Siddhartha (1922)

Corto y genial ( )

I did enjoy this book. I expected this to be a book that would not be an easy read but surprisingly it wasn't. It is relatively short but with a lot of contect in its few pages. I did enjoy the book and it did make you think. I am glad I read it. ( )

As a preface to my reaction to this book, I must say that the choice of this book was not my own, but rather the choice of my book club. I personally do not care for books I feel are allegorical. I find them too simplistic with philosophical thought cast at the reader and carefully delineated rather than allowing the reader freedom of thought about what was just read.

After reading half of the book, I found Siddhartha truly annoying and would have bailed, had I not agreed to read this book for someone other than myself. I hated that he left his father and then left his friend Govinda, first to seek the life of an ascetic and then to simply pursue riches...which was also accompanied by greed, lust and other vices. Nothing against those last three things other than they had no antithesis in Siddhartha's life at that time. There was later a character I liked very much...a ferryman by the name of Vasudeva. He was a hard-working, thoughtful, kind and caring man. He certainly seemed more well rounded than Siddhartha.

At the end of the book, as I suspected, we the readers were told what we should have gotten out of this story. I read it. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful and all that...but very abstract. I like more literal story-telling.

I am glad I read this book, though, as I had never before read a book by Herman Hesse, and this author was one of my dear late aunt Emma's favorite writers. I might later explore more of his works to see if there are other books of his I might like better. ( )

I honestly only remember this in the vaguest way - Indian hero's journey / spiritual quest n'at - after all, I probably read it about 37 yrs ago - but I watched the movie of Hesse's "Steppenwolf" recently & liked it & was reminded of why I liked him as a teenager. Giving it 3 stars is a safe bet. I know Hesse was important enuf to me for me to've read 3 bks of his in fairly quick succession but then I think I felt like I'd outgrown him & moved on. ( )

The foreword mentions how easy it was for Hermann to write Part 1. Then he got stuck and didn't return to write the rest of the book until years later.

It shows. I really loved the first part. It was a simple but beautiful story. The rest of the book just wandered off the path. ( )