What does IQfy think of Hermann Hesse?
What's your favorite work of his?
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It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
Hermann Hesse
What does IQfy think of Hermann Hesse?
What's your favorite work of his?
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
|
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
I like mysticism, Nietzsche, self-realisation etc. but I never liked Hesse. His writings always came across as a teenager who’d only recently discovered those things - in other words, quite cringey and immature.
Steppenwolf is likely the least enjoyable book that I’ve ever read.
Isn't the feeling of discovering things for the first time also refreshing? Isn't this more valuable than authors who pretend to know everything and simply pass on their infinite wisdom to the reader (e.g. Tolstoi)?
Very refreshing indeed, but I don’t think Hesse did a very good job of it (which is, of course, just my opinion).
Who would you say does a better job at this kind of approach?
Agree with Steppenwolf, it was torture finishing that book.
Siddhartha was good though.
Damien is somewhat better, less whiny. Still, don't waste your time.
What's whiny about Hesse? isn't he the antithesis of whinyness?
Not that guy and I wouldn’t say Hesse is whinny but he did seem to carry an amount of complaining resentment against normal society. I obviously didn’t know the guy personally but it’s clear he struggled with interpersonal relationships with his strict Christian upbringing, academia, his wife etc. He seems to have had the sense of outsiderness and would have been a IQfy poster. For obvious reasons he was a non conformist and inward facing but in my opinion errored when he said stuff like “there is no reality outside of that which is contained in us.” I read in his books an underlying superior sense of the special genius boy who has secrete knowledge that the “normies” can not comprehend and must uncover his true self. You see this archetype on IQfy all the time I struggle against sliding into this pattern. I don’t thinks this is necessarily wrong I do think the individual has to individuate and modern society is ill. However the man’s biography suggests a kind of narcissistic ego inflation, maybe all writers have that, for example he refused to see his dying mother and treated all of his wives poorly. I think it says a lot that he was a huge hit with the baby boomers the original me generation who took his writing as an endorsement for their own psychedelic hippie narcissist garbage. Ultimately I look at Hesse like the man who got outside of Plato’s cave and thought he was a God. He forgot the whole second part of gnosis about going back into the cave and what it means to be a person constrained by reality.
> However the man’s biography suggests a kind of narcissistic ego inflation, maybe all writers have that, for example he refused to see his dying mother
O, it’s only Hermann whose mother is beastly dead!
You could’ve knelt down, damn it, Hesse, when your dying mother asked you.
Again though, isn't the whole lesson of Steppenwolf kind of moving beyond being this archetypal person?
Yes and no the point of the book is something like the Jungian Individuation process by integrating the shadow and the anima. I just think that Hesse/Haller never quite changed enough to really escape some of the fundamental problems of modern alienation. The limitations of the book and maybe the Jungian theory itself in some ways is that is so focused on the individual. There is no revelation God or integration into a community at the end of the book still just Haller. In my opinion it feels like that is a big missing piece but I feel it’s common among the various reactions to modernity like the American Transcendentalist or the Nietzschean individualist. Haller is maybe able to overcome his desire for death and his divided self but then what? It’s still focused on Haller’s struggle for meaning inside bourgeois modernity. He never connected to any actual people or found a place as a father, husband, friend or anything like that. We are left without a final resolution.
demian or siddhartha just because of how accessible they are.
i've read everything available in english by hesse in college...and i guess you're not entirely wrong. he's hard to revisit as a 42 year old. i don't think he's whiny or too immature but there is shit you absorb as a 20-something and i want to say you eventually move through some of that mysticism but at the same time some people revel in it their whole lives.
>another german bourgeois
why are atheist men infatuated with the german bourgeoisie
Hesse is hardly an atheist. His work is deeply spiritual and expresses a belief in higher and deeper purpose, even though he doesn't tie it closely to one specific religion. There's a secion in Peter Camenzind where a character criticizes the hypocrisy of modern intellectuals who'd be embarassed to belief in God, but effectively treat their artistic or ideological role models like gods.
i like it when he kisses a boy in demian :3c
Hesse is an author who very clearly used stories to talk about the philosophical, religious and psychological concepts of men he admired. His stories are vehicles foremost for intellectual and spiritual reflection not artistic beauty. He also wrote the same adolescent story about the moody misfit genius young man in an elite school rebelling and overcoming his society to forge his own path. This is obviously in some ways admirable, attractive and necessary to be an individual person but he never really goes all way by tackling a post-narcissistic negotiation with society and other people. Individual rebellion against society may have packed more punch in a more conservative and restricted society like 1890’s Germany but now it has become warped and distorted in our times as a form of conformity itself. I really like Hesse as an other and I can only speak for him in English translation but it feels like he never had the artistic passionate connection with the muses. Compared to my favorite writer of this period, Nikos Kazantzakis. Hesse feels flat in someways. Still he is better than everyone published today and is well worth reading
Interesting write-up, anon.
