SOURCE: “Siddhartha: The Landscape of the Soul,” in The Novels of Hermann Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure, Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 146–77.

In the following essay, Ziolkowski discusses the influence Eastern thought and religion had on Hesse's writing of Siddhartha, and finds parallels between the life of Buddha and that of Siddhartha.

One of the most salient characteristics of the reaction against the nineteenth century was a reawakening of interest in the Orient. The East, with its aura of mystery, has been a symbol of revolt against rationalism in Germany at least since the twelfth century, when the authors of medieval romances such as König Rother and Herzog Ernst sent their heroes off to Constantinople and beyond in search of adventure and magical knowledge that were no longer in evidence in Europe. Not until Herder, however, was a mythical image of India created that inspired, on...