09.28.07
Demian (Hermann Hesse)
This book is indeed of a chthonic temperament…and I would not hastily refer it to anyone despite its literary brilliance and intensity. It is the only bildungsroman or künstlerroman
of its sort that I’ve ever burrowed my nose into. It causes a person to examine personal cultivation
of different aspects and stages in life. Its verities disturb me but make me embrace them at the same time. The spiritual side of the book I shall not
concede to… after all, the author was simply revealing his unfeigned
views.
“That is the way
leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down
its sides, of the sun, or the frost, and of life gradually retreating
inward. The tree does not die, it
waits.”
I have to thank Franz once again for giving me this opus,
but I’ll have to ask him “why?” =)
