In the beginning was the myth.

—1^st sentence, Peter Camenzind    

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord”, he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

—John 21: 15                      

The publication of Hesse`s Peter Camenzind in 1904 was, in many ways, Hesse`s breakthrough novel. Hesse had published a few minor works of poetry and literature before 1904, but with the publication of Peter Camenzind, Hesse became more widely recognized as an up and coming German writer.

Many know Hesse today, at a more sophisticated level, as the author of The Glass Bead Game (Siddharta being the primer for the larger tome that, in some ways, won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946). But, there are the many other compact novels that have held the attention of Hesse keeners: Demian, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, Under the Wheel, Wandering, Gertrude, Rosshalde and If the War Goes On… (to include his more political writings). There is also Hesse`s volumes of poetry, multiple paintings and thousands of letters. Hesse, like Thomas Mann, embodies the best and the highest of the German humanist way that has many a thick root going back to the layered soil of Goethe’s life and writings.

It is somewhat intriguing that Hesse engaged Nietzsche in many subtle and sensitive ways and yet Nietzsche is very much in the ascendant these days and waxing well, whereas Hesse (much wiser and more insightful) has waned. There has been, gratefully so, in the last decade plus, a revival and renaissance of Hesse, and, as such, a return to Hesse`s Peter Camenzind is a fine place to begin a journey with Hesse into the core of what animated and held his soul and mind, imagination and literary life.