George Wallis Field

1243. Hermann Hesse, by George Willis Field (read 16 Sep 1973) This study of Hesse was published in 1970. It was a mystery to me why I was reading so much by and about Hesse. It was certainly not that I was attracted to him by the then current vogue of the young for him. I much preferred the early Hesse novels to the later ones, though it is the later ones which are deemed 'significant.' I do not study assiduously what I read. In fact, I had to struggle to get thru some of Hesse's stuff, show more just as I struggled (meaning: force myself to concentrate on what I am reading) to get thru the second part of Goethe's Faust--this was 20 years ago and I still recalled how bored I was at the incomprehensible hodgepodge--or Goethe's Wilhelm Meister or Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. I am sure if I read Hesse's "greatest" novel, Das Glasperlenspiel (Magister Ludi) I would have to struggle also. So-- I won't. But I might read the other two novels of his I have not read: The Prodigy and Narcissus and Goldmund, and even Rosshilde, if it is now in English. But I cannot see why I am giving him this attention: there is German in me, but Hesse was born a Protestant in Wurttemberg and does not express anything I consciously admire philosophically... show less