Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Club degli Editori (1994), Hardcover, 96 pages
Description
A classic of modern literature, The Journey to the East is a profound rendering of the struggle between faith and despair. The hero, identified only as H.H., recounts a fantastic spiritual and geographic pilgrimage he took years ago with the League, a secret society whose members include the likes of Paul Klee, Mozart, and Baudelaire. Traversing both time and space, the pilgrims come across Noah's Ark in Zurich and meet Don Quixote at Bremgarten, only to part ways in seeming discord at the dangerous Morbio Gorge.
User reviews
LibraryThing member BooksForDinner
Found the original receipt from when I bought this in the book when I took it off the shelf for something to read on a long plane ride. Bought it back in the summer of 2000! 8 years between purchase and read.What a beautiful book. A short metaphor for youth and idealism turning to disillusion
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turning to wisdom. Just beautiful. Hesse has always been one of my favorites, and now it is cemented. Will re-read this again soon. Show Less
LibraryThing member autumnc
I was intrigued reading other member reviews of Journey to the East, and that the average rating is 3-1/2.
Like all of Hesse's novels, HH is reflecting on his interaction with religious philosophies, his experiences within different dogmas, and how this interaction and experience creates and
It doesn't hurt to also have some self-directed philosophical or dogmatic questing or questioning.
So I must preface my review with this information: my partner is a theological philosopher, well-versed in world religions and philosophies, and spending most of his reflection time (inadvertently) educating me on different religious principles. I, on the other hand, could be less interested. I feel that spirituality is a personal question and a personal endeavour, one that does not require the input or direction of others, but rather is not separate from my individual identity or daily values and practices. In fact, when someone presses me with any "god question" I generally say "this is not a question for me; it does not interest me. I know my belief system and that is enough."
Journey was a harsh lesson in egoism for me. HH discovers for himself that just because he does not feel connected to the spiritual group that he ascribed to as a younger man does not mean that the group does not exist. In fact, the group has more cohesiveness and more meaning without him, if anything it is stronger. In the face of this knowledge, he truly finds his Journey completed..."I regarded myself as the chronicler...but it was weak and foolish of me to believe that the League could not exist if I was not a part of it."
The lesson here, for me particularly, is that for one to think that a religious philosophy or belief system is not important cimply because I do not believe in it or care to discuss it does not make it less important or believable for the thousands of others who build their lives around it. This is not my universe to guide or "chronicle," rather it is my duty to share this space with others and recognize the wisdom of everyone rather than judge my own wisdom to be the end-all.
A difficult lesson, true, as it requires of me that I take note of my own egotistical tendencies, my own "shadow side," and facing something about me that is not exactly what I wish it to be.
Therefore I give this novel a high rating, because I learned a strong and poignant lesson from it, as I have from many of HH's novels. However I would suggest this novel to those who are themselves interested in spirituality, or perhaps entrenched in their own Journey to the East.
Like all of Hesse's novels, HH is reflecting on his interaction with religious philosophies, his experiences within different dogmas, and how this interaction and experience creates and
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re-creates his world. Journey is no different, however I think that a reader needs to have knowledge of HH's other writings and perhaps a little bit about the man himself to find meaning in Journey.It doesn't hurt to also have some self-directed philosophical or dogmatic questing or questioning.
So I must preface my review with this information: my partner is a theological philosopher, well-versed in world religions and philosophies, and spending most of his reflection time (inadvertently) educating me on different religious principles. I, on the other hand, could be less interested. I feel that spirituality is a personal question and a personal endeavour, one that does not require the input or direction of others, but rather is not separate from my individual identity or daily values and practices. In fact, when someone presses me with any "god question" I generally say "this is not a question for me; it does not interest me. I know my belief system and that is enough."
Journey was a harsh lesson in egoism for me. HH discovers for himself that just because he does not feel connected to the spiritual group that he ascribed to as a younger man does not mean that the group does not exist. In fact, the group has more cohesiveness and more meaning without him, if anything it is stronger. In the face of this knowledge, he truly finds his Journey completed..."I regarded myself as the chronicler...but it was weak and foolish of me to believe that the League could not exist if I was not a part of it."
The lesson here, for me particularly, is that for one to think that a religious philosophy or belief system is not important cimply because I do not believe in it or care to discuss it does not make it less important or believable for the thousands of others who build their lives around it. This is not my universe to guide or "chronicle," rather it is my duty to share this space with others and recognize the wisdom of everyone rather than judge my own wisdom to be the end-all.
