Crisis: Pages From a Diary (English and German Edition)

By Hermann Hesse

Book Overview

Book by Hermann Hesse This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374512515
• ISBN13: 9780374512514
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: The Noonday Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 121 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Human Side of Hermann Hesse.

"Crisis" is a collection of poems written by Hermann Hesse during the same time period as the creation of his novel, "Steppenwolf". This was a time of mid-life crisis for Hesse; he felt his life up to that point had lacked balance due to his concentration on the spiritual quest for self-knowledge. If you have read "Steppenwolf", you know that the attitude of the protagonist of that book was one of weariness with asceticism and intellectual pursuits. He needed an experience of the sensual and emotional side of life to give completeness to his efforts toward self-realization. So it was with Hesse himself, as these poems reveal. These poems are so brutal and unsparing in their revelation of Hesse's state of mind during this period that he suppressed most of them during his lifetime. They give a picture of a man alienated from his first family, trying to establish liaisons with other women, sometimes succeeding, mostly failing, but usually falling prey to profound feelings of failure and self-disgust over these adventures. Frequent alcoholic binges figure prominently as a backdrop before, during, and after these attempted romantic episodes. Bitter irony, sarcasm, and disgust are directed at himself, his acquaintances, and the objects of his wooing. A contempt for Philistinism and the tendency of the world to reward Philistines over artists also finds vivid expression in these lines. You might think from all this that Hesse was a complete emotional mess, who although brilliant, was another Van Gogh waiting to happen. No doubt this was a wretched and painful time for Hesse, but it seems that to some extent, this was a controlled running amok. Hesse had been a rebellious youth, wanting to pursue his individual path rather than conforming to anyone else's standards. This mid-life crisis appears to be an outbreak of that rebelliousness against the path of enlightenment that he himself had chosen. The success of his earlier novel "Siddhartha", a tale with a strong Eastern flavor about achieving enlightenment through transcending the demands of the emotions and senses led his admirers to expect Hesse to be hereafter defined in that way. Ironically, they wanted to impose a predictability on Hesse, the spiritual explorer who was looking to transcend the predictable and conventional. I am no authority on poetry, but I found these poems by Hesse interesting for the insights they give into a searcher who is trying to be completely honest and see himself warts and all. They show a man who, even though he realizes that he is often making a fool of himself, is nonetheless doggedly determined to pursue his course until he has plumbed the depths of this aspect of himself. I read the volume in only two sittings. This didn't seem to me the type of poetry where you need to let the impressions of each poem settle in one at a time. They are very frank and easy to understand. There is plenty of irony and metaphor but none of that hard-to-decipher symbolism which I, person