Hermann Hesse | Visionary or New Age Fiction Novels | Forum

    I know, it doesn't seem like he belongs here, but when I discovered his book Siddharta over the summer, I was really blown away with the wisdom in it, and the eloquent way Hesse wrote.  I'll say this with a very quiet voice, but reading his book made me feel the way I wish Paulo Coelho's books would make me feel.  Although I love Coelho's books, there's something that leaves me wanting.  Of course, we'll keep this between us.  

     I recently picked up Hesse's Steppenwolf, and although I'm not finished with it yet, all I can say is, Wow!  Let me give you a couple of quotes so you can see what I mean:

     "Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients).  He is much more an experiement and a transition.  He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit.  His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God.  His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother.  Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute."

     A dream-conjured Goethe speaking to the protagonist, Harry Haller, "Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time.  It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time.  I, too, once put too high a value on time.  For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old.  In eternity, however, there is no time, you see.  Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."

     Don't you love his piercing insight, so artfully put?