Diese thematische Auswahl enthält die bekanntesten Liebesgeschichten aus Hesses Erzählungen, Märchen und Legenden. Die meisten von ihnen - geschrieben in den Jahren 1900 bis 1924 - sind autobiographisch fundierte Erinnerungen aus der Jugend des Erzählers. Mit großem Einfühlungsvermögen werden hier neben den psychischen Kraftproben und Umwegen auch der Rausch erster Annäherungen an das andere Geschlecht und die Abenteuer intensiver Selbsterfahrung im Spannungsfeld zwischen idealer und sinnlicher Liebe geschildert.

Was die Ehe des Malers Johann und seiner Frau, der Pianistin Adele Veraguth, noch zusammenhlt, ist die Liebe zu ihrem jngsten Sohn Pierre, sonst leben die beiden getrennt, innerlich wie rumlich, der Maler in seinem Atelier, Adele im Wohngebude der Rohalde. Ihre Gemeinsamkeiten sind erschpft, und die Einsamkeit hat sie verhrtet und wortkarg gemacht. Der pltzlichen Erkrankung des geliebten Sohnes stehen die Eheleute fassungslos gegenber.

Text und Kommentar in einem Band. In der Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek erscheinen literarische Hauptwerke aller Epochen und Gattungen als Arbeitstexte für Schule und Studium. Der vollständige Text wird ergänzt durch anschaulich geschriebene Kommentare.

Vowing at an early age to be a poet or nothing at all, Hermann Hesse rebelled against formal education, focusing on a rigorous program of independent study that included literature, philosophy, art, and history. One result of these efforts was a series of novels that became counterculture bibles that remain widely influential today. Another was a body of evocative spiritual poetry. Published for the first time in English, these vivid, probing short works reflect deeply on the challenges of life and provide a spiritual solace that transcends specific denominationalhymns, prayers, and...

Siddhartha is a novel that deals with the spiritual journey of a boy known as Siddhartha from the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Buddha.

In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, science, and art. Intrigued as a school boy, Joseph Knecht becomes consumed with mastering the game as an adult.

At first sight Harry Haller seems a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters - accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe and the bewitching Hermione.

This Faust-like and magical story of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope is a portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. It can also be seen as a plea for rigorous examination of intellectual hypocrisy.

'One of his masterpieces ...without doubt a great novel' Guardian One of Hermann Hesse's greatest novels, Narcissus and Goldmund is an extraordinary recreation of the Middle Ages, contrasting the careers of two friends, one of whom shuns life in a monastery and goes on the road, tangled in the extremes of life in a world dominated by sin, plague and war, the other staying in the monastery and struggling, with equal difficulty, to lead a life of spiritual denial. An superb feat of imagination, Narcissus and Goldmund can only be compared to such films set in medieval Europe as Bergman's The...

A collection of essays on the absurdity of war, from the Nobel Prize laureate