Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was viewed, in the 1960s-1970s, in North America, as a spiritual and literary icon of sorts. He embodied the best of the counter culture in a probing and poignant manner. He was, as Theodore Ziolkowski rightly notes, “Saint Hesse among the Hippies”. There were few in the high noon of the counter culture who had not read Hesse. In fact, knowing Hesse was a rite of passage into the counter culture family. Hesse was the guru that many turned to for wisdom and insight in an age and ethos in which much seemed askew and out of joint. Many of Hesse’s early and more immature works seemed to pander to the “I’m spiritual but not religious” dogma that is so trendy today or he anticipated the Christianity without Religion (CWR) religion that is the cause de jour of many reactionary types (an ideological position more dogmatic than most 16^th century confessions).

Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, and his more mature books, The Journey to the East and The Glass Bead Game are a missive and tome not to missive on the religious journey. There is a decided shift in Hesse’s writing in these two burnished gold beauties and such splendid works of literary art draw the reader into Hesse’s comprehensive fullness. The younger Hesse was a reactionary of sorts (turning his tender back against his German pietistic upbringing) who elevated the notion of the lone individual contra church, state, history and society (all oppressive) in search of meaning and purpose. But, by the time Hesse came to research, write and publish The Journey to the East and The Glass Bead Game, he came to recognize the folly, reductionism and thinning out of the pilgrimage by turning against religion, history, state, society and the vast riches of the institutions that carry civilization forward.. The lone individual isolated from such imperfect historic and communal dimensions tends to shrink and shut off fuller possibilities. The same theme, in English literature, was played out earlier by Bunyan and Milton (liberal individualism in its emerging phase–today a fragmentary viral postmodern reality).