Paladin Books
5 total works
First published in 1915, Knulp was Hesse's most popular book in the years before Demian. This is the first edition in English. Knulp is an amiable vagabond who wanders from town to town, staying with friends who feed and shelter him. Consistently refusing to tie himself down to any trade, place, or person, he even deserts the companion who might be considered Hermann Hesse himself the summer they go tramping together. Knulp's exile is blissful, gentle, self-absorbed. But hidden beneath the light surface of these "Tales from the Life of Knulp" is the conscience of an artist who suspects that his liberation is worthless, even immoral. As he lies dying in a snowstorm, Knulp has an interview with God in which he reproaches himself for his wasted life. But it is revealed to Knulp that the whole purpose of his life has been to bring "a little homseickness for freedom" into the lives of ordinary men.
"Demian es la obra que catapulto a Hermann Hesse a la fama. La novela, que refleja la crisis personal de Hesse, es la historia de un hombre desgarrado entre su ordenada vida burguesa y un caotico mundo de sensualidad"
The narrator of this allegorical tale travels through time and space in a search of ultimate truth. This pilgrimage to the "East" covers both real and imagined lands and takes place not only in our own time but also in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Again, fellow travelers are both real and fictitious--Plato, Pythagoras, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, and Baudelaire. Like Siddartha, Journey to the East is a timeless novel of broad appeal, particularly among younger readers, stemming from an affinity with the lasting effects of the author's own youthful rebellion against the strictures of a classical education and his pacifist instincts, combined with an easy lyricism and a well-composed symmetry of style. Part of the new look Peter Owen Modern Classics range featuring a logo crafted by graphic design icon Alvin Lustig.