SOURCE: “Siddhartha: The Way Within,” in Hermann Hesse, Twayne's World Authors Series Online, G. K. Hall & Co., 1999, pp. 1–13.

In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Field comments on the background and social setting in which Siddhartha was written.

I Vita Activa

The first part of Siddhartha was written in the winter of 1919, at the end of that first exuberant productive year in Montagnola. Hesse has told us how the composition was borne along on a surge of creative energy which suddenly came to an end, and he was not able to complete the work until two years later:

Nearly two years ago [i.e. 1919] was my last high point … the fullest, most exuberant, most industrious and most glowing [year] of my life. … And now for almost a year and a half I have been living like a snail, slowly and thriftily. … I have produced nothing but the first...