Siddhartha: A Novel by Hermann Hesse

by Hermann Hesse

a long time ago, in the days of their youth, had once said to him. “You cannot love,” she had said to him, and he had agreed with her and had compared himself with a star, while comparing the childlike people with falling leaves, and nevertheless he had also sensed an accusation in that line. Indeed, he had never been able to lose or devote himself completely to another person, to forget himself, to commit foolish acts for the love of another person; never had he been able to do this, and this was, as it had seemed to him at that time, the great distinction that set him apart from the childlike people. But now, because

his son was here, now he, Siddhartha, had also become completely a childlike person, suffering for the sake of another person, loving another person, lost to a love, having become a fool on account of love. Now he too felt, late, for once in his lifetime, this strongest and strangest of all passions, suffered from it, suffered miserably, and was nevertheless in bliss, was nevertheless renewed in one respect, enriched by one thing.

Had he ever lost his heart so much to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily?

This pleasure also had to be atoned for, this pain also had to be endured, these foolish acts also had to be committed.

that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling to him. Deeply, he felt the love for the runaway in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.