A difficult lesson, true, as it requires of me that I take note of my own egotistical tendencies, my own "shadow side," and facing something about me that is not exactly what I wish it to be.
Therefore I give this novel a high rating, because I learned a strong and poignant lesson from it, as I have from many of HH's novels. However I would suggest this novel to those who are themselves interested in spirituality, or perhaps entrenched in their own Journey to the East.
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LibraryThing member sirilakcarter
"Comes to understand that it was he who failed the Journey rather than the Journey which failed him"
LibraryThing member eduscapes
After reading The Glass Bead Game, I decided to dive into the other works of Hesse. Like The Glass Bead Game, I thought The Journey to the East was a little slow in the middle. However once I began to enter Hesse's "world" the deeper issues in the book became clear. If you like "books that make you
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think," you'll like this one. Show Less
LibraryThing member ikkyu2462
Hesse's most difficult novel. Worth rereading on occasion.
LibraryThing member librisissimo
Substance: Almost non-existent. A man on a mysterious journey with a secret League fails to recognize that a popular servant of his group is actually the President (more like the High King). Possibly a Christian allegory, but just as easily Pagan.
Style: Sophomoric philosophical rambling with a
Style: Sophomoric philosophical rambling with a
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supposed core of wisdom, but basically a boring monologue of pretentious simplicity. Akin to the sort of New Age mysticism of the Seventies. CSM blurb says it "resembles Kafka", which is true. Show Less
LibraryThing member gbill
Hermann Hesse is interesting as a person. He battled inner demons: like his father he suffered from depression, apparently as early as the first grade (!), and attempted suicide as a teen. He had unhappy marriages and of his wives had a psychotic breakdown. On the other hand, he searched for a
And this is what “Journey to the East” references. The narrator “H.H.” is a member of a League of famous historical characters who go on a pilgrimage to the East in search of truth. Along the way a character who seems to be simply a servant disappears, causing the entire expedition to break down. As it turns out later, the servant is actually President of the League and his disappearance was a test of the others’ faith.
A somewhat mediocre story and just this quote, on history:
“I imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.
It is so difficult to relate connectedly a number of events which have really taken place and have been attested, it is in my case much more difficult, for everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves, just as our community, the strongest in the world, has been able to dissolve. There is no unit, no center, no point around which the wheel revolves.
…
And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane.”
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higher truth and explored Buddhism and Hinduism, undoubtedly influenced by his parents having served in a missionary in India, and was well ahead of his time in embracing Eastern philosophy. And this is what “Journey to the East” references. The narrator “H.H.” is a member of a League of famous historical characters who go on a pilgrimage to the East in search of truth. Along the way a character who seems to be simply a servant disappears, causing the entire expedition to break down. As it turns out later, the servant is actually President of the League and his disappearance was a test of the others’ faith.
A somewhat mediocre story and just this quote, on history:
“I imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.
It is so difficult to relate connectedly a number of events which have really taken place and have been attested, it is in my case much more difficult, for everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves, just as our community, the strongest in the world, has been able to dissolve. There is no unit, no center, no point around which the wheel revolves.
…
And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane.”
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LibraryThing member Drakhir
Promising start and as with Hesse's other works, some great prose. The reveal works dramatically as well as literally, but I can't say the end satisfied me. Yes it may be the inevitable conclusion, but it was a bit thick, i feel, hence 3 stars rather than the 4 that JttE was heading towards.
At just
At just
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93 short pages (in my edition), it is worth re4ading if you have liked any of Hesse's other books, and if you haven't, it's a good primer. Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Hesse is usually one of my favored writers, but this one left me cold and unimpressed. I went through it quickly, having felt that the other books told his ideas better. It's not a bad book, though.
LibraryThing member ratastrophe
It would be difficult for me to sum up this story in a concise manner, even though the text itself is relatively short. So in lieu of an actual review, here's one of my favorite passages:
"The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most
Although published in 1956, this still seems very relevant to our lives today.
"The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most
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powerful and senseless desire--the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important? Have we not just had the experience that a long, horrible, monstrous war has been forgotten, gainsaid, distorted and dismissed by all nations? And now that they have had a short respite, are not the same nations trying to recall by means of exciting war novels what they themselves caused and endured a few years ago?"Although published in 1956, this still seems very relevant to our lives today.
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Language
Original publication date
1932
1956 (English: Rosner)