The book consists of six narrative poems describing beautiful scenes of nature.
Hesse takes you with him for his morning walk through his garden drawing a lively picture of his flowers, vegetables and trees. He describes the hard work and the time he, his wife, Natalina and Lorenzo put to make this garden one entity of beauty and care. You take every step with him up the hill... see every tree and feel the warm sun ...and even smell the burning leaves. Of course Hesse never forgets to comment on human nature and life!
Whether he was planting his tree, describing the broken bough, the pavilion or the fall wind blowing at the old man's face... each poem has its message of contentment, serenity and natural beauty.

"The Lame Boy" is a recollection of his childhood and his relationship with a crippled boy, a "comrade" who taught him patience and understanding nature but could never call a friend!! He remembers his summers with this boy, going fishing together, showing his weak body but revealing his true qualities as a person. He talks about how we judge people and comments on the way he looked at his friend and what he thinks of him now after all those years.

I enjoyed reading the poems and I read the book more than once. The description is sublime... and I couldn't believe the sense of calmness it had on me!!

A collection of some of Hermann Hesse`s best essays and articles. This is the evidence that he was one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th century. Here he directly express some of his opinions on several subjects, ie literature and they all have a touch of his brilliancy of wisdom and narrative skills. A book that still deserves to be read!

Herman Hesse is one of the most important figures of German Literature, and in my view the most expressive artist who takes his inspirations directly from life and how we live it.

I will not tell what happens in the course of the book; instead, I will tell you the emotions it evokes in one's mind and heart. Hesse's style is very elegant, and you will not want to turn the pages, because you will be afraid the pleasure will end. Indeed, it is beautiful; indeed, it is simple.

It's about a man, who learns the life from the very beginning. It's a story that will question your thinking about the life itself. It will make you fall into doubts; it will make you wonder what life could give you.

It couldn't have been more fascinating for one to see how the hard issues of life (love, money, purpose of life) could be layed out in a refined and tasteful storyboard.

Usually people have books, that they would call as 'the book of my life'. I must admit, that it is one of those books, definitely. The story is short, but the delight is eternal. This book should be read, and reread, and reread...

This selection of 23 stories (20 available in English for the first time) offers a spectrum of Hesse's writing from 1899 to 1948 that could be matched only by an edition of his poetry, since in no other form -- novel, essay, autobiographical reflection -- did he span so many years. Here, within the covers of a single volume, the reader can trace Hesse's development from the aestheticism of his youth through the realism and surrealism of the next decades to the classicism of his old age. And the reader who knows Hesse mainly through his major novels of the twenties and thirties will be surprised to encounter him in a variety of new incarnations. Yet the greatest surprise is to see how faithful he remained to his essential self from first to last. Even as he tests and discards literary modes, he consistently rejects external "reality" for the sake of an inner world created by imagination.

This obsession with expressing his own consciousness is paralleled by criticism of the world he is fleeing from. In the earliest stories, such critiques amount to an attempt to epater le bourgeois. Later, in stories like "The Homecoming," the malice and corruption of society are forcefully unmasked. In the parable "Harry, the Steppenwolf" (1928), Hesse even ridicules the attitude we recognize today as "radical chic."

But all his stories, as Hesse himself realized, are concerned primarily with his own secret dreams, his own bitter anguish. Stories of Five Decades, arranged in chronological order, is a rewarding display of the full range of this storytelling as it blossomed over a lifetime.

Demian, as described by Hesse in the original title, is the "story of a youth." The book relates the experiences of Emil Sinclair, a boy at the beginning of the 20th century whose model childhood is tranformed through his encounter with Max Demian.

The novel reflects Hesse's fascination with mythology and religion. An extensive symbolism drawing on both Christianity and the theories of C. G. Jung permeate the work. The central message of the novel is a powerfully affirming one: that amidst chaos, amidst disintegration, one can remain loyal to a value system that has existed since the first human being.

I have read Hesse's works for many years, and this novel remains my favorite. It has some remarkable scenes, including Sinclair's conversations with the organist Pistorius and the fantastic conclusion on a World War I battlefield in Flanders.

