Hermann Hesse was a writer, poet, novelist, and painter, and became one of the most relevant and read authors of the XNUMXth century. Was born alemán a day like today of 1877, but it was nationalized Swiss in 1924. He wrote such significant titles as Siddhartha o Steppe wolf. But I stay with Under the wheels, one of his first works and reading from my adolescence that I have reread more than once. I review his works with a phrase selection.
Hermann Hesse
His trips to the India On various occasions, where his father was a missionary, they were decisive for the oriental culture to influence his work in a decisive way, especially in one of the most important and widely read, surely the most famous, Siddhartha.
Work as bookcase while he was writing. Demian, published in 1919, was his first success. And it shows one of his recurring themes: the development of the own individuality and su rebellion in front of social conventions.
When he condemned the participation of Germany in the World War I, Hesse decided to go into exile to Switzerland and there he wrote his possibly most influential work: Steppe wolf. They granted him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.
Works and phrases
Peter camezind (1904)
- In spite of everything, I kept seeing in my dreams a goal, a happiness, a greater perfection in front of me.
- Even today I know that in the world there is nothing more delicious than a true and loyal friendship between men.
- Again I had the conviction that I was not cut out for the homey and restful life among men.
- Perhaps it was my fate to be a stranger to that society to which I belonged all my life.
- Two weeks later he drowned bathing in a small river.
- I have walked after many dreams, none of which have come true.
Demian (1919)
- The life of each man is a path towards himself, the attempt at a path, the outline of a path.
- When we hate someone, we hate in his image something that is within us.
- When someone is feared it is because we have given that someone power over us.
- They all carry with them, to the end, the viscosities and eggshells of a primordial world.
- No man has ever been completely himself; but all aspire to become one, some obscurely, others more clearly, each one as best he can.
Siddharta (1922)
- The soft is stronger than the hard; water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than violence.
- How good it is to try for yourself what there is to know, to experience it firsthand, not to know it only with memory, to know it with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.
- I have no right to judge the lives of others. I just have to judge myself and choose or reject based on my person.
- Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom that a sage tries to communicate to others always sounds crazy.
- That smile, perennial, calm, fine, impenetrable, perhaps kind, perhaps mocking, wise, multiple ... that's how perfect beings smile.
- A man is never totally holy or sinful.
- He breathed for a moment, and for a moment he felt cold and shuddered. There was no being more alone than him.
Steppe wolf (1927)
- He was also tempted by suicide when he was still a child.
- These immortals did not turn their backs on life but built admirable worlds through a loving sublimation of the trifles that also make up existence.
- He had thought more than other men, he possessed a serene objectivity in matters of the spirit.
- That look touched the heart of all humanity.
- Haller was a genius of suffering.
- You have to be proud of the pain; everything is a reminder of our elevated condition.
- Most men don't want to swim before they know.
- The mighty man in power succumbs; the money man, in the money; the servile and humble, in service; the one who seeks pleasure, in pleasures. And so the steppe wolf succumbed in its independence.
Under the wheels (1906)
Yes, I keep this work. Perhaps because I read it at an age similar to that of the protagonist of this book, a lot simpler and easier to read which Siddhartha o Steppe wolf, for example. Or maybe because it was one of the first that deeply touched my heart.
He tells us the life of Hans giebenrath, a very intelligent and alert boy. The surrounding circumstances like the iron authority of his father and teachers They will be fundamental to that lack of freedom to do what you want and take control of your life. So decisive that they will lead to the total destruction of your magnificent and far superior personality.
You keep the fierce criticism that Hesse makes against social oppression That drowns out those cool personalities. Sometimes it is the environment, but many times more it is because of the envy and inabilities of weaker personalities around. It is a complaint, a manifesto in favor of intelligence and life in itself as a personal and unique project of each one.
- But he had also lived those few hours that meant more to him than all the lost joys of childhood, hours full of ambition and enthusiasm and the desire to win, in which he had wished and dreamed of himself in a circle of superior beings.
- He would be one of those vulgar and poor people whom he despised and who he decidedly wanted to overcome.
- If he had known, he could easily have been the first.
- The others were far below him. He had achieved his well-deserved award.
- He was only tormented by the idea of not having reached number one on the exam.
- It seemed to him that he himself was received at this hour in the circle of those who seek the truth.
- Protected against the dire spectacle of worldly life.
- All spiritual possessions represented no more than relative value.
- No one had ever thought that school and the barbaric ambition of a father and teachers had led such a fragile being to such a situation.