Just saw the film "Match", which stems from the stage play of the same name. Good strong characters, smart script. Although it isn't for the main stream viewer its a good film I'll watch again, unlike "Gone Girl" which I resent because it took time from my life that I can't get back.
“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want
to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what
they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I
know still don’t.” Kurt Vonnegut
Hearing nuns' confessions is
like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Show me your hands. Do they
have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me
your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
The proud man counts his
newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings.
Jealousy is the tribute
mediocrity pays to genius.
Pride is an admission of
weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.
Love is a mutual self-giving
which ends in self-recovery.
The big print giveth, and the
fine print taketh away.
I feel it is time that I also
pay tribute to my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
If you
don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.
The
difference between the love of a man and the love of a woman is that a man will
always give reasons for loving, but a woman gives no reasons for loving.” Life Is Worth Living
Patience
is power.
Patience
is not an absence of action;
rather it
is “timing”
it waits
on the right time to act,
for the
right principles
and in
the right way.
Why are
those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of
religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by
pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.
Pain
without love is suffering or hell. Suffering with love is sacrifice. Love does
not have the power to kill pain or extinguish it, but it does have the power to
diminish it.
Fulton
John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was
an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Roman Catholic Church known for
his preaching and especially his work on television and radio.
Ordained a priest of the
Diocese of Peoria in 1919, Sheen quickly became a renowned theologian, earning
the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He went on to
teach theology and philosophy at The Catholic University of America as well as
acting as a parish priest before being appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the
Archdiocese of New York in 1951. He held this position until 1966 when he was
made the Bishop of Rochester from October 21, 1966 to October 6, 1969, when he resigned
and was made the Archbishop of the Titular See of Newport, Wales.
For 20 years as Father, later
Monsignor, Sheen hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour
(1930–1950) before moving to television and presenting Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957).
Sheen's final presenting role was on the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program
(1961–1968) with a format very similar to that of the earlier Life is Worth
Living show. For this work, Sheen twice won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding
Television Personality, the only personality appearing on the DuMont Network
ever to win a major Emmy award.
Starting in 2009, his shows
were being re-broadcast on the EWTN and the Trinity Broadcasting Network's
Church Channel cable networks. Due to his contribution to televised preaching
Sheen is often referred to as one of the first televangelists.
After earning high school
valedictorian honors at Spalding Institute in Peoria in 1913, Sheen was
educated at St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Illinois, attended Saint Paul
Seminary in Minnesota before his ordination on September 20, 1919, then
followed that with further studies at The Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. His youthful appearance was still evident on one occasion when
a local priest asked Sheen to assist as altar boy during the celebration of the
Mass.
Sheen earned a doctorate in
philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1923.] While
there, he became the first American ever to win the Cardinal Mercier award for
the best philosophical treatise.
In 1924 Sheen pursued further studies in Rome
earning a Sacred Theology Doctorate at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale
Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.
Sheen was for a year assistant
to the pastor at St. Patrick's Church, Soho Square in London while teaching
theology at St. Edmund's College, Ware, where he met Ronald Knox. Although
Oxford and Columbia wanted him to teach philosophy, in 1926 Bishop Edmund Dunne
of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria, Illinois asked Sheen to take over St.
Patrick's Parish. After nine months, Dunne returned him to Catholic University,
where he taught philosophy until 1950.
In 1929, Sheen gave a speech at
the National Catholic Educational Association. He encouraged teachers to
"educate for a Catholic Renaissance" in the United States. Sheen was
hoping that Catholics would become more influential in their country through
education, which would help attract others to the faith. He believed that
Catholics should "integrate" their faith into the rest of their daily
life.
He was consecrated a bishop on
June 11, 1951, and served as an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York
from 1951 to 1965.
A popular instructor, Sheen
wrote the first of 73 books in 1925, and in 1930 began a weekly Sunday night
radio broadcast, The Catholic Hour. Sheen called WWII not only a political
struggle, but also a "theological one." He referred to Hitler as an
example of the "Anti-Christ."
Two decades later, the broadcast had a weekly
listening audience of four million people. Time referred to him in 1946 as
"the golden-voiced Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, U.S. Catholicism's famed
proselytizer" and reported that his radio broadcast received 3,000–6,000
letters weekly from listeners.
During the middle of this era, he conducted
the first religious service broadcast on the new medium of television, putting
in motion a new avenue for his religious pursuits.
In 1951 he began a weekly
television program on the DuMont Television Network titled Life Is Worth
Living. Filmed at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City, the program consisted
of the unpaid Sheen simply speaking in front of a live audience without a
script or cue cards, occasionally using a chalkboard.
The show, scheduled in a
graveyard slot on Tuesday nights at 8:00 p.m., was not expected to challenge
the ratings giants Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra, but did surprisingly well.
Berle, known to many early television viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and
for using ancient vaudeville material, joked about Sheen, "He uses old
material, too", and observed that "[i]f I'm going to be eased off the
top by anyone, it's better that I lose to the One for whom Bishop Sheen is
speaking."
Sheen responded in jest that maybe people should
start calling him "Uncle Fultie".
Life and Time magazine ran
feature stories on Bishop Sheen. The number of stations carrying Life Is Worth
Living jumped from three to fifteen in less than two months. There was fan mail
that flowed in at a rate of 8,500 letters per week. There were four times as
many requests for tickets than could be fulfilled. Admiral, the sponsor, paid
the production costs in return for a one-minute commercial at the opening of
the show and another minute at the close.
In 1952 Sheen won an Emmy Award for his
efforts, accepting the acknowledgment by saying, "I feel it is time I pay
tribute to my four writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." Time called him
"the first 'televangelist'", and the Archdiocese of New York could
not meet the demand for tickets.
One of his best-remembered
presentations came in February 1953, when he forcefully denounced the Soviet
regime of Joseph Stalin. Sheen gave a dramatic reading of the burial scene from
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, substituting the names of prominent Soviet leaders
Stalin, Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Andrey Vyshinsky for the original
Caesar, Cassius, Marc Antony, and Brutus. He concluded by saying, "Stalin
must one day meet his judgment." The dictator suffered a stroke a few days
later and died within a week.
The show ran until 1957,
drawing as many as 30 million people on a weekly basis. In 1958, Sheen became
national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, serving for
eight years before being appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, New
York, on October 26, 1966. He also hosted a nationally syndicated series, The
Fulton Sheen Program, from 1961 to 1968 (first in black and white and then in
color). The format of this series was essentially the same as Life Is Worth
Living.
