I didn't have a strong impression of Siddhartha when I read it as part of English class, so it wasn't until a friend mentioned that Hermann Hess is one of his favourite authors that I read another one of his books. I did enjoy this read, although I didn't find it too relatable (mostly the childhood parts at the beginning, but they set the tone for the whole story). I do very much enjoy the author's introduction, the full text brought to you by Google's OCR:
To tell my story, I have to start very far back. In fact, if I could, I would have to go back much farther to the very first years of my childhood, or even farther back, into the distant reaches of my origins.
When writers write novels, they tend to act as though they were God, who can see and understand anything and everything about a person's story, and they present that story as though God himself were telling it, without all the veils of disguise that are the fundamental nature of life. I cannot do that any more than these writers can. But my story is more important to me than some writer's story is to him, because it is my own, and it is the story of a human being not an imagined, possible, ideal, or in some other way nonexis tent person but a real, unique, living, breath ing one. Now we know much less today than ever before about what that is a real living person and as a result, people, each of them a precious, unique creation of nature, are be ing shot dead in enormous numbers. If each one of us were no more than a single human being, if the world really could completely be rid of us with a single bullet, then there would be no sense in telling stories anymore. But every person is more than himself: he is also the unique, entirely particular, and in every case meaningful and remarkable point of in tersection where the phenomena of the world overlap, only once and never again in just this way. That is why everyone's story is impor tant, eternal, and godlike-why everyone, as long as and in whatever fashion he lives and fulfills the will of Nature, is wonderful and worthy of all our attention. Everyone is the spirit made flesh; in everyone, creation takes form and suffers; in everyone, a Redeemer dies on the cross.
Few know what a person is these days. many feel it, and can die more easily, the But way I will die more easily once I have written out this story to the end.
I cannot claim to possess any knowledge. I was a seeker, and I still am. But I no longer look to the stars, or seek in books; I have started to hear the lessons roared and mur mured by the blood in my body. My story is not a happy one, not pleasing and harmonious like something invented it reeks of meaninglessness and confusion, of insanity and dream, like the life of anyone who no longer wants to lie to himself.
Everyone's life is a way into himself, or the attempt at a way, the hint of a path. No one is utterly and completely himself; every one strives to become himself, however he can, this one dully, that one more brightly. We all carry traces of our birth with us to the end-the slime and eggshell of a primeval past. Some of us never become human, but stay a frog, a lizard, an ant. Some are human from the waist up and fish from the waist down. But everyone is a stab at humanity, a roll of Nature's dice. We all share a common origin, our mothers; we all come out of the same gaping maw; but every one of us struggles an attempt, a throw from the depths to reach our own individual goal. We can understand each other, but each of us can truly grasp and interpret only himself.
The quotations that made an impression on me are all from once the story gets to his teenage years where the main character is exploring & forming his own beliefs:
Many people experience the death and rebirth that is the destiny of us all only this once, as childhood rots from within and slowly disintegrates, as everything we have grown to love abandons us, and we suddenly feel the solitude and deathly cold of the universe around us. And very many people remain stuck at this hurdle their whole life long, desperately hanging on to the irretrievable past and clinging to the dream of a paradise lost the worst and most deadly of all dreams.
My goal was not pleasure but purity; not happiness but purity and spirit.
It was the first time where the outside world was in pure harmony with my inner world, and that is a high holiday of the soul - a day that makes it worthwhile to be alive.
You mustn't have wishes you don't believe in. I know what you wish for. Either you can give up these wishes or you need to fully and properly wish for them. If you can ever ask in such a way that you are entirely sure your wish will be fulfilled, then fulfillment will come. But now you're just wishing and then feeling bad about it, scared the whole time. That is what you need to overcome.
"Love cannot ask," she said, "or plead. Love must have the strength to reach certain ty from within. Then one's love is no longer attracted, it attracts. Sinclair, your love is drawn to me. If it ever draws me to it, I will come. I don't want to do anyone a favor, I want to be won."
