Herman Hesse. Siddhartha: Between the Rebellion and the Regeneration

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SOURCE: “Herman Hesse. Siddhartha: Between the Rebellion and the Regeneration,” in The Literary Criterion, Vol. 16, 1981, pp. 50–66.

[In the following essay, Narasimhaiah discusses several shortcomings in Siddhartha, writing that Hesse's novel is hopelessly deficient in enactment, frequently confusing, and that the novelist becomes a perpetual commentator instead of letting the characters define themselves.]

Herman Hesse first came to Indian attention with his Siddhartha, not as novel but in its film version. It was one of those films which drew to the cinema house even those normally indifferent to films, largely because of the title. From the starchy public school snob to the credulous film goer, almost everyone, however, thought the film had not done justice to the novel. One suspects it was a stock response in vogue to any great novel when it appeared on the screen, for it is very likely that not even a small fraction of those that saw the film had read the novel. We are not a book-reading nation. Once it was the oral tradition and today the visual has replaced everything else. Largely for this very reason an attempt should be made to assess the novel.

Now how far does Herman Hesse's Siddhartha answer to D. H. Lawrence's criterion of the novel as ‘the one bright book of life’? On the face of it what seems to threaten the novel is the exclusion or impoverishment of ‘life’, that is, as Lawrence understands life, certainly as Lawrence's great admirer Dr Leavis understands it; indeed, generally speaking, as the Western man understands it. In the first place Siddhartha does not have the canvas of Anna Karenina which takes in many things and makes for life in its totality. And then, too, it is mainly the story of an individual like Albert Camus' The Outsider and therefore as in the case of The Outsider, here too the range gets helplessly narrowed. And yet it does meet Lawrence's claim for the Novel form, namely that it is ‘a greater gift than Galileo's telescope or some body else's wireless.’ For what is lost in the horizontal life-experience is made up in the vertical; in fact the distinction of this short novel, to the extent it is a distinction, lies in its vertical opulence.

Siddhartha, the son of Brahmin parents is the protagonist of the novel. As a boy, he discussed spiritual matters with learned men, practised the art of meditation with his friend Govinda, knew how to pronounce Om silently, knew even ‘how to recognise Atman within the depth of his being, indestructible, at one with the Universe’ (p. 3). His friend Govinda knew that ‘Siddhartha would become no ordinary Brahmin, a lazy sacrificial official, an avaricious dealer in magic sayings, a conceited worthless orator, a wicked sly priest, or just a stupid sheep amongst a large herd’ (p. 4). Which explains Govinda's admiration for Siddhartha ‘the beloved, the magnificent’ and the reason why he wanted to follow him as ‘his friend, his companion, his servant, his lance-bearer, his shadow’ (p. 4). This was how he became to every one the cause of happiness though he was not himself happy. For he was convinced that his relationship with his parents or his friend Govinda ‘would not always make him happy, give him peace, satisfy and suffice him’ (p. 5). Nor would knowledge and wisdom poured by the wise Brahmins into his waiting vessel give peace to his soul because the vessel was yet to be full and complete. And for him all the Brahminical sacrifices seemed meaningless: ‘nobody showed the way, nobody knew it—neither his father, nor the teachers and wise men, nor the holy songs’ (p. 5). Hence the compulsion that ‘one must find the source within one's own self’. He asks Govinda to accompany him to the banyan tree to practise meditation, which they both do sitting twenty paces apart. But a few days later some wandering ascetics called Samanas pass through the town; they were neither old nor young, with dusty bleeding shoulders, practically naked, scorched by the sun and around them hovered ‘an atmosphere of still passion, of devastating service, of unpitying self-denial’ (p. 8). Without a second thought Siddhartha decides to join the Samanas only to discover, long after he gets into the Order, that he could never attain Nirvana as a Samana, because, he says ‘we find consolations, we learn tricks with which we deceive ourselves, but the essential thing—The Way—we do not find’ (p. 15). And the conservative Govinda pleads with him not to utter such dreadful words.