>he never really goes all way by tackling a post-narcissistic negotiation with society and other people
Isn't this exactly what Steppenwolf does?
Sehr schön!
That’s not how I interpreted the ending but I could see it being a valid takeaway. I thought it was more an internal Jungian psychological negotiation with self-perception rather than a genuine reconciliation with the outside world. In the end Haller’s ego defense mechanism that protected him for the pain of life are shattered but we never see him actually reintegrate with society at large or build meaningful relationships. We don’t know what becomes of him.
Yes, the ending is definitely ambiguous. He might be insane, dead or be on a path of improvement and healing. But I think the book is acknowledging that the intellectual, individualistic, stand outside of society path can effectively become a sickness.
I don’t think he was on the path to improvement at least not fully. I would have to reread the ending to be sure but I took it as him killing Hermine was him symbolically killing the anima. Even though many of his illusions about the intellectual life have been shattered He still hasn’t embraced life. He still craves death and suffering in some form. But honestly Steppenwolf is an amazing book and I need to reread it. It was a direct blow to me the first time as i was literally the same type of person as Haller.
I agree with your thoughts. I also wouldn't read the ending as a positive one, but I think that reading is also possible. And I think a lot of people are with you (and me) and see parts of themselves in the Steppenwolf.
I read the book during a low point in my life and it really convicted me of how broken a person I was. In my head I suspected Haller lived like Hesse as a kind of isolated Flagellant just writing and painting watercolors up in the mountains. But maybe he learned how to dance and became engaged with life something I still try to find an outlet for.
If I had the money to just write and paint up in the mountains I would too. I don't see what's wrong with this if you can afford such a life style without being leech on others
It’s not wrong in the sense of being immoral or unethical but in the context of the book Haller makes himself suicidally miserable by his intellectual pursuits. Essentially he creates an image of himself in his mind as this tortured genius in a world full of philistines and pushes away everyone to indulge in narcissistic sadomasochism. The point of the book in part is the need for him to abandon this ego construction to embrace other undeveloped sides of his personality and put himself out there to become spiritually well. So while some people might do well isolating from society, I kinda of doubt it’s a good idea, Haller who is Hesse needs to learn to live a different way to be whole.
This is clearly not true. Not graduating high school these days is a very effective way of showing your resentment against libshit society.
> but it comes with huge societal sanctions, you'll never work a normal job boohoo
That's precisely the point of doing it. It would be different to 1890s burgeois society if it didn't.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Hesse left his elite school and had a mental breakdown from the expectations to led a professional bourgeois Christian life and became a spiritual seeker and artist. Obviously that would be more likely to get you excluded from the middle class social circles back then then say dropping out of college to run a podcast today. In a post boomer counter culture world there exists the mythos of fighting against the man and authenticity that I don’t think exists in the 1890s. Maybe there were certain ideas of the Romantic poets but I don’t think the culture is really the same. I think today you see people who brand themselves as counter cultural individualists but really are just their own other clique. Think the trans gender software developer who works in big tech they have the same beliefs and habits as millions of people even if they style themselves as oppressed by the man.
> Hesse left his elite school
Elite school? He graduated high school, then went on to study in a theology college (and dropped the frick out lol)
> In a post boomer counter culture world there exists the mythos of fighting against the man and authenticity that I don’t think exists in the 1890s
No that's wrong, dropping out of school to rebel against society is a European tradition. It is old custom since the Late Middle Ages. It is alive even today. When I went to Middle School a 14 year old student in my class decided to drop out of school. My teacher smilingly shook his hands and wished him good luck.
I dropped out of high school when I was 17.
It is very based.
I am not sure what Based means in this context. It would probably be better for you if you went back to school and got a high paying job. It doesn’t exactly hurt your enemies if you don’t have an education. But if you can make it work and are happy then good for you. There is something to be said about having practical trade skills or homesteading if you can pull it off.
> It would probably be better for you if you went back to school and got a high paying job
You don't just get a high paying job just like that. I am learning a trade that can be well-paid once learned. Of course if you compare it to the pay of a top banker it is still a small pay, but the banker can't do nothing on himself while with a trade you can do a lot of things by yourself, needing considerably less income to work on your dreams.
