Publisher:
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hermann Hesse's stories inspired nonconformity and a yearning for universal values to supplant the political fanaticism tearing Europe apart. Initially, critics thought his work inaccessible to Americans, but the counterculture of the 1960s--and...
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Universitätsbibliothek der Eberhard Karls Universität
Inter-library loan:
No inter-library loan
Hermann Hesse's stories inspired nonconformity and a yearning for universal values to supplant the political fanaticism tearing Europe apart. Initially, critics thought his work inaccessible to Americans, but the counterculture of the 1960s--and subsequent generations of admirers--emphatically proved the opposite. Gunnar Decker weaves together previously unavailable sources to offer a unique interpretation of the life and work of Hermann Hesse. Drawing on newly discovered correspondence between Hesse and his psychoanalyst Josef Lang, Decker shows how Hesse reversed the traditional roles of therapist and client, and rethinks the relationship between Hesse's novels and Jungian psychoanalysis. Readers who can now explore Hesse's correspondence with Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig--the latter recently unearthed--will come away with a better understanding of the author's profound sense of alienation from his contemporaries.-- Introduction: Doppelganger in a straw hat -- A child's soul: oppression and rebellion -- The self-proclaimed writer -- Awakening of individuality -- At home crossing borders -- Portrait of the successful artist as a young man wandering beneath clouds -- A new beginning in Switzerland and the First World War -- Escape to Ticino: making a fresh start and falling to earth in the South -- The awakening of Steppenwolf -- Traveling to the East -- On the nature of the glass bead game: the looming presence of the Third Reich -- The Old Man of the Mountains: Hesse's continuing journey inward.
