What Do I Read Next?
- The oldest speculative literature of the Hindus is the Upanishads, written between 600 B.C. and 300 B.C. This is a compilation of texts exploring the nature of humanity and the universe.
- The Bhagavad Gita, a segment of the grand Hindu epic the Mahabharata, has been dubbed the New Testament of Hinduism. It features a profound dialogue on the essence and purpose of life between the god Krishna, who appears as a charioteer, and Arjuna, a warrior on the brink of battle. This text has significantly influenced Western philosophy.
- The author of Ecclesiastes, a book from the Old Testament, delves into his quest for life's meaning, his belief that everything is vanity, and his conclusions in his later years.
- Goethe's Faust, an 1808 play inspired by the legend of the German necromancer Georg Faust, centers on an aged scholar who craves not just knowledge but all forms of experience. To achieve this, he must pledge his immortal soul to the malevolent spirit, Mephistopheles.
- E. M. Forster's 1924 novel, A Passage to India, offers a different perspective on India. The novel is renowned for its strong mystical elements and its exploration of Indian religions, including Islam and Hinduism.
- With the release of Peter Camenzind in 1904 (translated in 1961), Hesse earned significant recognition as a German writer, winning the Bauernfeld Prize of Vienna. The novel is a poetic and realistic depiction of the awkward and inhibited misfit Camenzind, serving as Hesse's veiled literary self-revelation of his time in Basel.
- Written by Hesse in 1919 and translated into English in 1923, Demian is a bildungsroman about Emil Sinclair, a young man troubled by life's opposing forces. A mysterious boy, Max Demian, introduces him to Abraxas, a devil-god symbolizing both good and evil.
- Hesse's 1927 novel, Steppenwolf, was translated into English two years later. It examines the artist as an outsider, a recurring theme in Hesse's works. Harry Haller, torn between his frustrated artistic realism and the dehumanizing nature of modern reality, sees himself as a wolf of the Steppes.
- Many of Hesse's novels explore the dynamics between characters with contrasting temperaments. In his 1930 novel, Narcissus and Goldmund (translated in 1932), the titular characters represent spirit and life, respectively. Set in a medieval monastery, half of the novel follows the friendship between the introverted, ascetic Narcissus and the extroverted sculptor Goldmund, while the other half chronicles Goldmund's hedonistic adventures outside the cloister.
- Another Hesse bildungsroman, Magister Ludi: (The Glass-Bead Game), was written in 1943 and translated in 1949. Josef Knecht lives in a utopian society of the twenty-third century, dominated by a glass-bead game played at its highest level by an intellectual elite. Knecht ultimately dies after leaving this world, a tragic consequence of a life devoted entirely to the realm of the spirit.
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