Word: goldmund
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...steadily risen to the status of a literary cult figure. College students rank him in the pantheon of literary gurus with Dostoevsky, Tolkien and Golding. In hippie hovels, those of his novels already available in English-Steppenwolf, Magister Ludi, Siddhartha, Demian, The Journey to the East, and Narcissus and Goldmund-are family bibles. Another early Hesse novel, Beneath the Wheel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $4.95), has now appeared in English. It will undoubtedly attract his youthful admirers too, although it is less likely to arouse their admiration, since it is too labored and predictable...
Salvation, in a word, is the theme of Demian-and of all the important novels (Siddhartha, Narziss und Goldmund, Glasperlenspiel) that followed it. In them all Hesse writes with the subtle and mocking simplicity of an oracle; almost every sentence must be sifted for double or triple meanings. And he never condescends to the little tricks of storytelling that make reading easy. He is totally, Germanically humorless, and time and again displays the absurdity of the selfabsorbed: when he tries to be serious about life, he often manages merely to be earnest about himself. Yet at his best Hesse writes...
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