Captivating
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This little book totally captivated my attention, my imagination and my emotion. I found the book worked for me on two distinctly different levels...
Firstly, it is one of the best allegories of leadership that I have ever read. The intrepid group undertaking the Journey to the East (a spiritual rather than geographic destination) are having a ball until one day they notice that one of their servants in missing. The realisation dawns on them that they all in various ways depend on this servant, Leo. He models lightness of spirit, he offers a listening ear and words of wisdom, and in his luggage he seems to carry all the important things required for the journey. Without him the journey becomes impossible - Leo was a true leader - not in name but in character.
Secondly, it is a book about loss: losing faith, losing youth and losing innocence. But unlike many books Hesse doesn't end there. He hints at what lies beyond... there are rays of hope for every reader who, like the writer, has faced the despair of age and asked, "Are my the best moments now behind me?" Hesse seems to be suggesting that whilst the answer may well be yes, that doesn't mean there's nothing to look forward to.
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new insight
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This journey by Hermann Hesse leads to an extra-ordinary place non other the self. It provides a mystical window to the reader for finding the micro and the macrocosm.
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What goes around.............
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Hermanne Hesse's reputation flowered amongst the sixties 'love affair' with all things Zen and Eastern, but in recent years his Buddhist allegories of self discovery have passed people by. 'Stepponwolf' was to most people a rock band from Canada who were on the 'Easy Rider' soundtrack. But Hesse's fiction is getting re printed more frequently now and 'Journey to the East' is what 'Apocalypse' was for D H Lawrence, a kind of philosophical touch stone to his fiction and a must read for any fans. Following a group of characters through time,myth and the very nature of self, Hesse blends the experiences he had with people like Paul Klee, into a sprawling tale of awakening and re-discovery of the nature of being. The East like a giant philosophical focul point draws all Western strands of narrative toward it, the stories middle beginning and end are not exactly clear cut, but what is clear is Hesse's determined stride to re awaken something he thought the world had lost after the two world wars. This book floats on the river of re-prints like a lotus flower, bobbing back onto book shelves like a hopeful ray of light.
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