Made of stone, eternal and animalistic, beautiful and cold, soulless, and yet filled with a hidden, terrifying life. He was surrounded by the aura of a tranquil emptiness, with air and stars, with this desolate death. — Hermann Hesse, Demian (Suhrkamp, January 1, 1974) Originally published Suhrkamp (January 1, 1974.
He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advancing years. Seized with weariness, he sat down on the wall,… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea.… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha. (New Directions (U.S.), 1922, 1951 U.S.)
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… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell. — Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund. Published by Fischer Verlag 1930, published in English 1932 (Dunlop translation as Death and the Lover); 1968 (Molinaro translation… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories;… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
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… Continue reading Hermann Hesse
No permanence is ours; we are a waveThat flows to fit whatever form it finds:Through night or day, cathedral or the caveWe pass forever, craving form that binds. ― Hermann Hesse, from “The Poems of Knecht’s Student Years,” The Glass Bead Game. (Picador; Reprint edition December 6, 2002) Originally published 1943
The Vale of Soul-Making 