Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Source of book: I own this.

I have a small hardback of this short novel, from Fall River Press, translated by Katja Pelzer. 

Siddhartha is one of those books that is considered an essential classic, but that few seem to have read. While it was published in Germany in 1922, it didn’t make an impact in America until the English language translation was published in 1951. This was ideal timing, as it was at the dawn of an era of interest in Eastern philosophy and religion. The book became one of the most influential writings during the 1960s. 

Hermann Hesse was himself a Buddhist, although he was raised by Pietist Christian parents - he later said that their genuine and humble faith - “not preached but lived” - was a tremendous influence on him. 

Siddhartha is the story of a life’s journey by the title character. Siddhartha is born into a Brahman family, and is so intelligent that his parents believe he will become a saint. This doesn’t exactly happen (or at least doesn’t happen until near the end of Siddhartha’s life.) Siddhartha leaves home to become a Samana, meets the Buddha, hooks up with a courtesan, makes a fortune, becomes disillusioned, and finally finds peace by listening to an old man and the river. 

Although translations can obscure the original a bit, I think Pelzer captured the simple and straightforward style of the original. 

A couple of quotes were interesting to me. For much of the novel, Siddhartha struggles to figure out what to do with the self. As a Samana, he is expected to punish the self, to cut the self off, so to speak. Later as he seeks pleasure, he finds the self disgusts him. A key turning point occurs as he notes that the senses (the flesh, perhaps) are not the self, but neither is the life of the mind.

But he had never really found this Self, for he had tried to capture it in the net of thoughts. Just as the Self was certainly not the body, and not the play of senses, it was also not thought, not the mind, not learned wisdom, not the learned art of drawing conclusions and spinning new thoughts out of old ones. No, even this world of thoughts was still on this side, and no goal could be reached by killing off the arbitrary Self of the senses while fattening the arbitrary Self of thoughts and scholarliness. Both were to be listened to, both were to be played with, both were neither to be condemned nor overvalued; from both, the secret voices of the innermost core were to be heard. 

This was fascinating to me, because of my own religious background. It is a Western thing, perhaps, but my religious tradition is deeply suspicious of the body and of the senses. (Particularly anything connected to sexuality, but pleasures in general.) This leads to an intellectualizing of one’s faith, making it a faith of “believing the right things,” and not a faith of a lived experience in community with the vulnerable. The other result, though, is a traumatic separation of the body and the senses from the “true self,” which is “spiritual” - meaning intellectual. For those of us who feel deeply, and experience transcendence in things like music and poetry and the beauty of nature, this was always a difficult thing - and it felt like a violation to be expected to divorce the parts of our inner being. (I imagine it is far worse for those who don’t have the advantage of being cishet, and thus literally have their nature set at war with their faith.) 

I’m not sure Siddhartha (or Hesse) ever finds a convincing answer to the nature of the self, but at least they acknowledge the question of how to live with one’s whole being. 

The second passage was fascinating for a similar reason. As an old man, Siddhartha is reunited with his childhood friend, Govinda, who left to follow Gautama. Govinda is disappointed that Siddhartha seems to have gained some insight, but can’t share it. I think, though, that Siddhartha is on the right track when he explains that words and ideas tend to get in the way - they intellectualize what must be lived. 

“You see, my Govinda, this is one of the thoughts that I have found: Wisdom cannot be conveyed. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to convey always sounds like foolishness....I am saying what I have found. One can convey knowledge, but not wisdom. One can find it, one can live it, one can be carried by it, one can do wonders with it, but one cannot speak or teach it.” 

This kind of captures the essence of the book. Wisdom (or faith, or a life well lived, or however you wish to put it) isn’t an intellectual exercise. It requires the whole self. It can be lived, it can be found, it can change your life. But you can’t reduce it to words or a set of beliefs or a formula. Likewise, one learns from others more by example than by teaching. Just like Hesse and his parents.

There were a few sour notes in the book. The main one concerns the role of women. Which is: not much, and not positive. Siddhartha’s mother gets a brief mention, but his main relationship is with his father. His best friend is Govinda - another boy and then man. The riverboat operator becomes the final path to enlightenment - and he too is male. The merchant Kamaswami, who teaches Siddhartha in the ways of commerce, is male. 

It is the courtesan, Kamala, who instructs him in the ways of love. But this isn’t presented as the most positive thing. It seems a bit like the stereotype of the wanton woman who seduces the man from his higher pursuits. And, conveniently, she dies, leaving Siddhartha with their son. She is given less character development than the male characters, and seems to be known for her beauty, and her ability to attract rich men to support her. She could have been so much more. 

