Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, The
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To read Hermann Hesse's fairy tales is to enter a fabulous world of dreams and visions, philosophy and passion. This landmark collection contains twenty-two of Hesse's finest stories in this genre, most translated into English here for the first time. Drawing on both Eastern and Western fairy-tale traditions, Hesse captures the innate power of this ancient form as he spins wondrous stories that both entertain us and penetrate beneath the surface of our conscious mind.
Full of visionaries and seekers, princesses and wandering poets, his fairy tales speak to the place in our psyche that inspires us with deep spiritual longing; that compels us to leave home, and inevitably to return; and that harbors the greatest joys and most devastating wounds of our heart.
Strikingly original in both substance and style, these richly symbolic works resonate with timeless themes: the fundamental duality of existence, the isolation of the artist, and the decline of Western civilization. Hesse's lyrical prose is deceptively simple, like a Zen koan, often camouflaging profound enigmas. What is the meaning of the killing of the blind leader in "The Forest Dweller"? Why does the guide leap off the mountain in "The Difficult Path"?
By making us ask these provocative questions, Hesse invites us to undertake a quest for personal and cultural enlightenment that is as relevant today as it was to readers in his own time.
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See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Translator/editor Jack Zipes has gathered many different sorts of tales, originally published between 1904 and 1918: early Gothic-style romances like “The Dwarf,” pieces that mimic traditional folklore like “The Three Linden Trees,” several surreal dream narratives, anti-war satires like “If the War Continues,” and symbolic quest stories like “Iris.” Few are retellings or variants of traditional tales, but they share the heightened, concentrated language and rich array of symbols that come to us from our fairy-tale heritage. As well as drawing on the past, they point toward the future: several of them struck me as reminiscent of science-fiction themes and ideas, and I wondered if Hesse had some influence on authors in that nascent genre.
There are wonderful flights of the imagination here: A poet whose poems have no words and cannot be written down; a mysterious stranger who comes to a city and grants everyone one wish, with surprising results; an isolated forest dweller who quests toward the mysterious world “outside.” Most of the stories were written under the shadow of the Great War, and in manifold ways they cry out for human beings to fight the forces of oppression and mechanization by cultivating the living forces within. Some are more polished, others more like sketches or preliminary drafts for larger works, but all offer a fascinating window into the soul of an artist striving to articulate his deepest feelings and thoughts in a turbulent time.