In September 1974, the
Archbishop of Washington asked Sheen to be the speaker for a retreat for
diocesan priests at the Loyola Retreat House in Faulkner, Maryland. This was
recorded on reel-to-reel tape, state of the art at the time.
Sheen requested that the
recorded talks be produced for distribution. This was the first production of
what would become a worldwide cassette tape ministry called Ministr-O-Media, a
nonprofit company that operated on the grounds of St. Joseph’s Parish. The
retreat album was titled, Renewal and Reconciliation, and included nine
60-minute audio tapes.
For several years,
Ministr-O-Media was one of the largest distributors of non-musical tapes in the
United States. The operation started in
the St. Joseph’s rectory dining room and eventually grew into five temporary
classrooms on the church property, employing nine parishioners full-time, and
at one point 18 workers in all. At its height, Ministr-O-Media staff and
volunteers were packaging and mailing 500 albums a week and, in ten years,
shipped a million tapes to clients worldwide. The effort generated income of
$15,000 per week.
St. Joseph’s Parish was
targeted to be closed due to lack of funding for repairs before the chance
connection between Sheen and Brady. The parish, founded in 1763, owed its
continued existence to the intervention of Sheen and the tape ministry that
rebuilt the church, in collaboration with a dedicated workforce of parish
volunteers.
At Sheen’s direction, most of
the tape ministry profits were turned over to the pope’s worldwide missionary
effort, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. In its decade of
existence, Ministr-O-Media routed over a quarter million U.S. dollars to this
charity
Sheen was credited with helping
convert a number of notable figures to the Catholic faith, including agnostic
writer Heywood Broun, politician Clare Boothe Luce, automaker Henry Ford II,
Communist writer Louis F. Budenz, theatrical designer Jo Mielziner, violinist
and composer Fritz Kreisler, and actress Virginia Mayo. Each conversion process
took an average of 25 hours of lessons, and reportedly more than 95% of his students
in private instruction were baptized.
According to the foreword
written for a 2008 edition of Sheen's autobiography, Treasure in Clay: The
Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen, Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo wrote why
Sheen "retired" from hosting Life is Worth Living "at the height
of its popularity ... [when] an estimated 30 million viewers and listeners
tuned in each week." Arroyo wrote that "It is widely believed that
Cardinal Spellman drove Sheen off the air."
Arroyo relates that "In
the late 1950s the government donated millions of dollars worth of powdered
milk to the New York Archdiocese. In turn, Cardinal Spellman handed that milk
over to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to distribute to the poor
of the world. On at least one occasion he demanded that the director of the
Society, Bishop Sheen, pay the Archdiocese for the donated milk. He wanted
millions of dollars. Despite Cardinal Spellman's considerable powers of
persuasion and influence in Rome, Sheen refused. These were funds donated by
the public to the missions funds Sheen himself had personally contributed to
and raised over the airwaves. He felt an obligation to protect them, even from
the itchy fingers of his own Cardinal."
Spellman later took the issue
directly to Pope Pius XII, pleading his case with Sheen present. The Pope sided
with Sheen. Spellman later confronted Sheen stating "I will get even with
you. It may take six months or ten years, but everyone will know what you are
like."
Besides being pressured to leave television
Sheen also "found himself unwelcome in the churches of New York. Spellman
cancelled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral and
discouraged clergy from befriending the Bishop."
In 1966 Spellman had Sheen
reassigned to Rochester, New York and caused his leadership at the Society for
the Propagation of the Faith to be terminated (a position he had held for 16
years and raised hundreds of millions for, to which he had personally donated
10 million of his own earnings).
Sheen never talked about the
situation, only making vague references to his "trials both inside and
outside the Church". He even went so far as to praise Spellman in his
autobiography.
While serving in Rochester, he
created the Sheen Ecumenical Housing Foundation, which survives to this day. He
also spent some of his energy on political activities, such as his denunciation
of the Vietnam War in late July 1967.
On Ash Wednesday in 1967, Sheen decided to
give St. Bridget’s Parish building to the federal Housing and Urban Development
program. Sheen wanted to let the government use it for African-Americans. There
was a protest, since Sheen acted on his own accord. The pastor disagreed,
saying that “There is enough empty property around without taking down the
church and the school.” The deal fell through.
On October 15, 1969, one month
after celebrating his 50th anniversary as a priest, Sheen resigned from his
position and was then appointed Archbishop of the Titular See of Newport
(Wales) by Pope Paul VI. This ceremonial position allowed Sheen to continue his
extensive writing. Archbishop Sheen wrote 73 books and numerous articles and
columns.
Beginning in 1977 Sheen
"underwent a series of surgeries that sapped his strength and even made
preaching difficult."
Throughout this time he continued to work on
his autobiography, parts of which "were recited from his sickbed as he
clutched a crucifix."
Sheen died of heart disease on December 9,
1979, having previously had open-heart surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital. He is
interred in the crypt of St. Patrick's Cathedral, near the deceased Archbishops
of New York.
“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and
land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each
other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s
opposite and complement.”
“O how incomprehensible everything was, and
actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and
ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so
challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue
harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it
seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a
veil would drop from it all, but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle
remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and
looked cunning … or wise … and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still
waiting and listening.”
“Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find
the way to himself….His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary
one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else
was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the
ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.”
“When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “It
happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is
unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking
of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with
his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be
receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for
in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your
nose.”
Siddhartha is a
1922 novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of
self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha.
The book, Hesse's ninth novel, was written in German, in a simple, lyrical
style. It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential during the
1960s. Hesse dedicated Siddhartha to Romain Rolland and Wilhelm Gundert.
The word Siddhartha is made up
of two words in the Sanskrit language, siddha (achieved) + artha (what was
searched for), which together means "he who has found meaning (of
existence)" or "he who has attained his goals".
In fact, the Buddha's own name, before his
renunciation, was Siddhartha Gautama, Prince of Kapilvastu. In this book, the Buddha
is referred to as "Gotama".
