In the first half of the XNUMXth century there were two European writers who excelled, one was Thomas Mann and another was the one that I bring to this space today: Hermann Hesse. They were both German and both traveled that bitter path towards the alienation of a homeland whom they looked at strangely.
And from that alienation they were able to offer an existentialist, fatalistic, dramatic literature, but at the same time repairing from the idea that the survival of the worst can only lead to freedom and the most authentic glimpses of happiness.
How could it be otherwise, they ended up being friends in their creative tune. And who knows, maybe they ended up feeding each other to write some of their best works.
3 recommended novels by Hermann Hesse
Steppe wolf
A fantastic metaphor to introduce us to the human in search of his most basic sustenance. A wolf sniffing through the ice. The world is a kind of frozen wasteland where everyone looks for a way to survive the prevailing conditions (let's remember the life of this writer, from the First to the Second World War, with his interwar period and his post-fires ... that's nothing) .
Summary: The steppe wolf is one of the most shocking reading and most often remembered by those who undertake it. On the one hand, the story it tells is a mind-boggling journey into the fears, anguishes and fears that contemporary man is doomed to.
But on the other hand, Hesse's narrative expertise reaches its climax in this novel, because through the combination of narrative voices and points of view, it offers us various dimensions of a character who tries to live outside of social conventions.
It is undoubtedly the work to which the name of Hesse has been most closely associated. A Hessian book is always an event, and the recent appearance of his Essential Stories, also published in Edhasa, was warmly received by critics.
Perhaps among the most unique thing about this novel is that it is a work widely read by adolescents, which discovers a hard way of facing society, romantic relationships and death. It is considered the masterpiece of a great author.
Under the wheels
Hesse's debut novel as far as novel is concerned. From her one might expect a positivist, hopeful author. A story about youth, energy, ideals and a final condemnation of all those who seek to annihilate everything that makes us brilliant human beings.
Summary: Prodigious recreation of the world of adolescence, but also a severe accusation against the educational systems that are imposed at the cost of the imagination and the harmonious cultivation of the spiritual, emotional and physical faculties.
Separated from the milieu of his childhood and forced by parents and teachers to an exhausting preparation for entry into a seminary, Hans Giebenrath finally achieves his goal, but at the high price of first losing his sensitivity and, later, his emotional balance. Despite being a work of youth, it is interesting for all those interested in the work of Hesse.
the game of the abalors
In contrast, it is also interesting to discover this, the one that was the last novel of Hesse. A truly disconcerting but splendid novel, filled with a kind of complete vision of the world, with its absurdities and with the sensation of a mixture of past and future as the only destiny of the human condemned to revisit his sins and his successes.
Abstract: Next to the compendium of his conceptions about the human condition and literary creation, as well as a bridge built between the aestheticism of his time and the existential commitment of the next, The Bead Game is the plastic representation of the millennial vision always present in his novels and essays.
Written supposedly by an anonymous narrator of the mythical Castalia around the year 2400, the work revolves around the strange game from which it takes its title, encompassing all the contents and values ​​of culture, and linked to the advent of the Third Kingdom of the spirit, unification of all the times of man.
Other Recommended Herman Hesse Novels
Siddhartha
This novel, set in traditional India, recounts the life of Siddhartha, a man for whom the path to truth passes through renunciation and understanding of the unity that underlies everything that exists. In its pages, the author offers all the spiritual options of man.
Hermann Hesse delved into the soul of the East in order to bring its positive aspects to our society. Siddhartha is the most representative work of this process and has had a great influence on Western culture in the XNUMXth century.