In the meanwhile word gets round that Gotama, the Illustrious one, was living in the Jetavana grove near a town called Savathi. On the way Govinda suggests that if Siddhartha had stayed with the Samanas a little longer he would have soon learned how to walk on water, to which he replies—‘let the old Samanas satisfy themselves with such arts. What I have so far learned from the samanas I could have learned more quickly and easily in every inn in a prostitutes' quarter, amongst the carriers and dice players’ (p. 14). Both Siddhartha and Govinda anxiously walk a long way in search of Gotama not merely to have his darshan but to hear his discourses. As a result while Govinda joins the Order, Siddhartha gets away from its orbit because he feels reassured that ‘nobody finds salvation through teachings’ and that ‘Gotama himself learned nothing through teachings’. Instead Siddhartha decides to ‘learn from himself, be his own pupil’.

In the second part of the novel, we read of Siddhartha's encounter with a beautiful courtesan called Kamala and his surrender to her great beauty. He apprentices himself to a wealthy businessman, Kamaswami, with a view to winning her. Day after day, week after week he comes closer to the world, becomes a part of it, becomes so indulgent in the affairs of the world that the spiritual detachment which he once practised so ardently, is now a mere memory. It is after a fairly long time that Siddhartha realises his futile existence when ‘A shudder passed through his body; he felt as if something had died’ (p. 67). And he sat all that day under a mango tree thinking of his father, thinking of Govinda, thinking of Gotama. Had he left all these in order to become a Kamaswami?’ (p. 67). And the same night Siddhartha leaves the town and never returns. His later life is spent with Vasudeva, a ferryman, who becomes, in a way, his spiritual master. It's at this stage when he had run into Kamala and his defiant son who swears at him, hurts him inordinately and goes his way nonchalantly leaving him grief-stricken, humbled, humiliated and chastened in succession that Govinda meets him and discovers in him a great awakening. This in brief is the substance of the novel.

That Siddhartha is a rebel, is evident almost throughout the novel. His quest for freedom induces him not merely to break away from his family, from a system, but also from his relationship with individuals like his friend Govinda and even Gotama, the Illustrious One, because, for Siddhartha, relationship itself is some kind of bondage or imprisonment. The rebel in Siddhartha makes him assert: ‘I can think, I can wait, I can fast’ (p. 52). It is important to note all three—thinking, waiting, fasting—are not passive but are actually highly charged with the spirit of rebellion that is, rebellion of a subtle, even superior, kind. It's unfortunate, though, that in the name of rebelling against a conventional settled life he gets bogged down in new relationships, first with Kamala and later with the world of Kamaswami. If Siddhartha desires for a relationship with Kamala it's partly because for one like him with a spiritual penchant it goes counter to the conventions of the world to make friends with a courtesan, love her and even accept her as his teacher. It is obvious that he suffers from an itch for defying and it is this spirit of defiance that makes him shave off his beard, oil and comb his hair and perfume his body. The question to ask is: Is Siddhartha a dilettante, striking new postures wanting to be different from the rest of society or does he go to an extreme in the attempt to avoid dangers of conformity as of outlawry.

In fairness to Siddhartha it must be said that his defiant attitude has no relation to his non-acceptance of the Buddha as his teacher. If he was not very curious about Buddha's teachings, it is not necessarily due to the assertion of his ego (though one can't still say he has transcended it); on the contrary, ‘he looks attentively at Gotama's head, at his shoulders, at his feet, at his still downward-hanging hand, and it seemed to him that in every joint of every finger of his hand there was knowledge; they spoke, breathed, radiated truth’ (p. 23). Nevertheless he doesn't come under the Enlightened One's Order for he is convinced that ‘nobody finds salvation through Teachings’. Buddha himself learned nothing through Teachings.

Since the novel obviously runs almost parallel to the life of the historical Buddha, one can't help recalling an instance ‘when Gautama drove forth for the last time he met a hermit, a mendicant friar. This Bhikku was self-possessed, serene, dignified, self-controlled with downcast eyes, dressed in the garb of a religious man and carrying a beggar's bowl’.1 Even though Gautama was enchanted by the Bhikku's presence, he doesn't become a lay disciple, for he believed in being a Lamp unto himself, in not looking for an external refuge but hold fast as a refuge to the Truth. Note the Buddha's advice to his disciple, Ananda—6 “… And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I am dead, shall be a Lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their Lamp and holding fast as their refuge to the Truth, shall look not for refuge to anyone besides themselves, it is they, Ananda, among my Bhikkus who shall reach the very topmost Height!—but they must be anxious to learn’.2 Therefore if Siddhartha is going away from Gotama, the Illustrious One, it is not that the personality of the Enlightened One had no appeal for him but that the didactic aspect of Buddhism which instructed common man ‘how to live righteously and how to avoid evil’, repelled his inquiring spirit. It is his profound conviction that nobody, certainly not the Buddha, can communicate to anybody ‘in words and teachings what happened to him in the hour of enlightenment’ (p. 28). Siddhartha, therefore, goes away, let it be noted, ‘not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone or die’ (p. 28). At the conclusion of his dialogue with Gotama, the Enlightened One tells him that he is a clever samana and that he knows how to speak cleverly but also warns him ‘Be on your guard against too much cleverness’. It is true in later years, this too much cleverness in Siddhartha deviates him frequently, from his goal.

Now that Govinda, who represents the conservative element in society, joins the safe and secure Order of the Buddha, Siddhartha is left alone. ‘He shivered inwardly like a small animal, when he realised how alone he was’ (p. 33). And ‘he breathed deeply and for a moment he shuddered. Nobody was so alone as he’ (p. 33). This sense of complete self-exposure in Siddhartha is itself a kind of awakening. But this awakening suffers from an inadequacy—which is in its very enactment, rather the lack of it. Probably because the awakening itself, in the first place, is not profound—not so profound as the Buddha's—whose compassion for the deformed and the diseased in the streets overflows. Note the Buddha's own words: ‘Let me rather like Dipankara, having risen to the supreme knowledge of the truth, enable all men to enter the ship of truth and thus I may bear them over the sea of Existence, and then only let me realise Nibbana myself’3 which were said in response to Dipankara's prophecy that he would become a Buddha of the name of Gautama. Buddha's exhortation to his chief disciple Ananda is memorable because he who ardently desired to attain Nirvana is found saying ‘You have no right to cross the threshold of this life till you have rescued the last blade of grass caught up in distress’. In a minor way Coleridge had experienced this kind of compassion when he was overcome with the feeling ‘He prayeth best, who loveth best / all things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all.’

In both the cases, it is an outgoing passion which pulsates most naturally. Whereas with Siddhartha it is incoming and purely self-centred. Consider him saying ‘I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha’ (p. 31). Despite the fact that there is much self-reliance which is no doubt a great virtue, it is also true that for Siddhartha, the egocentric self in him asserts itself and becomes more important than the Universe. The profundity in Buddha's awakening consists in the final breaking away from those precious links' of life man generally clings to. It is the dukkha of the world or the human condition and so the Buddha sought to get at the core of this sorrow. There is no such inner compulsion in Siddhartha; rather, it is imposed by the passing fashions of an intellectual life or from ennui. The doctrine of ‘Know Thyself’ seems thrust into Siddhartha's thoughts. At least there is not sufficient objective correlative for his dissatisfaction with himself or the world when he pronounces ‘I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha’. True, Siddhartha tries to know and conquer the self in him but pays little thought to the greater Self or that by which all else is known, though the term Absolute does get mentioned in the course of the novel.

It's not the approach of the kitten to the Mother Cat (Marjara Nyaya), not even that of the young ones of the monkey which cling to the mother (Markata Nyaya). The primacy of the supernatural is nowhere in question.

The beginning of the second part of the novel marks the beginning of Siddhartha's fall but that it is a fall fated to induce self-knowledge has to be conceded. It is here that Siddhartha begins to stir out of his cold self frozen by too much intellection; flesh and blood assume human passions thanks to his acquaintance with Kamala the courtesan. In accepting Kamala as his teacher, Siddhartha is at once declining and recovering—declining for the obvious reason that he falls for physical Beauty that grows ‘pale, spectre-thin and dies’ and recovering because he surrenders his own inordinate ego and self-pride and becomes conscious of the other. And yet his surrender of the self is not complete. For he asks Kamala: ‘But tell me, fair Kamala, are you not at all afraid of the samana from the forest, who has come to learn about love?’ Kamala replies ‘Why should I be afraid of a samana, a stupid samana from the forest, who comes from the jackals and does not know anything about women?’ (p. 45) and thus deflates the Samana's ego. Kamala acts not merely as a corrective to start with, but serves as a liberating force to the extent that she liberates Siddhartha from a cold spirituality in him that is more cerebral than real—cerebral because his spirituality at first is an infatuation with an idea: and not the result of a felt experience of human suffering which the Buddha experienced, if not personally, at least imaginatively.

