Title: Siddhartha
Author: Hermann Hesse
Genre: Classic
Trigger Warnings: Animal death, misogyny (mention), self-harm by denial of physical needs, sexual content, suicidal ideation
Back Cover:
Siddhartha is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922.
Review:
I originally thought this was a fictionalized biography of the Buddha, and was very confused when the titular Siddhartha’s journey didn’t line up with what I knew of the Buddha Siddhartha’s story. But the protagonist of this story is a completely different character who just happens to have the same name.
There is no real plot in this book, unless you count the kind-of character arc of Siddhartha searching for enlightenment. He becomes an aescetic and masters all those teachings and he meets the Buddha and recognizes the wisdom in his teachings but chooses not to become a disciple (this is where I looked at the Wikipedia article for this book and discovered I was not in fact reading a fictionalized biography of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha), and does a bunch of other stuff on his journey to become enlightened.
This may be my modern sensibilities talking, a strange choice by the translator (this book was originally written in German), or the 1920s having a very different way of expressing friendship, but I choose to believe this book is queerer than it seems on the surface. Siddhartha’s best friend Govinda is obviously completely in love with Siddhartha, with several paragraphs talking about how much Govinda loves every aspect of Siddhartha’s face and body and personality, and it must have been at least somewhat reciprocated because they call each other “my dear.” Siddhartha did have a female lover, but he later moved in with a man and at one point they raise a child (Siddhartha’s with his female lover) together. There’s nothing explicitly queer anywhere, but I don’t think the subtext is exactly subtle.
This book is best understood when you have the context of Hermann Hesse’s life. Hermann was very depressed, didn’t fit into the bourgeois society he grew up in, and couldn’t find meaning in having fun and being rich like his peers did, so he went to India to try and find enlightenment in Eastern philosophy. He didn’t find it, so he wrote a novel where the protagonist has the enlightenment experience he wishes he had. (And Hermann himself being not into women would explain why he couldn’t seem to stay interested in any of his wives – although considering this book and that his Wikipedia page hints nothing about him being gay, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were asexual and romantically interested in men but his strict religious upbringing meant he was never comfortable acting on anything.) This is all speculation, of course, but I think it explains a lot.
Much of the philosophy in this book is obscure bordering on incomprehensible. From reading Hermann’s Wikipedia page his personal philosophy was that each person has to find their own individual path to god, and that seems to be the moral of Siddhartha (just replace “god” with “enlightenment”). This book’s redeeming quality is that it’s less than 100 pages long. If this were a longer book I probably wouldn’t have finished it, but since it’s so short it didn’t drag too much. And even though the philosophy came off as esoteric and unclear, it did end up being a cute little story.
Bluejay Reads 