Reading check-in + Day Two + A Fine Appreciation of Foreign Prose + reading notes
With his romantic and poetic brushwork, Hesse describes for us a wanderer who is unrestrained and unruly, yet seems somehow bound. As a wanderer, “I” am so full of contradiction: at first I wanted to possess everything at once, only to discover in the end that some things were merely my own “idols” or “inner demons.” Those illusions seem only to be projections of the obsessions within us. At last comes the discovery: “The road to salvation leads neither to the left nor to the right; it leads into one’s own heart, where there is only God, where there is only peace.”
“I” detest boundaries, disdain a love pinned to a single point, and revere departure, change, and fantasy. “I” bid farewell to everything here and go on to love another kind of roof, another kind of farmhouse. Yet within “me” there seems also to be a kind of homesickness. I accept myself: I am not a perfect person, not a pure wanderer. “I” must enjoy homesickness just as I savor joy. When you set out on the road, even the wind seems to speak; no matter how far you wish to leave, you will find that you can never completely leave this place, leave her — your mother.
There is a kind of suffering in being human: I am not that sort of person, yet I long to become that sort of person. Just as the author writes, I wanted to be a poet, and I also wanted to be a farmer. But only after a long time did I discover that I was a nomad. Originally there was only one true image in our hearts, yet desire projected from it infinite phantom images. As it is said: depart from inverted dreams, and attain ultimate nirvana. Who am I, where do I come from, and where am I going?
This article was published on my blog, “What the Wise Eye Sees.”