Introduction

While scholars today continue negotiating the definition of world literature with some variation, there is often one significant consensus: a micro-macro approach to interpreting a work both inside and outside of its host culture. Pascale Casanova’s model, for instance, invokes a metaphor from Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” to liken a reader’s experience with a literary work to an observer’s perception of a Persian carpet: a fragmentary image that continuously changes as one shifts vantage points.4Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 1–6. One might focus on details of a given section, but these details are merely fragments of a larger image. As one’s gaze wanders, new imagery unfolds, recontextualizing these details as the broader image simultaneously grows more coherent. Similarly, a reader must examine a text as part of the substratum of “national” literature from which it originates. One can isolate a text from cultural context, or one can step back to interpret the text as a component of a larger tradition. In both cases, one alternates between the microscopic and macroscopic factors that shape both the text’s composition and our reception of it. A similar theory comes from Thomas O. Beebee, whose model problematizes the two-way foci of Damrosch’s ellipses, expanding them to a Venn diagram that represents a “multidimensional modelling of the interactions of literary systems.”5Thomas O. Beebee, “Introduction: Departures, Emanations, and Intersections,” in German Literature as World Literature, ed. Thomas O. Beebee (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 2. Beebee emphasizes the “international, intersystemic relations” (Fig. 2.1) of world literature, envisioning multiple cross sections of cultural contact rather than a two-way interaction when works are distributed beyond their nation of origin.6Beebee, “Departure, Emanations, and Intersections,” 2.

Reading a text for its universality while remaining aware of distinct “national” factors that contextualize it seems essential to all of these world literature reception theories. Each one, though, envisages world literature in terms of a text’s movement from one geographical space to another. Yet today’s literary economy extends beyond physical space. In the Digital Age, “globalization” adopts an entirely new meaning, and readers congregate in digital spaces to discuss literature. Digital media have transformed how people access, discuss, and engage with literature. Therefore, to fully reevaluate an author’s role on today’s world stage, one must examine that author’s refraction through digital media. This beckons a new approach to Hesse and raises an important question: where is Hesse in this digital world? A cursory Google search only begins to answer this question. With more than seventeen million search results in under a second, Hesse’s sustained relevance in today’s literary landscape is undeniable. Outside the scope of scholarship that tends to contextualize him by nationality, language, or historical period, who is his audience, and how have his works evolved for a contemporary readership? By answering these questions, we can better appraise Hesse and weigh his impact in a world vastly different from that in which he was writing. Numerous internet users connect through their enthusiasm for his works, which is why we must examine his diffusion across digital spaces, where borders do not circumscribe “nationality” in the conventional sense. In this essay, I thus explore why internet users have placed Hesse in their own “library of world literature” and how they engage with his works through digital media.

I first evaluate the role world literature played in Hesse’s life and work. Hesse was a bibliophile, a voracious reader of numerous literary traditions that informed his own writing. Online discussion makes it evident that the confluence of world literature in his writing resonates with contemporary readers. By illustrating the importance of world literature to Hesse, we can then gauge how his works appeal to online audiences. Following that, I examine this appeal, defining exactly what we mean by “community” in a digital realm and then analyzing these communities’ discussions to better understand why they have chosen to read Hesse and how they interpret him.

As the essay will reveal, many readers view Hesse as a focal point that opens access to various world philosophies, religions, and values. It is thus necessary to also address one of the most problematic aspects of reading world literature: the risk of shoehorning one’s own culturally prescribed ideas into foreign texts. Hesse himself was not exempt from this risk, which I address below by examining readers’ online discussions of Siddhartha (1922). Siddhartha is a useful case study for such an analysis for two reasons: first, because internet engagement suggests that it is Hesse’s most widely read novel; and, second, because it is often seen as a “Buddhist” text. I thus not only examine Hesse’s own westernized depictions of Buddhism, but I also evaluate internet users’ responses to these depictions.

The essay concludes by moving beyond these discourse communities, assessing digital spaces that are less discussion-based but that nonetheless engage with Hesse in unique and thoughtful ways. A thorough investigation of Hesse’s role in all corners of the internet is, of course, far too expansive for the space allotted here. As such, this overview limits itself to English-language forums and websites, hopefully opening a door for broader, multilinguistic analyses in the future. The scope of this essay is to at least survey, as thoroughly as possible, the digital landscape that enables readers to engage with Hesse’s works in new ways and to illustrate his impact on readers in this Digital Age.