SOURCE: “Artist against Himself: Hesse's Siddhartha,” in History of Ideas Newsletter, Vol. 10, Summer, 1958, pp. 55–58.

In the following essay, Spector comments on Hesse's belief that the communication of essential truth can take place only in a person's own experiential circumstances, and the effects of this belief on literary art.

In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, considered for what it has to say about the purpose of art, rests the fundamental failure of existentialist philosophy as a doctrine for the literary artist. Given the truth of Hesse's message, the artist must deem himself incapable of fulfilling the basic function of the creative writer. For at the heart of Siddhartha is the paradoxical statement that the teacher cannot teach and the student cannot learn, since communication of the essential truth is to be found solely in one's own experiential circumstances.

All the superficialities of knowledge are available to the Govindas of this world...