The Buddha had rightly advised Siddhartha to be on his guard against too much cleverness. For it is this too much cleverness that makes him think: ‘his heart was not indeed in business, his real self wandered elsewhere, far away, wandered on and on invisibly and had nothing to do with his life’ (p. 57) For a long time Siddhartha had lived the life of the world without belonging to it like the dew on the lotus leaf. Even though ‘he had learned to play dice and chess and to watch dancers carried on sedan chairs and sleep on a soft bed, he always felt different from and superior to others; he had always watched them with a slightly mocking disdain, with that disdain which a samana always feels towards the people of the world’ (p. 61). Whenever Kamaswami, his business chief was troubled with business affairs, Siddhartha had always regarded him mockingly, not realising that his own mockery and feeling of superiority kept diminishing day by day. This is because he tried to live in a make-believe world. When finally he encounters reality he realises that ‘property, possessions and riches had finally trapped him, they were no longer a game and a toy; they had become a chain and a burden’ (p. 63). ‘He who staked ten thousand on the throw of the dice and laughed, became more hard and mean in business, and sometimes dreamt of money at night’ (p. 64). ‘He stood alone like a shipwrecked man on the shore’ (p. 66).

It is important, however, to notice that his present loneliness is different from the earlier one when Govinda had left him. When Govinda became a Buddhist monk, it was a challenge to Siddhartha. His utter loneliness then results in renewed energy to go forward, to explore, to find. In contrast to this the effect of the present loneliness is a feeling of ‘horror and death in the heart’ (p. 66). There is now no challenge to gather strength and go forward which does not become an ascetic in any case. He now shows a mature and graceful acceptance of life when ‘he smiled wearily, shook his head and said goodbye to these things’ (p. 67). It's almost as detached as Eliot's ‘wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh’. That's probably because his present loneliness is preceded by a human suffering in the blood with his son denouncing him and running away from him and not just in the mind as it was before. There is therefore some kind of deepening in Siddhartha. That Siddhartha's boyhood dissatisfaction with life and inquiry was rather intellectual and even superficial becomes more and more evident now that he feels lost in the affairs of the world. This is because Siddhartha let the natural urges of life pass him by and takes to a life of the spirit by self-will, unlike the Buddha and finds himself miserable and lost. It is true he lives with Kamala to whom he gives a child. But this doesn't make him a grhasta, for it is more a happening, a physiological event than a way of life.

This, anyhow, is not to say it is impossible for one to skip this stage successfully. Quite a few have achieved it, Sankara in eighth century and Ramakrishna despite the marriage (the wife becomes a veritable mother) and Vivekananda only a hundred years ago. But here Siddhartha was not ready for spiritual heights. And readiness is all. There wasn't any. There was no perception born out of real or imaginative suffering, reflection or a hopeless empathetic involvement. This is clear as we see his spirituality confined to the verbal level (which is a raw level really) where he had a fancy for discussing spiritual matters with knowledgeable elders of the village. Sad that it didn't percolate deep down into his very being. How could it, when it lacked the spiritual churning in him—it was so insufficient, the indestructible divine butter of which Ramakrishna talks hadn't really formed. For if it had, even half-formed, he couldn't have mixed and mingled so easily with the world without any resistance or struggle—the resistance and the struggle of, for example, one like Faustus whose situation is not very different from Siddhartha's at a certain stage of life. But that churning takes place now when ‘he was deeply entangled in sansara, he had drawn nausea and death to himself from all sides, like a sponge that absorbs water until it is full’ and he realises ‘he was full of ennui, full of misery, full of death …’ (p. 69). ‘He wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead. If only a flash of lightning would strike him! If only a tiger would come and eat him!’ And he thought ‘there was nothing more for him but to efface himself, to destroy the unsuccessful structure of his life, to throw it away, mocked at by the Gods. That was the deed which he longed to commit, to destroy the form which he hated! Might the fishes devour him, this dog of a Siddhartha, this madman, this corrupted and rotting body, this sluggish and misused soul! Might the fishes and crocodiles devour him, might the demons tear him to little pieces!’ And then ‘with a distorted countenance he stared into the water. He saw his face reflected and spat at it’ (p. 70).