Hermann Hesse is without a doubt one of the most intriguing writers I have ever read. However, when reading reviews and hearing other people's opinions, I usually feel that peopl misunderstood what he is like and what his character represents. This is particularly the case with Demian. This book is often described as a great insight into what it is like going from child to teenager and then entering the adult world. However, I believe that Sinclair, the main character, is not entering the normal world on any level. In fact he is leaving it. The first time he meets Demian, both know there is something different about him. As their friendship/relationship grows, it become smore and more clear that they should not be part of the normal world, where people to choose to be part of a group, to share a religion, to accept the truth as it is told to them. Demian shows sinclair a new world, where people of a higher intelligence, and by that I am referring to more than simply an academic intelligence, will find each other. Those who are different, who choose to be individuals instead of be part of the the main stream mass meet, are Hesse's version of the ubermensch. Where Nietzsche claims that all men can let go of the standards and morals of our society, their religion, their need to be part of a group, can focus on themselves and become better, become the ubermensch, someone who is above all others, someone who is not alone in his existence, but who is alone in his own life, Hesse contradicts this with an ubermensch who is born different, someone who will find others like him, someone who will has a clear vision of what people are like and who he is, an individual, an ubermensch. Hermann Hesse's Demian is not at all about growing up, or understanding "how the world works", Hesse is not for the average reader, but he will only be understood by those who understand themselves and can see themselves as individuals instead of part of the mass. On a more personal note: The very strong homosexual tendencies in this book intensify the emotional appeal of the book and are also simply satisfying.

If the text is to speak to me sans the authorial function surrounding Hesse, "Demian" speak one thing loudly to me - Nietzsche, the Overman is in the flesh.

Apollo and Dionysis are doing battle in Emil Sinclair - specially when he meets Max Demian - an individual in touch with his "natures" and uses them to produce personal greatness, strength and Emil Sinclair. We are all, in a sense, all in a state of becoming - just like Emil, just like Max.

When Max introduces Abraxas the whole texture of the book changes - it really becomes liberating. We are reminded that we are raw stuff - stuck in an existential scenario and the limitlessness of our lives. Max embodies the qualities I would imagine Nietzsche's beloved overman to be - strong and sensitive and not allowed to pity. Demian is wonderful introduction to the complex psyche of Hesse, Demian allows readers to ease their way into his Oeuvre. Part surreal, part mystical, Demian has to be read several times to appreciate its many layers. This volume is one I plan to revisit, and soon.

Miguel Llora

A sad story .. so cold .. what a hard life! I am not interested in Buddhism but I like Hesse! He is so sensitive and realistic ..just like a painter taking his time to finish his portrait after studying every stroke and every color..

Despite all the hardships that Siddhartha go through, you always feel at ease, relaxed .. totally enjoying the story.. It is full of wisdom .. extreme measures .. but as Siddhartha said no one can feed you his/her experience you have to try and learn .. you can choose to be a falling leaf or a star?! searching and looking for answers .. we can make our own future .. depending on which path we choose .. but fate and luck are part of this future ..and Love conquers all!

I read this book in my junior year of college. I thought it was profound. It was one of my favorite books. I'm glad I re-read it now that I am 51-years-old. It is not one of my favorite books anymore.

Siddhartha is fine literature and deeply insightful. It traces the life of an intelligent, sensitive young man of Eastern (Buddhist?) spirituality; from his youthful studies with the masters, through a period of self-conscious asceticism and self-rejection, through a period of self-indulgence and sensuality, ultimately to self-knowledge and peace as he becomes a ferryman living humbly in a small hut beside a river which teaches him many of the ultimate truths of life.

Siddhartha has a shortcoming that I did not see when I was young but I see now. This book is always and only about the self. Even when he finds salvation - Siddhartha finds it in himself. The path towards salvation is only internal - coming from self-denial, self-examination, self-discipline, self, self, self... Where compassion, charity, humility, and love exist, they exist as by-products of self-knowledge.

There are a great many truths in Siddhartha. Young people who are seeking should read this book. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw that life does not change. I suggest that things do change - and they change as a result of what we do. Like the young Siddhartha, the young reader of this book should pause for a while, then grow and move on. There are bigger things outside the self. You will find that Robert Frost spoke more truly when he said "[you] have promises to keep."

One of the truly wonderful books I have read and read and read again. I keep waiting as I age to finally become so cynical that I don't appreciate it, but it doesn't happen. I have also taught the book at the community college level with an outstanding response. One interesting note that has been pointed out to me is the book loosely follows the narrative of the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament. Like the speaker in that work, Siddhartha experiments with the broad aspects of life: intellectualism, pleasures of the flesh, acquisitiveness, and so forth. And like the speaker in the Bible he finds them all a bit wanting.

Ignore the reviewers who are picking the book apart on religious grounds, and so forth -- it's not intended to be educational in that sense. As for those who say the lessons of the book are ones that we all know -- well, I say that it's the reponsibility of great writing to PRESENT those ideas with the kinds of images that help us feel what the writer is saying. As Sid. says -- whenever you put life's wisdom into words it sounds silly and cliched. Hesse successfully puts the ideas into wonderful images.

