The second part of
Siddhartha extends beyond ascetic practices and rejects blindly following the Buddha’s doctrine: “What he had said to Gautama—His, the Buddha’s treasure and secret were not the Teaching, but the ineffable and unteachable that he had once experienced in the hour of his illumination—that was precisely what he was now setting out to experience, what he was now starting to experience. He now had to experience on his own.”
1Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 44. It thus clearly emphasizes individual experience in a secular environment over institutionalized religion.
2Carina Gröner, “Peripherie der Moderne: Buddhistische Motive und die Dekonstruktion institutionalisierter Religion in Hermann Hesses ‘Siddhartha,’” in Hermann Hesse und die Moderne: Diskurse zwischen Ästhetik, Ethik und Politik, ed. Detlef Haberland and Geza Horvath (Vienna: Praesens, 2013), 144–60.The protagonist’s subsequent reflections on his individual learning experiences are repeatedly presented by the meanwhile familiar heterodiegetic voice at the same time internally focalized on Siddhartha. These experiences, still focalized predominantly on Siddhartha, can therefore be connected to the reader’s own reflections, experiences, and learning processes. According to Adrian Hsia, Hesse’s protagonist and the historical Buddha “are comparable, only they developed in reverse directions. The Buddha developed from sensual and luxurious life to asceticism and spirituality, while Siddhartha’s path is from ascetiscism and spirituality to sensuality.”
3Adrian Hsia, “Siddhartha,” in A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse, ed. Ingo Cornils (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), 154. Nevertheless, both reach their goal at the end. Siddhartha learns a lot from his worldly experiences, which readers will be familiar with regardless of their cultural background or historical period. Hesse’s protagonist thus undergoes an “experiential learning cycle,” a basic principle of constructivist learning theory.
4Kolb, Experiential Learning.The first chapter of the second part initiates these cyclical learning experiences, each taking Siddhartha a step towards his goal: “Siddhartha learned something new at every step along his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted …. But now his liberated eyes remained on this side, he saw and acknowledged visibility, he sought his home in this world, did not seek reality, did not aim any beyond. Beautiful was the world if you contemplated it like this, with no seeking, so simple, so childlike.”
5Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 43. Here, too, we zoom in on the protagoist, whose new experience is presented through internal focalization.
Siddhartha’s first learning cycle begins with experiencing sexual desire: he kisses a laundry maid by a river. Although his thinking is initially still shaped strongly by his ascetic lifestyle, as he refuses sexual intercourse with the laundry maid, he then processes this first erotic experience and reshapes his ideas of love and sexuality: “Never again will I lower my eyes when I encounter a beautiful woman.”
6Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 47–50. In a third step, he draws new conclusions about how he should approach love and sexuality, namely, that he should learn about these pleasures from an experienced woman, the curtisan Kamala: “Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing about the art of which you are a mistress.”
7Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 50. Finally, he actively tests this new approach: “every day at the hour that she set, he visited beautiful Kamala. … Her clever lips taught him a lot. Her tender supple hand taught him a lot.”
8Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 59. Kamala also teaches Siddhartha that love, sex, and economic factors are interdependent and underpin sexual relationships. He realizes that he will need to acquire wealth to continue learning from Kamala as her lover.
Siddhartha’s second experiential learning cycle begins when he starts working for the merchant Kamaswami: “That seems to be the way of the world. Everyone takes, everyone gives, that is life.”
9Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 58. Based on this knowledge, Siddhartha pursues a worldly life: he does business, becomes rich, and keeps Kamala’s company for many years. Notwithstanding his worldly success, Siddhartha’s experiential learning continues: he loses his former spiritual superiority through compulsive gambling: “The world had captured him: pleasure, lustfulness, sluggishness, and finally the vice that he had always scorned and scoffed at most as the most foolish vice: greed. … In this senseless cycle he ran himself weary, ran himself old, ran himself ill.”
10Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 70–71. Reshaping his concept of what is desirable in life, Siddhartha renounces his worldly possessions and previous lifestyle to strive for spiritual rather than worldly learning.
11Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 75.His experiential learning continues: he grows tired of life and soon “recogniz[es] the folly”
12Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 79. of his attempted suicide; he befriends the ferryman Vasudeva, whose spiritual guidance leads him to a “second awakening”
13Hsia, “Siddhartha,” 153. and a new insight, unconditional love for all sentient beings: “That was the enchantment that had happened to him in his sleep and through the om: he now loved everything and everyone, he was full of cheerful love for anything he saw.”
14Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 83.In the chapter “By the River,” Siddhartha conceptualizes his learning process as circular:
I had to go through so much stupidity, so much vice, so much error, so much disgust and disillusion and distress, merely in order to become a child again and begin afresh. But it was right, my heart says yes, my eyes are laughing. I had to experience despair, I had to sink down to the most foolish of all thoughts, to the thought of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear om again, to sleep properly again and to awaken properly again. I had to become a fool in order to find Atman in me again. … Where will my way lead me now? This way is foolish, it runs in loops, it may run in a circle.
15Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 85.Once more, Siddhartha’s reflections on his cyclical learning are couched in an internally focalized inner monologue. The circular nature of his experiential learning is addressed directly, and his most important insights are conveyed with the smallest possible narrative distance. Although his way to enlightenment might be “circuitous,” Siddhartha reaches his goal at the end.
16Hsia, “Siddhartha,” 154. True to the novel’s central postulate, that “wisdom cannot be communicated,” Siddhartha’s achievement is described in the very last chapter, “Govinda,” from Govinda’s more distanced perspective:
17Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 124.No longer knowing whether time existed, whether this seeing had lasted a second or a century, no longer knowing whether a Siddhartha existed, or a Gautama, or I and Thou, wounded in his innermost as if by a godly arrow, whose wounding tasted sweet, enchanted and dissolved in his innermost, Govinda stood for a brief while, leaning over Siddhartha’s silent face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the setting of all formations, all Becoming, all Being. … He was still smiling, smiling softly and quietly, perhaps very gently, perhaps very mockingly—just as
he had smiled, the Sublime One.
18Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Neugroschel, 131–32.Siddhartha presents its protaganist’s achievement by varying the heterodiegetic voice established at the beginning with focalizing on Govinda in the beginning and at the end. In terms of narrative perspective, it concludes by complementing “zooming in” with “zooming out.” This shift in perspective, from a distanced, heterodiegetic, and “zooming in” narrative voice to internal focalization on the protagonist, to describe Siddharta’s experiential learning in terms of the historical Buddha’s life story from “his perspective,” draws readers into this dominant internal focalization on Siddhartha. This narrative technique makes his constructivist cyclical learning experiences understandable and adaptable for a global readership.