Review: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

In this short novel we meet the title character as a boy, the son of a Brahman, or scholar. With his best friend Govinda he practices debate, reflection and meditation until he is “surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit”. He is loved and admired by all but he finds there’s something lacking, “the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied”. So he takes leave of his father, who is at first unhappy about his disobedience, and with Govinda goes to join the Samanas, a group of ascetics.

But even here Siddhartha is unsatisfied, until he hears rumours of Gotama, the Buddha, who has reportedly found enlightenment. He and Govinda go to join the followers of Gotama, but once again Siddhartha finds the figure wanting, and rejects his teachings, in fact rejects teachings in general because they “do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself”. Siddhartha decides he will have to go it alone to find the “path of paths”.

Siddhartha is a story of a lifelong search for meaning and an end to personal suffering, although what exactly the nature of these two great disputes with life is remains opaque, Hesse relying on some universal feeling that there must be something “more”. The point is the searching. Siddhartha at first tries to live only by nurturing his mind through meditation. Later he tries satisfying the desires of the flesh, in the material world of Sansara. Of course he realises that it is perhaps not sensible to focus too much on either. If Siddhartha’s inward journey feels a little abstract, or of its time, it is still a convincing and compelling characterisation of yearning. It would be easy to accuse Siddhartha of solipsism, as many have levelled at Buddhism itself, but in our time of self-help and wellness that may be a case of a mirror reflecting our individualism a little too uncomfortably, mistaking the symptoms for the cause.

Siddhartha is written as something of a dialogue. There are many staged conversations between characters, and it is also a dialogue with the ideas of Buddhism and Hinduism, and perhaps a few other philosophies along the way. There is an admirable clarity to Hesse’s imagery and ideas, like the river that Siddhartha encounters towards the end of his journey, which becomes a simple and elegant metaphor for the illusion of time:

The river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, at the sea, in the sea, everywhere at once.

And there is indeed something enlightening about the way that Siddhartha learns to notice the world around him, when he leaves the Samanas and

he looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself.

It’s an evergreen reminder of the pleasures and possibilities of paying attention to nature.

Gay rating: 2/5 for a certain homoerotic charge between Govinda and Siddhartha.