/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18015395]

Is it normal to outgrow this dude?

I read Siddhartha and Steppenwolf a few years ago when I was ~22 and loved them. Picked up Demian now and I'm really struggling, it seems Hesse's shtick is a bit one-note and I find his whole outlook more limited now. Demian seems like a less successful version of Steppenwolf.

[Anonymous No.18015477]

Hesse's books seem to hit hard between 16-21, when you're searching for meaning and changing internally. There are better writers to read as an adult. Hesse is better than the schlock most young people read today but he's rather introductory and once you're in your twenties it's diminishing returns

[Anonymous No.18015901]

>>18015395
>>18015477
What happens after your early twenties that makes it lose the magic?
t. 20 yr old who just read and enjoyed Siddhartha

[Anonymous No.18016030]

>>18015477
Who are some other authors that write similarly to Hesse? Either thematically or stylistically, Glass Bead Game and Narcissus are comfy reads. I've read Stoner and Henderson the Rain King which I felt touched on the whole search for authenticity thing that Hesse writes about a lot.

[Anonymous No.18016088]

>>18015901
I think it's because your personality becomes more set in stone. Steppenwolf particularly holds a special place in my heart because I read it when I was 22 - in your early twenties you're old enough to truly appreciate and love literature, music, culture etc, and I could relate to Steppenwolf's despair at the time that such things seemed to be dying. But afterwards, through living, you sort of make peace with it. I nearly died from a chronic illness, worked as a police officer for a while, visited different countries, and a more mature type of philosophical fiction became more appealing to me. I don't think that makes it 'better' than Hesse's work, just that different works are best appreciated at different ages.

>>18016030
After Hesse I enjoyed reading Camus, especially The Plague. It showed a completely different, humanistic approach to things which leads you outwards, towards other people, rather than inwards in search of some inner truth. More recently I've found Tolstoy and, unironically, Proust to be excellent explorations of the self and the search for authenticity. I tried reading both when I was 20 and found them dull.

[Anonymous No.18016252]

>>18016030
Thomas Mann probably

[Anonymous No.18016267]

>>18015395

He's comfy but he kind of writes the same book over and over again about internal change. Very cool Jungian elements and symbolism in his books though.

[Anonymous No.18016319]

>>18016267
Yeah, once you've read Siddhartha and Steppenwolf you've basically read all his work. The former dealing with universality and the latter with duality

[Anonymous No.18016344]

>>18016319
You didn't understand Steppenwolf at all if you think it had anything to do with duality.

[Anonymous No.18016432]

>>18016344
T. Retard

Steppenwolf was about uniting duality in the same way demian was

[Anonymous No.18016442]

>>18015395
>Read Steppenwolf at 16
Holy shit this is so hopeful, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever read
>Read Siddhartha later on that year
Such a comfy book. The simplicity of the style really plays in its favour.
>Read Under the wheel at 17
This is not bad, but the protagonists in all his books are maybe too similar
>Read Demian later on that year
Jesus Christ this is awful, he must have been on opium or some shit when he wrote this
>Read The glass bead game at 18
The fake-biography shenanigan is cool, but this is mostly an elaboration on the "Dude, academia bad" that pops up in all his books, I expected more.
>Re-read Steppenwolf at 20
This is still good in parts, but I wish he didn't jerk off Haller so much during the Prologue, it comes across as self-indulgent.
>Re-read Siddhartha at 21
Such a comfy book. The simplicity of the style really plays in its favour.

[Anonymous No.18016472]

>>18015395
I'd argue Demian is the more successful version of Steppenwolf.

Doing the same thing, which I guess you no longer want anon, but better in that the opening with the childhood is so convincingly realised, the hero's rejection of his own intellectualism is dramatised via the organ-guy (also a better drawn character than those in the earlier book), and because the mystical note at the end is more cathartic.

[Anonymous No.18016557]

>>18016432
No, the "duality" was only the limited imagination of a pretentious little man. The true scope was revealed in the cigarette experience.

[Anonymous No.18016622]

>>18016557
Yes, the solution was multifaceted, but much of Hesse's work was concerned with that initial feeling of duality and its resolution. The MC of Steppenwolf, Demian, and Narcissus & Golmund all explicitly struggle with feelings of duality, light/dark, virtue/sin, civilised/bestial. All resolve it by realising there are far more dimensions, their personalities are much more intricate, universality, blah blah. It's the exact same message in each story - the same self-constructed duality, that's slowly peeled back. It's not as deep as people take it to be. Siddhartha remains his best work because it avoids this

[Anonymous No.18016692]

>>18016557
Harry Haller was hardly pretentious

[S10241875 No.18016935]

>>18015395
Try to read
Autobiographical Writings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2174837.Autobiographical_Writings
especially
"Notes on a Cure in Baden"
There, about the attempts of old man Hesse to fight off another obsessed "Reader".
He wrote many of his books, including The Bead Game, for psychotherapy purposes, he himself admitted this in his letters. This therapy is through creativity. Demian was written to ward off the shock of the First World War.

In general, if you wrote your post personally to Hesse (as many readers constantly wrote to him), he would only answer you with his sad smile and silent sympathy.

[what should I start with? No.18017172]

The on
>>18015395
Personally the only book i didnt outgrow is narziss and goldmund and perhaps glasperlenspiel because its his most complete one. Kind of brothers karamazow for dosto.

[Anonymous No.18017326]

>>18015395
I know what you mean. I read Steppenwolf at 21 while traveling through India. At the time I sympathized with Harry Haller and his misanthropy. I similarly enjoyed Demian a year later, though I found Siddartha to be boring (probably because the protagonist is well-adjusted). A few years have passed since then, and I picked up the Glass Bead Game a couple months ago -- I couldn't get into it. Once Hesse's perspective become familiar to you as a reader, his novels becomes predictable. I started the Glass Bead Game right after finishing Nietzsche's BGE, and the difference in the levels of prose between the two authors was enough to give me whiplash. I consider Hesse to be someone with whom I can genuinely sympathize, whereas there is great distance between me and thinkers like Nietzsche or Goethe.

[Anonymous No.18017429]

>>18017326
>>18016622
>>18016472
>>18016442

It always gives me pleasure to find anons who have actually read. I concur with the general sentiment. I'll always be fond of Hesse but his books are gateway literature and serve their best purpose in providing catharsis for aimless, intelligent young men.