Thoughs on ... Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

To read Siddhartha is to apprehend one kind of India, the kind where one can disappear from one life easily into another, the kind where an internet-free anonymity is possible. The main character goes through many lifestyles and abandons each one without a trace, and without any particular consequences. That kind of life does not really exist anymore, but no matter. It is romantic to think that it could.

Siddhartha reflects more influence from Hegel and ancient Greece than from the Ramayana or the Buddhavacana, which reflects the main character's own decision not to follow the path of his Brahmin father or of the Buddha, but to seek his own path. The dialogue between Siddhartha and his friend Govinda calls to mind the dialogue between Socrates and Plato. Siddhartha attempts to engage the actual Buddha in discourse to refine his ideas, but Buddha rejects the Socratic method with the nicest of verbal bish slaps. Siddhartha takes kind of a scientific approach to enlightenment, that is, he experiments a lot. And when one experiment is over, he peels out. His decision to become a person who lives by his own hands, self-reliant and kind of apart from the material world, is also romantic. It calls to mind another character drawn by Hemingway, except without the war scars. Overall a very satisfying read.