Hesse Introduction

Hesse overview

https://www.hermann-hesse.de/en/biography

• Religion
  • Father Christian minister
  • living in a world of a diversity of religions
• He was a life-long seeker

• Life crisis (“author of crisis”)
  • influence of Freud & psychoanalysis
  • we saw in Sacred Quest that psychoanalysis can be seen to function something like a religion

• Connections to India & Asia from grandfather, father
• for more cf. youtube overview: 1 hour in 4 parts https://youtu.be/5SJNVAlm9Gc

Hearing his "voice"

"For many years, I have been convinced that the European spirit is on the wane, and is in need of a return to its Asian roots. I have admired Buddha for many years, and have been reading Indian literature since my earliest youth. Later, I became more familiar with Lao Tsu and the other Chinese philosophers“

• We can hear his voice in an excerpt from this essay on language: https://www.hermann-hesse.de/node/2586

Setting of the novel

cf. translator's preface

• On the one hand, set in imagined India of 5-6th c. BCE
• On the other hand, written in "Machine Age Europe"

Stories

Kinds of Stories

Booker's 7 basic types of story plots

https://tobedwithatrollope.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/the-seven-basic-plots-wh-we-tell-stories-by-christopher-booker/

1-2

• Overcoming the Monster — Stories like Beowulf, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, Jaws, and many of the James Bond films, where a hero must defeat a monster and restore order to a world that has been threatened by the monster’s presence.
• Rags to Riches — These stories feature modest, generally virtuous but downtrodden characters, who achieve a happy ending when their special talents or true beauty is revealed to the world at large. Includes any number of classics such as ‘Cinderella’, David Copperfield, and the Horatio Alger novels.

3-4

• The Quest — A hero, often accompanied by sidekicks, travels in search of a priceless treasure and fights against evil and overpowering odds, and ends when he gets both the treasure and the girl. The Odyssey is a classic example of this kind of story.
• Voyage and Return — Alice in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, other stories of normal protagonists who are suddenly thrust into strange and alien worlds and must make their way back to normal life once more.

5-7

• Comedy — Not always synonymous with humour. Instead, the plot of a comedy involves some kind of confusion that must be resolved before the hero and heroine can be united in love. Think of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Marriage of Figaro, the plays of Oscar Wilde and Gilbert and Sullivan, and even War and Peace.
• Tragedy — As a rule, the terrible consequences of human overreaching and egotism. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Julius Caesar, Anna Karenina…this category is usually self-evident.
• Rebirth — The stories of Ebeneezer Scrooge and Mary Lennox would fall into this basic plot type, which focuses on a threatening shadow that seems nearly victorious until a sequence of fortuitous (or even miraculous) events lead to redemption and rebirth, and the restoration of a happier world.

Religion is/is not

first, religion is *not:

• necessarily monotheistic,
• necessarily a body of moral rules
• necessarily a belief in the supernatural, heaven, hell, or even life after death
• necessarily an explanation of the origins of creation.

Religion is:

• notion of sacred reality
• orders and brings understanding to human existence
• has lasting effect on thinking, feeling, acting

Hinduism Vocabulary

resources for Vocabulary

• Both Sacred Quest and Siddhartha (Bernofsky edition) have glossaries
• Each of the following have reliable glossaries
  • http://www.dharma.org/resources/glossary
  • http://www.accesstoinsight.org/glossary.html

Complexity of subject

• The concepts of Hindu and Hinduism are problematic for several reasons.
• Hindu and Hinduism are words of Persian origin from the 12th century C.E.; thus, they are not native to India.
• Those who have conceptualized Hinduism have been western European

What do we mean by "religion" (cf. Our definition)

• notion of sacred reality
• made manifest in human experience
• in such a way as to produce long-lasting ways of thinking, feeling & activity
• with respect to problems of ordering & understanding existence

Questions

1. When you attempt to understand a new religious tradition, what is the most important thing to learn? Would you focus on its doctrines, the way it tells stories, its art, its rituals, or its institutions? Would you focus on something else?
2. If you were trying to explain your own religious tradition to someone who knew nothing about it, what would be the most important thing for that person to learn?

Hinduism

• Hinduism is not just a part or aspect of Indian life or culture; it is far more encompassing than that.
• It structures and influences every aspect of Hindu life, including

• arts,
• music,
• medicine,
• etc.

Timeline

https://www.preceden.com/timelines/274460-buddhism---hinduism

Veda

• most authoritative text for Hinduism
• composed between 2300 and 1200 B.C.E.
• e.g. The oldest and most important of these collections contains more than a thousand songs to various gods and goddesses and is aptly named the Rig, meaning praise. Scholars believe it was composed between 2300 and 1200 B.C.E.
• many different gods sung to

Humans

• The Veda regarded humans as being individual souls

• and members of a stratified society.
• For the Aryans, the essence of human life is the soul, which they associated with the breath, designated by the word atman.

• The Aryans' strong emphasis on ritual over doctrine and belief - was the basis of the Vedic tradition.

Classical Hinduism

• Transformations of thought in the Axial Age (c. 800–200 B.C.E.) led to the re-evaluation of Vedic ritual and new ideas about the nature of human existence.
• Deeper spiritual questions led to the examination of human nature and the possibility of an afterlife.
• (This evolution in Indian religion was roughly contemporaneous with similar developments in other civilizations, including ancient Greece, China, Mesopotamia, and Israel.)

From Cosmic to Personal

• The function of religion changed from that of cosmic maintenance to one of personal enlightenment and transformation.
• Classical Hinduism established the central problem of human existence for Hindus; samsara, the cycle of continual transmigrations of the soul.
• Karma, even good karma, keeps a person bound to the cycle of transmigration. One path the Hindu tradition offers for the attainment of moksha, or ultimate release, is the path of wisdom.

Axial Age

• The path of wisdom found in the Axial Age, when the most important Hindu responses to the anxieties about death and rebirth were recorded in a collection of texts called the Upanishads. The oldest of the Upanishads was probably composed between 800–400 B.C.E., but actually written down much later.
• Modern Hinduism has had to face challenges brought by the advent of Islam and Western culture.

https://youtu.be/8Nn5uqE3C9w

Exercise

5 Themes of Siddhartha

Write on a piece of paper an example from text of:

1. Self-realization
2. Personal experience vs. Formal training
3. Persistence
4. Folly of materialism or less is more
5. paradox of unreal reality (reality is an illusion)

With a partner discuss:

1. most important illustration of the theme from the text
2. How important was that theme in the context of the whole work
3. What does the theme tell us about religion?