Hermann Hesse

“We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.”

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

“Сè противречи едно на друго, сè протрчува едно крај друго, никаде нема сигурност. Сè може да се толкува вака, и сè може да се толкува обратно. Сета човечка историја може да се протолкува како развој и напредок, а истовремено без да се види нешто повеќе од пропаст и глупост. Зар нема вистина? Зар не постои вистинска и валидна наука?”

“Feliz emprendí mi largo camino a casa en la fría noche. Aquí y allá tropecé aún con estudiantes que se retiraban a dormir alborotando y haciendo eses. Muy a menudo había comparado su singular manera de divertirse con mi vida solitaria, unas veces con cierta envidia y otras con desprecio. Pero nunca había sentido como hoy, con plena serenidad y secreta energía, cuán poco me atañía aquello y cuán lejano y perdido era para mí aquel mundo. Me acordé de los honrados filisteos de mi ciudad natal, viejos señores rebosantes de dignidad que conservaban los recuerdos de sus años estudiantiles como la memoria de un bienaventurado paraíso y consagraban a la perdida «libertad» de aquellos años un culto como el que los poetas y otros románticos dedican a su infancia. ¡En todas partes sucedía lo mismo! Todos los hombres buscaban la «libertad» y la «felicidad» en un punto cualquiera del pasado, sólo por miedo a ver alzarse ante ellos la visión de la responsabilidad propia y del propio singular camino. Durante un par de años alborotaban y bebían, para someterse luego al rebaño y convertirse en señores graves al servicio del Estado. Era verdad lo que Demian afirmaba: nuestro Mundo estaba carcomido, y esa estupidez estudiantil era aún menos estúpida y menos despreciable que ciertas otras.”

“...and as far as talent is concerned, there will be such an excess that our artists will become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.”

“Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.”

“For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.”

“The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?”

“At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.”

“An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.”

“I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.”

“For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.”

“Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.”

“E poi di nuovo, come oggi, può divenirmi problematico il fatto che abbia veramente visto, udito, odorato qualcosa o se invece tutto ciò che credo di percepire altro non sia se non l'immagine della mia vita interiore proiettata fuori di me.”

“Non puoi essere vagabondo e artista e contemporaneamente borghese e uomo sano e decoroso. Ti vuoi ubriacare, allora tieniti anche il mal di testa! Se dici di sì alla luce del sole e alle fantasie leggiadre, devi dire sì anche alla sporcizia e al disgusto. Tutto questo è in te, oro e fango, bramosia e pena, riso infantile e paura della morte.Dì a tutto sì , non sottrarti a niente, non tentare di eludere niente.”

“Patria non è qua o là. Patria è dentro te, o in nessun luogo.”

“Non fa nessuna differenza, salvo un piccolo particolare, che per me ad ogni modo è di massima importanza. Che io senta la vita guizzare in me, sia essa sulla lingua o nelle suole, sia nella voluttà o sia nel tormento, che la mia anima sia mobile e possa insinuarsi con cento giuochi della fantasia in cento forme, in parroci e viandanti, in cuoche e assassini, in fanciulli e animali, in particolare in uccelli ed anche in alberi, questo è essenziale, questo voglio e di questo ho bisogno per vivere, e se un giorno tutto questo non dovesse più essere, se la mia vita dovesse essere inquadrata nella cosidetta “realtà”, allora preferirei morire.”

“Niente è più odioso dei confini, niente è più stupido.”

“Om is the bow, the arrow is soul,”

“Merchant: 'So you have lived on the possessions of others?'Saddhartha: 'Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possession of others.'Merchant: 'Well spoken...”

“And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.”

“I believe . . . that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that, very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world.”

“Most people are like a falling leaf as it twists and turns its way through the air, lurches and tumbles to the ground. Others, though – a very few – are like stars set on a fixed course; no wind can reach them, and they carry their law and their path within them.”

“Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.”

“(We) consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table of evolution as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from the face of the earth save for one halfway talented child that had received no education, this child would rediscover the entire course of evolution, it would be capable of producing everything once more, gods and demons, paradises, commandments, the Old and New Testament.”

“I will not pretend to justify this espionage I carried on, and I will say openly that all these signs of a life full of intellectual curiosity, but thoroughly slovenly and disorderly at the same time, inspired me at first with aversion and mistrust. I am not only a middle-class man, living a regular life, fond of work and punctuality; I am also an abstainer and a nonsmoker, and these bottles in Haller's room pleased me even less than the rest of his artistic disorder.”

“I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain.”

