Hermann Hesse: Poet of the Interior Journey

I just want to get a quick post out here about Hesse, whom I never would have read if it wasn't for the write up below (and whose title I stole), featured in the 2nd issue of the "Psychedelic Review" in 1963, and written by Timothy Leary & Ralph Metzner. Hopefully it will inspire you to read this amazingly lucid author, or reread him in a new light.

Hermann Hesse: Poet of the Interior Journey (PDF file)

I really do recommend you read the insightful analysis of Hesse's work provided by these two great thinkers, but here's a passage that kinda summarizes the piece (and my thoughts, as I agree after having read all these, in this order):

Few writers have chronicled with such dispassionate lucidity and fearless honesty the progress of the soul through the stages of life. Peter Camenzind (1904), Demian (1919), Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), Narziss und Goldmund (1930), Journey to the East (1932), Magister Ludi (1943) -- different versions of spiritual autobiography, different maps of the interior path. Each new step revises the picture of all the previous steps, each experience opens up new worlds of discovery in a constant effort to communicate the vision.

You can see a definite progression (depending on your take, I suppose) as you move through the novels, deeper levels of insight and learning, and deeper reflections and critiques of the journey as a whole.

His final novel, Magister Ludi (aka The Glass Bead Game) won Hesse the Nobel Prize in 1946, and for good reason. It is a book of grandeur, an honest look at the path behind him and some of the disillusionments he feels with where he is and where he is going. Written as a "future biography" of a distinguished member of an intellectual/spritual order that is core to the book, it can be a bit dry at times, but always lifts itself above the scholarly restrictions of this style.

I have (or have had) all of his books on my shelf, and recommend them highly. Read the piece above, read Hesse....read... =)

(FYI - I've found most of his novels are regularly available at used book stores!)

The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel - Herman Hesse


(p.s. - 150 pages into another book now, Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold)