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 German
poet and novelist, who depicted in his works the duality of spirit
and nature, body versus mind and individual's spiritual search outside
the restrictions of society. Hesse was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1946. Several of Hesse's novels depict
the protagonists' struggle for enlightenment. A spiritual guide
assists the hero in his quest and shows the way beyond everyday
world.
"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That
is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the
images outside them for reality and never allow the world within
to assert itself."
Hermann Hesse was born into a family of pious missionaries and
religious publishers in the Black Forest town of Calw, in the German
state of Wüttenberg. His parents expected him to follow the family
tradition in theology. Hesse entered the Protestant seminary at
Maulbronn in 1891, but he was expelled from the school. After unhappy
experiences at a secular school, Hesse worked in several jobs. He
was a bookshop clerk, a mechanic and as a book dealer in Tübingen,
where he joined literary circle called Le Petit Cénacle. In 1899
Hesse published his first works, ROMANTISCHE LIEDER and EINE STUNDE
HINTER MITTERNACHT.
ELISABETH
Ich soll erzählen
die Nacht ist schon spät -
willst du mich quälen,
schöne Elisabeth?
Daran ich dichte
und du dazu,
meine Liebesgeschichte
ist dieser Abend und du.
Du musst nicht stören
die Reime verwehn.
Bald wirst du sie hören,
hören und nicht verstehen.
 Hesse
became a freelance writer in 1904, when his novel PETER CAMENZIND,
a Rousseauesque 'return to nature' story, gained literary success.
The book reflected Hesse's disgust with the educational system.
In the same year he married Maria Bernoulli, with whom he had three
children. A visit in India in 1911 gave start to Hesse's studies
of Eastern religions and novel SIDDHARTHA (1922). It was based on
the early life of Gautama Buddha. The culture of ancient Hindu and
the ancient Chinese had a great influence on Hesse's works. For
several years in the mid-1910s Hesse underwent psychoanalysis under
Gustav Jung and his assistant J.B. Lang.
In 1912 Hesse and his family took a permanent residence in Switzerland.
In the novel ROSSHALDE (1914) Hesse explored the question of whether
the artist should marry. The author's replay was negative. During
these years his wife suffered from growing mental instability and
his son was seriously ill. Hesse spent the years of World War I
in Switzerland, attacking the prevailing moods of militarism and
nationalism. He also promoted the interests of prisoners of war.
Hesse, who shared with Aldous Huxley a belief in the need for spiritual
self-realisation, was condemned for his persistent pacifism.
Hesse's breakthrough novel was DEMIAN (1919). It was highly praised
by Thomas Mann, who compared its importance to James Joyce's Ulysses
and André Gide's The Counterfeiters. The novel attracted
young veterans of the WW I, and reflected Hesse's personal crisis
and interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. Demian was first
published under the name of its narrator, Emil Sinclair, but later
Hesse admitted his authorship. It was a Faustian tale of a man torn
between his orderly bourgeois existence and a chaotic world of sensuality.
In is said to provide an unusual justification of German soldiers,
who were said to have killed their enemies impersonally.
 Leaving
his family in 1919, Hesse moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland.
In 1922 appeared SIDDHARTHA, a novel of asceticism set in the time
of Buddha. Its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual
guide to the generation of American Beat poets. Hesse's second marriage
to Ruth Wenger (1924-27) was unhappy. These difficult years produced
DER STEPPENWOLF (1927). The protagonist, Harry Haller, is a self-absorbed
man in midlife crisis, who must chose between a life of action and
one of contemplation. Haller faces his shadow self, named Hermine.
This Doppelgänger figure introduces Harry to drinking, dancing,
music, sex and drugs, teaching him to find his true self.
During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Hesse stayed aloof from
politics. His books continued to be published in Germany during
the Nazi regime, and were defended from individual attacks by an
official circular in 1937, though he was placed on the Nazi blacklist
in 1943.
"The secret of Hesse's work lies in the creative power of
his poetic similes, in the "magic theatre" of the panoramas of
the soul that he conjures up before the eyes and ears of the world.
It lies in the identity of idea and appearances that, to be sure,
his work - like any work of human hands - can do more that suggest."
(Hugo Ball in Hermann Hesse, 1947)
In 1931 Hesse married his third wife, Ninon Dolbin, and began in
the same year work on his masterpiece DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, which
was published in 1943. The setting is in the future in the imaginary
province of Castilia, an intellectual, elitist community, dedicated
to mathematics and music. Knecht ('servant') is chosen by the Old
Music Master as a suitable aspirant to the Order. He goes to the
city of Waldzell to study, and there he catches the attention of
the Magister Ludi, Thomas von der Trave (an allusion to Hesse's
rival Thomas Mann). He is the Master of the Games, a system by which
wisdom is communicated. Knecht dedicates himself to the Game, and
on the death of Thomas, he is elected Magister Ludi. After a decade
in his office Knecht tries to leave to start a life devoted to realizing
human rights, but accidentally drowns in a mountain lake. - In 1942
Hesse sent the manuscript to Berlin for publication. It was not
accepted by the Nazis and the work appeared first time in Zürich.
 After
receiving the Nobel Prize Hesse wrote no major works. He died of
cerebral haemorrhage in his sleep on August 9, 1962 at the age of
eighty-five. Hesse's other central works include In Sight of
Chaos (1923), a collection of essays, the novel Narcissus
and Goldmund (1930), set in the Middle Ages and repeating the
theme of two contrasting types of men, and Poems (1970).
In the 1960s and 1970s Hesse became a cult figure for young readers.
The interest declined in the 1980s. In 1969 the Californian rock
group Sparrow changed their name to Steppenwolf after Hesse's
classic, and released 'Born to be Wild'. Hesse's books have gained
readers from the New Age movements and he is still one of the best-selling
German-speaking writers throughout world.
For further reading: Herman Hesse by Hugo Ball (1947);
The Novels of Hermann Hesse by T. Ziolkowski (1965); Hermann Hesse
by F. Baumer (1969); Hermann Hesse, His Mind and Art by M. Boulby
(1967); C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse by M. Serrano (1971); An Outline
of the Works of Hermann Hesse by R. Farquharson (1973); Hesse
by T.J. Ziolkowski (1973); Hermann Hesse: A Collection of Criticism,
ed. by J. Liebmann (1977); Hermann Hesse: Biography and Bibliography
by J. Mileck (1977); Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel: A Concealed
Defense of the Mother World by Edmund Remys (1983); The Hero's
Quest for the Self by D.G. Richards (1987); Hermann Hesse's Fictions
of the Self by E.L. SATELZIG (1988), Reflection and Action by
James N. Hardin (1991) - See: Romain Rolland, who was interested
in Indian philosophy. Hesse's novel Demian was based on Carl Jung's
theories of individuation. James Joyce's daughter Lucia was among
Jung's patients in the 1930s. See also: Zelda Fitzgerald.
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