Siddhartha

Siddhartha: The Search for Peace How do we find lasting peace?Siddharthadescribes its main character's individual search for the answer to this question, and its author's call for peace in the world. Since its publication in 1922, the novella has endured cycles of popularity and obscurity, depending on the public's enthusiasm for its unconventional definition of peace as an individual quest that can transform society as a whole. When Hermann Hesse first published this novella in Germany, it quickly became popular throughout Europe. Its introspective and passive protagonist appealed to readers who were traumatized by the violence and aggression of World War I, which had ended a few years before its publication. The novella became popular again after World War II, when Hesse won many prestigious awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. A few decades later, American readers supportive of pacifism and individualistic spirituality found resonance inSiddhartha, which was first published in English in 1951. From the late 1960s into the 1970s, a period during which many Americans protested the Vietnam War, it sold over fifteen million copies. Ironically, in spite of the novella's antimaterialism, restaurants and retailers attempted to profit from association with it. American restaurants such as Siddhartha in New York, retailers such as a waterbed store in San Francisco called Siddhartha's, and an Oriental rug shop in Berkeley called Siddhartha reflected a fascination with Hesse's novel that became an American phenomenon. To Americans in the late 1970s, Siddhartha's search for individual enlightenment reflected a common disillusionment with authority. The Eastern philosophy explained and explored inSiddharthaappealed to readers who had lost faith in traditional Western models of spirituality. And its main character's search for peace resonated with many who protested violence as a means to preserve civilization. For contemporary readers, the novel is a classic because of its accessible description of Buddhist philosophy for a Western audience. It still speaks to a culture that has become jaded by the empty promises of material wealth and skeptical of organized religion, and to readers intent on finding peaceful solutions to all types of conflicts. The Life and Work of Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse was born in Germany to Johannes Hesse and Marie Gundert on July 2, 1877. The second of six children, Hesse demonstrated early that he was a poor student. After he tried several different schools without success, his parents finally permitted his return home in 1893. He cultivated a passion for reading in his grandfather's library and for helping at his father's publishing house. During his childhood, he frequently heard stories about the beauty of spirituality in Eastern culture from his father, who had been a missionary in India, and his mother, who was born in India to missionary parents. He apprenticed in a bookshop in 1895, where he could easily pursue his love of reading, and was drawn to the emphasis on the individual imagination in German Romantic philosophy. He published his first book of poems along with his first book of prose in 1899. Hesse began writingSiddharthain December of 1919 in Montagnola, a small Italian-speaking village in southern Switzerland. By the time it was finished, it would become a novella that reflected Hesse's disillusionment with the extremes of peace and war, or more specifically, with Buddhism and World War I. In his exploration of Eastern culture and philosophy, he draws most of his portrait of the character Siddhartha from his own journey to the East in 1911. With the Swiss painter Hans Sturzenegger, he traveled to Sumatra, Malaya, and Ceylon to find his own personal enlightenment. But after only a few months, he returned home, never having reached the continent of India. He wasHesse, Hermann is the author of 'Siddhartha', published 2008 under ISBN 9781416561484 and ISBN 141656148X.