SOURCE: “The Turn Inward,” in Faith from the Abyss: Hermann Hesse's Way from Romanticism to Modernity, New York University Press, 1965, pp. 68–78.

In the following essay, Rose comments on the artistic logic that prompted Hesse to use the influences of his own life experience in writing Siddhartha.

Demian as well as Klingsor's Last Summer already had visualized an ironical acceptance of the world as a possible solution for the problem of human existence. Yet because of their contemporary connotations both stories were open to misunderstanding. It was not conformity that Hesse was advocating, but a reshaping of the world from within. The Turn Inward (Der Weg nach Innen) was the common title chosen by him, in 1931, when he brought Siddhartha and Klingsor's Last Summer together under the same cover. The “turn inward” was meant to be described in both Demian and Klingsor.

For the reader of Siddhartha (1922) no further...