Bibliofreakblog

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

In preparing to take the A.P. English test when I was in eleventh grade, I chose this book, The Tempest, and I don’t know…something else.  The question on the test that year was something to effect of “sometimes the journey, getting from one place to another, is the most important part rather than the actual destination blah, blah, blah.”  I made a case for the search for Prospero’s daughter and it was pretty weak.  I ended up getting a 3 on the test and I blame my idiocy with this question for it.  Why I didn’t realize that Siddhartha is in itself a journey, I don’t know.  Also, had we read Heart of Darkness yet I could have used that and would have aced the damn thing, but alas, we’d not read it yet.

Siddhartha does journey, throughout the book, both physically and spiritually.  All of his physical excursions parallel his spiritual attitudes.  He goes through various ordeals, tries out various degrees of piousness, before hitting on enlightenment.  

When we meet Siddhartha, he is an ascetic.  He soon realizes that this is not working, and is a sort of vanity in and of itself and journeys on, questing for enlightenment.

The story is an allegory of the life of Buddha, whose name was Gautama or Gotama, but sometimes is referred to as Siddhartha.  However, Hesse is not writing about Buddha.  In fact, the Buddha is alluded to as a nomadic spiritual person in the region.  

Siddhartha goes from various extremes, in being an ascetic, a beggar, a lusty materialist, and finally settles on the middle road as the path to enlightenment.  What I like so much about this book is that it exemplifies the good in Buddhism while deploring some of the behavior that I hate about it.  

Let me explain.  I do not like Buddhism because I think that it is an elitist religion.  It basically says that only monks can reach enlightenment and if you are not a monk, well, better luck next life.  And then those same monks, in their pious quest for enlightenment and living meagerly will often times beg from the poor for their food.  But Siddhartha realizes the hypocrisy in this.  In the end he has lead his life fully, trying different lifestyles, and is better off for it.

This is a highly cerebral book, but the prose is not difficult.  It’s heady, and makes you think, and makes you wonder, but it’s a short read.  It’s a novella, so definitely fast.

If you like this book/author, you might like:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (F) by Robert M. Pirsig
Buddha (NF) by Karen Armstrong
Living Buddha, Living Christ (NF) by Thich Nhat Hanh
Deep River (F) by Shusaku Endo
Heart of Darkness (F) by Joseph Conrad
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (NF) by Joseph Campbell
The Tao of Pooh (F) by Benjamin Hoff
The Prophet (F) by Khalil Gibran
The Odyssey (EP) by Homer
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (F) by Richard Bach
Dharma Bums (F) by Jack Kerouac
C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse (CNF) by Miguel Serrano
Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment (F) by Deepak Chopra
Wake Up (F) by Jack Kerouac 

Other works by Herman Hesse*:

Steppenwolf (F)
Demian (F)
The Glass Bead Game (F)
The Journey East (F)
Narcissus and Goldmund (F)
The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse (F) 
Poems (P)
Pictor’s Metamorphoses & Other Fantasies (F)
Rosshalde (F)
Peter Camenzind (F)
Gertrude (F)
Beneath the Wheel (F)

With Thomas Mann:

The Hesse/Mann Letters (CNF)
 

*NOTE: This list is not exhaustive.  For the most part it only includes works still in print, though you can still find many of his other works, that have been translated into English, used.