I also felt that the final resolution was a bit trite. I will concede that I am reading this from a very Western point of view, that I am not particularly well versed in Buddhism so I am likely missing some of the reference points, and that the triteness is probably because Hesse has been imitated by many lesser artists in the 70 years since. It is certainly possible that the “everything is connected” insight felt fresher then. Although, come to think of it, there are plenty of people today who could use that insight. 

Siddhartha is a thoughtful book, and was pleasant to read. I think it also helps to understand the popular versions of Eastern mysticism that took off in the 60s. Like most things we Americans have appropriated from other cultures, it lacked context and got watered down a bit. But elements permeated our own culture to the point where we don’t even notice them these days. It is in elucidating these hidden bits of borrowed culture that the book is most enlightening, although Siddhartha’s journey is compelling in its own way. 

***

Siddhartha's quest reminds me so much of one of U2's greatest songs ever. 

All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This was my selection for Banned Books Week this year. Yeah, I know, this review is a bit late. Unfortunately, the week feel during our Symphony week, so I had zero evening time for reading.

Back in 2012, I wrote about my philosophy of book selection for this week, and why I believe it is important to read banned books. You can find that post here.

Previous Banned Books Week selections:

Areopagitica by John Milton (2011) (Written in defiance of censorship laws - and thus pre-banned in England)
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (2012) (Banned in the Confederate States)
The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf  (2013) (Banned in the author's native East Germany)  

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (2014) (Banned in most of the Middle East)

All Quiet on the Western Front was banned by the Nazis, which is about as good of a recommendation as a book can have.  

***

British soldiers in World War One

It isn’t hard to find wars that can only be described as “senseless.” Particularly if you eliminate “greed” and “self-aggrandizement” as legitimate reasons to slaughter others, most wars turn out to have been for bad reasons.

But in the pantheon of utterly senseless, stupid, inane wars, I think World War One has to be in the running for the worst. To imagine a modern parallel, I think it would go like this: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls gets assassinated by an ISIS fighter while on a visit to Lebanon. A few months later, Russia and England are lobbing nukes at each other. (I’m trying not to think too much about this, because it isn’t quite as implausible as I would wish…)

Not only did WWI kill 17 million people, it was probably the single greatest cause of WWII, which killed at least another 50 million. And all because at no point did any of the players hesitate before jumping into total war. As the author of this book points out in a conversation among the soldiers, if even one player had said “no,” the war may have been avoided. And certainly, if twenty or so people had declined, the horror could have been prevented.

Sometimes we Americans tend to believe that anti-war activism and sentiment was a product of the 1960s and the Vietnam war. Maybe that is because we hadn’t had a morally dubious war of our own. After all, the Revolutionary War brought our nation into being, and the small wars of the 1800s were generally provoked by other parties, and thus could be thought of as legitimate self defense. We entered WWI and WWII after being attacked. WWII in particular could be thought of as a just war. Stopping Hitler was pretty clearly a necessary deed by the time we joined in.

Even the Civil War could be looked at as a justified war because the Confederates fired first, and slavery was an evil that the war ended.

But we can easily forget that other nations had already become involved in senseless wars. The prophets of those nations, however, were not yet being heeded, and it would take future generations to tire of the “glory” of war.

One of these early works that illuminated the horror and stupidity of a senseless war was Leo Tolstoy’s short stories about the Crimean War. (Reviewed here.) (Seriously, the only good thing to come out of that war was Florence Nightingale - and neither party learned a darn thing from the horrors of artillery and trench warfare.)  

But perhaps the best known early work in this vein is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Written in 1929, the book draws on Remarque’s own experience as an 18 year old soldier drafted into the German army during World War One. He was injured by shrapnel, but survived. It was during this war that the term “Shell Shock” was first coined, even though PTSD would not be the subject of serious research until quite a bit later. Remarque clearly understood the psychology, however, in the way that only a survivor and writer can.

The title isn’t a particularly good translation of the original German. Probably better would be “Nothing New on the Western Front.” However, the title has a certain amount of poetry, and has thus been retained by later translators.

Remarque pulls no punches in his brief introduction to the book.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

There is no doubt why this book was banned by the Nazis: it refused to glorify war or the states that engage in it. Like a later poet would say,

“They're beating plowshares into swords

For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers clean up all details

Since daddy had to lie.”

Those who made the decision for war were safely back behind the lines, sending endless waves of young men to die for...what, exactly? The glory of the nation? A few acres of land?

When the narrator returns to his village for a brief leave, the older townsfolk show their cluelessness about the war.

They argue about what we ought to annex. The head-master with the steel watch-chain wants to have at least the whole of Belgium, the coal-areas of France, and a slice of Russia. He produces reasons why we must have them and is quite inflexible until at last the others give in to him.

The details in this book are outstanding - and horrifying. The author is all too familiar with starvation, infestation, disease, and death.

The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavour to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language.

Some things apparently transcend nationality.

