6 - Siddhartha

Summary

The essay has three parts. The first part deals with the interpretation of the novel in accordance with international Hesse scholarship, while the second part discusses the English translations and their accompanying introductions of Siddhartha. The third part examines the similarities between Hesse’s message as expressed in the novel and some tenets of Zen Buddhism.

An East-Western Interpretation of Siddhartha

As early as 1923, one year after the publication of Siddhartha, Hesse emphasized that he had found the deepest truth in the Upanishads, the thoughts of Buddha, Confucius, Lao Zi (Hesse’s transcription: Lao Tse), and the New Testament. He reiterated the same thought in 1958 with specific reference to Siddhartha: that the novel is the confession of a man of Christian origin who left the Church early in his life in order to learn to understand other religions, especially the Indian and Chinese forms of belief. This perspective on the novel, not only carrying the authoritative stamp of the author, but subscribed to by most critics of today, will be the foundation of our analysis of Siddhartha.

Hesse had begun writing the novel in December 1919 and completed the first part by August 1920. He then had to put it aside because he had exhausted his own experience of searching for knowledge and his personal reaction to the teaching of Buddha. He was at a loss how to depict the further development of Siddhartha, which culminates in his enlightenment. It seems that C. G. Jung was instrumental in the work’s completion. Hesse had several sessions of psychotherapy with him in Küsnacht, a suburb of Zurich, in May and June 1921. The therapy helped him “to create a space within us in which God’s voice can be heard,” as he wrote in a letter during this period. Having a new focus, Hesse was able to look beyond Buddhism for inspiration. At this point, Lao Zi seemed to have come to his aid: Hesse confessed in a letter of February 1922 (a few weeks before he took up writing Siddhartha again) that the novel departed from Brahman and Buddha, but would end in Tao. He took up writing again in March 1922 and completed the novel in May. The novel was then published in October of the same year.