> It doesn’t exactly hurt your enemies if you don’t have an education
No I just don't comply with current society and me having an education implies that I do comply with current society. It is a purely societal thing: anyone can ask me at the table where I have graduated, and I will reply I never went to college, never graduated HS and they would ask: 'why not', and then I can go on a rant on how shitty I find this society, and insist on the proposition that I did in fact drop out not because I was stupid, but out of protest against this shitty society.
>What's your favorite work of his?
Stufen
>Wie jede Blüte welkt und jede Jugend
>Dem Alter weicht, blüht jede Lebensstufe,
>Blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend
>Zu ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern.
>Es muß das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe
>Bereit zum Abschied sein und Neubeginne,
>Um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern
>In andre, neue Bindungen zu geben.
>Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
>Der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.
>Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten,
>An keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen,
>Der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,
>Er will uns Stuf´ um Stufe heben, weiten.
>Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
>Und traulich eingewohnt, so droht Erschlaffen;
>Nur wer bereit zu Aufbruch ist und Reise,
>Mag lähmender Gewöhnung sich entraffen.
>Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
>Uns neuen Räumen jung entgegen senden,
>Des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden,
>Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!
i really Like this thread so far. wish IQfy was more like this thread.
I like steppenwolf, Narziss und Goldmund, Unterm Rad. i haven't read Demian or Glasperlenspiel.
I despise Hesse, the proto Hippie new age writer, but I still like the author and I think that descriptively, he had some insight into the human psyche, but I wouldn't advice to follow his normative "conclusions". Just be a good catholic and be happy.
one of my favorites. I also like picrel
I don’t really think Hesse was a proto hippie or new age in the way you probably mean. I think the reason people hate the American hippies is their association with the new left and mindless hedonism. People imagine multi millionaires John Lenon singing “imagine” or some sleazy guy giving acid to barely legal girls. I don’t think Hesse would have condoned the way the counter culture turned out I think he would have the same reaction as Kerouac did. Basically a disgust at people thinking anti-conformity meant giving into a pure amoral pleasure drive. Same with the whole adoption of the hippie persona as something you could adopt and copy. Hesse was foremost an individual spiritual seeker struggling like everyone with the consequences of the death of god. You can definitely see overlaps with him, the romantics, the Americans transcendentalist, Nietzsche bros, the beats and the hippies but I think it’s a mistake to say there is a linear logical progression from him to hippiedom.
we might have different standards for whom to count as a hippie but I dunno. To me, the statement "you must embrace the multitude within you" sounds very esoteric and pretty indistinguishable from "open up your chakras, man" (open up your inner anus, relax man). anyone who says that you can be at once a person who understands the greatness of Bach's B-minor Mass and also the cuck who watches the Black person with the big black baritone saxophone "loving" your gf Hermine while listening to jazz ("just relax, bro, open up your inner chakra [i.e. your inner anus], it's cool, just lay back and enjoy the grove, man"), is completely gay and a homosexual hippie. Adolf knew the cure for this movement. either you are constantly under stress, Biedermeier, or you relax your inner sphincter. speaking of musical instruments, didn't Harry play the same wind instrument as Schopenhauer?
You actually can enjoy both jazz music and classical music for the same reason people enjoyed peasant folk music and classical music or Aeschylus and Aristophanes. There are different rolls for different arts though you should never become a redditor who says Homer is Marvel or all art is subjective etc. Hesse was trying to get at the idea that people have a limited understanding of themselves and construct a persona for themselves where they flee from the repressed contents of the unconscious. You’re not wrong to be wary of such claims which went down the Freudian-Marxian path with Wilhelm Reich and Marcuse. Yet being purely reactionary and clinging to an already lost past will not let us actually overcome people like that.
Really doubt it’s that easy Heidegger and people in that vain were probably correct about the need to rediscover the sacred for ourselves outside of old religious traditions that no longer speak.
>You actually can enjoy both jazz music and classical music
As I already said, I suspect that we have different tolerance levels for gayness.
>clinging to the past won't help overcoming those people
I don't have to "overcome" anyone. (Plötzlich über-windet nun alles jeden und alles. - Winke I/Schwarze Hefte) Marcuse etc don't stand in my way. I don't have to do anything with them. Should I change my ideals, only because some israelites don't want me to uphold them? The way to deal with their ideas is to simply reject them or to ignore them. The same goes for their authors. Either ignore them or use them to make special cookies.
