SOURCE: “Hermann Hesse and the Bhagavad-Gita,” in Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, October, 1959, pp. 27–40.

In the following essay, Beerman explains the influences of the Bhagavad-Gita on Hermann Hesse and on his novella Siddhartha.

I

It is difficult to overestimate Hermann Hesse's literary achievement. There are few works in modern literature comparable to his. When he received the Nobel Prize in 1946, an author of no less stature than Thomas Mann said of him: “his life work belonged to the highest and purest spiritual aspirations and labors of our epoch.” Unfortunately, Hesse's highly romantic prose style does not lend itself too well to translation, and many of his works are not available in English. He is thus not known too well in Anglo-Saxon countries. Hesse, a Swiss citizen but German-born, produced some twenty-five important works. While some of these belong to the realm of poetry, his most important novels are autobiographical...