Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of my favorite books. I have Steppenwolf and Narcissus und Goldmund with me, but somehow I couldn’t read them yet. Recently I read stories from the book The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, translated by Jack Zipes. If the author of Siddhartha has written fairy tales, then definitely they wont be ordinary ones. There are 22 stories in this collection - Many of them have a plain but beautiful narration style resembling fairy tales, and give Hesse's views regarding spirituality, social life and human character.

My favorite story in this collection is Augustus, which has traces of Siddhartha on it. It is the story of a man called Augustus. He was born to a poor woman, and his father had died just before his birth. His mother gets a boon from an old man that whatever she wishes as the very best thing for her son, would become true. The confused woman wishes that everybody should always love Augustus, and the wish becomes true. Augustus grows up as a handsome young man and everyone around him love him, whatever he does. However, the boon makes him an arrogant, heartless person who doesn’t care at all about others. As days pass, he gets bored of the love of other people and feels life as uninteresting. He doesn’t find peace of mind. He decides to suicide, and it is then that the old man meets him again. He takes back the boon he had given and asks Augustus to choose an alternate boon for the rest of his life. Augustus is a bit skeptic and doesn’t have much hopes for his life, but he finally chooses a boon - instead of everybody else loving him, he wanted to be able to love everyone else! The new boon changes his life. He finds peace of mind, but the world around him treats him like a fallen person.