Book Review: Herman Hesse's Siddharta

Herman Hesse and Nieztche have something in common: Both are authors with whom you come into contact during youth. Whether it's a colleague or a college professor who mention them, or because its during that age that we already have the intellectual equipment to initiate more sophisticated intellectual pursuits wikipedia-thanks for the lols- Hesse is an author who regularly is discovered before the 20s. There is a kind of triforce written by this gentleman, composed by Demian (Book which I have spoken before) Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, which is that I shall speak below. The novel was written after Demian but before Steppenwolf, so has a lot of the deep and inspiring atmosphere of the first book but without the overwhelming complexity of the second(Do you rebember the tractac of the steppenwolf? Oh my god...). Siddhartha, as many of you can imagine, chronicles the life of the Buddha, but this is not a ordinary Buddha , if not rather a personal version of Hesse, which is full of flaws, passions and virtues course also to be more pronounced over the years in our protagonist. The son of a respected monk in his village, a journey of self-discovery that leads him to be a member of a sect of ascetics to be a merchant gambling addict and alcohol, to meet after the kamala sexy, voluptuous and sensual woman who it starts in the arts of kama sutra. With the passage of time and experience is joining, Siddhartha ends up becoming a hermit dedicated solely to their reflections and cultivate land.

The book ends with our hero dying while still absorbed in his thoughts and his best friend from lifelong Govindawho now is a great monk, accompanies him on his deathbed. At the end of the book we witness as someone who looked young and gifted virtuoso ends as an ordinary man, as someone else's lot. While I can first seem like an attempt by the author to teach humility to his audience, is quite the contrary, we see that despite humble life-or mediocre, depending on how you see-our protagonist, throughout the play we see that has within it a enome, complex and rich inner life, which is not destroyed or obscured by moral delusions that beset Siddhartha, but it rather thrives on them. At the end of the book, what we see is that Siddhartha was what I wanted to understand human nature in its entirety, that is, he wanted to be all men, but there comes a point where it realizes that this is impossible for a single person, given the vast nuances that can encompass the human soul.

I hope my review did not make to this book look like something depressing and gloomy, and rather is an ode to equanimity and spirituality that humans face certain life circumstances, such as the senselessness of it, or death, or the loss of love, innocence, etc etc. Widely recommended for a weekend, as it is a short story and you can read without problems on a Sunday you have nothing to do. Give it a try, you will not regret.