If Herman Hesse had to hang his entire reputation on reeds as slender as this one, he'd be in big trouble.  But Siddartha is a fine novel and he wrote the only truly great novel about the game M'Laba Laba (Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game), so we'll cut him some slack.

This very brief novel consists of the report of a failed pilgrimage to the East by a group of men who belong to a mysterious League.  In the course of relating their misadventures, the narrator realizes that the pilgrimage was part of a much larger effort to collect all of human knowledge in one place, that his version of events differs from that of others, that many great thinkers have also participated in this effort and finally, when he despairs of their ever succeeding, that he is being tested and has failed the test.  But out of this despair he is able to grow in understanding.  As he is told:

    ...despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and
    understanding and to fulfil their requirements.  Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on
    the other side.

Having emerged on the other side of despair, he is accepted as a full League member.

The story is okay as far it goes; it just doesn't go very far.  All of these elements are completely derivative, all pilfered from Christianity then dressed up in mysticism.  And if you are going to propound this kind of faux Eastern philosophy bilge, there really ought to be some reason behind it.  At the point where you turn around and merely rip off the Bible, the reader is entitled to ask why the original does not suffice.

(Reviewed:20-Jan-00)

Grade: (C) Orrin C. Judd

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