Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse: A Pictorial Biography offers a wealth of unknown photographic and textual material, which was first discovered among Hesse's literary effects after his death. Over 200 photographs chronicle his family background, his school and apprentice years, his first literary efforts and initial successes, his travels to India and throughout Europe, his continuing growth as a writer. These photographs, apart from illustrating Hesse's long and varied...

This collection of poems, written during the same period as Steppenwolf, was first published in 1928 in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Hesse's uneasiness about the degree of self-exposure in these quite untypical poems is evident in that the majority (and many of the best) were never reprinted during his lifetime. Astonishingly frank and raw at times, they reflect his effort to balance the constraints of his intellectual life with his longing...

With its excellent line-for-line English translation on facing pages, this handy dual-language volume allows students of German language and literature an ideal way to read the 1922 classic based on events from the life of Buddha. The restless young Brahmin Siddhartha undertakes a spiritual journey that takes him from years of asceticism to long-sought enlightenment.

Few American readers seem to be aware that Hermann Hesse, author of the epic novels Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, among many others, also wrote poetry, the best of which the poet James Wright has translated and included in this book. This is a special volume-filled with short, direct poems about love, death, loneliness, the seasons-that is imbued with some of the imagery and feeling of Hesse's novels but that has a clarity and resonance all its own,...

Originally published in 1919 under the pseudonym of the narrator of the story, Herman Hesse's "Demian" is the coming of age story of its principal character "Emil Sinclair." The struggle of Emil is one of self-awareness. A principal theme that courses throughout the novel is that of the inherent duality of existence. In the case of Emil this duality presents itself in the form of the opposing demands of the external world and his one internal quest...

In 1919, the same year Demian was published, seven of these stories appeared as a book entitled Märchen-literally, Fairy Tales. For this first edition in English, we have followed the arrangement Hesse made for the final collected edition of his works, where he added an eighth story, "Flute Dream." The new note so clear in Demian was first sounded, Hesse believed, in some of these tales written during the years 1913 to 1918, the period that brought...

Knulp is an amiable vagabond who wanders from town to town, staying with friends who feed and shelter him. Consistently refusing to tie himself down to any trade, place, or person, he even deserts the companion who might be considered Hermann Hesse himself the summer they go tramping together. Knulp's exile is blissful, gentle, self-absorbed. But, hidden beneath the light surface of these "Tales from the Life of Knulp" is the conscience of an artist...

The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature. Set in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed...

Blends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat's efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths.