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 Post subject: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Sat Mar 22, 2003 5:59 am 
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Among my very favorite authors. Hesse (1877-1962) wrote fiction that is strongly philosophical/religious. Here's some quotes from a few of his books. I hope they speak to any of you. Maybe they'll make you think in directions you haven't before. Or if they aren't new concepts to you, maybe they're just another beautiful way of expressing the thought.

These two are from his masterpiece, The Glass Bead Game. It's the book that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's the biggest and most intricate of his books, and these two tiny quotes don't begin to give you the slightest idea of anything that happens, or what the Glass Bead Game is. But here goes. Quote:I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.Quote:To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one, it does not need my explanations. On the other I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning," but do not imagine that it can be taught.

These two are from Narcissus and Goldmund.Quote:"I believe that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or it becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world."Quote:"It has struck me how a certain shape, a certain line recurs in a person's structure, how a forehead corresponds to the knee, a shoulder to the hip, and how, deep down, it corresponds to the nature and temperment of the person who possesses that knee, that shoulder, that forehead, and fuses with it. And another thing has struck me: one night, as I had to hold a light for a woman who was giving birth, I saw that the greatest pain and the most intense ecstasy have almost the same expression."

And these two are from Siddhartha. These quotes are a little longer than the others, but I figure if you've enjoyed it so far.... Quote:        He learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions.
        He lived happily with Vasudeva and occasionally they exchanged words, few and long-considered words. Vasudeva was no friend of words. Siddhartha was rarely successful in moving him to speak.
        He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"
        A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.
        "Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?"
        "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man, and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality. Siddhartha's previous lives were also not in the past, and his death and his return to Brahma are not in the future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."Quote:        "Listen, my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this 'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people - eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. There are some of the thoughts that are in my mind."
        Siddhartha bent down, lifted a stone from the ground and held it in his hand.
        "This," he said, handling it, "is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal, or man. Previously I should have said: This stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but perhaps because within the cycle of change it can also become man and spirit, it is also of importance. That is what I should have thought. But now I think: This stone is stone; it is also animal, God, and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything. I love it just because it is a stone, because today and now it appears to me a stone. I see value and meaning in each one of its fine markings and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness and the sound of it when I knock it, in the dryness or dampness of its surface. There are stones that feel like oil or soap, that look like leaves or sand, and each one is different and worships Om in its own way; each one is Brahman. At the same time it is very much stone, oily, or soapy, and that is just what pleases me and seems wonderful and worthy of worship. But I will say no more about it. Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another." Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Sat Mar 22, 2003 7:12 am 
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I looooove Siddartha and many other Hesse, mon frier! God I'll have 2 do alot of rereading if I'm 2 b ur match, Ser... And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 8:36 pm 
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Actually, it's been a looooong time since I've read any of his books. I just wrote down some quotes within the last couple of years. (I'm kinda into quotes. ) I really only have vague memories of some books, and an overall impression. I have clearer memories of parts of other books. So if anybody has anything to say about just these quotes, that would be great too. I tried to pick quotes that could be enjoyed without an understanding of the whole book. Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


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 Post subject: siddhartha
PostPosted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 3:50 am 
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This is the only book I've read by Hesse, we studied it in a humanities class I took in high school. Every student's book was all dogeared in the sex chapter. <i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 4:33 am 
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Quote:I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.

I highlighted this passage in fluorescent green in the copy of The Glass Bead Game I read as a college freshman.

A faculty friend who had also read it opined that I might see the book differently when rereading it in a couple of years. He felt that although one often glimpses what looks like the beginning of "a world-reorganizing revelation," the revelation itself never comes.

I was a more dewy-eyed freshman than some, I suppose. Yet in the twenty-plus years since, although my imminent expectations of my world being reorganized have cooled a good deal, I've never stopped seeing refractions of the unimaginable center in every act of recognition that unites previously separate ideas.

I haven't yet done a complete reread of Magister Ludi, and since my career change in 2000 was in the direction of undoing the trauma of premature specialization, I really need to. I both anticipate and dread it; the voltage of recognition nearly fused my circuits the first time.

_____
BTW, I'm known as Durris on the Kevin's Watch forum. The name I've chosen here is derived from Le Guin's Always Coming Home. Hiraio means Homesick Woman in Kesh, and the Obsidian is one of the Kesh moieties, the Five Houses of Earth. <i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:37 am 
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Welcome Hiraio/Durris!

I hope that you will also contribute to our Le Guin forum, as you seem to be a reader of her work. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: Hermann Hesse
PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 10:42 pm 
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A complete reread... Such a daunting thought, but I really want to. Maybe after I've cleared a few more off of my "to read" list. And if anybody wants to Dissect Hesse, I'm there!!!

Anyway, welcome Hiraio!!!! And thank you very much for stopping in!! ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


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