Hermann Hesse

Much he learned from her red, smart mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. Him, who was, re­gard­ing love, still a boy and had a tend­ency to plunge blindly and in­sa­ti­ably into lust like into a bot­tom­less pit, him she taught, thor­oughly start­ing with the ba­sics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleas­ure can­not be taken without giv­ing pleas­ure, and that every ges­ture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, how­ever small it was, had its secret, which would bring hap­pi­ness to those who know about it and un­leash it. She taught him that lov­ers must not part from one an­other after cel­eb­rat­ing love, without one ad­mir­ing the other, without be­ing just as de­feated as they have been vic­tori­ous, so that with none of them should start feel­ing fed up or bored and get that evil feel­ing of hav­ing ab­used or hav­ing been ab­used.

tran­scend­ent

Joy leapt in his father’s heart for his son who was quick to learn, thirsty for know­ledge

But more than all the oth­ers he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brah­min.

He was a source of joy for every­body, he was a de­light for them all.
But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for him­self

But where, where was this self, this in­ner­most part, this ul­ti­mate part?

Your soul is the whole world”

it all pre­ten­ded to be mean­ing­ful and joy­ful and beau­ti­ful, and it all was just con­cealed pu­tre­fac­tion. The world tasted bit­ter. Life was tor­ture

In this mo­ment, Govinda real­ized that his friend had left him, and he star­ted to weep.

“I wish that they shall all stay with the teach­ings, that they shall reach their goal! It is not my place to judge an­other per­son’s life. Only for my­self, for my­self alone, I must de­cide, I must chose, I must re­fuse.