Start & finish so so , to "etherial". I like the middle of his "awakening". ( )

This novel is presented as the memoirs of a 50-year-old man named Henry Haller, a lonely, wandering man who identifies his disconnect from "bourgeois" society as being like a wolf of the steppes. Over the course of the book he makes friends and acquaintances who help him enjoy frivolous activities such as dance and casual drug use. The final part of the book is set inside a magic theater where his thoughts come to life. Honestly I don't understand what was happening in there.

The novel at times reads more like a treatise on philosophy and spirituality than a fictional narrative. Haller comes across as a grump although I suppose there's a lot about him that is relatable. Many years ago I read Hesse's Siddhartha, which is a similar story of spiritual self-discovery that I found more engaging. Nevertheless, this worth the read. ( )

I read this one a while ago, and don't recall any details. ( )

There's tremendous wisdom in this book, but I nevertheless found it a pretty unrewarding read. I have never been one for the novel of ideas - just write an essay about your ideas! - and this book has all the standard problems of the form. I never found the protagonist, Harry Haller, very likeable or very interesting. I could really identify with so many of the insights about how he is distanced from life and how his insistence on refinement has ended up as a kind of dried-up deprivation. But he was such a crashing bore and such a caricature that I didn't much care what happened to him.

One of the major problems is that he exerts no volition whatsoever; he just encounters one signpost after another and follows them obediently. Even when he doesn't follow the signposts it turns out he was supposed to ignore that one and take the next turn. I believe that's all very Jungian with the universal unconscious and so on, but in narrative terms it makes for a pretty boring read. I think if a character is going to be passive like Harry Haller, they need to either be charming or there needs to be a higher purpose for the reader to be invested in.

I also found the book entirely humourless. There's some insistence on the need to laugh, but that rings pretty hollow when you can't seem to muster a decent joke. I seem to have a constitutional dislike of dream sequences and "it was almost as if...", which I guess make me particularly ill-suited to getting the most out of this book.

I'd like to pretend that I might reread this book, and it could completely change my perspective to read it in a different stage of life, but there are so many books I've never read it's hard to imagine going back to one I didn't particularly enjoy. ( )

Stepskog vuka Hese je napisao 1927. godine. U toj "biografiji duse" svaka licnost je odraz jednog od sukoba autora sa samim sobom, kao ogledalo neprikrivenog razdora i pometnje u samopoimanju.

Ime glavnog junaka - Hari Haler jasno je obelezje, dovoljno za indentifikaciju. Hari Haler ima mnogo toga zajednickog sa Heseom. Sam je Hese kao izdavac rukopisa o izlaganjima Harija Halera, primetio sledece: "Ove zabeleske, bez obzira do koje mere pocivaju na stvarnim dozivljajima , predstavljaju saznanje da se velike bolesti nasega vremena ne mogu savladati na taj nacin sto cemo ih zaobici i ulepsati , to je pokusaj da sama bolest bude predmet izlaganja . "

Celokupno pripovedacko delo Hermana Hesea je autobiografsko, ali sa jednim posebnim obelezjem . Sam Hese je rekao da su to " biografske duse ". Dozivljaji su uglavnom plod maste ali ne u smislu proizvoljnog izmisljanja , vec kao pokusaj da se duboko dozivljavani dusevni tokovi prikazu kao vidljiva zbivanja. Tako je Heseovo kazivanje, s jedne strane, vezano za stvarnost koja je formirana u vremenu, a s druge, za nevidljivu i neoformljenu strvarnost koja ne zna za vreme…