German writer Hermann Hesse is a master of intellectual, philosophical and psychological novels, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1946.
Hesse worked for three years in a bookshop during his youth. In 1911 he moved permanently to Switzerland.
Hesse was a quiet, withdrawn and thoughtful loner, more fond of books than people, but he had a few close friends - T.S. Eliot (in Britain) and Thomas Mann (Germany). In the mid-1980s he was treated for several years by Gustav Jung and his assistant J.B. Lang, who later became a good friend of the writer, through psychoanalysis.
Hesse despised European cultural values. He particularly abhorred the educational system and dropped out of school himself.
During the First World War, Hermann Hesse actively expressed his pacifist views and called on the fighting nations to end the war. He also helped prisoners of war.
His life and work can be divided into three periods.
The first, conditionally called the pre-Hessian period. These are Hesse's first novels - Peter Kamenzind (the hero of this novel is a wanderer, an outcast in search of meaning, who is determined to break with social norms in order to find wisdom and peace of mind) (1904), Gertrude (1910), and Knulp (1915). These works made the young writer famous, but they lacked the spontaneity and uniqueness that makes every writer a great artist. They were characterised by the spirit of neo-romanticism and impressionism, and were full of music. The writer himself called the first phase of his work a tribute to sentimentalism.
The second phase of his work includes Demian (1919), The Last Summer of Klingor (1920), Siddhartha (1922), The Courier (1925) and The Wolf of the Steppe (1927), which is the beginning of the end.
The third and most mature period of the writer's life is crowned by Narcissus and Chrysostom (1930) and the 1946 Nobel Prize-winning utopian novel The Game of Glass Beads.
Hesse's real character is his particular way of thinking, his distinctive intonation and his unique vision of the world. This is the result of several circumstances in his life, which he mentions in his letters and essays. First of all, the trip to India and the disillusionment of escaping alienated Europe; then humanitarian work in the German prisoner-of-war service, the experience of the First World War, the death of his father, his wife's mental illness and the breakdown of his family life, the illness of his son Martin, Hesse's own emotional crisis, and, lastly, his life in the remote village of Montagnola, in Switzerland, close to the Italian border. There he read the books of the psychoanalysts Freud and Jung, and relived and reflected on his cultural, religious and empirical experiences.
Hesse was born into a family of Protestant missionaries in the Swabian town of Kalve, Germany. Hesse's home is associated with Bible reading, his grandfather's oriental library, listening to beautiful music and singing Christmas carols.
Hesse's depressive adolescence, accompanied by constant exaltation and various excesses (attempts to run away, suicide), encouraged the gifted young man to believe in his own inferiority, and was the source of his impulsiveness, instability, tendency to extremes and denial. It also encouraged the morbidly sensitive man to put on the mask of a sceptic, led to his constant flight from the community, and encouraged him to rebel against his parents' home and the world, which was so lovely and bright.
Hesse's most famous works are those that deal with man's search for a spiritual identity.
While some readers admire Hesse's beautiful, poetic language, others are drawn to his focus on the individual's struggle to achieve inner harmony. In the 1960s, Hesse became very popular in the USA. Some of his works were seen by hippies as their gospel.