Plot
The story takes place in
ancient Nepal. Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin, decides to leave behind his
home in the hopes of gaining spiritual illumination by becoming an ascetic
wandering beggar of the Samanas. Joined by his best friend Govinda, Siddhartha fasts,
becomes homeless, renounces all personal possessions, and intensely meditates,
eventually seeking and personally speaking with Gautama, the famous Buddha, or
Enlightened One. Afterward, both Siddhartha and Govinda acknowledge the
elegance of the Buddha's teachings. Although Govinda hastily joins the Buddha's
order, Siddhartha does not follow, claiming that the Buddha's philosophy,
though supremely wise, does not account for the necessarily distinct
experiences of each person. He argues that the individual seeks an absolutely
unique and personal meaning that cannot be presented to him by a teacher; he
thus resolves to carry on his quest alone.
Siddhartha crosses a river and
the generous ferryman, whom Siddhartha is unable to pay, merrily predicts that Siddhartha
will return to the river later to compensate him in some way. Venturing onward
toward city life, Siddhartha discovers Kamala, the most beautiful woman he has
yet seen. Kamala, a courtesan, notes Siddhartha's handsome appearance and fast
wit, telling him that he must become wealthy to win her affections so that she
may teach him the art of love. Although Siddhartha despised materialistic
pursuits as a Samana, he agrees now to Kamala's suggestions. She directs him to
the employ of Kamaswami, a local businessman, and insists that he have
Kamaswami treat him as an equal rather than an underling. Siddhartha easily
succeeds, providing a voice of patience and tranquility, which Siddhartha
learned from his days as an ascetic, against Kamaswami's fits of passion. Thus
Siddhartha becomes a rich man and Kamala's lover, though in his middle years
realizes that the luxurious lifestyle he has chosen is merely a game, empty of
spiritual fulfillment. Leaving the fast-paced bustle of the city, Siddhartha
returns to the river and thinks of killing himself. He is saved only by an
internal experience of the holy word, Om. The very next morning Siddhartha
briefly reconnects with Govinda, who is passing through the area as a wandering
Buddhist.
Siddhartha decides to live out
the rest of his life in the presence of the spiritually inspirational river.
Siddhartha thus reunites with the ferryman, named Vasudeva, with whom he begins
a humbler way of life. Although Vasudeva is a simple man, he understands and
relates that the river has many voices and significant messages to divulge to
any who might listen.
Some years later, Kamala, now a
Buddhist convert, is travelling to see the Buddha at his deathbed, accompanied
reluctantly by her young son, when she is bitten by a venomous snake near
Siddhartha's river. Siddhartha recognizes her and realizes that the boy is his
own child. After Kamala's death, Siddhartha attempts to console and raise the
furiously resistant boy, until one day the child flees altogether. Although
Siddhartha is desperate to find his runaway son, Vasudeva urges him to let the
boy find his own path, much like Siddhartha did himself in his youth. Listening
to the river with Vasudeva, Siddhartha realizes that time is an illusion and
that all of his feelings and experiences, even those of suffering, are part of
a great and ultimately jubilant fellowship of all things connected in the
cyclical unity of nature. After Siddhartha's moment of illumination, Vasudeva
claims that his work is done and he must depart into the woods, leaving
Siddhartha peacefully fulfilled and alone once more.
Toward the end of his life,
Govinda hears about an enlightened ferryman and travels to Siddhartha, not
initially recognizing him as his old childhood friend. Govinda asks the
now-elderly Siddhartha to relate his wisdom and Siddhartha replies that for
every true statement there is an opposite one that is also true; that language
and the confines of time lead people to adhere to one fixed belief that does
not account for the fullness of the truth. Because nature works in a
self-sustaining cycle, every entity carries in it the potential for its
opposite and so the world must always be considered complete. Siddhartha simply
urges people to identify and love the world in its completeness. Siddhartha
then requests that Govinda kiss his forehead and, when he does, Govinda
experiences the visions of timelessness that Siddhartha himself saw with
Vasudeva by the river. Govinda bows to his wise friend and Siddhartha smiles
radiantly, having found enlightenment.
Characters
• Siddhartha: The protagonist.
• Govinda: A friend and follower of Gotama.
• Siddhartha’s Father: A Brahmin who was unable to satisfy
Siddhartha's quest for enlightenment.
• The Samanas: Traveling ascetics who tell Siddhartha that
deprivation leads to enlightenment.
• Gotama: A spiritual leader Buddha, whose Teachings are
rejected but whose power of self-experience and self-wisdom is completely
praised by Siddhartha.
• Kamala: A courtesan and Siddhartha's sensual mentor,
mother of his child, Young Siddhartha. Dies of a snake bite while on a
pilgrimage, hoping to see the Buddha before she dies, leaving Young Siddhartha
with Siddhartha and Vasudeva.
• Kamaswami: A merchant who instructs Siddhartha on
business.
• Vasudeva: An enlightened ferryman and spiritual guide of
Siddhartha.
• Young Siddhartha: Son of Siddhartha and Kamala. Lives with
Siddhartha for a time but runs away.
Major themes
In Hesse’s novel, experience,
the totality of conscious events of a human life, is shown as the best way to
approach understanding of reality and attain enlightenment – Hesse’s crafting
of Siddhartha’s journey shows that understanding is attained not through
intellectual methods, nor through immersing oneself in the carnal pleasures of
the world and the accompanying pain of samsara. It is the completeness of these
experiences that allow Siddhartha to attain understanding.
Thus, the individual events are
meaningless when considered by themselves—Siddhartha’s stay with the Samanas
and his immersion in the worlds of love and business do not lead to nirvana,
yet they cannot be considered distractions, for every action and event gives
Siddhartha experience, which leads to understanding.
A major preoccupation of Hesse
in writing Siddhartha was to cure his 'sickness with life' (Lebenskrankheit) by
immersing himself in Indian philosophy such as that expounded in the Upanishads
and the Bhagavad Gita.
The reason the second half of the book took so
long to write was that Hesse "had not experienced that transcendental
state of unity to which Siddhartha aspires. In an attempt to do so, Hesse lived
as a virtual semi-recluse and became totally immersed in the sacred teachings
of both Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. His intention was to attain to that
'completeness' which, in the novel, is the Buddha's badge of distinction."
The novel is structured on three of the
traditional stages of life for Hindu males (student (brahmacarin), householder
(grihastha) and recluse/renunciate (vanaprastha)) as well as the Buddha's four
noble truths (Part One) and eight-fold path (Part Two) which form twelve
chapters, the number in the novel.
Ralph Freedman mentions how Hesse commented in
a letter "[my] Siddhartha does not, in the end, learn true wisdom from any
teacher, but from a river that roars in a funny way and from a kindly old fool
who always smiles and is secretly a saint."
In a lecture about Siddhartha, Hesse claimed
"Buddha's way to salvation has often been criticized and doubted, because
it is thought to be wholly grounded in cognition. True, but it's not just
intellectual cognition, not just learning and knowing, but spiritual experience
that can be earned only through strict discipline in a selfless life".
Freedman also points out how Siddhartha
described Hesse's interior dialectic: "All of the contrasting poles of his
life were sharply etched: the restless departures and the search for stillness
at home; the diversity of experience and the harmony of a unifying spirit; the
security of religious dogma and the anxiety of freedom."
Eberhard Ostermann has shown how Hesse, while
mixing the religious genre of the legend with that of the modern novel, seeks
to reconcile with the double-edged effects of modernization such as
individualization, pluralism or self-disciplining.
Steppenwolf
(orig.
German Der Steppenwolf) is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann
Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into
English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the
novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes. The story in large part
reflects a profound crisis in Hesse's spiritual world during the 1920s while
memorably portraying the protagonist's split between his humanity and his
wolf-like aggression and homelessness. Hesse would later assert that the book
was largely misunderstood.
Background
and publication history
In 1924 Hermann Hesse married
singer Ruth Wenger. After several weeks, however, he left Basel, only returning
near the end of the year. Upon his return he rented a separate apartment,
adding to his isolation. After a short trip to Germany with Wenger, Hesse
stopped seeing her almost completely. The resulting feeling of isolation and
inability to make lasting contact with the outside world led to increasing
despair and thoughts of suicide.
Hesse began writing Steppenwolf
in Basel, and finished it in Zürich. In 1926 he published a precursor to the
book, a collection of poems titled The Crisis: From Hermann Hesse's Diary. The
novel was later released in 1927. The first English edition was published in
1929 by Martin Secker in the United Kingdom and by Henry Holt and Company in
the United States. That version was translated by Basil Creighton.
Plot
summary
The book is presented as a
manuscript written by its protagonist, a middle-aged man named Harry Haller,
who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance
adds a short preface of his own and then has the manuscript published. The
title of this "real" book-in-the-book is Harry Haller's Records (For
Madmen Only).
As the story begins, the hero
is beset by reflections on his being ill-suited for the world of everyday,
regular people, specifically for frivolous bourgeois society. In his aimless
wanderings about the city he encounters a person carrying an advertisement for
a magic theatre who gives him a small book, Treatise on the Steppenwolf. This
treatise, cited in full in the novel's text as Harry reads it, addresses Harry
by name and strikes him as describing himself uncannily. It is a discourse on a
man who believes himself to be of two natures: one high, the spiritual nature
of man; the other is low and animalistic, a "wolf of the steppes".
This man is entangled in an irresolvable struggle, never content with either
nature because he cannot see beyond this self-made concept. The pamphlet gives
an explanation of the multifaceted and indefinable nature of every man's soul,
but Harry is either unable or unwilling to recognize this. It also discusses
his suicidal intentions, describing him as one of the "suicides":
people who, deep down, knew they would take their own life one day. But to
counter that, it hails his potential to be great, to be one of the
"Immortals".
By chance, Harry encounters the
man who gave him the book, just as the man has attended a funeral. He inquires
about the magic theater, to which the man replies, "Not for
everybody." When Harry presses further for information, the man recommends
him to a local dance hall, much to Harry's disappointment.
When returning from the
funeral, Harry meets a former academic friend with whom he had often discussed
Oriental mythology, and who invites Harry to his home. While there, Harry is
disgusted by the nationalistic mentality of his friend, who inadvertently
criticizes a column Harry wrote. In turn, Harry offends the man and his wife by
criticizing the wife's bust of Goethe, which Harry feels is too thickly
sentimental and insulting to Goethe's true brilliance. This episode confirms to
Harry that he is, and will always be, a stranger to his society.
Trying to postpone returning
home, where he fears all that awaits him is his own suicide, Harry walks aimlessly
around the town for most of the night, finally stopping to rest at the dance
hall where the man had sent him earlier. He happens on a young woman, Hermine,
who quickly recognizes his desperation. They talk at length; Hermine
alternately mocks Harry's self-pity and indulges him in his explanations
regarding his view of life, to his astonished relief. Hermine promises a second
meeting, and provides Harry with a reason to live (or at least a substantial
excuse to continue living) that he eagerly embraces.
During the next few weeks,
Hermine introduces Harry to the indulgences of what he calls the
"bourgeois". She teaches Harry to dance, introduces him to casual
drug use, finds him a lover (Maria), and, more importantly, forces him to
accept these as legitimate and worthy aspects of a full life.
Hermine also introduces Harry
to a mysterious saxophonist named Pablo, who appears to be the very opposite of
what Harry considers a serious, thoughtful man. After attending a lavish
masquerade ball, Pablo brings Harry to his metaphorical "magic
theatre," where the concerns and notions that plagued his soul
disintegrate as he interacts with the ethereal and phantasmal. The Magic
Theatre is a place where he experiences the fantasies that exist in his mind.
The Theater is described as a long horseshoe-shaped corridor with a mirror on
one side and a great many doors on the other. Harry enters five of these
labeled doors, each of which symbolizes a fraction of his life.
Major characters
• Harry Haller – the protagonist, a middle-aged man
• Pablo – a saxophonist
• Hermine – a young woman Haller meets at a dance
• Maria – Hermine's friend
Critical analysis
In the preface to the novel's
1960 edition, Hesse wrote that Steppenwolf was "more often and more
violently misunderstood" than any of his other books. Hesse felt that his
readers focused only on the suffering and despair that are depicted in Harry
Haller's life, thereby missing the possibility of transcendence and healing.
Hermann Hesse in 1926
In the moment of climax, it is
unclear whether Haller actually kills Hermine or whether the "murder"
is just another hallucination in the Magic Theater. It is argued[by whom?] that
Hesse does not define reality based on what occurs in physical time and space;
rather, reality is merely a function of metaphysical cause and effect.[citation
needed] What matters is not whether the murder actually occurred, but rather
that at that moment it was Haller's intention to kill Hermine. In that sense,
Haller's various states of mind are more significant than his actions.
It is also notable that the
very existence of Hermine in the novel is never confirmed; the manuscript left
in Harry Haller's room reflects a story that completely revolves around his
personal experiences. In fact when Harry asks Hermine what her name is, she
turns the question around. When he is challenged to guess her name, he tells
her that she reminds him of a childhood friend named Hermann, and therefore he
concludes, her name must be Hermine. Metaphorically, Harry creates Hermine as
if a fragment of his own soul has broken off to form a female counterpart.
Later German Edition
From the very beginning,
reception was harsh.[citation needed] American novelist Jack Kerouac dismissed
it in Big Sur (1962) and it has had a long history of mixed critical reception
and opinion at large.[citation needed] Already upset with Hesse's novel Siddhartha,
political activists and patriots railed against him, and against the book,
seeing an opportunity to discredit Hesse.
Even close friends and longtime readers
criticized the novel for its perceived lack of morality in its open depiction
of sex and drug use, a criticism that indeed remained the primary rebuff of the
novel for many years. However as society changed and formerly taboo topics such
as sex and drugs became more openly discussed, critics[which?] came to attack
the book for other reasons; mainly that it was too pessimistic, and that it was
a journey in the footsteps of a psychotic and showed humanity through his
warped and unstable viewpoint, a fact that Hesse did not dispute, although he
did respond to critics by noting the novel ends on a theme of new hope.
Popular interest in the novel
was renewed in the 1960s ― specifically in the psychedelic movement ― primarily
because it was seen as a counterculture book, and because of its depiction of
free love and explicit drug usage. It was also introduced in many new colleges
for study, and interest in the book and in Hermann Hesse was feted in America
for more than a decade afterwards.
"Treatise on the
Steppenwolf"
The "Treatise on the Steppenwolf"
is a booklet given to Harry Haller and which he finds describes him. It is a
literary mirror and, from the outset, describes what Harry had not learned,
namely "to find contentment in himself and his own life." The cause
of his discontent was the perceived dualistic nature of a human and a wolf
within Harry. The treatise describes, as earmarks of his life, a threefold
manifestation of his discontent: one, isolation from others, two, suicidal
tendencies, and three, relation to the bourgeois. Harry isolates himself from
others socially and professionally, frequently resists the temptation to take
his life, and experiences feelings of benevolence and malevolence for bourgeois
notions. The booklet predicts Harry may come to terms with his state in the
dawning light of humor.
References in popular culture
Hesse's 1928 short story
"Harry, the Steppenwolf" forms a companion piece to the novel. It is
about a wolf named Harry who is kept in a zoo, and who entertains crowds by
destroying images of German cultural icons like Goethe and Mozart.
The name Steppenwolf has become
notable in popular culture for various organizations and establishments. In
1967, the band Steppenwolf, headed by German-born singer John Kay, took their
name from the novel.
The Belgian band DAAU (Die
Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung) is named after one of the advertising slogans
of the novel's magical theatre. The innovative Magic Theatre Company, founded
in 1967 in Berkeley and which later became resident in San Francisco, takes its
name from the "Magic Theatre" of the novel, and the Steppenwolf
Theatre Company in Chicago, founded in 1974 by actors Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry,
and Gary Sinise, took its name from the novel. The lengthy track
"Steppenwolf" appears on English rock band Hawkwind's album
Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music and is directly inspired by the novel,
including references to the magic theatre and the dual nature of the
wolfman-manwolf (lutocost). Robert Calvert had initially written and performed
the lyrics on 'Distances Between Us' by Adrian Wagner in 1974. The song also
appears on later, live Hawkwind CD's and DVDs.
"Be Here Now"(1971),
by author and spiritual teacher Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) contains an
illustration of a door bearing a sign that reads "Magic Theatre - For
Madmen Only - Price of Admission - Your Mind." This references an
invitation that Steppenwolf's Harry Haller receives to attend an
"Anarchist Evening at the Magic Theatre, For Madmen Only, Price of
Admission Your Mind."
The Black Ice, by Michael
Connelly, has J. Michael Haller making a reference to the author when he
mentioned that, if his illegitimate son took his surname, he'd be "Harry
Haller" instead of Harry Bosch.
Steppenwolf was also referenced
in the film Mall (2014).
ART WORK BY HESSE
Hermann Hesse. July 2 1877 – August 9 1962 was a German born Swiss poet,
novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha,
and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for
authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
Hermann Karl Hesse was born on
2 July 1877 in the Black Forest town of Calw in Württemberg, German Empire. His
parents served in India at a mission under the auspices of the Basel Mission, a
Protestant Christian missionary society. Hesse's mother, Marie Gundert, was
born at such a mission in India in 1842. In describing her own childhood, she
said, "A happy child I was not..." As was usual among missionaries at
the time, she was left behind in Europe at the age of four when her parents
went to India.
Hesse's father, Johannes Hesse,
the son of a doctor, was born in 1847 in the Estonian town of Paide
(Weissenstein). In his own way, Dr Hesse was just as tyrannical as Dr Gundert.
Johannes Hesse belonged to the
German minority in the part of the Baltic region, which was then a part of the
Russian Empire, thus his son Hermann was at birth both a citizen of the German
Empire and the Russian Empire.
Hesse had five siblings, but two of them died
in infancy. In 1873, the Hesse family moved to Calw, where his father worked
for the Calwer Verlagsverein, a publishing house specializing in theological
texts and schoolbooks. Hesse's grandfather Hermann Gundert managed the
publishing house at the time, and Johannes Hesse succeeded him in 1893.
Hesse grew up in a Swabian
Pietist household, with the Pietist tendency to insulate believers into small,
deeply thoughtful groups. Furthermore, Hesse described his father's Baltic German
heritage as "an important and potent fact" of his developing
identity. His father, Hesse stated, "always seemed like a very polite,
very foreign, lonely, little-understood guest."
His father's tales from Estonia
instilled a contrasting sense of religion in young Hermann. "[It was] an
exceedingly cheerful, and, for all its Christianity, a merry world... We wished
for nothing so longingly as to be allowed to see this Estonia ... where life
was so paradisiacal, so colorful and happy." Hermann Hesse's sense of
estrangement from the Swabian petty bourgeoisie further grew through his
relationship with his grandmother Julie Gundert, née Dubois, whose French-Swiss
heritage kept her from ever quite fitting in among that milieu.
