Siddhartha

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SIDDHARTHA

HERMANN HESSE was a German-born poet, novelist, and painter, born in 1877 in the town of Calw in Württemberg, in the heart of the Black Forest, the German Empire. His best-known novels include Siddhartha, Demian, Steppenwolf, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual’s search for self-knowledge and spirituality. Hesse’s mother, Marie Gundert, was born in India in 1842, their parents were missionaries and left her in Europe at the age of four when they returned to India. In 1895, Hesse began working in a bookshop in Tübingen, which had a specialized collection in theology, philology, and law. After the end of twelve-hour workday, Hesse pursued his work and spent all his spare time working to his books rather than with friends. Hesse studied theological writings and Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Greek mythology.

By 1898, Hesse concentrated on the works of the German Romantics, including Novalis, Clemens Brentano, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, and Friedrich Hölderlin. In 1896, one of his poems, Madonna, appeared in a Viennese periodical, and Hesse released his first small volume of poetry, Romantic Songs. The year after, he published another poem, Grand Valse, acclaimed by Helene Voigt, the wife of Eugen Diederichs, a publisher. He consequently agreed to publish Hesse’s collection of prose entitled One Hour After Midnight in 1898, but both works were a business failure.

From late 1899, Hesse worked in a famous antique book shop in Basel. The city offered Hesse many opportunities for withdrawal into a private life of artistic self-exploration, and work. Hesse was exempted from compulsory military service in 1900 due to an eye disorder, along with another to the nerves and persistent headaches, that affected him his entire life. Hesse traveled to Italy for the first time in 1901. Hesse now had more opportunities to release poems and small literary texts to journals. These publications now provided honorariums, and his new bookstore agreed to publish one of his works, Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher. His mother died in 1902, after a long and painful illness. He had not the strength to bring himself to attend her funeral.

Due to the success that Hesse received for Lauscher, the publisher Samuel Fischer became interested in his writings and, eventually, with the novel Peter Camenzind, in 1904, arrived a breakthrough: from now on, Hesse had his freedom and could make a living as an author. The book became popular throughout Germany, and Sigmund Freud praised Peter Camenzind as one of his favorite readings. Finally, stable, financially Hesse married Maria Bernoulli.

In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, but he was unfit for combat duty, and the military assigned him to the service care for prisoners of war. A very profound life crisis befell Hesse with the death of his father in 1916, the severe illness of his son Martin, and contemporary his wife’s schizophrenia. Due to this family problem, Hesse was forced to leave his military service and begin receiving psychotherapy, for which he came to know Carl Jung personally. During three weeks in September and October 1917, Hesse penned his novel Demian, published in 1919, after the armistice, under the pseudonym of Emil Sinclair. By the time Hermann Hesse returned to civilian life in 1919, his marriage with Maria Bernoulli had fallen apart. Due to his wife’s psychosis, Hesse saw no possible future with her. They divided their house, their children were accommodated in boarding houses and by relatives, and Hermann Hesse resettled alone in Ticino and eventually got married for the second time.

Hermann Hesse observed the rise to power of Nazism in Germany with great concern. In 1933, he helped Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann with their travels into exile and attempted to go against Hitler’s suppression of art and literature, along with his third wife, a Jewish. In the 1930s, Hesse made a quiet statement of resistance by reviewing and publicizing the work of banned Jewish authors, including Franz Kafka. After a strong censure from the regime, German journals stopped publishing Hesse’s writings, and the Nazis eventually banned them.

Fortunately, in 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature and continued to write. He died in 1962.

SILVIA LICCIARDELLO MILLEPIED is an Italian writer born in Teramo, Italy. She is an award-winning songwriter and singer, and editor of more than seventy titles, including three children’s books. Considered a child prodigy among her peers, she wrote and performed her first play when she was eleven years old, and her first song when she was only a six-year-old little girl. She studied Music, Arts, Performing Arts and Cinema at the University of Bologna, and at La Sapienza University of Rome with a diploma in Cinema. After a few years, she attended an online literature course at Harvard University with David Damrosch and Martin Puchner. She is now working on her first novel and has spent the past few years writing different stories. She became an editor and publisher in order to study the craft from the most prominent and famous authors of the past. Founder of Res Stupenda, RSMediaItalia and Astrid Magazine, she is also the author of the Italian translation of Sylvie by Nerval (2019), and Pride and Prejudice by Austen (2019),and two books about cinema: Lo Strano Caso Fincher (2014) and Tempo Labirinto (2015).

FURTHER READING

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SIDDHARTHA

HERMANN HESSE

Edited by SILVIA LICCIARDELLO MILLEPIED

Res Stupenda

Published in 2019 by

Res Stupenda

Silvia Licciardello Millepied, 40 rue Jacob, 75006, Paris France

SIRET: 829 135 300 00020

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#resstupenda

First Published 1922

First Published by RSMediaItalia in 2014.

The English Translation of this book is in the Public Domain

Translated by Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer and Semyon Chaichenets

Original Text copyright © the Literary Executors of the Estate of Hermann Hesse

Further Reading, Photographs, Cover & Book Design copyright © 2019 Silvia Licciardello Millepied

The right of Silvia Licciardello Millepied to be identified as the editor has been asserted by her. The moral right of Hermann Hesse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisherr, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce not more than three illustrations in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper or blog

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologies for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book

Edited by Silvia Licciardello Millepied

ISBN 10: 10-378-0059-6

ISBN 13: 979-10-378-0059-6

To Benjamin

CONTENTS

About the Editor

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

PART ONE

The Son of the Brahman

With the Samanas

Gotama

Awakening

PART TWO

Kamala

With the Childlike People

Sansara

By the River

The Ferryman

The Son

OM

Govinda

SIDDHARTHA

An Indian Tale

Part One

Hermann Hesse.

To Romain Rolland, my dear friend

The Son of the Brahman

IN the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Salwood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

Joy leapt in his father’s heart for his son who was quick to learn, thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man and priest, a prince among the Brahmans.

Bliss leapt in his mother’s breast when she saw him, when she saw him walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, Siddhartha, strong, handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect respect.

Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans’ young daughters when Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips.

But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. He loved Siddhartha’s eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many. No, and he, Govinda, as well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of thousands of Brahmans. He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved, the splendid. And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god, when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow.

Siddhartha was thus loved by everyone. He was a source of joy for everybody, he was a delight for them all.

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone’s love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rigveda, being infused