Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Today I finished reading "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse [translation by Susan Bernofsky, The Modern Library]. I think if you were going to read one "finding yourself" narrative from the first half of the last century, I'd skip this and read The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. (great book, great Tyrone Power movie).With that being said, I thought this short novel was engaging and, at times, enlightening. Grade: B #61

“Siddhartha began to understand that it was not happiness and peace that had come to him with his son but, rather, sorrow and worry. But he loved him and preferred the sorrow and worry of love to the happiness and peace he had known without the boy.” - "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse

"[rejecting the philosophical concept that all is meaningless and illusory] Blue was blue, river was river, and even if the One, the Divine, lay hidden in the blue and the river . . .it was still the nature and the intention of the Divine to be yellow here, blue here, sky over there, forest here, and here Siddhartha. Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything . . . When a person reads something and wishes to grasp its meaning, he does not scorn the characters and letters and call them illusory, random, and worthless husks; he reads them, studies them, and loves them, letter for letter. But I - I who set out to read the book of the world and the book of my own being - I scorned the characters and letters in deference to a meaning I assumed in advance." - "Siddhartha: An Indian Poem" by Hermann Hesse

“To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it - this may be the business of great thinkers. But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it and hate myself but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.” - Siddhartha, Herman Hesse