>Heidegger and ppl in that vain on traditional religious life
As I already said, I suspect that we have very different tolerance levels for homosexualry.
>nooo.... you can't just pray the rosary daily, be a simple carpenter living in the woods, using IQfy in the evening and while shitting up the toilet, Heidegger clearly showed that you cannot! Now submit to the israeliness by "overcoming" it and eat the lit crit bugs. You cannot continue with that, it is not that easy
I am not sorry,I certainly will not.
>if you read the theory, you will see that it is not that easy.
picrel is for someone you know.
I mean if it works for you to be a tradcath living in the woods I don’t have any problem with that. I kinda of doubt that’s going to be enough to actually defeat the people you hate. But good luck working with your hands and maintaining your ideals is certainly better selling out.
you don't have to become a culture warrior in order to win the culture war. I don't even think that I have to
"win" any culture war. sure, I don't want to live amongst Black folk or be forced to look at trannies, but that is simply a political issue. good if you can move to a place where you don't have to deal with pakis or trannies if you currently have to, but a very simple way to avoid them is to work a regular job, because usually neither trannies nor pakis work. Pakis rape little girls at McDonalds and trannies hero themselves at universities. avoid those places, avoid the city, be racist with your friends and neighbours. you don't have to "defeat your enemies" and you don't have to read Derrida in order to defeat Klaus Schwab. If you do study modern day sophistry just like good old Plato did back in his days, that is good. but you don't have to "overcome" Derrida in some kind of culture warrior move. Simple logic should do the trick, no need for burger historical dialectics or synthetic drugs.
And I even think that you could not even win a culture war by becoming yourself a culture warrior of this sort. Sir Roger Scruton once said that it is very hard to defend decency without being indecent. He certainly has a point here, if you catch my drift!
Well I wouldn’t advocate becoming a culture warrior in the sense of becoming a Twitter person like JBP where you tweet scream at Elmo all day. Also personal victories obviously can look different for many people if your personal victory is raising a family in the countryside according to traditional Christian values more power to you. I am a semi NRX type person and believe that the existing elite are a psycho-spiritually dead end and should be replaced. I don’t believe in retreat and want to position to take over the system in the future. I also believe in advancing philosophy and theology to address the challenges of modernity and it’s not possible to return directly to the premodern.
btw, your criticism of Hippie culture stinks like ~~*Theo Wiesengrund Adolfo*~~
I read steppenwolf when I was in school
I didn't get it
Steppenwolf was great, Demian and Siddhartha failed to leave any impression on me. I will read his Glass bead game (?) Or whatever it's called, I heard that's his best book.
Glass bead game is an interesting book. I think a lot of the focus he puts on the individual in his other works is here extended to a broader perspective. One that is mainly concerned with academia and people in search of knowledge.
Steppenwolf only gets really interesting towards the latter half. What really stood out for me in this book was the passage about eternity.
I'd like ot read this too. Can somebody upload?
Narcissus and Goldmund
Hesse communicated with his wife in letters, living in the same household, he is a based autist
Being German Hesse had the natural Autism buff
The only one of jis works I've read is Demian, and that was enough for me. Liked bits of the child parts, but everything after "What if Cain was just really smart and looked at people funny? Ever think about that? Hasn't your whole world just changed?!" The main theme of the book was just endlessly eyerolling.
He seems very new age, if new age was a thing at the time, and basically writes what westerners think Eastern religions are, and keeps trying to one up itself with that until it finally hits a hodge podge cludge of philosophical ideas.
I woulda still liked it if it was a fun read, but it wasn't.
It’s a Jungian book if you don’t understand Jungian theory it won’t make sense and will just seem like bad Yaoi/milf erotica.
>no mention of Unterm Rad (Beneath the Wheel)
🙁
His popularity I can understand, in the same way I understand the popularity of a writer for a Boys Own mag. He repackages eastern philosophistry into poetic gossamer, maybe he sticks another story to scaffold the ideas but they become so thin. Think of the Glass Bead Game, where the elusive nature of the game merely points to the elusive nature of all his writing, which eludes because it has nothing to say.
One of many writers who thought they were way more deep and profound than they actually were. Just cut out the middle man and read the Upanishads and the Gnostic gospels instead.
His writing appears almost wholly derivative of greater works, with vague and imprecise prose that meanders around a message, or theme, for no other purpose than commiserating with his reader over a projection of artistic intent.
Perhaps I expected too much, seeking emotional and intellectual depth where there was none, but his stories are even more worthless without that presupposition.
good reads for the masculine man