Hermann Hesse Quote
Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?"Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile."Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?""This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present."Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?"Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile."Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?""This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present."Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
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About Hermann Hesse
Hesse was born in 1877 in Calw, a town in Germany's Northern Black Forest. His father was a Baltic German and his grandmother had French-Swiss roots. As a child, he shared a passion for poetry and music with his mother, and was well-read and cultured, due in part to the influence of his polyglot grandfather.
As a youth, he studied briefly at a Protestant boarding school, the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren, where he struggled with bouts of depression and once attempted suicide, which temporarily landed him in a sanatorium. Hesse completed Gymnasium and passed his examinations in 1893, when his formal education ended. An autodidact, Hesse read theological treatises, Greek mythology, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Friedrich Nietzsche after his formal education concluded. His first works of poetry and prose were being published in the 1890s and early 1900s with his first novel, Peter Camenzind, appearing in 1904.