Hesse is a genius -- go read his stuff! His writing is by no means light reading. Very deep and mysterious. This book, in particular -- magical and supernatural and profound. It was slow getting through the first third of the book, but after that I flew right threw it. The first part is a little boring -- but that's because the protagonist is boring at the beginning, and that's part of the point. (Don't give up!) The book then blossoms into a beautiful, vivid exploration of the senses and a visit to the strange and mysterious "magical theater" -- which contains some of the most beautiful and poignant scenes i've read in all of literature. Hesse has incredible insight into the complexity of mankind and has an amazing, profound wisdom of life and truth.

The book is basically about a man who is trapped in the personality he has created for himself, in the small, confined, grey world he has created, and how he learns to break free from those, to free himself from the restriction of the illusion of a singular soul, as each person is comprised of many souls. ("Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads").

Harry experiences many strange encounters, including his visit to the "magial theater" in which he relives all the possibilities of love, engages in war, and meets Mozart, who, laughing ridiculously (I wouldn't have him depicted any other way), shares with Harry some of his Immortal wisdom, teaches him to laugh instead of taking himself so seriously.

Anyhow... go read this. You will never see the life the same way again.

I love this book, and I'm forever grateful to its author.

Hesse has said about Nietzsche that he was a man caught between two ages, suffering in deep aloneness a hundred years ago what thousands go through today. Hesse was such a man, of course. As the book's fictional bourgeois narrator says about Harry Haller:

...He called himself the Steppenwolf, and this too estranged and disturbed me a little. What an expression! However, custom did not only reconcile me to it, but soon I never thought of him by any other name; nor could I today hit on a better description of him. A wolf of the steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd, a more striking image could not be found for his shy loneliness, his savagery, his restlessness, his homesickness, his homelessness....

He also has this to say, and for me this beautifully sums up the novel's impact:

And now we come to these records of Haller's, these partly diseased, partly beautiful, and thoughtful fantasies...I see them as a document of the times, for Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts. These records...are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full.

--And yet, and yet...Hesse later wrote a beautiful Author's Note in which he emphasized that to descend is not enough; to live in shadows and be eccentric and feel despair...no, that's not the novel's destiny and shouldn't be the reader's either. Here is the last piece of that Note which expresses Hesse's view of regarding the work as only doomful:

These readers, it seems to me, have recognized themselves in the Steppenwolf, identified themselves with him, suffered his griefs, and dreamed his dreams; but they have overlooked the fact that this book knows of and speaks about other things besides Harry Haller and his difficulties, about a second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. The "Treatise" and all those spots in the book dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts and the "immortal" men oppose the Steppenwolf's world of suffering with a positive, serene, superpersonal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still, it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing.

Of course, I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale. May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him! But I would be happy if many of them were to realize that the story of the Steppenwolf pictures a disease and crisis--but not one leading to death and destruction, on the contrary: to healing.

I don't even know where to begin. "Steppenwolf" is so gut-wrenching and so powerful that no review could possibly do it justice. About twenty times in the book, I stopped to ask myself what drug Hesse had consumed (and in what tremendous quantities) when he wrote this book. Apparently, no drug; Hesse was savagely intoxicated on life. He was a steppenwolf, much like his doppelganger Harry Haller, the novel's narrator. Steppenwolf - a man who believes himself to be half human, half wolf. Harry Haller is a loner, drawn away from the banality of bourgeois life and wallowing in the desperation of existence. His only companions are the books that have taken him to the extremes of intellectual snobbery. At the outset of the novel, Harry is on the verge of suicide (the "Treatise" which chronicles his desire for death is one of the most depressing albeit formidable pieces of literature that I have ever read). But all is changed when Harry meets Hermine - she represents that part of himself that Harry has hidden somewhere in the recesseses of his yearning mind, she is a metaphor of the "lighter" side of life, that part of us all that craves pleasure and triviality and precisely the part that Harry needed to unravel. The novel goes on to explore Harry's journey towards self-discovery and his changing realisations about life and its meanings. It is a beautiful story, I was very moved by it's power and particulary by the events that take place in the novel's so-called "Magic Theatre".... whoa, talk about madness, this part of the story is incredible, Hesse's imagination really has no limits. Actually, when I think of Harry Haller, I am reminded of a certain expression from "Macbeth" - the "heat-oppressed mind." Read Steppenwolf, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Another great book by Hermann Hesse decribing the search of Peter for peace...

