MITHYL BANYMANDHUB
Hermann Hesse is read in our times because the corpus of his writings is an admixture of German Romanticism, Eastern religion and Jungian psychoanalysis through which he explores the theme of the isolation of the artist and the fundamental duality of existence.
His First Prose Work
Hermann Hesse was born in Calw, Württemberg, Germany, on July 2, 1877, to Johannes and Marie Hesse. The family moved to Basel in 1881, where Hesse acquired Swiss citizenship. He returned to Calwin in 1889 and attended the Latin school in Göppingen during the years 1890 and 1891 to prepare himself for the Württemberg regional examinations, He had to renounce his Swiss citizenship to qualify. In 1891-1892, he was a student at the seminary at Maulbronn, which he left after seven months because he had decided to be a writer. 
In 1892 he underwent exorcism treatments in Bad Boll, attempted suicide, spent three months in a clinic for nervous diseases in Stetten and was admitted to the Gymnasium in Cannstatt. Over the next ten years he worked in a clockwork factory in Calw and in bookshops in Tübingen and Basel. During this time, he began to write a novel Schweinigel (The Hedgehog), the manuscript of which has disappeared. In 1899, he published his first prose work, Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht (An Hour Beyond Midnight).
In 1901, Hesse made his first trip to Italy. He returned after two years to finish Peter Camenzind, his first successful novel, which appeared in 1904, (English translation, 1961). In the course of the same year, he married Maria Bernoulli and moved to Gaienhofen on Lake Constance, where he began a career as a freelance writer. He published Unterm Rad (The Prodigy, 1957, also published as Beneath the Wheel, 1968) and founded März, a liberal weekly directed against the personal authority of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Gertrud came out of press in 1910. It was published as a Gertrude and I in 1915 and as Gertrude in 1955. Unterwegs: Gerdichte (On the Road) was published in 1911.
Lifelong Interest in Indian Philosophy
In the same year he travelled to India, a journey that resulted in Aus Indien (1913; Sketches from an Indian Journey) and a lifelong interest in Eastern philosophy. Rosshalde appeared in 1914 (English translation, 1970), the year World War I was declared. Hesse volunteered for active duty but was found unfit for military service. He was assigned to the embassy in Bern, where he edited newspapers and set up a publishing company for prisoners of War. In 1915, when his father died and his wife and youngest son fell seriously ill, Hermann Hesse suffered a nervous breakdown that led him to psychotherapy with J. B. Lang, a student of C. G. Jung.
In the course of 1919, he moved to Montagnola, Switzerland, where he lived till 1931. That year also saw the publication of Demian (English translation,1923), a book that gathered a cult following all through Europe. Blick ins Chaos (In Sight of Chaos) was published in 1920. It was followed the next year by a collection of selected poems Ausgewählte Gerdichte. In the same year Hesse suffered an emotional crisis that lasted eighteen months, during which he underwent psychoanalysis with Jung himself. His most popular novel, which was adapted for the screen, Siddhartha (English translation, 1951), appeared in 1922. In 1924, he became a Swiss citizen again. In 1926, he was elected member of the Prussian Academy of Writers, from which he resigned in 1931 after expressing fears that the academy was deceiving people about contemporary German politics. 
Der Steppenwolf (Steppenwolf) considered as his most “bizarre” work appeared in 1929. In 1930, Hesse published Narziss and Goldmund (Death and the Lover, 1932, also published as Narcissus and Goldmund, 1968). In 1932, he published the third work inspired by his travels in the Far East, Die Morgenland farht (1932, The Journey to the East, 1956).
Award of the Nobel Prize
Between 1932 and 1943, Hesse wrote and published many stories and poems but spent most of his time concentrating on his masterpiece, Das Glasperlenspiel (1943; Magister Ludi, 1949, also published as The Glass Bead Game, 1969). The novel was not only the culmination of a lifetime of supreme literary achievement but also led directly to the bestowing of the Nobel Prize in Literature on him in 1946. Between 1939 and 1945, many of Hesse’s works, including Steppenwolf and Narcissus and Goldmund, were banned in Germany. The Glass Bead Game was published in Switzerland in 1943. By 1946, however, the publication of his works was resumed in Germany and in the course of the same year he was awarded the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt.
