I just read this book and it was one of the best books I've ever read. The preface to my edition compared it to Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus (my favorite Mann)- which i found to be very true. I love Hesse but this is the only one of his books that was on the level of Mann for me. "Goldmund and Narcissus" and especially "Stepanwolf" also are excellent. Magister Ludi has a lot in common with the character Goldmund. This book has the intellectual incisive prose that I like so much in Mann - the mind and motivation are clearly written out, not just suggested.
The book follows the life of a great scholar from grade school to death. What distinguishes him is he has a great heart/sense of morality along with his genius. You follow his evolution as a person throughout the story. The story is set somewhere around 2500 AD but theres no indication that technology has advanced since the 1940's - or that life socially is much different...the emphasis is on the political situation as it relates to Knecht's scholarly order. Since there the order is celebate like the 19C Oxford scholars there are no female characters of consequence - so you see a lot of male relationships in all different shades. Hesse lets you know as much about the game as he can and still do it justice...the game is supposed to be one of the supreme human achievements so he couldnt invent it fully fleshed out for the purposes of a novel. Magister Ludi is Joseph Knecht's title: he is Master of the Game. He's on the highest board which includes a Music Master and Master of Meditation. The climax of the book is a discussion Knecht has to have with the Master of Meditation/President of the Board of Educators to justify a momentous life changing decision he makes. I reread very few classics (I plan on rereading the major Mann and Doestoyevsky books) but this is one I would reread: it's beautiful. If you loved "Doctor Faustus" or "Goldmund and Narcissus" you most likely love this one.

I just read this book and it was one of the best books I've ever read. The preface to my edition compared it to Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus"(my favorite Mann)- which i found to be very true. I love Hesse but this is the only one of his books that was on the level of Mann for me. "Goldmund and Narcissus" and especially "Stepanwolf" also are excellent. Magister Ludi has a lot in common with the character Goldmund. This book has the intellectual incisive prose that I like so much in Mann - the mind and motivation are clearly written out, not just suggested.
The book follows the life of a great scholar from grade school to death. What distinguishes him is he has a great heart/sense of morality along with his genius. You follow his evolution as a person throughout the story. The story is set somewhere around 2500 AD but there's no indication that technology has advanced since the 1940's - or that life socially is much different...the emphasis is on the political situation as it relates to Knecht's scholarly order. Since the order is celebate like the 19C Oxford scholars there are no female characters of consequence - so you see a lot of male relationships in all different shades. Hesse lets you know as much about the game as he can and still do it justice...the game is supposed to be one of the supreme human achievements so he couldn't invent it fully fleshed out for the purposes of a novel. Magister Ludi is Joseph Knecht's title: he is Master of the Game. He's on the highest board which includes a Music Master and Master of Meditation. The climax of the book is a discussion Knecht has to have with the Master of Meditation/President of the Board of Educators to justify a momentous life changing decision he makes. I reread very few classics (I plan on rereading the major Mann and Doestoyevsky books) but this is one I would reread: it's beautiful. If you loved "Doctor Faustus" or "Goldmund and Narcissus you most likely love this one.

This is the best book I have ever read. It is fantastically engaging and has a surprise ending. Hesse never really explains the Game to a point that the reader must construct his own version of what the Game is like. The Game uses beads that represent high information density symbols, somewhat like advanced mathmatics, to show connections between fields of study or disiplines that have interconnections that are not immediately obvious. The Game imbodies the ultimate "life of the Mind" and to study the Game is a truly life long adventure. Ludi becomes the Magister, or top player, of the Game and greatly admired.

Hesse was an inveterate story writer and this collection is an excellent introduction to his work. Most of these tales are only a few pages long and even the longest can be completed in one sitting. They also span his entire career and give the reader a great overview of the author's style.

I recommend especially the title story, "Pictor's Metamorphoses": here a youth named Pictor wanders into a garden and finds a magic carbuncle which transforms him into a tree. But he realizes that his life his incomplete, and remains unhappy until a girl wanders into the same garden...

this book has followed me throughout my life, and has never been topped by another. He was, and is, the author closest to my heart.

This is a really good book. From the dreams he has as a young boy to the times after the war. A good book to read in between books. Most of the stories are short but there are some long ones too.

This book is not only a very thorough biography of Hermann Hesse.