Peter coming for a very small town is taken by a priest to learn and get cultured. He spends a lot of his life trying to get that perfect combination, he goes through a tragedy in the loss of a friend, and misery romances.

Boppi shows up and life changes, standards change, and Peter starts seeing the beauty in the small everyday behaviors...

Hermann Hessse expresses in Peter some of the things he went through, the pain in the beginning before finally understanding what life is all about...

I've read all works of Hesse that I could find during my teenage years. I read them not as books but as a starving person would devour delicious food.

I have not yet encountered another book (Hesse or not) that is as striking as Peter Camerzind. That's partly because I had some tough times during my teenage years and in Peter C. Hesse is 100% realistic to me.

It's been 12-13 years that I had not read Hesse again with maybe with one or two exceptions. As I said before, I read Hesse when I was a teenager and I had no intentions to analyze, criticize or whatever ! There are too many people who go into to analytical descriptions of Hesse's works. Don't do it. I do not think that Hesse's works are intellectual. I doubt he is after anything intellectual, rational or analytical. It could be the opposite ! Forget about the feeling you had while reading, do you think a wolf wandering in the steppes would philosophize ?

I felt Peter Camerzind deep in my heart. That's all I have to say.

Hermann Hesse is a superb writer. This book is very good for a first novel (and very good for a novel, period). I have read all of Hesse's major novels except Gertrude and I can honestly say that none of them moved me in the way which this book did. Hesse's description of the yearnings of one's soul are always stirring. But the story of the narrator's relationship with the hunchback, Boppi, is unforgettable. To claim that Peter did not find what he was looking for and that "he does not enjoy life", as one reviewer claims, is absurd. It completely misses Hesse's point. Anwyays, read the book and find out for yourself -- don't take my word for it.

i am currently a sophomore in high school. as part of my ap english class, we are forced to read six books in six weeks with six different writing assignments. i read herman hesse's siddhartha and i was suprised by the story that i read. it was truly a good book. many of my classmates did not think that highly, but i believe it to be one of the best books i have ever read. it makes you want to read it again, so you can think about every sentence more and maybe find some sort of meaning to our lives.

This book starts out when Siddhartha, a Brahmin's son, leaves his family to find inner peace. Then the book didvides into three parts of his life. The ascetic, which is when siddhartha becomes Samana, the lover, which is when Siddhartha falls in love with Kamala. The final part is the ferryman, where Siddhatha spends the rest of his life searching for inner peace. At the end of the book he finds inner peace and becomes a Buddha. I think Siddhatha was a well rounded character. I like how he was never staisfied with himself and determined to find inner peace. This was a great book to read.

In my English 9 Honors class, we read this book, Siddhartha. I thought that this was a really good and interesting book and I liked it a lot. I liked the way that the author, Herman Hesse, wrote about Siddhartha's life in religion. Also I liked the way that this book progressed. To me this book got so much better and more interesting towards the end of the book than the beginning. Also, in our class we got to read some of Herman Hesse poems and I liked that too. I reccommend this book to all that reads my comments.

In Rosshalde, Hesse draws on his own life experience to describe the feelings of resigned loneliness surrounding the loveless marriage of painter Johann Veraguth and his wife, Adele. The famous painter lives alone in his studio on the same grounds as the house harboring his wife and son. This estate, Rosshalde, becomes the serene backdrop for the melancholy tale of a man whose love for his son has kept him in a stagnant state of resignation. A visit from an old friend finally stirs the emotions that have long been lurking inside of Veraguth, granting him the insight he will need to be free of his own self-made prison. Lyrical and deeply sad, Rosshalde is not Hesse's best work, but it may indeed be his most emotionally sincere.

The book is as beautiful as it is sad. Set in beauty amongst the lime tree garden with its flowers and strawberries, the lake, the painters studio, the big beautiful house with a dear boy, a beautiful wife and the famous painter himself. Still nothing is as it should be. Then there is the travelling friend and the longing for something else. In Rosshalde Hermann Hesse constructed a very pleasant novel. A sad one, but with all the beautiful ingredients of art, nature, people, feelings and Hesse's language and art of story telling.

I've read most Hesse's work, and after long and hard deliberation(not really) I have found Rosshalde to just barely beat out The Steppenwolf. We know Hesse as being a very mystical writer, but this book is vibrantly real, and moving. If you want to understand Hesse as a person, and not as a writer, this is the book to read- it is similar to events that occured in his life. The question is then asked, should the artist(and this I mean writers, musicians, etc.) have a typical family? This is a question that will never be answered with a yes or no, but this book is accurate in exposing both sides of the battle.