His works collected in six volumes appeared in 1952 to mark his seventy-fifth birthday and succeeding years saw the publication of facsimile editions, correspondence, incidental pieces and new and old poetry. In 1956 the Hermann Hesse Prize was established by the society for the Advancement of German Art in Baden-Württemberg.
Pervasive Love of Nature
The early works contain many of the themes that appear in Hesse’s later writings. One of these is the author as confessor-observer who looks at life objectively and perceives a higher resolution above its superficial contradictions. There is also a pervasive love of nature throughout Hesse’s works. The hero of Peter Camenzind strives to obey his own inner law just as seeds obey theirs. His experiences as a student in the city expose him to the artificiality of humankind, and he comes to feel that his mission is to lead the world back to God through Nature. Peter Camenzind also contains another of Hesse’s central themes: a moment of awakening when intuition and intelligence ignite in a burst of inspiration. The Prodigy chronicles the rebellion of its main characters, Hans and Hermann, against a dehumanizing education system. Hermann has the courage to escape while Hans retreats into a world of madness and ultimately commits suicide. The theme of the inaccessible woman dominates Gertrude. Similar goddess figures can be found in Peter Camenzind and particularly in Demian, where Frau Eva, Demian’s mother, is depicted as a shadowy Earth mother.
Artistic Reflection of Rebirth
Discouraged by the events of World War I and devastated by domestic tragedies, Hesse underwent psychoanalysis to emerge spiritually reborn. The artistic reflection of the rebirth is Demian, in which Hesse makes conscious use of dreams, memories and associations. He published it under the name of its narrator, Emil Sinclair because he wished to express the change of personality he had experienced as a result of psychoanalysis and it was his desire to appeal to a more intellectual kind of reader. There is only one principle that Demian teaches: that people have a duty to be themselves.
In Siddhartha, although the main character’s life closely parallels that of the Buddha, the novel, with its synthesis of minor religions, is really the profession of faith of a seeker who cannot accept any doctrine but who, when he finds his “way”, is able to approve each doctrine and share in the universal brotherhood of all those who have glimpsed something of the divine and the eternal.
In Steppenwolf, Harry Haller purges his soul of time and personality in a vain attempt to reach the realm of the Immortals. Despite his failure to see the eternal behind the temporary and to laugh at the game of life, the novel ends on a positive note for him. Narcissus and Golmund deals with the conflict between the Spirit and Nature. It is embodied in the relationship between Narcissus, the analytical thinker who represents the Spirit and Goldmund, the dreamy artist who represents Nature.
Death of the Personal Self
After Narcissus and Golmund, Hesse’s perspective again changes. In his last two prose works the individual quest is no more at the centre of the novel. In The Journey to the East, the message is that the personal self must die and the suprapersonal self must increase. This implies the liberation of the true self and the ability to view life as a game. The Journey described in this work is not geographical but spiritual. The novel also celebrates artists as artist- saints, for among the travellers are famous writers, painters and musicians.
The Glass Bead Game has been hailed as Hesse’s magnum opus. Like in The Journey to the East, it expresses faith in “the indestructibility of humanity’s spiritual culture”. The novel repeats the major motifs in Hermann Hesse’s other works, particularly the essential duality of human nature, which is represented by contrasting characters who form bonds to ultimately transcend their differences and result in an all-encompassing oneness. The artist-saint-the self-fulfilled individual- is embodied in such characters as Goldmund, Demian, Siddhartha and the Wayfarer to the East.
The Quest for Identity
Hermann Hesse’s works are fragments of a long confession, reflecting a single human being and his reflection to the world and to his own self. Although they are primarily concerned with self-recognition and self-realization, these spiritual biographies deal with the human condition in general. They bear a mystical quality in the way Hesse traces the quest for identity in a universe that is either hostile or indifferent. The quest is not undertaken with the dogma of an established religion, for then obedience to an established law would suffice. To Hesse, one finds the way according to one’s own inner law.
He died on August 9, 1962, in Montagnola, Ticino, Switzerland.
Bibliography
1.Freedman, Ralph. Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of crisis, a Biography. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
2.Mileck, Joseph. Hermann Hesse: Life, Work and Criticism. Fredericton, Canada: York Press, 1984.
3. Whissen, Thomas. Hermann Hesse. New York: Magill’s Survey of World Literature, 1993.
4.Ziolkowski, Theodore. The Novels of Hermann Hesse. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965.
