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Hermann Hesse

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Hermann Hesse


Born
in Calw, Württemberg, Germany
July 02, 1877

Died
August 09, 1962

Genre
Fiction, Philosophy, Spirituality

Influences
Wolfgang Goethe, Knut Hamsun, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Carl Gus ...more


Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946.

Other best-known works of this poet, novelist, and painter include The Glass Bead Game , which, also known as Magister Ludi, explore a search of an individual for spirituality outside society.

In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Young Germans desiring a different and more "natural" way of life at the time of great economic and technological progress in the country, received enthusiastically Peter Camenzind , first great ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.08 · 1,471,980 ratings · 72,482 reviews · 1,803 distinct works • Similar authors
Siddhartha
4.08 avg rating — 872,921 ratings — published 1922 — 3230 editions
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Steppenwolf
4.13 avg rating — 214,355 ratings — published 1927 — 154 editions
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Demian
4.14 avg rating — 134,851 ratings — published 1919 — 122 editions
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Narcissus and Goldmund
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4.22 avg rating — 72,399 ratings — published 1930 — 59 editions
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The Glass Bead Game
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4.10 avg rating — 42,296 ratings — published 1943 — 5 editions
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Beneath the Wheel
3.88 avg rating — 22,315 ratings — published 1906 — 45 editions
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The Journey to the East
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3.69 avg rating — 16,473 ratings — published 1932 — 207 editions
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Demian / Siddhartha
4.20 avg rating — 12,603 ratings — 6 editions
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Peter Camenzind
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3.89 avg rating — 8,762 ratings — published 1904 — 246 editions
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Knulp
3.88 avg rating — 8,289 ratings — published 1915 — 8 editions
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More books by Hermann Hesse…

Series by Hermann Hesse

Cuentos, 1 Cuentos, 2 Cuentos, 3 Cuentos, 4
(4 books)
by
3.83 avg rating — 101 ratings

Najljepše pripovijetke I Najljepše pripovijetke II Najljepše pripovijetke III
(3 books)
by
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 17 ratings

Quotes by Hermann Hesse  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte
tags: eternity, fear, forests, history, holiness, home, life, longing, poet, roots, self-discovery, spirituality, strength, trees, trust
5016 likes
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“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
― Herman Hesse
tags: steppenwolf
4618 likes
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“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
3681 likes
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484 total votes
More...

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