The Herman Hesse Collection Demian + Narcissus and Goldmund + Journey to the East

NARCISSUS AND GOLDMUND Narcissus is a teacher at Mariabronn, a monastery in medieval Germany, and Goldmund his favourite pupil. While Narcissus remains detached from the world in prayer and meditation, Goldmund runs away from the monstery in pursuit of love. Thereafter he lives a picaresque wanderer s life, his amatory adventures resulting in pain as well as ecstasy. His eventual reunion with Narcissus brings into focus the diversity between artist and thinker, Dionysian and Apollonian. DEMIAN Published shortly after the First World War, Demian is considered to be one of Hermann Hesse s finest novels. Emil Sinclair boasts of a theft that he has not committed and subsequently finds himself blackmailed by a bully. He turns to Max Demian, in whom he finds a friend and spiritual mentor. This strangely self-possessed figure is able to lure him out of his ordinary home-life and convince him of an existing alternative world of corruption and evil. He progressing from an orthodox education through to philosophical mysticism, Emil s search for self-awareness culminates in a meeting with Demian s mother symbol and personification of motherhood. JOURNEY TO THE EAST It was Henry Miller who suggested to this publisher that he should acquire the rights to a translation of a novel by Hermann Hesse who, despite having recently won the Nobel Prize, was little known outside Germany. The success of that first book (Siddhartha) ensured the publication of six further books by Hesse of which this one, first appearing in 1956, is regarded today as one of his best. The narrator of this allegorical tale travels through time and space in a search of ultimate truth. This pilgrimage to the East covers both real and imagined lands and takes place not only in our own time but also in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Again, fellow travellers are both real and fictitious Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy and Baudelaire