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Siddartha Sucked

>>2277170

You're a faggot.

OP, Hesse is one of my favorite authors. Journey To The East is pretty good. It's more of an experimental novel than the others though.

>>2277199
ive read journey, didnt find it to be particularly experimental though, what made you find it to be so?

>>2277199

Me again. If you're interested in his older stuff read Gertrude. It has some of the most beautiful descriptions of music I've ever read.

>>2277206

Just the way he starts telling the story then stops and realizes he needs to figure out what actually happened. Then he goes to the league's hq and characters from hesse's other works make an appearance, along with other historical figures. To me, the whole thing was kind of an exploration of the relationship between artists and their work.

Like Hesse, hate Siddhartha. It's shallow as fuck and only gives the pretense of philosophical knowledge. I rank it slightly higher than The Alchemist in this regard.

>inb4 fanboys get mad

>>2277247

Man, why you gotta?

Yeah, Siddhartha was pretty much "he Xed without Xing" for two hundred pages.

I read Siddhartha expecting it to be more like a Buddhist text, and was disappointed.

Steppenwolf is on my to-read list.

I'm just not very impressed with Hesse. I don't like how his racism bleeds through his texts so often in a jarring way, and I don't like how all of his books feel so light in spirituality and enlightenment. They offer very little truth to me. For example, what I took away from Steppenwolf is that men need emotional and irresponsible women to see the true joy or beauty in life. It was a really weak kind of hopefulness he leaves us with at the end of Steppenwolf. What he sets out to do, and what he ends up achieving are two very different things. Like another anon said earlier, feels shallow as fuck.

>>2277282

How does racism bleed though any of what he wrote?

>>2277269

Wha?

>>2277282

>Hesse
>Racism

Nope.jpg

>>2277276
mfw you don't understand what religious biographies are

well, he was certainly a better writer than he was a painter.

One of my favorite authors, who taught me to love long sentences. I like how his work is chockfull of idea's, just like OP said.

>>2277282

racist how?

Siddharta be pure pimpness!!!

I absolutely adored Steppenwolf and identified completely with it whilst I was going through a tough phase trying to find myself in my late teens, but the ending ultimately felt unfulfilling and rushed.
that reminds me to re-read it.

>>2277309
"For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro..."

Steppenwolf was published in 1927

>1927
>being an author still spouting that same primitive negro trash

Steppenwolf and Siddhartha are on my to-read list. Ho-hum.

>>2277534

>implying negro wasn't the accepted nomenclature at the time

>implying the majority of negros don't live in primitive conditions

You're probably the kind who gets offended at the use of nigger in Huck Finn.

>>2277804

The notion that there's a such thing as a 'primitive' culture is eurocentric.

>>2277161
Are you me, OP? Those are exactly the novels I've read... except I read Journey to the East before Steppenwolf.

When I read Siddhartha and Demian in high school he blew my mind and really spoke to my own convictions in a way no other author had at the time. Now I teach Siddhartha and Demian to my students and they don't have quite the same impact... but they truly are coming-of-age novels and probably speak more to youths.

Journey to the East is like Hesse's "Notes from Underground" imho... it's his short experimental work that sort of pushes the limits of what is an acceptable narrative structure. I truly loved it.

I find Steppenwolf just a bit overrated.. read it a year ago and didn't get as moved by it,... but it could be because Hesse does do the same old thing quite a bit and it started getting repetitive.

>>2277813

So? That doesn't make Hesse a racist. Sorry he didn't see the world through enlightened twenty-first century glasses.

>>2277813
not since 'primitive' is not a synonym for 'fucking retarded'

>>2277820
He is a racist. Many authors that were contemporary to Hesse, or even pre-dated Hesse did not exhibit such gross dismissals of an entire swathe of humanity in their writings.

Steppenwolf is one of my favorite books of all time.

While reading Damien I kept expecting the main character to turn out gay.

>>2277509
The ending is trippy as shit, I love the war between car owners and pedestrians

>>2277865

Except he's not. If you knew anything about the man other than the fact that he used a phrase you don't like you'd realize you're wrong. But hey, go ahead and stick with your knee jerk reaction.

>>2277899

How does Hesse's rotten undead semen taste?

>>2277899

>>knee jerk

>>jerk

fix'd

>>2277903

>implying Hesse is a vampire

>>2277899
It's not that I don't like the phrase, bro.

It's that the phrase is racist. Hesse implies that the "primitive negro" is the lowest common denominator of humanity. Hesse is a racist.

Your argumentation technique needs work. You know you're grasping for straws when you attack the integrity of the person making the argument instead of the evidence presented in support of that person's conclusion.

>>2277923

Except I already did. The dude was just using the accepted nomenclature of the time. Saying the word "negro" wasn't racist back then and was actually what many black people preferred to be called. And he wasn't dismissing them by adding on primitive as an adjective. He was referring to african tribesmen, who were nowhere near as educated or as well off as their european counterparts at the time. Including them in the statement made it more universal. Sorry I didn't go into as much detail when I said it before, I thought you'd understand. Since you dont you're obviously a retard and I will continue to insult you. There's not much else to do after refuting your point.

>>2277954
>And he wasn't dismissing them by adding on primitive as an adjective. He was referring to african tribesmen

[citation needed] This is 1927. Negro slaves have already been emancipated. How can you prove he was referring to African Tribesmen specifically? You can't. Try again, son.

you're both idiots

Hesse was speaking racially, not racistly. And why not? Races exist. His (and our) understanding of them may have been more superficial and just plain incorrect, but it doesn't seem fueled by hatred or bigottry, does it? It's kind of dishonest to take offense when none is meant

>>Calling Hesse racist because I can't understand his work so I'll just invalidate everything with political correctness

In all honesty I think Hesse is a huge faggot that wrote / writes (can't be assed to google to find out if that asshole is still alive) pseudo intellectual garbage to sound "deep" and to make people "think"

but when you look past it, it's all homolust and encouragement to act like an asshole to everything and everybody you've ever met

>>2277998
you're not looking past it, you're looking like, off to the side somewhere at something else you don't know anything about

>>2277995
>Races exist.

[citation needed] I think you're a racist, just like your buddy Hesse.

>>2278006
same guy who made the point earlier about ad homs?

I remember reading Siddhartha for a class way back in high school, well most of Siddhartha. I don't understand why people are on Hesse all like he's some deep philosopher and his body of work is some masterpiece of philosophy and lifechanging. I won't go as far as >>2277998, but from my limited experience I can't say that I'm impressed with his work.