Hermann Hesse “Siddhartha”(Audio Book) : Summary and Commentary
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Siddharta, a short novel by the German (but Swiss national) writer Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), was published in 1922. The story is ideally inspired by the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, who however is not the true protagonist. In fact, the plot tells, with a complex style that intertwines lyrical and epic, the events of a young Indian, a sort of potential Buddha, where the real character of Siddhartha is present only in the background and is called Gotama.
Siddharta is therefore not an ascetic mystic, but rather a young man who seeks the path best suited to him in life through reasoning and the attempt to understand the deepest reality of things. The book, especially starting from the 1960s, has become a classic of literature and a great success with the public (especially young people) for the themes it deals with (the search for oneself, the conflict with the typical world of adolescence, the rejection of ephemeral and superficial material goods, spiritual restlessness) and for their proximity to the pacificist movements of the time and to the spiritual current of Buddhism (or, more generally, Eastern philosophies).
SUMMARY
Siddharta is a young Indian, son of a Brahmin, restless and dissatisfied with his existence. Together with Govinda, a lifelong friend, he decides to leave his father's house and go to live with the Samana, ascetics who live with the bare minimum and pursue identification and empathy with the things of the world. The two spend three years with the Samanas, between meditation and extreme physical deprivation (fasting, refusal of clothes), but they do not reach the long-awaited spiritual revelation. Siddharta and Govinda therefore decide to reach the sect of Buddha Gotama, known as the Enlightened One, to benefit from his example and his teachings. However, once they arrive in the presence of the master, Govinda decides to stay with him, while Siddharta, not yet satisfied with the goal achieved, continues his journey. What the protagonist aims for is to gain wisdom independently, without passively adapting to someone else's teachings, albeit valid.
After meeting a boatman who helps him cross a river and predicts that they will meet again, Siddhartha arrives in the city, where he meets the beautiful courtesan Kamala. Although the young man has so far despised the material enticements of her body, he soon gives in to the charm of Kamala, who wants to make him a rich and successful man. For this reason, she directs Siddhartha to the merchant Kamaswami. Siddharta's calm and serene attitude balances the gruff character of his business partner, so that the protagonist, within a few years, finds success both in work and in the love sphere. However, the latent dissatisfaction is not quelled: Siddhartha perceives that his material life cannot silence the nagging search for a spiritual truth. The torment is such that Siddharta even thinks about drowning himself in the river. When he meets his friend Govinda, now a Buddhist monk, he understands that he must abandon the life of pleasures to which he is accustomed. Siddharta thus leaves Kamala, who (unknown to the protagonist) is pregnant, and leaves.
Siddhartha stops by the river, where after years he sees the boatman who had helped him some time ago. It is the sage Vasuveda, who teaches him to understand the spirit of the river, conceived as a living entity. In particular, in his daily work with Vasuveda Siddharta learns the fundamental role of silence, thanks to which all the teachings of the voices and noises of Nature can be heard.
Years later, Siddharta sees Kamala again, who, with her son, also named Siddharta, is on her way to the bedside of Gotama Buddha and has to cross the river. However, the woman, having converted to Buddhism, is bitten by a snake and dies. Siddhartha, recognizing the child as his, takes him with him and raises him lovingly by the river with Vasuveda. The young Siddharta, however, does not resemble his father: he is listless, indolent and unfriendly, and in the end he runs away, just like the protagonist had done many years before. Vasudeva, despite Siddhartha's insistence, advises him against going in search of the young man, who must find his place in the world. The suffering of abandonment is then combined in Siddhartha with the awareness of the pain that he himself caused to his Brahmin father, when he abandoned his parents' home at a young age.
The profound reflection that arises from this event and the contemplation of the river allow Siddhartha to finally reach enlightenment, thanks to which he understands the illusory nature of time and the grandiose cyclical nature of everything, in which joys and sorrows, hopes, converge. and individual suffering. At this point, Vasuveda can separate from his student.
Now elderly and wise, Siddhartha sees Govinda for the last time, who, without initially recognizing him, goes to listen to the words of the wise ferryman. Siddharta explains to his old friend the foundations of what he has discovered: that there is no definitive doctrine, since in the world every "true" statement is counterbalanced by another equally "true" one; that therefore Nature is an uninterrupted cycle of complementary opposites, which must be loved and admired in its completeness and totality; that we must rather identify with the order of the world around us; that time and language are nothing but illusory cages for our mind; that true wisdom can only come to us from our deepest interiority.
Govinda thus recognizes Siddharta's enlightenment, whose face opens into a radiant smile of happiness.
COMMENT
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse can be classified in the genre of the coming-of-age story or novel (in German, Bildungsroman), which describes the way - often critical and difficult - in which a young man becomes an adult man. In the specific case of Siddharta, this path of individual maturation has wisdom as its objective and actually extends to his entire life, intersecting closely with the principles of Eastern Buddhism and with some details of the historical figure of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha 3.
In fact, the cornerstones of Buddhism - including the recognition of desire as a source of pain and the suppression of the desire to live as a path to Nirvana - very often coincide with the reflections and ways of research of Siddhartha, who in a central episode of the novel , meets Buddha. His search for an authentic and peaceful inner dimension, however, does not stop at the teachings of the supreme master, since, for the protagonist, everyone must find their own path to wisdom. Siddharta follows the same path as Buddha, but in some ways surpasses him, since his enlightenment occurs not through the rejection of life, but by violently immersing himself in it, allowing himself to be involved in it and then resurrecting with a new maturity.
This individual path, for Siddharta, is halfway between the excesses of the intransigent asceticism of the Samanas and the exclusively passionate and earthly life experienced with the fascinating Kamala; furthermore, enlightenment can only be achieved by abandoning oneself, almost in symbiosis with the river that Siddharta contemplates in silence, to the eternal and wonderful cycle of Nature. This, however, does not mean - both for Siddhartha and for Hesse - devaluing the role of real experience; the latter indeed, as the protagonist understands when he is now old and wise, is the fundamental resource for reaching the condition of true happiness.
In this sense, to the suggestions of Indian culture and religiosity, to which the author was sensitive throughout his life, we can add as philosophical-cultural sources of the book some ideas of German idealism (such as the awareness of an extrasensory spiritual reality and the illusory nature of the phenomenal world) and above all the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