From childhood, Hesse appeared
headstrong and hard for his family to handle. In a letter to her husband,
Hermann's mother Marie wrote: "The little fellow has a life in him, an
unbelievable strength, a powerful will, and, for his four years of age, a truly
astonishing mind. How can he express all that? It truly gnaws at my life, this
internal fighting against his tyrannical temperament, his passionate turbulence
[...] God must shape this proud spirit, then it will become something noble and
magnificent – but I shudder to think what this young and passionate person
might become should his upbringing be false or weak."
Hesse showed signs of serious
depression as early as his first year at school.
In his juvenilia collection Gerbersau, Hesse
vividly describes experiences and anecdotes from his childhood and youth in
Calw: the atmosphere and adventures by the river, the bridge, the chapel, the
houses leaning closely together, hidden nooks and crannies, as well as the
inhabitants with their admirable qualities, their oddities, and their
idiosyncrasies. The fictional town of Gerbersau is pseudonymous for Calw,
imitating the real name of the nearby town of Hirsau. It is derived from the
German words gerber, meaning "tanner," and aue, meaning
"meadow."
Calw had a centuries-old
leather-working industry, and during Hesse's childhood the tanneries' influence
on the town was still very much in evidence. Hesse's favorite place in Calw was
the St. Nicholas-Bridge (Nikolausbrücke), which is why the Hesse monument was
erected there in 2002.
Hermann Hesse's grandfather
Hermann Gundert, a doctor of philosophy and fluent in multiple languages,
encouraged the boy to read widely, giving him access to his library, which was
filled with the works of world literature. All this instilled a sense in
Hermann Hesse that he was a citizen of the world. His family background became,
he noted, "the basis of an isolation and a resistance to any sort of nationalism
that so defined my life."
Young Hesse shared a love of
music with his mother. Both music and poetry were important in his family. His
mother wrote poetry, and his father was known for his use of language in both
his sermons and the writing of religious tracts. His first role model for
becoming an artist was his half-brother, Theo, who rebelled against the family
by entering a music conservatory in 1885. Hesse showed a precocious ability to
rhyme, and by 1889–90 had decided that he wanted to be a writer.
In 1881, when Hesse was four,
the family moved to Basel, Switzerland, staying for six years and then
returning to Calw. After successful attendance at the Latin School in
Göppingen, Hesse entered the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Maulbronn
Abbey in 1891. The pupils lived and studied at the abbey, one of Germany's most
beautiful and well-preserved, attending 41 hours of classes a week. Although
Hesse did well during the first months, writing in a letter that he particularly
enjoyed writing essays and translating classic Greek poetry into German, his
time in Maulbronn was the beginning of a serious personal crisis.
In March 1892, Hesse showed his rebellious
character, and, in one instance, he fled from the Seminary and was found in a
field a day later. Hesse began a journey through various institutions and
schools and experienced intense conflicts with his parents. In May, after an
attempt at suicide, he spent time at an institution in Bad Boll under the care
of theologian and minister Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt. Later, he was placed
in a mental institution in Stetten im Remstal, and then a boys' institution in
Basel. At the end of 1892, he attended the Gymnasium in Cannstatt, now part of
Stuttgart. In 1893, he passed the One Year Examination, which concluded his
schooling. The same year, he began spending time with older companions and took
up drinking and smoking.
After this, Hesse began a
bookshop apprenticeship in Esslingen am Neckar, but quit after three days. Then,
in the early summer of 1894, he began a 14-month mechanic apprenticeship at a
clock tower factory in Calw. The monotony of soldering and filing work made him
turn himself toward more spiritual activities. In October 1895, he was ready to
begin wholeheartedly a new apprenticeship with a bookseller in Tübingen. This
experience from his youth, especially his time spent at the Seminary in
Maulbronn, he returns to later in his novel Beneath the Wheel.
On 17 October 1895, Hesse began
working in the bookshop in Tübingen, which had a specialized collection in
theology, philology, and law. Hesse's tasks consisted of organizing, packing,
and archiving the books. After the end of each twelve-hour workday, Hesse
pursued his own work, and he spent his long, idle Sundays with books rather
than friends. Hesse studied theological writings and later Goethe, Lessing,
Schiller, and Greek mythology. He also began reading Nietzsche in 1895, and
that philosopher's ideas of "dual...impulses of passion and order" in
humankind was a heavy influence on most of his novels.
By 1898, Hesse had a
respectable income that enabled financial independence from his parents. During
this time, he concentrated on the works of the German Romantics, including much
of the work from Clemens Brentano, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Friedrich
Hölderlin, and Novalis. In letters to his parents, he expressed a belief that
"the morality of artists is replaced by aesthetics".
During this time, he was
introduced to the home of Fräulein von Reutern, a friend of his family's. There
he met with people his own age. His relationships with his contemporaries were
"problematic", in that most of them were now at university. This
usually left him feeling awkward in social situations.
In 1896, his poem
"Madonna" appeared in a Viennese periodical and Hesse released his
first small volume of poetry, Romantic Songs. In 1897, a published poem of his,
"Grand Valse", drew him a fan letter. It was from Helene Voigt, who
the next year married Eugen Diederichs, a young publisher. To please his wife,
Diederichs agreed to publish Hesse's collection of prose entitled One Hour
After Midnight in 1898 (although it is dated 1899).
Both works were a business
failure. In two years, only 54 of the 600 printed copies of Romantic Songs were
sold, and One Hour After Midnight received only one printing and sold
sluggishly. Furthermore, Hesse "suffered a great shock" when his
mother disapproved of "Romantic Songs" on the grounds that they were
too secular and even "vaguely sinful."
From late 1899, Hesse worked in
a distinguished antique book shop in Basel. Through family contacts, he stayed
with the intellectual families of Basel. In this environment with rich stimuli
for his pursuits, he further developed spiritually and artistically. At the
same time, Basel offered the solitary Hesse many opportunities for withdrawal
into a private life of artistic self-exploration, journeys and wanderings. In
1900, Hesse was exempted from compulsory military service due to an eye
condition. This, along with nerve disorders and persistent headaches, affected
him his entire life.
In 1901, Hesse undertook to
fulfill a long-held dream and travelled for the first time to Italy. In the
same year, Hesse changed jobs and began working at the antiquarium Wattenwyl in
Basel. Hesse had more opportunities to release poems and small literary texts
to journals. These publications now provided honorariums. His new bookstore
agreed to publish his next work, Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann
Lauscher. In 1902, his mother died after a long and painful illness. He could
not bring himself to attend her funeral, afraid that it would worsen his
depression.
