Hermann Hesse

The German writer, Hermann Hesse (1877 – 1962), is best known for his existential novels, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game, Goldmund and Narcissis. Today it is unclear if hardly anyone bothers to read these iconic works, which were all the rage during the psychedelic sixties. Unlike the numerous world-class literary figures of his day, there was nothing particularly remarkable about Hesse’s literary style. If you wanted to read great literature you chose Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, William James, Thomas Mann, Flaubert, Hawthorne or Merman Melville, each far more gifted, from a literary standpoint, than the German writer. However, Hesse coupled the newly emerging psychoanalytic theory with eastern mysticism to create a hybrid universe unlike anything previously witnessed and many young readers such as myself ( I was still in my teens when I discovered Steppenwolf and Demian in the early 1960’s) were both mystified and eventually mesmerized by his metaphysical sagas.

My original intent writing this essay was to describe Hesse’s personal life as a prominent European writer, but after stumbling over so many memorable quotes describing his mystical/philosophical beliefs, I decided to fall back on a collection of random quotes as the best way to shed light on this enigmatic figure and the contribution he made to both modern literature and existential thought.

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to
the rest.”

“There is no reality except the one contained within us.
When I ignore this truth, the outside world can annoy me
at best and overwhelm me at worst. That is why so many
people live such an unreal life. They take the images
outside of them for reality and never allow the world within
to assert itself.”

“Most men, the herd, have never tasted solitude. They leave
father and mother, but only to crawl to a wife and quietly
succumb to new warmth and new ties. They are never alone,
they never commune with themselves.

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.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to
question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the
teaching my blood whispers to me.


Hermann Hesse's works offer profound insights into the philosophical themes of unity and interconnectedness. Through the journeys of his protagonists, Hesse illustrates that true understanding and enlightenment come from recognizing the interconnectedness of all life and the unity of seemingly opposing forces. Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life.

What follows are several quotes from the novel Steppenwolf:

“Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I
had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still,
wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the
stars revolve.”

"For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was
this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved
optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”

“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why
so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside
of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”

“How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One
should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible
sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never
in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to
behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They
don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars
in the sky.”

From childhood, Hesse was 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.”

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 works of world literature. All this instilled a sense in Hermann Hesse that he was a citizen of the world.

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 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.

As reflected in Demian, and other works, he believed that "for different people, there are different ways to God". Despite the influence he drew from Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, he stated about his parents that "their Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me".

By the time of Hesse's death in 1962, his works were still relatively little read in the United States, despite his status as a Nobel laureate. A memorial published in The New York Times went so far as to claim that Hesse's works were largely "inaccessible" to American readers. The situation changed in the mid-1960s when his works suddenly became bestsellers in the United States.