This Side: Stories
The Early Works of Hermann Hesse Book 2 · Marchen Press
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About this ebook
In 1907, Hermann Hesse released Diesseits, a collection of short stories whose title can be translated as “This Side” or “On This Side (of Life).” Published by S. Fischer in Berlin, Diesseits marked Hesse’s return to the short prose form after concentrating on novels. The book comprises a series of tales and sketches—often labeled Erzählungen (narratives)—written in the years following his early novelistic success. At the time, Hesse was settled in the tranquil village of Gaienhofen, balancing his roles as a writer, husband, and new father. These stories reflect the milieu of that period: provincial life, personal reflection, and small-scale human dramas. Diesseits is not a single unified narrative but rather a panorama of vignettes, each independent yet loosely connected by an underlying philosophical mood. The publication didn’t cause a major stir; it was a quieter entry in Hesse’s bibliography, mainly appreciated by readers who already knew his name. If anything, it served to satisfy Hesse’s audience between novels (Gertrud would come in 1910) and to show that he was as adept with the short story as with longer forms. In English, Diesseits has seldom been published as a standalone collection, though individual stories from it have appeared in various translations. The title “This Side” hints at a thematic concern of the book: an exploration of the here-and-now, the tangible reality of life, perhaps as opposed to the “beyond” (Jenseits) or any mystical otherworldly. This short story collection scrutinizes the mundane absurdities of bourgeois life through a lens of detached irony. Characters in tales like “The Latin Scholar” and “Walter Kömpff” confront existential trivialities—failed ambitions, marital tedium—their struggles rendered with Chekhovian ambiguity. Hesse’s prose here adopts a flintier realism, eschewing the lyricism of his novels for psychological precision. Though lacking the mythic scope of his later work, Diesseits reveals Hesse’s mastery of the short form. Its unheroic protagonists and inconclusive endings reject romantic resolution, mirroring the disjointedness of modern experience. The collection’s subdued critique of social conformity anticipates the more overt rebelliousness of Steppenwolf, bridging 19th-century realism and 20th-century existential fiction. This new edition features a fresh, contemporary translation of Hesse's early work, making his philosophical, existentialist literature accessible to modern readers from the original Fraktur manuscripts. Enhanced by an illuminating Afterword focused on Hesse's personal and intellectual relationship with Carl Jung, a concise biography, a glossary of essential philosophical terms integral to his writings (his version of Jungian Psychological concepts) and a detailed chronology of his life and major works, this robust edition introduces the reader to the brilliance of his literature in context. It not only captures the depth and nuance of Hesse’s thought but also highlights its enduring impact on the debates of the mid-20th century, contemporary culture and Western Philosophy across the 20th and into the 21st century.
About the author
Herman Hesse (1877-1962) navigated a life shaped by psychological turbulence that fundamentally transformed his literary vision following his pivotal encounter with Carl Jung's analytical psychology. After suffering a severe breakdown in 1916 amid his crumbling first marriage and the ravages of World War I, Hesse underwent intensive psychoanalysis with Jung's student J.B. Lang and later with Jung himself, sessions that would profoundly alter his creative trajectory. This Jungian influence became evident in his subsequent works, particularly "Demian" and "Steppenwolf," where the protagonist's journey toward individuation—Jung's concept of integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of personality—emerges as a central theme. Hesse's correspondence with Jung continued for decades, their intellectual relationship deepening as Hesse increasingly incorporated Jungian archetypes, dream symbolism, and the notion of the shadow self into his narratives of spiritual seeking. The writer later acknowledged that Jung's therapeutic methods had not only rescued him from psychological collapse but had fundamentally reshaped his understanding of human consciousness, enabling him to transmute his personal suffering into the allegorical quests for wholeness that characterized his most enduring works.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.
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