Due to the good notices he
received for Lauscher, the publisher Samuel Fischer became interested in Hesse
and, with the novel Peter Camenzind, which appeared first as a pre-publication
in 1903 and then as a regular printing by Fischer in 1904, came a breakthrough:
from now on, Hesse could make a living as a writer. The novel became popular
throughout Germany. Sigmund Freud "praised Peter Camenzind as one of his
favorite readings."
With the literary fame, Hesse
married Maria Bernoulli (of the famous family of mathematicians in 1904,
settled down with her in Gaienhofen on Lake Constance, and began a family,
eventually having three sons. In Gaienhofen, he wrote his second novel, Beneath
the Wheel, which was published in 1906. In the following time, he composed
primarily short stories and poems. His story "The Wolf," written in
1906–07, was "quite possibly" a foreshadowing of Steppenwolf.
His next novel, Gertrude,
published in 1910, revealed a production crisis. He had to struggle through
writing it, and he later would describe it as "a miscarriage".
Gaienhofen was the place where Hesse's interest in Buddhism was re-sparked.
Following a letter to Kapff in 1895 entitled Nirvana, Hesse had ceased alluding
to Buddhist references in his work. In 1904, however, Arthur Schopenhauer and
his philosophical ideas started receiving attention again, and Hesse discovered
theosophy. Schopenhauer and theosophy renewed Hesse's interest in India.
Although it was many years before the publication of Hesse's Siddhartha (1922),
this masterpiece was to be derived from these new influences.
During this time, there also
was increased dissonance between him and Maria, and in 1911 Hesse left for a
long trip to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. He also visited Sumatra, Borneo, and
Burma, but "the physical experience... was to depress him."
Any spiritual or religious inspiration that he
was looking for eluded him, but the journey made a strong impression on his
literary work. Following Hesse's return, the family moved to Bern (1912), but
the change of environment could not solve the marriage problems, as he himself
confessed in his novel Rosshalde from 1914.
At the outbreak of the First
World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial
army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other
young authors were dying on the front. He was found unfit for combat duty, but
was assigned to service involving the care of prisoners of war.
While most poets and authors of the war
participating countries quickly became embroiled in a tirade of mutual hate,
Hesse, seemingly immune to the general war-enthusiasm of the time, wrote an
essay titled "O Friends, Not These Tones" ("O Freunde, nicht
diese Töne"),[a] which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on
November 3.
In this essay he appealed to his fellow
intellectuals not to fall for nationalistic madness and hatred. Calling for
subdued voices and a recognition of Europe's common heritage, Hesse wrote:
[...] That love is greater than hate, understanding greater than ire, peace
nobler than war, this exactly is what this unholy World War should burn into
our memories, more so than ever felt before.
What followed from this, Hesse later indicated,
was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in
the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the
recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive
continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain
Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland,
"The attempt...to apply love to matters political has failed."
This public controversy was not
yet resolved when a deeper life crisis befell Hesse with the death of his
father on 8 March 1916, the serious illness of his son Martin, and his wife's
schizophrenia. He was forced to leave his military service and begin receiving
psychotherapy. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysis,
through which he came to know Carl Jung personally, and was challenged to new
creative heights. During a three-week period in September and October 1917,
Hesse penned his novel Demian, which would be published following the armistice
in 1919 under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair.
By the time Hesse returned to
civilian life in 1919, his marriage had shattered. His wife had a severe
episode of psychosis, but, even after her recovery, Hesse saw no possible
future with her. Their home in Bern was divided, their children were accommodated
in pensions and by relatives, and Hesse resettled alone in the middle of April
in Ticino. He occupied a small farm house near Minusio (close to Locarno),
living from 25 April to 11 May in Sorengo. On 11 May, he moved to the town
Montagnola and rented four small rooms in a castle-like building, the Casa
Camuzzi. Here, he explored his writing projects further; he began to paint, an
activity reflected in his next major story, "Klingsor's Last Summer",
published in 1920. This new beginning in different surroundings brought him
happiness, and Hesse later called his first year in Ticino the fullest, most
prolific, most industrious and most passionate time of my life.
In 1922, Hesse's novella Siddhartha appeared,
which showed the love for Indian culture and Buddhist philosophy that had
already developed earlier in his life. In 1924, Hesse married the singer Ruth
Wenger, the daughter of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger and aunt of Méret
Oppenheim. This marriage never attained any stability, however.
In 1923, Hesse received Swiss
citizenship. His next major works, Kurgast (1925) and The Nuremberg Trip
(1927), were autobiographical narratives with ironic undertones and
foreshadowed Hesse's following novel, Steppenwolf, which was published in 1927.
In the year of his 50th birthday, the first biography of Hesse appeared,
written by his friend Hugo Ball. Shortly after his new successful novel, he
turned away from the solitude of Steppenwolf and married art historian Ninon
Dolbin, née Ausländer. This change to companionship was reflected in the novel
Narcissus and Goldmund, appearing in 1930. In 1931, Hesse left the Casa Camuzzi
and moved with Ninon to a large house (Casa Hesse) near Montagnola, which was
built according to his wishes.
In 1931, Hesse began planning what
would become his last major work, The Glass Bead Game (aka Magister Ludi). In
1932, as a preliminary study, he released the novella Journey to the East. The
Glass Bead Game was printed in 1943 in Switzerland. He was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1946.
In a conversation with Miguel
Serrano, Herman Hesse commented about the belief in God:
"You should let yourself
be carried away, like the clouds in the sky. You shouldn’t resist. God exists
in your destiny just as much as he does in these mountains and in that lake. It
is very difficult to understand this, because man is moving further and further
away from Nature, and also from himself."
As reflected in Demian, and
other works, he believed that "for different people, there are different
ways to God"; but despite the influence he drew from Indian and Buddhist
philosophies, he stated: “Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the
strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me".
Hesse observed the rise to
power of Nazism in Germany with concern. In 1933, Bertolt Brecht and Thomas
Mann made their travels into exile, each aided by Hesse. In this way, Hesse
attempted to work against Hitler's suppression of art and literature that
protested Nazi ideology. Hesse's third wife was Jewish, and he had publicly
expressed his opposition to anti-Semitism long before then.
