Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha is an allegorical novel written by Hermann Hesse in 1922 after the First World War. It relates the life of a Hindu man named Siddhartha. The work has been considered by the author as a "Hindu poem" and also as the essential expression of his way of life. Widely read in the East as such, and less in the Western world. The novel presents a very original register in which lyrical and epic elements are unified, including narration and meditation, elevation of the highest spirituality, and, at the same time, stark sensuality. The manifest success of the book came after twenty years of its publication and treading on the resounding echoes of the Nobel Prize awarded to Hesse in 1946. It was above all the young people who made the figure of Siddhartha a compendium of the concerns of the adolescents, the desire to meet the essential of himself, the pride of the individual faced with the world and history. The novel was written by Hesse, in German, in a simple but powerful and poetic style. It was first published after Hesse lived for some time in India in the 1910s. It was published in the United States in 1951 and achieved great notoriety during the 1960s.