Killing each separate louse is a tedious business when a man has hundreds. The little beasts are hard and the everlasting cracking with one’s fingernails very soon becomes wearisome. So Tjaden has rigged up the lid of a boot-polish tin with a piece of wire over the lighted stump of a candle. The lice are simply thrown into this little pan. Crack! and they’re done for.

And then, there is way that war dehumanizes.

We have become beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down - now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged.

And when it can’t it breaks, as the narrator discovers when he has to kill a man in hand-to-hand combat.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing; - it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?

That is an important question, and one that the leaders of the world often seem to give too little thought to.

I am not a pacifist. Although, as a descendant (on both sides) of German Mennonites, I certainly have a heritage of pacifism. My ancestors came to the United States as a result of being evicted, first from Germany, then from Russia, as a result of their beliefs. But I am not exactly a pacifist. However, the concept of a just war is important to me. I also think that far fewer wars are “just” than we would like to believe. At some point in this war, both sides (all sides?) were legitimately fighting for their fatherlands. No side was “unjustified” at a certain point. The problem was at the outset, in the decision to make war. And also in the failure to de-escalate before millions were slaughtered. Some wars cannot be avoided. But many can. And many should have been.

I also have a family history regarding World War One. One of the non-Mennonite branches of my family is English. We are actually distant (maybe bastard?) cousins of the famous Wedgwood family in England. (This means that I am probably related to Charles Darwin as well.) Anyway, my great grandfather on that side fought in the trenches in Europe. (I can’t remember if he was an American or a Brit at that time.) He was the victim of a gas attack. While he survived, it destroyed his health, and probably eventually led to his death from lung cancer later. By all accounts, his psyche was damaged as well. He struggled with alcoholism, and even though my grandmother didn’t talk about him much, I have the impression he was violent. It is safe to say that the repercussions of the Great War echo through that branch of our family to this day. Each person has made their own choices, of course, and are responsible for what they did. But it isn’t hard to draw a connecting line.

So, I think Remarque was right. The point isn’t to condemn, but to give reason for pause. War is destructive, not just to those killed, but to those who survive. As such, one should consider if the reward is worth the cost. For the concept of a “just war” to mean anything, it must mean that the evil of war is necessary and the only way to prevent a greater evil.

***

A few relevant links:

Reviews that touch on World War One or trench warfare:

Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery

Sevastopol Sketches by Leo Tolstoy

Also related:

Band of Brothers (Series)

I cannot say enough good things about The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. In relation to this review, Pinker details the shift in the view of war from one of Guts ‘n’ Glory to sad necessity. The horror of World War One was a part of that shift. 

Also, because it fits:

The Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke

Source of book: I started out reading this as a library loan, but liked it enough to purchase my own copy.

First of all, because I read this book in English translation, the approach by the translators is important. In effect, this book has three authors: Rilke, and the two women who translated it, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. One could make the argument that there are four authors - at least in Rilke’s view, because he considered the Divine to be a co-author of this volume. (Rilke was a non-practicing Catholic, and more of a mystic in practice.)

Barrows and Macy chose to translate freely, rather than adhere to Rilke’s rhymes. His forms are traditional, with alternating rhymes predominating. As they show in the preface, trying to duplicate this in English tends to make the poems sing-song-y, rather than stately as they are in German. Thus, the feel of the translated poems in this case is very modern. The lines are kept intact, but not the meter, so they read as free verse. I recognized a few of the poems as they are translated here, so I suspect that this translation remains popular - particularly for those who tend to quote poetry as soundbites. No knock against the translation for that. It is beautiful enough, and its quotability should be seen as a sign of its universal appeal.

If anything, this reflects Rilke’s current moment of popularity. His mysticism and focus on art for its own sake are refreshing, particularly after the recent period (say, the ‘60s and ‘70s) where so much of poetry became overtly political. (These things go in cycles, of course. And, some political issues wear better than others. For example, Milton’s works on freedom of speech are still powerful, while Yeats’ references to Irish conflicts and personalities are largely lost on modern Americans.)

Rilke wrote The Book of Hours as a young man in his mid-20s, after a visit to Russia. He met with Tolstoy and Pasternak, and became acquainted with Eastern Orthodox monasticism. The very title of the book reflects that influence. The Medieval “Book of Hours” contained prayers and devotions, much like Rilke’s work, which he subtitled, “Love poems to God.” 

Rilke at the age when he wrote The Book of Hours.