It is at this stage that ‘from a remote part of his soul, from the past of his tired life, he heard a sound’. It was the sound of the holy Om which ‘without thinking he spoke indistinctly’ (p. 70). ‘At that moment, when the sound of Om reached Siddhartha's ears, his slumbering soul suddenly awakened and he recognised the folly of his action’ (p. 71). Siddhartha's sudden awakening here makes one recall the sudden awakening of The Ancient Mariner which is far more authentic despite the fact that Siddhartha's awakening is the result of a much greater sin and much intenser suffering than the Ancient Mariner's. This is so because the manner of awakening in Siddhartha through the indistinct utterance of the holy Om sounds rather inauthentic atleast for an Indian. Om is something that is eternally there in one's being and the realisation of this does not come from listening to it with the organic ear. And here, Om seems to ‘reach Siddhartha's ears’ (italics mine) and his slumbering soul suddenly awakens. This lapse, anyhow, is due to Hesse's own failure of a deep understanding of Hindu thought. One has only to consider the concluding line of The Waste Land: Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi, that is, in the given context. Unlike Eliot, Hesse isn't struggling to find an objective correlative to a revelation or sudden illumination. One also wonders whether the tired author did not hasten to clinch the plot and conclude somehow. Is this naive awakening of Siddhartha a technical flaw only? Or does it strain the reader's credibility as to the actual nature of Realisation of Truth? The fact, however, remains that in awakening at the fag-end of his spentout life, Siddhartha is rising from his own ashes as it were, like the Phoenix. This rising like the Phoenix is not the self-assertiveness of the Santiago kind but it is actually preceded by a total understanding of the past and the present. Note for instance, his words: ‘Now when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray, when strength begins to diminish, now I am beginning again like a child’ (p. 76) and again ‘I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child and begin anew’ (p. 77). Still, Siddhartha is no cynic. Nor is this the agony of the Romantic. For ‘he did not grieve about it’, thanks to a certain robustness in him. He says ‘This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it’ (p. 77). It is important to observe that the determination we find in the words ‘I will follow it’ is far different from his boyhood determination of leaving his parents. Because earlier Siddhartha wanted the ‘path’ to follow him, wanted to learn from himself—in other words he tried to shape his fate himself. But now there is considerable amount of surrender to the Unknown, Unfathomable path. In fact, the surrender takes place to such an extent that one feels the ‘I’ in ‘I will follow it’ has almost crumbled.

Having said all this there are still certain things which must strike us as odd, fail to carry conviction, that is to an Indian. Hesse invariably goes wrong when he tries to establish a relationship between Siddhartha and the external world like the river or the abstract concept of Om. It is clear that the author doesn't know enough of the river in India. We are told time and again that the river played a significant role in the moulding of Siddhartha; that ‘never had a river attracted him as much as this one’ and that ‘it seemed to him as if the river had something special to tell him, something which he did not know, something which still awaited him. Siddhartha had wanted to drown himself in this river; the old, tried, despairing Siddhartha was today drowned in it. The new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this flowing water and decided that he would not leave it again so quickly’ (p. 80). As it can be seen the treatment of the river remains only at the level of intellection and doesn't become an experience. Howevermuch the author tries to load the river with meaning, it doesn't come home to the reader, because the river doesn't have a name, a history, a tradition, not even a legend which alone can enable the reader to participate and make it an experience. On the contrary certain words work against the river's very existence: ‘In his heart he heard the newly awakened voice speak, and it said to him: “Love this river, stay by it, learn from it”’ (p. 81). There is no authenticity in Siddhartha's ‘awakened voice’ what with the neat, concrete verbal pattern—almost the pattern of an exhortation which is indicative of the rational western mind of Hesse at work.

Yet in fairness to the author, a word or two must be said in respect of the impact of the river on Siddhartha, because, in a particular point of time in a man's life he may have gathered some wisdom. ‘Above all, he learned from it (river) how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions’ (p. 85). Our nagging reservation still persists since the river is not particularised. Siddhartha might well have learnt this lesson from any river, any waters flowing or stagnant, even a mountain or a tree. That is what makes one think the river is not so indispensable (as the author feels, for the shaping of either the novel or the character) as for instance the sea is, in Moby Dick or The Old Man and the Sea. The river here, remains outside us, because it remains outside him. It doesn't flow in his veins and become ‘Antar-Ganga’. In other words, the internalisation of the river doesn't take place in Siddhartha. This is due to the constant authorial intervention, and at the conceptual level too.

