Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was born on July 2, 1877, in Calw, Germany. He was a renowned German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter known for his exploration of spirituality, self-discovery, and the human condition. Hesse's work often reflects a deep interest in philosophy and Eastern traditions, earning him international acclaim and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.
Personal Name: Hermann Hesse
Birth: 2 July 1877
Death: 9 August 1962
Hermann Hesse Books
(49 Books)
Hermann Hesse wrote Siddhartha after he traveled to India in the 1910s. It tells the story of a young boy who travels the country in a quest for spiritual enlightenment in the time of Guatama Buddha. It is a compact, lyrical work, which reads like an allegory about the finding of wisdom.
A story that focuses on the loneliness and suffering of the protagonist, Harry Haller, who feels that he has no place in a world filled with meaningless frivolity. Having decided to take his own life a chance encounter causes him to change his views and he begins to learn ways to enjoy life. One of the most misunderstood of his novels the book is, according to Hesse, about the possibilities of transcendence and healing.
A young man awakens to selfhood and to a world of possibilities beyond the conventions of his upbringing in Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s beloved novel Demian. Emil Sinclair is a quiet boy drawn into a forbidden yet seductive realm of petty crime and defiance. His guide is his precocious, mysterious classmate Max Demian, who provokes in Emil a search for self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment. A brilliant psychological portrait, Demian is given new life in this translation, which together with James Franco’s personal and inspiring foreword will bring a new generation to Hesse’s widely influential coming-of-age novel.
First published in 1930, Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of two diametrically opposite men: one, an ascetic monk firm in his religious commitment, and the other, a romantic youth hungry for worldly experience. Hesse was a great writer in precisely the modern sense: complex, subtle, allusive: alive to the importance of play. Narcissus and Goldmund is his very best. What makes this short book so limitlessly vast is the body-and-soul-shaking debate that runs through it, which it has the honesty and courage not to resolve: between the flesh and spirit, art and scientific or religious speculation, action and contemplation.
Hesse’s most highly acclaimed book, The Glass Bead Game is set in a fictional state in Central Europe in the 25th Century. The state of Castalia is the home of an austere order of intellectuals who run a group of boarding schools for boys but also make it their life’s work to extend their knowledge and prowess of the Glass Bead Game, a mysterious game whose rules are never revealed. The story chronicles the life of Magister Ludi, the man responsible for administering the game. Although educated in Castalia he has spent a significant length of time in the outside world and as he reflects on his experiences in China and elsewhere he begins to doubt the value of the introverted life he and his fellow masters are leading.
To read Hermann Hesse's fairy tales is to enter a fabulous world of dreams and visions, philosophy and passion. This landmark collection contains twenty-two of Hesse's finest stories in this genre, most translated into English here for the first time. Drawing on both Eastern and Western fairy-tale traditions, Hesse captures the innate power of this ancient form as he spins wondrous stories that both entertain us and penetrate beneath the surface of our conscious mind.
Full of visionaries and seekers, princesses and wandering poets, his fairy tales speak to the place in our psyche that inspires us with deep spiritual longing; that compels us to leave home, and inevitably to return; and that harbors the greatest joys and most devastating wounds of our heart.
Strikingly original in both substance and style, these richly symbolic works resonate with timeless themes: the fundamental duality of existence, the isolation of the artist, and the decline of Western civilization. Hesse's lyrical prose is deceptively simple, like a Zen koan, often camouflaging profound enigmas. What is the meaning of the killing of the blind leader in "The Forest Dweller"? Why does the guide leap off the mountain in "The Difficult Path"?
By making us ask these provocative questions, Hesse invites us to undertake a quest for personal and cultural enlightenment that is as relevant today as it was to readers in his own time.
The story is an account of the final months of the life of Klingsor, a forty-two-year-old expressionist painter. A lover of poetry, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, he spends his final summer in southern Switzerland, torn between sensuality and spirituality and troubled by feelings of impending death.
Hermann Hesse en este obra inicia al lector en las zonas remotas dela conciencia humana y un cuadro psicológico del mundo y de sus habitantes, logrando posicionarse en el grado más alto de la literatura universal.
A collection of essays from Hermann Hesse concerning World War II, his personal anguish and his antagonism to racism, nationalism and war.
Twenty-three stories arranged in chronological order that are primarily concerned with the authors own secret.
