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Customer Reviews (3)

More please
Yes, after reading passages from Hesses' letters in biographies & literary critisism for 20 years, it was very exciting to hear that Noonday was finally publishing a volume of them in English translation. The focus was to try to put them out in an edition that might pass for an autobiography. But many of the letters that dealt with his major criseses, or the inspiration for his major novels, so many important letters still go untranslated.
If they didnt translate the complete 4 volume edition back in the 1970s, when he was so popular with students & youth, I dont hold out too much hope that they will do it anytime soon. I guess my best betstll is to try & learn Gearman, go online & purchase the German edition. With my luck though, as soon as I have learned the language the set will suddenly appear in bookstores, neatly translated

Better than a biography
This is an important book to have if you're a fan of Hesse.There are many personal letters collected here by a reknown Hesse scholar which shed light on Hermann Hesse the man, artist, and writer.These are also the sources for many biographers and it's good to have them available for those of us who like to form their own opinions and thoughts about Hesse's life and works from the man himself.Ziolkowski provides a nice, brief introduction, and reading these personal (often private) letters whether chronologically or at random, is like eavesdropping in on the life of a kindred soul and good friend.Together they create a well rounded, kaleidoscopic view of one of the Twentieth-Century's greatest and most respected writers.

A good book for understanding Hesse
Soul of Age contains a good selection of Hesse's letters that provide a very usefull introduction to Hesse. The translations are very good, and the introduction is informative and intresting. Some letters between Jung andHesse are missing, but you can find them in Michael Serrano's book. ... Read more

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The most original, new work on Hesse in many years and the definitive study of the young Herman Hesse, offering much previously unknown material such as his "neo-Romantic" poetry of which two dozen are published here for the first time in the original. ... Read more

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I am still on the journey ,sir, I still belong to the League!
_I have always suspected that this penultimate novel of Hesse's plays upon the myth of the Most Honorable Order of the Rosy Cross in certain German intellectual circles. Even today you can get an arguement, either way, about the existance of the Rosicrucians and Christian Rosencreutz. This is fitting, since even the protagonist (H.H.) is left wondering if the League that sent him forth on his quest really ever existed or if he hallucinated it all.

_At the begining H.H. has no doubt what-so-ever in the existance or purpose of the ancient League. He sets forth on the journey to the East with his brother members in pursuit of the Tao, Kundalini, and the other Eastern mysteries. In short, they are seeking union with the divine. Even when some member drops out during the quest and "takes the railroad back" to the mundane world, they simply bid him farewell and continue on, unshaken in their own faith. They travel on through time, myth, poetry, and magic towards their goal.

_It is at the gorge of Morbio Inferiore that everthing unravels. It is here that the loyal servant Leo suddenly departs and the expedition falls apart in squabbling over trifles. Morbio Inferiore is the dark night of the soul. It is also the historical cataclysm of WW1. You see, before the Great War Germans could still belive in magic, Mozart, and Goethe, after the war all magic and innocence were dead. All that remained was cynicism, machines, and monsters.

_H.H. is suddenly left alone wondering if the League ever really existed or if it was a dream. He searches and searches for the lost servant Leo- only to be surprised at what he eventually finds....

_Ultimately we end up at the realization that despair serves a purpose in our own journey through life. For if we are still capable of despair then we must still, deep down, still believe in innocence, virtue, and justice. You cannot deeply mourn what never existed- somewhere, sometime!
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Classic Study of Hermann Hesse's Novels
Incredible that I'm the first one to review this book! Perhaps it's because it's no longer in print? I don't know, but I highly recommend Ziolkowski's superbly readable critical study for ALL serious Hesse fans.If you've read at least two of his novels, and plan on reading more, than you MUST at least glance through a couple chapters of this book.

In it, Ziolkowski discusses Hesse's life and times, putting his work into its literary context.First and foremost, Hesse was a writer of fiction, and the craftmanship of Hesse's writing style is prevelant.In addition to relevant biographical information, there are discussions on "Magical Thinking", "Timelessness", "Humor", and "Triadic Rhythm", which are all important aspects of structure and theme to be found in all of Hesse's work.The focus here is on the six major novels, in chronological order: Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus & Goldmund, Journey to the East, and The Glass Bead Game.Each is given its own chapter and lengthy analysis.One of the important discoveries Ziolkowski makes is that the spiritual progress of the protagonist in each novel continues where he left off in the successive novel (i.e. Demian develops into Siddhartha into the Steppenwolf into both Narcissus & Goldmund, into the realm of Castalia in The Glass Bead Game).This is a simplification, but the concept is fascinating once you've read all the novels, and can appreciate what Ziolkowski reveals about Hesse, a master artist.

There's a lot here, especially for a cheap, out-of-print paperback with a trippy 1960's black & yellow cover full of Hesse heads!Well worth having delivered to your doorstep, along with more of Hesse's magical works.Happy journeys (to the East)! ... Read more

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In the disastrous years before and during the Second World War, when confidence in a harmonious future was as difficult as it was crucial for spiritual survival, two German artists in exile wrote what would become their late masterpieces. The composer Paul Hindemith conceived an opera on the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler s mature life and theories, The Harmony of the World; the poet and novelist Hermann Hesse wrote a complex literary collage, The Glass Bead Game. Both works address the topic of universal harmony in the fabric of creation and culture, as well as the urgent problem of how such harmony can heal the spiritual, mental, and emotional developments of individuals and of society at large. The two quests are mirrored into circumstances that are almost equidistant from the mid-20th-century period in which their stories are being told Hindemith s opera centers on an outstanding intellectual in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, while Hesse s work focuses on this intellectual s counterpart projected into a fictional world of the early 23rd century. In both cases, the quest for harmony and truthful proportion manifests at all levels of the stories told and of the works telling them. Siglind Bruhn s thought-provoking interdisciplinary study is organized along the lines of the seven areas in which scholars of the Pythagorean tradition from Plato to Kepler and beyond found universal harmony paradigmatically realized music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy (the quadrivium of the medieval liberal arts) complemented by metaphysics, psychology, and art. ... Read more

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A contemplative discussion of the connections between music study, world cultures, and cosmology
Musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar Siglind Bruhn presents The Musical Order Of The World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith, a contemplative discussion of the connections between music study, world cultures, and cosmology, particularly as researched by great scientific minds. Covering topics from "Music's Moral Power in Ancient China and Hesse's Castalia" to "The Eternal Realm of Numerical Relations", to an extremely close reading of Kepler's poetry concerning the meaning of death. The Musical Order Of The World is a thoughtful and perfectly attuned blend of advanced music study, ground-breaking scholarship, and metaphysical awareness.
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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more