- Hermann Hesse lived in the German Empire and won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1946 for his works.
- A lot of his tales involve an individual’s search for individuality.
- Orientalism: Western culture fabricates a view of Eastern culture as something that’s static and monolithic, rather than as a huge number of dynamic cultures.
- There’s no “The East”. People in Europe lump it togeter.
- The idea of “The East” implies that it cannot develop without the rationality of “The West”, making it inferior.
- Hesse fabricates a view of Eastern culture as undeveloped and the West as cultured. But! He hates the West, and values his fabricated version of the East over what he sees in Europe.
- Hesse took a trip to India and wouldn’t shut up about it.
- The tales we read were written around World War I (~1918).
- Hesse didn’t like war, and was very vocal about it. He also wasn’t a fan of the nationalism that was driving the war, which made society around him not like him very much.
- Hesse pushed back against the Enlightenment.