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”

“Dove non era riuscito a suo tempo mio padre, riuscì ora il tormento d’amore. Mi dedicai all’arte del bere. Per la mia vita e la mia indole questo avvenimento fu senza dubbio il più importante di tutti quelli narrati finora. Il Dio forte e dolce mi divenne fedele amico e lo è ancora oggi. Chi altrettanto potente? Chi ugualmente bello, fantastico, entusiasta, lieto e malinconico? E’ eroe e mago, seduttore e fratello d’amore. Può l’impossibile; riempe i miseri cuori umani di stuèpendi, bizzarri poemi. Ha trasformato me, eremita e contadino, in re, poeta e saggio. Carica di nuovi destini navi di esistenze divenute ormai vuote e risospinge naufraghi nell’impetuosa corrente della grande vita. Così è il vino. E’ simile a tutti i doni preziosi, a tutte le cose artistiche. Vuole essere amato, ricercato, compreso e conquistato a fatica. Non molti vi riescono, migliaia ne vengono annientati. Li fa invecchiare, li uccide o spegne in loro la fiamma dello spirito. Egli invita invece i suoi prediletti a delle feste e costruisce loro ponti iridescenti verso isole felici. Pone loro, quando sono stanchi, un guanciale sotto il capo e li circonda, quando cadono preda della malinconia, in un abbraccio dolce ed affettuoso, come un amico o una madre consolatrice. Trasforma la nostra esistenza disordinata in un grande mito e suona su un’arpa imponente l’inno della creazione. A volte è un bambino, con lunghi riccioli di seta, le spalle esili e le membra delicate. Si stringe al tuo cuore e allunga il visetto smunto in cerca del tuo, osservandoti stupito e fuori dalla realtà con quei suoi cari occhi spalancati, nelle cui profondità ondeggia umido e luminoso un ricordo del paradiso terrestre e della mai dimenticata discendenza divina, simile a una sorgente sgorgata nella foresta.Questa è la storia della mia gioventù. Se ci ripenso, mi sembra che sia stata breve come una notte d'estate.E perché il Dio incomprensibile mi aveva insinuato nel cuore quel bruciante desiderio d'amore, quando la vita mi aveva già destinato ad essere solitario e poco amato?”

“Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?”

“She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and sparkled with joy in his soul. He had loved and had found himself. But most people love to lose themselves.”

“We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere.”

“Wer lieben kann, ist glusklick.”

“Trebao bi se ponositi bolom - svaki bol nas podseca na nas visoki polozaj'. Divno! Osamdeset godina pre Nicea! Ali to nije izreka na koju sam mislio - cekajte, evo je. Dakle: 'Vecina ljudi nece da pliva pre neo sto nauci'. Zar to nije saljivo? Razume se da nece da plivaju! Ta rodjeni su za tle, a ne za vodu. I, razume se, nece ni da misle; stvoreni su da zive, a ne da misle! Da, onaj koji misli, kome je glavna stvar da misli, moze da dotera daleko, ali je ipak zamenio tle vodom i jednom ce se udaviti.”

“La solitude est l'indépendance, je l'avais souhaitée et acquise au cours de longues années. Elle était froide, oh! oui, mais elle était calme, merveilleusement calme et immense comme l'espace silencieux et glacé où tournent les astres.”

“The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph.”

“Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?”The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.”

“Love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.”

“You will learn it,' said Vasudeva, 'but not from me. The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.'...Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid thing, this repetition, this course of events in a fateful circle?...The river laughed. Yes, that was how it was. Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone.”

“Let every reader do as his conscience bids him.”

“but what is it you wanted to learn from the teachings and teachers, and those who taught you so much, what could they not teach you?" and he concluded: "it was the i, whose meaning and essence i wanted to learn. it was the i, from which i wanted release, which i wanted to conquer. but i could not conquer it, i could only deceive it, only flee from it, only hide myself from it. truly, nothing in the world has taken up so much of my thinking as this i of mine, this conundrum, that i am alive, that i am one and separate and cut off from everyone else, that i am siddhartha! and about nothing in the world do i know less about than me, about siddhartha!”

“Of all the conceptions of pure bliss that people and poets have dreamed of, listening to the harmony of the spheres always seemed to me the highest and most intense. That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged - to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious innate harmony. Alas, how is it that life can be so confusing and out of tune and false, how can there be lies, evil, envy and hate among people, when the shortest song and most simple piece of music preach that heaven is revealed in the purity, harmony and interplay of clearly sounded notes. And how can I upbraid people and grow angry when I myself, with all the good will in the world have been unable to make song and sweet music out of my life?”

“The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that a man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science has invented the name schizomania for it. Science is in this so far right as no multiplicity maybe dealt with unless there be a series, a certain order and grouping. It is wrong insofar as it holds that one only and binding lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity of subordinate selves. This error of science has many unpleasant consequences, and the single advantage of simplifying the work of the state-appointed pastors and masters and saving them the labors of original thought. In consequence of this error many persons pass for normal, and indeed for highly valuable members of society, who are incurably mad; and many, on the other hand, are looked upon as mad who are geniuses...This is the art of life. You may yourself as an artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may complicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands. Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy.”

“Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.”

“This little theater of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty cabinet of pictures, my dear friend; but it would be quite useless to go through it as you are. You would be checked and blinded by it at every turn by what you are pleased to call your personality. You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie.”

“Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.”

“How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.”

“Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He worenothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak.He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted forfifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned fromhis thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlargedeyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggybeard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encounteredwomen; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a cityof nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting,mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicianstrying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day forseeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of thiswas not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank,it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful andbeautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tastedbitter. Life was torture.A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty ofthirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with anemptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that washis goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once everydesire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate partof me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer myself, the great secret.”

“But it's a poor fellow who can't take his pleasure without asking other people's permission.”

“A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone.”