I was reminded of another devotional work that I read nearly three years ago, Gitanjali, by the Bengali poet Tagore. That work’s name is “song offerings,” and is likewise a gorgeous expression of a longing for the Divine. In contrast to George Herbert (recently read and reviewed) or Christina Rossetti (reviewed here), Rilke and Tagore do not incorporate much theology into their poems. To the extent that they do, it is of a mystical - and occasionally pantheistic - sort, with a sort of kinship with nature, life, and the whole of experience. I hesitate to use “pantheistic” because that is such a loaded - and negative - word in the circles I grew up in. I rather would describe it as an acknowledgement that we experience the Divine from more than just prescribe religious rituals. The stars above us as well as the dirt beneath sing to us, and we can worship just as well in the open air cathedral of the mountains. As Rilke puts it:

          For all things

sing you: at times

we just hear them more clearly.

With that, here are some of my favorites.

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

(I, 2)

We must not portray you in king’s robes,

you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes

we take the same gold for scepter and crown

that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you

till they stand around you like a thousand walls.

And when our hearts would simply open,

our fervent hands hide you.

(I, 4)

There is so much that is truth in that one. Throughout history, we have always understood the Divine through the lens of our own cultural systems; and so we find difficult to lay aside the old paints and colors and open our hearts to the untamed lion, as C. S. Lewis put it. Or, as another once said, we insist on putting new wine into those old wineskins.

Because Rilke writes these from the viewpoint of the monk, he captures the introvert experience so well. Perhaps poets are all introverts - it is hard to say for sure, but there is strong evidence in that direction. Either way, it is hard to imagine a more beautiful portrait than this one:

I love the dark hours of my being.

My mind deepens into them.

There I can find, as in old letters,

the days of my life, already lived,

and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open

to another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree

rustling over a gravesite

and making real the dream

of the one its living roots

embrace:

a dream once lost among sorrows and songs.

(I, 5)

Or this one:

Why am I reaching again for the brushes?

When I paint your portrait, God,

nothing happens.

But I can choose to feel you.

At my senses’ horizon

you appear hesitantly,

like scattered islands.

Yet standing here, peering out,

I’m all the time seen by you.

…

All creation holds its breath, listening within me,

because, to hear you, I keep silent.

(I, 18)

Or, there is the one that led me to take a look at this volume. In one of the more peculiar, perhaps laughable, connections, I heard a line from this in Flora and Ulysses, a kids’ book about a squirrel with superpowers my kids introduced me to on one of our trips. (You can read my thoughts on this one here.) At a significant moment, this poem is quoted. Under circumstances which can only be described as ludicrous. But the line itself is good (“flare up like flame”) and in context, makes for a moving metaphor of serving as the hands and feet of God on earth.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

(I, 59)

Occasionally, bits and pieces of this collection attach themselves to the outside world. A great example of this is one poem that many have noted seems prophetic in hindsight. Rilke published these in 1905, but began writing them in 1899. The end of the century, the fin de siecle, as it came to be known. And, standing on that divide, he wrote these words:

I’m living just as the century ends.

A great leaf, that God and you and I

have covered with writing

turns now, overhead, in strange hands.

We feel the sweep of it like a wind.

We see the brightness of a new page

where everything yet can happen.

Unmoved by us, the fates take its measure

and look at one another, saying nothing.

(I, 8)

Another poem surprised me in that I knew I had heard a version of it before. It is found in a song by Sixpence None The Richer (another C. S. Lewis reference there…) entitled “Still Burning.”

Here is Rilke’s original:

Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you.

Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you.

And without feet I can make my way to you,

without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you

with my heart as with a hand.

Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.

And if you consume my brain with fire,

I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

(II, 7)

Here is the Sixpence version:

you are the burning
the flame that is turning
my smoldering ash into a bird
so stay close my brother
I couldn't stand the loss
you are the bridge of action
I need you to help me cross
I need you to help me

so when you break,
my arms I'll take hold of you
I know your heart is a hand that takes hold of me

my hand that is breaking
is the hand that is making
all the dead things in me grow
a gift of a holy loss
this burning at the dross

This vision of longing and brokenness resonates with those of us who feel deeply and cannot always utter our deepest and darkest needs and fears. We call out to the Divine, and wish to take hold with our hearts when we cannot with our hands.

Likewise, for those of us who have not had a serene journey, and who often feel that our own wrestling fails to even make sense to those around us, can find in this poem a sense of a kindred spirit.

I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words

from the depths of me

rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,

torn by conflict,

mocked by laughter,

washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up

out of garbage and broken glass.

With my half-mouth I stammer you,

who are eternal in your symmetry.

I lift to you my half-hands

in wordless beseeching, that I may find again

the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire

where only the guilty sometimes sleep

before the punishment that devours them

hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea

sinking into a toxic tide.

I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown

had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame

that now I find myself again.

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained

in an all-embracing mind that sees me

as a single thing.

I yearn to be held

in the great hands of your heart-

oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,

and you, God - spend them however you want.

(II, 2)

I’ll end with a final poem, about endings.

God, give us each our own death,

the dying that proceeds

from each of our lives:

the way we loved,

the meanings we made,

our need.

(III, 6)