Thoughts on Hemann Hesse?

>>24478496 (OP)
One of the greatest writers ever, a genius. But people with short attention spans cannot appreciate him.

A fucking faggot that started the self-help stupid shit

>>24478516
That was Nietzsche

>>24478496 (OP)
One of my favorite writers and I feel deeply connected to him. No matter what I read I feel that he had a kindred soul. A great mystic and religious man as well who understood the holiness of art.

>>24478527
he is your spiritual godfather, anon

I hated Steppenwolf when I first read it for how it seemed to praise degeneracy but now that I have gained new life experiences I might need to read it again because it might be absolute kino.

>>24478554
I certainly discovered a lot thanks to him

>>24478564
And what were those experiences exactly?

>>24479259
he got fucked up the ass in the back of a mcdonald's bathroom

>>24478496 (OP)
Steppenwolf is one of the coolest words

Hedonistic new age homo with a hard-on for pajeets and chinks. The reason we have a bunch of crystal wearing middle-aged women who listen to sitar music today.

>>24478496 (OP)
I wanted to like him. I started reading Steppenwolf, liked it, but set it aside and forgot about it. I picked it up again a few years later, specifically remembering I liked the first 100 pages, and it was just meh.

What's the point in Steppenwolf? Is it literally just "be yourself"?
Harry (the steppenwolf) tries to shut down a part of himself, and it turns him into a half-person. But then a manic pixie girlfriend (probably a norm for the place and time) shows him the way and showers him with her friend's tasty pussy.
He was enlightened.

The surreal scenes in the theatre were nice, the overall writing is good, but an I missing something here? A moral lesson, a guide to unlocking my own spirituality, perhaps.

>>24479402
You won't understand if you have never been in such a situation/state of mind yourself.

>>24479423
Seems like you're unable or unwilling to put it into words.

It's also sad to see that Steppenwolf is apparently the only book /lit/ knows of him.

>>24479428
The book is pretty clear about what happens.

I liked Siddhartha both times I read it idc what /lit/ says.
Eventually Ill make it through the rest of my Hesse shelf

>>24478527
>>24479376
well which one is it

>>24479447
https://science-media.org/userfiles/574/papers/574_paper_1145.pdf

>>24479447
Read Siddhartha and judge for yourself, it's really short. Knock it out in a couple hours. It's about a pajeet hindu dude who goes full on new age mystic. "I sat by the river and learned the secret to life" type shit. It's gay as hell.

>>24479491
How superficial do you have to be to base your whole image of Hesse solely on Siddhartha lmao

>>24479497
If Hesse was born in our era, he’d be wearing a dashiki, smoking dope a Persian rug, and selling reiki sessions, crystals, and other new age snake oil to the spiritually gullible.

>>24479526
He was a devout Christian, so no, he wouldn't do that.

>>24479542
lol.. uh no

>>24479402
>>24479428

It's not a book for children. You have to be 40+yo to get it

>>24479526
Hesse created that movement so not likely

>>24479565
Read more than one book by him and you will find out

>>24479704
See, the thing about Christianity is that it requires fidelity to the Buble, not some weird ass fusion of world religions and personal intuition dressed up as deep spirituality.

Syncretism isn’t faith, it’s confusion. Calling Hesse a devout Christian is totally fuckin' absurd. lol

I only tried to read Damian but it was super gay

>>24478496 (OP)
I enjoyed demian and Siddhartha but I thought steppenwolf was shit. Might continue with glass bead game or narcissus and goldmund

>>24480370
Demian was his worst book

>>24479692
>It's not a book for children. You have to be 40+yo redditor to get it

>>24479431
>>24479692
>if you didn't get it, it's not for you
>if you don't know what X is, you don't need it
Very helpful, guys. Thanks for taking time to respond

>>24481785
WHt are you are lookin gfor, a summary?

>>24482431
Not a summary, I read the book. Explanation of a possible measing, I guess, to help me connect the dots.
Last paragraph here >>24479402

>>24482579
It's Hesse trying to rekindle the two sides of his being (basically the theme of all his books): the spiritual man vs. the material man, soul vs. body.

brb i'll try to find the purpose of my life by clinging to the skirt of the image of my best friend's mother.

>>24482593
That character is basically a saint. I would be clinging to the skirt of a saint as well, if I knew one.

>>24482597
clinging to saints is anti-intellectual

>>24478496 (OP)
Is the Glass Bead Game good? Been on my reading list for years.

>>24482709
not to mention that when she had their little intellectual parties, all he wanted to do was to have a chance to make out with her.

>>24482741
His best book.

>>24482741
Yea, read Journey to the East first though

>>24482579
It's basically a reaffirmation of life. Why HH should go on living when really he just wants to die.