Hesse was criticized for not condemning the
Nazi party, but his failure to criticize or support any political idea stemmed
from his "politics of detachment [...] At no time did he openly condemn
(the Nazis), although his detestation of their politics is beyond
question." From the end of the 1930s, German journals stopped publishing
Hesse's work, and the Nazis eventually banned it.
The Glass Bead Game was Hesse's
last novel. During the last twenty years of his life, Hesse wrote many short
stories (chiefly recollections of his childhood) and poems (frequently with
nature as their theme). Hesse also wrote ironic essays about his alienation
from writing (for instance, the mock autobiographies: Life Story Briefly Told
and Aus den Briefwechseln eines Dichters) and spent much time pursuing his
interest in watercolours. Hesse also occupied himself with the steady stream of
letters he received as a result of the Nobel Prize and as a new generation of
German readers explored his work. In one essay, Hesse reflected wryly on his
lifelong failure to acquire a talent for idleness and speculated that his
average daily correspondence exceeded 150 pages. He died on 9 August 1962, aged
85, and was buried in the cemetery at San Abbondio in Montagnola, where Hugo
Ball and the great conductor Bruno Walter are also buried.
In his time, Hesse was a
popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame
only came later. Hesse's first great novel, Peter Camenzind, was received
enthusiastically by young Germans desiring a different and more
"natural" way of life at the time of great economic and technological
progress in the country (see also Wandervogel movement).
Demian had a strong and enduring influence on
the generation of home-returners from the First World War.; similarly, The
Glass Bead Game, with its disciplined intellectual world of Castalia and the
powers of mediation and humanity, captivated Germans' longing for a new order
amid the chaos of a broken nation following the loss in Second World War.
In the 1950s, Hesse's
popularity began to wane, while literature critics and intellectuals turned
their attention to other subjects. In 1965, the sales of Hesse's books by his
publisher Suhrkamp reached an all-time low. However, after Hesse's death in
1962, posthumously published writings, including letters and previously unknown
pieces of prose, contributed to a new level of understanding and appreciation
of his works.
By the time of Hesse's death in
1962, his works were still relatively unknown in the United States. A memorial
published in the New York Times went so far as to claim that Hesse's works were
largely "inaccessible" for American readers. The situation changed in
the mid-1960s, when Hesse's works suddenly became bestsellers in the United
States.
The revival in popularity of
Hesse's works has been credited to their association with some of the popular
themes of the 1960s counterculture (or hippie) movement. In particular, the
quest-for-enlightenment theme of Siddhartha, Journey to the East, and Narcissus
and Goldmund resonated with those espousing counter-cultural ideals. The
"magic theatre" sequences in Steppenwolf were interpreted by some as
drug-induced psychedelia, although there is no evidence that Hesse ever took
psychedelic drugs or recommended their use.
To a large part, the causes of the Hesse-Boom
in the United States can be traced back to enthusiastic writings by two
influential counter-culture figures: Colin Wilson and Timothy Leary.
From the United States, the Hesse renaissance
spread to other parts of the world, and even back to Germany: more than 800,000
copies were sold in the German-speaking world in 1972–1973. In a space of just
a few years, Hesse became the most widely read and translated European author
of the 20th century. Hesse was especially popular among young readers, a
tendency which continues today.
Hesse's Siddhartha is one of
the most popular Western novels set in India. An authorized translation of
Siddhartha was published in the Malayalam language in 1990, the language that
surrounded Hesse's grandfather, Hermann Gundert, for most of his life. A
Hermann Hesse Society of India has also been formed. It aims to bring out
authentic translations of Siddhartha in all Indian languages and has already
prepared the Sanskrit translation of Siddhartha.
One enduring monument to
Hesse's lasting popularity in the United States is the Magic Theatre in San
Francisco. Referring to "The Magic Theatre for Madmen Only" in
Steppenwolf (a kind of spiritual and somewhat nightmarish cabaret attended by
some of the characters, including Harry Haller), the Magic Theatre was founded
in 1967 to perform works by new playwrights. Founded by John Lion, the Magic
Theatre has fulfilled that mission for many years, including the world
premieres of many plays by Sam Shepard.
Throughout Germany, many
schools are named after him. In 1964, the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis was
founded, which is awarded every two years, alternately to a German-language
literary journal or to the translator of Hesse's work to a foreign language.
There is also a Hermann Hesse prize associated with the city of Karlsruhe.
Awards
1906 – Bauernfeld-Preis
1928 – Mejstrik-Preis of the
Schiller Foundation in Vienna
1936 – Gottfried-Keller-Preis
1946 – Goethe Prize
1946 – Nobel Prize in
Literature
1947 – Honorary Doctorate from
the University of Bern
1950 – Wilhelm-Raabe-Preis (de)
1954 – Pour le Mérite
1955 – Peace Prize of the
German Book Trade
Bibliography
Demian, 1919(1899) Eine Stunde
hinter Mitternacht. Novella.
(1900) Hermann Lauscher
(1904) Peter Camenzind
(1906) Unterm Rad (Beneath the
Wheel; also published as The Prodigy)
(1908) Freunde. Novella.
(1910) Gertrud
(1913) Aus Indien (Out of
India)
(1914) Roßhalde
(1915) Knulp. (Also published
as Three Tales from the Life of Knulp)
(1916) Schön ist die Jugend.
Novella.
(1919) Strange News from
Another Star. (Originally published as Märchen) Collection of short stories
written between 1913 and 1918.
(1919) Demian (published under
the pen name Emil Sinclair)
(1919) Klein und Wagner
(1920) Klingsors letzter Sommer
(Klingsor's Last Summer)
(1922) Siddhartha
(1927) Der Steppenwolf
(1930) Narziß und Goldmund
(Narcissus and Goldmund; also published as Death and the Lover)
(1932) Die Morgenlandfahrt
(Journey to the East)
(1943) Das Glasperlenspiel (The
Glass Bead Game; also published as Magister Ludi)
Film
adaptations
(1966) El lobo estepario (based on
Steppenwolf)
(1971) Zachariah (based on
Siddartha)
(1972) Siddhartha
(1974) Steppenwolf
(1981) Kinderseele
(1996) Ansatsu (based on
Demian)
(2003) Poem: I Set My Foot Upon
the Air and It Carried Me