If, therefore, Siddhartha learns to listen it is not that the river did something to him but that he must have learnt from books of the River's spiritual potency to uplift. The act of listening itself is symptomatic of transcendence, of sainthood as compared to the mere act of talking or preaching. No wonder Hopkins said ‘who would be a poet, if one could be a saint?’ Because in listening one experiences much humility, much surrendering of the individual ego, much self-effacement and above all much silence born of complete understanding in contrast to words like ‘I can think, I can wait, I can fast’. In listening also there is waiting, a lot of it really, but the growth of Siddhartha is in the gradual shedding of the ‘I’ which is a sign of maturity in him. And yet one can't say he has reached this state, let alone remained at it. Since Siddhartha's life-pattern itself, thanks to his rebellious nature, is so unconventional with too many ups and downs. He moves from the so-called spiritual to the de-spiritual and recovers again but not without soaring up and coming down. His life is very unlike the lives of Buddha, Aurobindo or St Augustine which normally have two broad phases—the first being rather yet-to-ripe and worldly and the second transformed into highly profound and spiritual.

We see Siddhartha caught up in deep worldly love for his indifferent son. And this relationship makes for some complexity in him. For one is not sure whether it ties him up or liberates him. Perhaps it does both. The first genuine outgoing feeling or passion is towards his son, not even towards Kamala in Jetavana where he had himself confessed that he cannot love like ordinary men. However it is only now that his channels open up and blood begins to flow. Siddhartha moves from a frozen but neat and attractive marble-like spirituality to a full-blooded human being, when he not merely thinks like a man but feels like a man. This is not to say he harboured no love and affection for Kamala. In fact one finds a genuine compassion in him for the aged Kamala who is dying—‘she was lying on Siddhartha's bed in his hut and Siddhartha, whom she had once loved so much was bending over her’ (p. 90). The symbolic meaning that one can read into the act of bending over reminds one of a Lear-like affection welling up. But the difference lies in Siddhartha not being overcome by it, as Lear was in the final stages of the play. It is true Kamala's death disturbs him immensely; he couldn't sleep or eat rice which Vasudeva the ferryman had cooked for him. Yet there is no lasting impression left on him. Siddhartha knows that he is disturbed, knows that he couldn't sleep or eat and therefore he is not lost. But in the case of his son, he wonders if he had ‘lost his heart to anybody so much, so blindly, so painfully, so helplessly and yet so happily?’ (p. 96) despite the fact that the son hated every inch of him so strongly. Note his words—‘just to spite you, I would rather become a thief and a murderer and go to hell than be like you. I hate you, you are not my father even if you have been my mother's lover a dozen times!’ (p. 98). In weaning away from his son, Siddhartha is actually cutting off his last vein connecting it with the world of Sansara.

Siddhartha ultimately attains detachment when there is complete self-effacement which is not self-willed but spontaneous. This transparence he reaches at a stage where he gets convinced of the truth that ‘he had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them …’ (italics mine). Siddhartha learns not to resist because he realises ‘the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there’ and ‘the potential hidden Buddha must be recognised in him, in you, in everybody’ (p. 113). Siddhartha continues: ‘The world Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people—eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice-player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time to see simultaneously the past, present and future, and then everything that exists is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good,—death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me’ (p. 113). (It is important one mustn't overlook the ‘my’ here is totally impersonal). These words do intimate to us the clairvoyance of someone who has seen it all however briefly. Siddhartha has now ceased to look at life and begun to perceive it with his entire being and not just with his mind. That is, there is no gulf between the object of perception and his perceiving self, for he becomes one with the object and experiences unity and diversity—‘This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything. I love it just because it is a stone, because today and now it appears to me a stone. I see value and meaning in each one of its fine markings and cavities, in the yellow, in the grey, in the hardness and the sound of it when I knock it, in the dryness or dampness of its surface’ (p. 114).