>>24480911
redditors are unlikely to ever have that kind of spiritual and existential crisis that HH had. HH was a leading intellectual of his country. Those who understand this book best are intellectuals and artists in the middle or late part of their career.

>>24480370
>it was le gay yknow
What a sad idiot you're

>>24484224
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.

>>24479542
lol

>>24484272
>Abraxas
Some people criticize Hesse for his interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, but he was equal opportunity here

>>24479402
the girls weren't even real and likely all the dancing stuff wasnt either

>>24483177
Lmfao Hesse is slop for teenagers who have never read a real book in their life.

>>24480393
Narcissus and Goldmund is genuinely the worst book ever written.

>>24486406
>slop for teenagers
> Nobel Prize
You just got filtered, that's all.

>>24486402
I was thinking that Hermina wasn't real. Her name, her behavior, her desire to die - was she really a part of Harry just like the wolf? Does this mean HH was drugged up butt buddies with Pablo?

>>24485762
>for his interest in Eastern philosophy and religion
He was as much interested in Christian philosophy and mysticism as in the Eastern tradition. I have a collection of his book reviews and through the choice of authors he discusses it's evident, here's the contents: https://d-nb.info/943053102/04

>>24486408
It's an exquisite book that moved me deeply. I cried at the end.

>>24478496 (OP)
There's hardly anyone to whom Nabokov's line "essentially a writer for very young people" applies so well. He's a great one to read at 16-18, and you'd do well to never reread him. If you do, and have developed some taste in the meantime, you'll be revolted by the sentimentality, the cringeworthy romanticized navelgazing of his protagonists and the proto-hippie rebel attitude. There's a syrupy layer of self-importance over everything, while he would like to pretend to be detached and ironic. But he doesn't have either the personality nor the artistic gifts to pull that off.

>>24486975
You sound like a very sad and cynical person. Everything is kitsch for you.

>>24482741
Absolutely best but read it in german.

>>24487011
Feel free to defend Hesse instead of making speculations about my inner state. Not *everything* is kitsch to me, but Hesse, this threads' topic, is. If an author constantly insists on being profound, he most likely isn't.

>>24487030
>If an author constantly insists on being profound
Where does he do that?

>>24487032
Are you kidding? Just about every work of his is bloated with it. Steppenwolf, Demian, Siddhartha... everything is always a transcendent spiritual journey with him. Every trivial little musing he gives to the protagonists is blown up to Biblical significance. And it's always the misunderstood Sensitive Young Man.
Just scrolling through wikiquote for steppenwolf, you got a passage like

>Do you think I can’t understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.
That's Hermine, who supposedly teaches gloomy old Harry about life. And Hesse can't even stop himself to ruin her with pretentiousness too, after pages and pages of suffering through Harry's get-off-my-lawn-isms. Worst of all, it's always told, not shown. Compare Goethe's Werther, where it's done really well.

I will not read anything from Hesse after reading Steppenwolf. HOOOOLYYY COPE what a terrible book.

>im smart coz uh... I dont get pussy!

>>24486937
thank you

>>24487057
Fuck you, faggot, Hesse is the greatest writer of all time

>>24487057
It's not that your criticisms are wrong per se, but they reflect a different set of preferences and inclinations. Hesse can be long-winded and all the things you say, but if you take his work in totality there is a lot of beauty and wisdom there to appreciate, but maybe only for certain types of people, and you may not be one of them. Hesse himself more than once in his books says he's not writing for such people. So maybe to fully appreciate him, you have to share his personality traits of being or having been that "sensitive young man" being an artist/writer/intellectual, etc. Otherwise it may just fall flat.

>>24487232
The perils of the lonely man, like a woman walking alone with no male escort

Read his essay on Zarathustra.

>>24487232
When you extract women out of your life you unironically become smarter

Siddartha is some of the most boring shit i have ever read. Nice prose, regardless.

>>24487232
>im smart coz uh... I dont get pussy!
This but unironically

>>24478519
Slanderous. Nietzsche literally talks shit about some self-help guru from the 1800s.

>>24478516
Don't blame Herman for the hippie boomers for picking up the worst book of his catalogue and being dumbass drug-addled todlers. He didn't start shit.

>>24487057
Wasn’t the point of this to be purposefully pretentious as to call attention to how he falsely believed himself above others? This self-importance was the whole cause of conflict with the Chinese scholar, who Harry irrationally broke off a friendship with.

>>24489372
Thanks, didn't know this existed, will pirate asap

>>24493178
NTA, but I think he means in a general sense, in Hesse's books there is a lot of wisdom or navel-gazing which can come off as pretentious if you're not receptive ot it. He's not a minimalist author, so if you are looking for minimalism you will probably lose patience with him. Hesse does sometimes make the mistake of directly naming what he's talking about (like the yoga communities in Demian), when it would have been better to be more obtuse.