by Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner
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| List Price: | $12.00 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $14.66 |
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Product Description
In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah’s Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims’ ultimate destination is the East, the “Home of the Light,” where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into open conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, with H.H. bitterly blaming the others for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A cause for introspection, 2008-09-05
An idealist goes off in search of enlightenment, roams his searching fruitlessly, and in his failure, finally looks in the correct direction.
Read it cover to cover. Put it down for a day. Read it again.
If you can do this, and not reflect on your own goals, purpose, and understanding of your life, you should probably stick with TV. The story is engaging, and an uncomplicated person might feel the end is a let down. But the book isn't really entertainment, so much as a catalyst for reflection. As such, it is brilliantly successful. Read it, sleep on it, and reread it. It won't tell you where to go, but it might offer some insight on how to figure that out for yourself.
E. M. Van Court
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Hesse understands a leader, 2008-05-10
I initially was assigned this book for an introductory leadership class, I have since searched the internet for a copy of my own. Hesse has skillfully used a journey both physical and emotional of one man H.H. to tell of the true art of servant leadership.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A GREAT NOVEL FOR A LEADERSHIP COURSE, 2007-06-28
Every college course or business seminar or church retreat on the theme of leadership should include 2 or 3 important novels as required reading--or at least for review by the class instructor. This is a wondrful book on servant leadership that fits wonderfully into a Christian context (coming from the author's missionary family heritage). The message is as old as Jesus. I wish I had known of the book when I taught my leadrship course at Calvin Theological seminary, where there was little evidence of servant leadership in the school's administration ("My Calvin Seminary Story"). I'm out of a teaching job, but my next published book is on the topic of leadership--or, if you will, "anti-leadersip," and this novel will find its way into that book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Another amazing work from Hesse, 2007-01-15
There are several reviewers here, such as Christopher Nelson and Richard Schwartz, who are perfectly in tune with this novel. To truely understand this novel, you have to understand Hesse. I wouldn't recommend picking this book as one's first Hesse novel. Start with "Siddhartha" and "Narcissus and Goldmund" and then move into Demian. Find some essays on Hesse and the meanings of Demian and do a little research on Jung ([...]). Those will help to enhance one's understanding of this novel. To give a review of the meaning, intent, or purpose of this novel would be to contradict the novel itself. Hesse tries to point out in the book that it is through experience that we learn.
"No, our historical efforts were of no use; there was no point in continuing with them and reading them; one could quietly let them be covered with dust in this section of the archives...How awry, altered, and distorted everyone was in these mirrors, how mockingly and unattainably did the face of truth hide itself bhind all these reports, counter-reports, and legends! What was still truth? What was still credible?"
Begin your journey of the study of Hesse and begin a journey into yourself. Read each book four or five times and give yourself up to it and you will receive. Any Hesse book is a five-star in my opinion!
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Misleading mystical mystery tour with some occasional insights, 2006-12-30
When one thinks of a 'Journey to the East' one thinks of a trip to India or China. This is not however what this book is about.
The only real place in this book is the mind of the writer. The narrator tells of his membership in a strange kind of society called the League, and his strange journey in Time and Space. He does not in fact go to any real place which is concretely and specifically described. And the people he travels with are mostly distinguished historical figures, philosophers, mystics, writers - just names mentioned perhaps to impress. The only figure of substance is named Leo, who in the beginning is the faithful servant, the most virtous of all the members of the League. When he disappears the narrator searches for him and finds him walking, engages him in a conversation in which we come to understand that Leo is the great wise figure but cannot really help the poor narrator.
This trip is a mind - trip and it has something to do with escaping with the horrors of history and civilization. Or at least that's the way I interpret. Hesse was a strong pacifist, influened by his parents in their pietistic Christian home. He also was influenced by the great historican Jacob Burckhardt who perhaps is the figure Leo in the book is modeled after.
I am actually a bit confused about whether to recommend this book or not. It certainly is 'different'. And Hesse throws in ideas now and then which are interesting.
The idea of an unreal journey or a journey purely in the mind was of course highly suited to those of the psychedelic hippy generation.
And we all want to escape sometimes.
However there is no character here, even Leo, who moves the way a great character in Literature does.
There is no situation, no connection , no human relationship which moves in such a way either.
This is a very lonely book written out of a very lonely and weird mind.
It can be interesting but I was grateful that it was not longer.
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