, 12:27 pm

Read the review before I saw this thread. I read Hesse in college but don't recall what, perhaps short fiction or excerpts. None of it stayed with me, but I've had Glass Bead Game on my wishlist for ages now. I expect I'll get a lot more out of it now than if I'd read it in my 20s!

ETA

That's a great anecdote about your Other Reader. Has she re-read it, I wonder, and what does she think of it now as compared to before?

16paradoxosalpha
set. 10, 2015, 12:49 pm

I tried to chat her up about it after I finished, but her memory of it was very vague -- it's been a couple of decades, after all.

I read a little of Demian auf deutsch as a classroom exercise in high school, and Siddartha for my own entertainment in college, but it's been in more recent years that I've really enjoyed his work: Journey to the East, The Glass Bead Game, and Steppenwolf.

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