Siddhartha transcends to such an extent that in sense the word loses its significance and becomes absurd. On the other hand he feels he could love a stone, a tree or a piece of bark but he could never love words. ‘Therefore teachings are of no use to me; they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no corners, no smell, no taste—they have nothing but words. Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace, perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue, Sansara and Nirvana are only words, Govinda. Nirvana is not a thing; there is only the word Nirvana’ (p. 114). It is possible too many words all around (about God and spirituality) bored, frustrated and disgusted him as long as a boy. And so he may have sought liberation from words. No wonder he desires to be Kamala's pupil as words were not her medium. And much latter Vasudeva, the ferryman becomes his teacher and as one can see, Vasudeva didn't talk words but simply was. This doesn't however mean that Siddhartha has lost faith in the word but that he detests words which are wordy, which assault and destroy the silence that hovers over every thought, feeling or thing. Consequently we find a transformation in himself from the state of ‘I can think, I can wait, I can fast’ to the present state where Govinda discovers' his glance and his hand, his skin and his hair, all radiate a purity, peace, serenity, gentleness and saintliness which Govinda, had never seen in any man since the death of the illustrious teacher’ (p. 117). In other words he is now like the veena, spontaneously vibrating music without the pulling of the string.

Siddhartha not merely achieves that clairvoyance but is potent enough to enable his friend Govinda to achieve the same and get his salvation too not through words and teachings but by ‘kissing’ knowledge on the forehead of Govinda. The experience in Govinda after Siddhartha's lips touched his forehead is almost similar to that of Yashoda who felt human kind cannot bear very much reality when her little son Krishna showed the whole universe in his mouth or that of Vivekananda's when Ramakrishna's foot was placed on his head. Govinda, here, begins to perceive the entire universe in Siddhartha's face. ‘He no longer saw the face of Siddhartha his friend. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces—hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha’. For Govinda, Siddhartha's face ‘had just been the stage of all present and future forms’ and Siddhartha's smile ‘reminded him of everything that had ever been of value and holy in his life’ (p. 119). The anachronism, however, is in the act of kissing on the forehead which gives away the Western sensibility of the author. Some acquaintance with the country and the people either in the Kipling way or with Buddha's life, say in the Eliot way and some sociological background might have helped to give a contextual authenticity to the situation in the novel.

A study of the life of the Buddha reveals various points of similarity with that of Siddhartha; one could almost see them moving on parallel lines although there is variation in the sequence of events. Buddha too experiences dissatisfaction with life, begets a son, leaves his home, encounters a wealthy businessman, Anāthapindika, and a beautiful and wealthy courtesan, Ambapāli, the mango girl etc. But it is important to observe that for Buddha, thanks to his apocalyptic birth, obstacles resolved themselves and quickly too. It is almost with incredible ease and speed that the Buddha converts his son Rāhula (meaning a ‘hindrance’ but who proved to be not much of a hindrance at all—at least there is paucity of information on this point), the Sakhya princes, the fierce robber Angulimāla (who not-withstanding his evil life quickly attained to Arahatta), the notorious criminals and the fierce and intoxicated elephant Mālāgir let loose upon by his own disciple and later his rival Devadatta. In addition to this the Buddha was too well guarded against ordinary physical temptation. Fortunately or unfortunately neither Anāthapindika, the wealthy businessman nor Ambapāli, the beautiful courtesan were temptations for Buddha—unlike Kamaswamy or Kamala. For at the very sight of the Buddha they got converted leaving no time for him even to wonder if they were temptations or if they represented evil. Perhaps one can explain these as the triumph of individual or racial Samskara.

Hesse's hero on the contrary encounters obstacles which in a realistic context, shorn of the apocalyptic, should make for real tension between a rare high-mindedness and the natural impulses of the heart. This seems to happen atleast once that is when his son defies him, goes away from him leaving him to his grief. Elsewhere the author rescues Siddhartha too fast and too easily. The novel is hopelessly deficient in enactment. As the novelist becomes a perpetual commentator instead of letting the characters fend for themselves. And then things frequently look confused. Translation might have made for distortions and it is possible we are evaluating not Hesse's effort but a distortion of it. Consider one small example when the translator uses ‘S’ capital where she ought to be using the small letter, as when she says Siddhartha tried to escape from the Self. Such is the peril of assessing a work in translation. Even apart from the translation the authorial interference by way of constant comment mars the novel. In other words we do not see things as Henry James says ‘happening’ before us. This, in addition to the author's own imperfect understanding of India must go against Hesse in any final assessment.

Notes

  1. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Buddha and The Gospel of Buddhism, p. 13.

  2. Ibid, p. 67.

  3. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Buddha and The Gospel of Buddhism.

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