It is also one of the best biographies I have ever read. Among other things, it does a very impressive job of blending Hesse's life and work, explaining how precise parts of a given book were influenced with events in his life, and so on.

I do wish all biographies were as well researched, and as well written, as this one.

Ralph Freedman ranks with Joseph Mileck, Theodore Ziokowski, and Mark Boulby in his importance to Hesse scholarship. Freedman previously published an important study comparing the fiction of Virginia Woolf, Andre Gide, and Hesse. This biography is a standard against which any future biographies are likely to be judged, composed by a man who has studied the author for many years.

What is it like to be a famous German novelist living in Switzerland during World War II? Innumerable Germans at their wits' end would write Hermann Hesse hoping that somehow he could help them. In this collection of short pieces, Hesse shows that the best way he knew to achieve peace was to use his pen.

It is worth getting your hands on this book just in order to read "The European," which reminds us that philosophy must above all be practical.

Hermann Hesse's "If the War Goes On" is different from many of his other books because rather than fiction, it is a book of short essays. The one which still stands out in my mind after 20-plus years is entitled, "The European". The book is worth reading. Hesse was, if I recall correctly, a pacificist whose nationality happened to be German, at a time when war was going on in Europe. The title of the book seems to reflect both the external political cirumstances of the time in which he was writing, but also, and perhaps mainly, conditions of conflict inside people. It is evident from biographies of Hesse that he struggled alot and documented this in his writing. It's time for me to re-read this incredible book.

fascinating, luscious stories filled with spiritual and debaucherous intrigues of the most unexpected sorts.

Hesse waves tales infused with rich mythological imagery and interesting turns around every corner.

Three stories that run the gamut from romanticism to melancholy.

Always a mystery and forever a joy.

Not one review of this book! Incredible, you don't know what you're missing if you have not read this author. This is not one of the most recognized works of the Nobel prize author (my personal favorite), but it has everything of what made their other novels so remarkable: the beautiful and deep description of his characters' thoughts and emotions.

This edition contains three stories: "Child's soul", "Klein and Wagner" and "Klinsor's last summer" The first one succeeds in showing how intense a child's feelings can be, the happiness and sadness that can be reached while being so young, how a small mistake can trigger the biggest of fears... Klein and Wagner, for me the best one of this book. And "Klingsor's last summer" the story of an artist who is dying, while reading this you become Klingsor...I wonder how could Hesse succeed to such degree in portraying thoughts and feelings, no other existentialist author I've read so far reached this complexity.

Dimyan is me some how.. but i hope to be him completely

....of letters between two of the patriarchs of modern German literature. One thinks of Hesse in particular as so solitary a man; here he shows another side of himself.

Narziss and Goldmund is not a classic because it is old, but because it is timeless. Many believe that Narziss and Goldmund are the two sides of Hermann Hesse.

Goldmund finds himself in a monastery, after having lost his mother to death. He befriends a monk teacher their, whose name is Narziss. The teacher immediately recognizes something special in the boy and tells him he must go on his own journey and that he does not belong in this monastery. Goldmund jumps the fence and begins a journey that takes him to many different lands, His boyish good looks are too much for any woman to resist and this becomes Goldmund's friend and foe, as it brings both good things and bad.

The most interesting part about this book is how it is philosophical without being preachy. Hesse has achieved this by constructing two very likeable characters who represent the two sides that exist in all of us: reason and inclination.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great literature, but especially to younger people who are searching for themselves. You will imagine yourselves on this great journey and learn many things as Goldmund does.

I read this book a couple of years ago and, as most of Hesse's novels, it filled with joy and fascination. In most of Hesse(Demian, Siddhartha, Beneath the wheels) we travel with the characters in a life-journey that we can almost feel as our own. Each of Goldmund's step is a teaching, a coversation with Narcissus is a conflict full of a joyful anxiety, as we wish they would talk for ever. I strongly recommend this book... but my envy to all of you who havn't read this book is even stronger since nothing can compare to reading a Hesse novel for the first time... Enjoy!! Felipe Flórez Duncan

As with most Hesse novels, the storyline in Narcissus and Goldmund too, is an elegantly linear one, with few characters and no tangle of events. Much like tea leaves; it appears light on a perfunctory reading but reveals its deep underlying philosophy only when one attempts to read beyond the written words.

This is a tale of two medieval monks at the Mariabronn cloister - Brother Narcissus and his pupil Goldmund - both of whom are on a quest to seek peace and salvation. Though there is a convergence of their ultimate goal, the two strive to achieve it by setting out on two apparently diametrically opposite paths in life.

Blessed with a superbly analytical mind guided by intelligence, reason and logic alone, Narcissus is an ascetic of the highest order. He has shunned the world of senses to devote himself completely to the service of God. By contrast, Goldmund's being is dominated entirely by 'feelings', unshackled by the bonds of intellect. He gives up the austere discipline and abstemious cloister life in pursuit of worldly pleasures as also its pains - the realm of the 'Maya'. (Concept of Hinduism wherein Maya refers is the cosmic illusion that creates ignorance and veils the vision of the one Reality.) He becomes a wondering wayfarer, traveling through sun, snow and rain; swamp and peat; hunger and fatigue. This is symbolic of his journey through life itself. Celebrating life in all its facets, he plumbs the depths of lust, wades through snow fields, surviving on frozen, wilted berries, escaping from the jaws of death. He experiences a surfeit of life's every aspect until he feels they no longer bring him happiness.

A beautiful wooden statue of Madonna in the 'bishop's city' is a turning point in his life. Its beauty touches him so deeply that it ignites his hitherto dormant creative spark and sets it on fire. Awakened, Goldmund decides to try his hand at sculpting. The experience turns out to be so sublime that he sacrifices his 'freedom' at the altar of creative bliss. He settles down to a sedentary life for a few months, giving his heart, soul and fiber to making wonderfully beautiful wooden figures.

While Narcissus represents the masculine mind, Goldmund is the embodiment of all that is feminine- imagination, creation, passion and attachment. The two epitomize the eternal battle between the mind versus the senses, thinker versus the artist. Hesse addresses the perennial question - Which of the two is superior? Which of the two roads is the shorter route to salvation?

The book ends on a very touching note. ...

I believe I need not include the details of the book here.

As I read the book my thoughts went through some changes. At first, I took Goldmund for a demon-possessed, forsaken child. So when Narcissus, who devoted his life to piety, tried to expose that demon-quality, which came with the image of his mother, within him, I felt that Narcissus was wrong to send him out intot the world, that the life in the cloister was the only way that he could heal the child, by showing him the eternal joy of God. As Goldmund came back to the cloister after the near-death experience in the count¡¯s castle, and began to live a life of an artist, and especially when he felt calm when he was exhorted to pray and sing canticles, I believed him to be on the right track.

However, as I continued see the big picture, I found many parts that made my idea rather less plausible. So I came up with a new idea. Perhaps the two characters implied the difference between Law and Grace? Surely, both character's renewing of struggle everyday resembles the struggle of faith. This new thought had to come to end when Goldmund himself said that he didn¡¯t have any inclination toward God.

But looking back, my idea hardly seems to be the intent of the author. I decided not to involve Christianity and its ideals in this. I believe Hesse was trying to explain that when it comes to how one finds meaning of life (not spiritual atonement), one probably is leading a life between the two very different characters, one seeking it through intellectual thoughts, the other searching it within sensuality, wandering and the inspiration which comes from them.

While I reading the book, I had the chance of reading from Amazon¡¯s customer reviews, and I was amazed how people easily discovered the subject of this book. It did not seem to me so apparent that these characters symbolized anything. It may also be what the author is trying to convey in this novel, how life is; that one doesn¡¯t always recognize where one is heading, how complex it is, what colorful and different things lie in it.

It was not the first time I read the book. Few years ago, when I was around 12, I tried reading this book in my first-language, Korean. I had bought the book without realizing that I already had the English version, because the title had been translated as ¡°Intellect and Love¡±. I felt that this book embodied an easy theme. However, I grew tired of endless dialogue -- so it seemed to me at the time -- between Narcissus and Goldmund. Now that few years have passed, and my understanding of life somewhat grew richer, this book brought some new ideas into my mind. I found myself looking at the two main characters, whom I had seen as two opposing forces before, as linear beings, each heading for the same objective this time.

I believe my thought about the book will continue to evolve as I grow older, as I gain more experience in life.

Certainly a good read.