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Hermann Hesse, the Novel’s Ideological
Background and Survival Vocabulary for
Chapters 1-2
Hermann Hesse

Brief Biographical Sketch
Youth

 born in 1877 to a North German father and South
German mother
 father had been a missionary in India, and mother
was the daughter of a renowned linguist and
missionary
 Piety and duty having been inculcated into Hesse, he
was expected to become a minister.
 Hesse rebelled, even running away from his seminary at
15 yrs old., and consequently experienced a mental
breakdown that led to a suicide attempt and time spent
in mental institutions; depression followed him
throughout his life.
Life-molding Experiences

 In his youth, Hesse, influenced by his parents’ sojourns in
India and his study of Indian literature, religions and
philosophies, developed an affinity for India and hoped
that he could find in its culture the meaning in life he
personally sought for and the philosophical
enlightenment Europe and the Western world needed to
overcome its intellectual and cultural decay.
 In 1911, Hesse set out for India; he never made it (because of
exhaustion), but visited Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Borneo and
Burma.
 He was disappointed by his travels and claimed that
‘colonial rule had denatured the territory’; still, he did find
literary inspiration from his experience.
Life-molding Experiences cont’d

 Maternal grandfather was a doctor of philosophy and
encouraged Hesse to develop global awareness and a desire to
preserve a sense of European culture and community
 This resulted in his outspoken resistance (1914) to the
nationalism that pervaded Europe prior to and during World
War I and led to his unpopularity with his German audience.
 The shock and disappointment he experienced because of the
vitriolic opposition he received led him again to need treatment for
mental and emotional instability (1916), so he sought refuge in the
popular psychiatric therapy of the time—Freudian
psychoanalysis—and became friends with Carl Jung (who worked
very closely for a period with Sigmund Freud and whose
psychological theories we are going to be visiting again
throughout the year).
Siddhartha

 From a combination of his Asian travels and investigations into Hinduism,
Buddhism, and Jungian philosophy, Siddhartha was written, beginning in 1919;
it was published in 1922.
 Writing Style: In German (remember: what you have is a translation!!!), Hesse
wanted to mimic the style of an ancient pious legend.
What would you expect the language (diction, imagery and syntax/sentence
structure) to sound and feel like?
 Highly poetic style reminiscent of ancient scriptures and sermons (particularly
those ascribed to the Buddha)
 Parallelism of simple clauses (think—simple sentences) and their incantatory
repetitions
 Use of archaic words, unusual word forms and rarer secondary meanings of
everyday words
 Use of “dignified” diction
In case you fall in love with Hesse…

Other noteworthy works by Hesse include Demian, Der
Steppenwolf, and Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Pearl Game);
the last is considered his magnum opus in construction,
imagination, style, and ideological exploration and impact.
Siddhartha

Ideological Background
The Hero, Siddhartha

 novel covers about 60 years of his life, from 540-480 BCE
 Historically, this time was a period of great religious
upheaval in India as Brahmanism (polytheistic worship
based on strict ritual observances and requiring oversight
from the highest, priestly caste—the Brahmans) was
giving way to Hinduism (also polytheistic, but
encouraging almost exclusive devotion to a single
supreme god chosen from among a small number;
significantly, the gods most popular under Hinduism,
Shiva and Vishnu (who had other incarnations as Rama
and Krishna), were the gods of the common people.
The Hero, Siddhartha

 Synchronously, Buddhism was developing. Considered a sect or heresy, it
challenged the Hindu hope that good works in this life would lead to an
improved life upon reincarnation by arguing that there was no good in
living at all, as life is only full of suffering, and that the real goal in life
should be to achieve release from reincarnation through total extinction, or
nirvana.
 Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakya clan is the historical Buddha; he
preached Four Great Truths–
 All existence is suffering.
 Suffering is caused by desires.
 To stop suffering, one must cease to desire.
 This is achieved by the Eightfold Path: correct opinions, correct thoughts,
correct speech, correct actions, correct way of living, correct effort, correct
attention, and correct concentration.
 The hero of our novel, though also named Siddhartha, is NOT Buddha!!!
The Hero, Siddhartha

 This “original” Buddhism was more a philosophy or therapy; its adherents who
became monks who renounced worldly ties ignored the gods and did little in
the way of formal worship. (This approach to Buddhism moreso dominates in
Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.)
 Much later, by the beginning of the Christian era, it developed in India into a
religion for the masses: it developed an extensive pantheon of gods, a number
of Buddhas, the possibility of instant salvation without great efforts, and the
concept of active “guardian angels.” (This approach to Buddhism disappeared
from India and held sway in Tibet, China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan and
Vietnam.)
 Taoism also is dominant in the novel; taoism encourages quietism, seclusion, an
austerely simple life-style, and the belief that softness is stronger than hardness.
 You will notice that Siddhartha’s and other characters’ experiences are an
amalgamation and appropriation of many of these different ideologies; this
leads to the novel’s philosophy being “much more emotional and imagistic
than systematic or really thought out.” We need to explore WHY Hesse
approached the novel in this way.
Survival Vocabulary

Chapters 1 and 2
Chapter 1
Siddhartha: “one who has
achieved his goal”
 Brahman: (in chapter 1) a
member of the highest caste,
the priests, who guard the
Vedic tradition and officiate at
numerous rites and sacrifices
 om: the untranslatable syllable
uttered before every recitation
from the Vedas; as a result of its
prominence in ritual, mystics
elevate om to the position of
Supreme in the universe
 Atman: the self; one’s own
nature; the individual soul. In
some of the Upanishads, this is
equated with the Brahman (or
universal soul…another
definition of the word)





Govinda: possible derivation of the name is
from later literature about the Hindu
herdsman-god Krishna, where it is a title of
Krishna and sometimes of Vishnu (one of the
chief gods of India both in the Hindu trinity
and in his being viewed as the supreme,
practically only god, of whom Krishna is an
incarnation, or avatar)—it seems to mean
“cow-seeker” and refers to Krishna’s life as a
herdsman
Rig Veda: most famous of the four Vedas (or
holy books of Brahmanism and Hinduism); an
anthology of hymns to the gods to be
performed at sacrifices
Upanishads (of the Sama Veda): the Sama Veda
contains instructions on chanting the hymns;
the upanishads are the most recent writings
within each Veda—they are also mystical
and/or philosophical reflections n elements in
the Vedas (or on religion in general) and
LARGELY INFLUENCE later Indian and
European thought
Samana: wandering ascetic, or mendicant
monk
Sources

 Siddhartha: A Dual-Language Book; Dover edition;
translated by Appelbaum
 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureate
s/1946/hesse-facts.html
 http://www.egs.edu/library/hermann-hesse/biography/
THIS IS NOT A MODEL OF HOW TO CITE SOURCES.