Siddhartha (novel)

Siddhartha is an allegorical novel written by Hermann Hesse in 1922 after the First World War. It recounts the life of a Hindu man named Siddhartha. The work has been considered by the author as a "Hindu poem" and also as the essential expression of his way of life. Widely read in the East as such, and less so in the Western world.

The novel presents a very original register in which lyrical and epic elements are unified, including narration and meditation, elevation of the highest spirituality, and, at the same time, stark sensuality.

The manifest success of the book came after twenty years of its publication and stepping on the resounding echoes of the Nobel Prize awarded to Hesse in 1946. It was especially the young, who made the figure of Siddhartha a compendium of the concerns of adolescents, the desire to meet with the essentials of oneself, the pride of the individual facing the world and history.

The novel was written by Hesse, in German, in a simple yet powerful and poetic style. It was first published after Hesse lived for some time in India in the 1910s. It was published in the United States in 1951 and achieved great notoriety during the 1960s.

The novel recounts Siddhartha's search to achieve wisdom; Constantly in the novel the search for this wisdom as Unity is affected. Hermann Hesse's novel is written in the third person and shows us, introspectively, his feelings through the various experiences that make up his life, until the moment he meets his final teacher who will take him to the perfection so longed for. The novel is inspired to some extent by the life and experiences of the Buddha, but it is not the same story.

"Siddhartha" means "one who has achieved his goals" or "every wish has been fulfilled". The Buddha's name, before his renunciation, was Prince Siddhartha Gautama, later Gautama Buddha.

Buddha.

Plot

The novel recounts the life of the son of a Brahman (priest), Siddharta, a young Hindu who is looking for his way. Next to him is Govinda, a friend of the young man. In common resolution they decide to go live with the Samanas, abandoning their families. The Samanas are men with a religious soul, meditators, who live haphazardly, with little or nothing, and who survive on their meek pilgrimage with what they find on the way. At this stage of his life he learns to fast, meditate, and wait, skills that will serve him well later in his life.

It is after having lived with them that they both decide to go see Buddha (Gotama). In that moment, Govinda makes the decision, not shared by the friend, to join the visiting group. Consequently, Siddhartha, from that moment on, will be vitally alone. And making a pilgrimage he has to arrive at a city where he has to meet the beautiful Kamala, with whom he will embark on living what he has never lived.

Hesse's extraordinary mastery is revealed in the chapters related to Kamala, whom he never calls with a nickname with a negative connotation, which would give rise to the light and "unprejudiced" profession to which the woman lives dedicated.

Siddhartha, spontaneously and sometimes deliberately resolved, prepares to learn the secrets of love from his contact with her, sharing, at the same time, the needs of work, earning money, and expensive expenses. and ostentatious amusements. And so we are presented with a man who, being at first an immaculate model, now appears subject to all the normal human foibles. It is the same Siddhartha who considered these behaviors negative and despicable, for a soul of lineage, and of a superior nature like his.

Kamala's separation

After 20 years spent with Kamala, in life and in her bed, weariness sets in; he feels tired of that existence that passes in dissipation and oblivion, he understands that in the unilateralization of his daily and sensual experience, he has made a mistake. And he abandons all that orb of superficialities, and Kamala, the woman who must feel abandoned, at the moment when she carries in her womb a son-undeclared-of the beloved man, who leaves.

Siddhartha, from now on, has rediscovered once again a reason to live and seek a renewed path. Paradoxically he has to find her stepping on the same bank of the river in which he thought to put an end to her existence. Thus he meets Vasudeva, the old boatman whose mission is to transport pilgrims from one bank to the other. A deep friendship and coexistence begins in which they share the best of themselves and the experiences that "listening" to the river suggests to both of them. Because, in effect, for them the river is spiritual and with its natural murmur it communicates in esoteric messages resolutions for the problems that afflict both of them. The river is for both of them something alive, that speaks, that teaches... And Siddhartha, the wise son of a Brahmin, must decide to stay by the side of the modest and noble old man, from whom he will learn a lot, even when Vasudeva is immersed in his deep silences.

The vicissitudes of history bring Kamala closer, who is in search of the Buddha in her ending life. With her is her young son, "Siddhartha", as her father. He wants the unfortunate luck that a snake bites the woman, and that is how the little boy starts crying and asking for help for his mother. The father, well disposed to do so, will eventually have to admit that everything is useless. Kamala eventually passes away.

Siddhartha, Father

Now the hero of the novel has become a father in the full sense. But his son will not be a source of joy, but of infinite hardships. His lack of love, his whims, his malevolence, destroy him and even when he wants to transform him with his parental love, he cannot achieve it. The young boy is rebellious, he hates all kinds of work, he is bored and disgusted by everything, he does not want to learn... In short: a figure contrary to that of his paradigmatic father. They are very different for coexistence to be possible. In order to make an effort to understand his son, the father thinks and it is said that he too was cruel when, to begin his life as Samana, he abandoned with certain cruelty and inconsideration the noble Brahmin who had engendered him.

After years of suffering, the boy finally runs away. With Vasudeva's support, Siddhartha has to accept this break and loneliness. The quiet anguish of this fact will be reinforced when his old friend, in turn, decides to leave, going into the jungle, in search of other knowledge that deepens his wisdom.

The End

This is how the story ends, but not before making possible another reunion with Govinda, who this time will not admit it either. It is that both have changed, aged... Their very different vicissitudes are recounted, but, above all, Govinda inquires about the philosophy that life, after so long, has lavished on Siddhartha. The long monologue of the son of the Brahmin will not be very convincing or persuasive, since he cannot explain in words what he has felt. The directions of both have been and somehow continue to be different. But in the end Govinda realizes that his friend got what he wanted: to find himself, reach nirvana and become a perfect being. Starting a beautiful life full of serenity and harmony.

Characters

The quintessential protagonist is Siddhartha, a man who from a very young age has asked himself many questions in search of the long-awaited wisdom and the hidden meaning of life. He never manages to feel satisfied in this endeavor. He only manages to get some quiet towards the end of the story.

The other characters that we find in the plot are:

• Govinda, who from childhood decides to follow him, accompany him in the inquiry, being at his side. Until the meeting of Buddha. There they are to forge their ways.

• Kamala it is to be the courteous woman with whom to share the pleasures of love and of deliberate and total sensuality. It's beautiful, smart and rich. Lives in a central palace surrounded by umbrious gardens populated with beautiful exotic plants.

• Kamaswami He is a very powerful and worldly merchant who will meet in the "discarriated" era of his relationship, in the life submerged in banalities, with Kamala. As Kamaswami is a man already in years, he must decide to put his things and his business, fully confident, into the hands of Siddhartha. He is rich and esteems Siddhartha for being a culte person

• Vasudeva It's a simple, serene and kindergarten. His wisdom emanates from what he calls “hearing the river”, from which, through reflection, he responds to all kinds of dilemmas and existential questions. Your mission is to help you cross the river with your boat. He will have a very early meeting with Siddhartha in the times of origin in which this was Samana. Afterwards they will find themselves, already much later in the immeasurable life of the river, until their departure and mute and tearful internment in the jungle. A humble, silent and wise man whose judgments and appreciations are to provide many teachings to the son of the brahman.

Aspects of the work

The novel is implicitly installed in an imaginary time, but close to the time of Buddha, what some called axial time. Hesse does not stop at the description of the places, he prefers to give relevance to the discourse, essentially psychic, of the lives of the beings that move in it. With destinations that, in some cases, are traveled from the beginning.