Talk:Siddhartha (novel)

message: Hi, sorry but I'm not an expert Wiki Editor. I do have some critiques of the page. First, the summary is an analysis, as has been mentioned. This could be split into two sections. 
Second, the discussion of the difference between "experience" and "understanding" I find a) misplaced, b) opinionated, c) irrelevant, and d) lacking in citation. 
Third, I have issues with the Theme section. It has digressions on Hesse's thinking which really don't belong in a theme analysis. Also, there is in my view a major missing theme. While the novel obviously centers around the search for transcendence, it is also a story about the pain of being a father (or parent) and learning to balance caring for and letting go of the child. This is evident not only in Siddhartha's painful experience and subsequent peace with his parenting, but in a more implied way in Siddhartha's himself needing to leave his father the Brahmin behind in order to get where he is going. SO ... can we add the stuff I said? Thanks BeholdMan----  — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 07:15, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I heard this story many years ago--does anyone know if it's true?  Apparently there was some author in the Depression (call him X) who was a literary type but who found himself writing porno novels to pay his bills.  Like many authors, X was sometimes slow delivering manuscripts, and the publisher would sometimes hassle X's agent and ask what was taking so long.  X's agent, the story goes, on one of these occasions made up a ridiculous excuse about how X was some kind of swami in the remote Himalayas, sending his manuscripts on a long journey by yak, blah blah (the agent knew that X was in fact interested in eastern mysticism, and had made up the rest from there).  The publisher said "hey, that sounds exotic, tell him to put some of that into the next porn book".  The agent passed the instruction to X, who obediently delivered such a work, which was duly published to the usual obscurity.  
A few decades later, Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize and Hesse's novels took off in popularity and maybe new English translations appeared.  And a few people who read these Hesse translations but who had previously read X's mystical porno novel recognized what they were now reading, and said "what's going on here?  They took the good parts out of Siddhartha" (i.e. X had in fact read Hesse in German, and rewrote the story of Siddhartha with a bunch of steamy sex added, long before the official translation came out).  I don't know who X was.  I've heard one name mentioned but I think that person was born in the wrong decade for the pieces to fit together.  Anyone else heard this? Phr (talk) 20:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  translation anecdote 

message: Precisely how is this novel allegorical?  I suspect one of our authors doesn't know what allegorical means.
--CRATYLUS22
This is an excellent point about use of the word allegorical! I have read the book very carefully and it is confusing. The main protaganist meets Buddha in the book but keeps going on looking for something else, saying that Buddha has not given him what he is looking for. But at the end, if you read the write-up here, the very last sentences,you will see that Siddhartha has come around to pure Buddhism, denying the self, realizing exactly what Buddha put forward, etc.  v I don't think the person doing this write up of the Hesse book knows anything about Buddhism. I do; I've been reading about it for years. It stresses denying the self and not looking for any fixed references in life. What the character Siddhartha found that Buddha could not give him is never explained. In my mind, he found exactly what Buddha preached but on his own. So the concept of "allegory" does not fit here. This should be re-written by someone who understands Buddhism.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.70.145.102 (talk) 23:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Allegory

message: I'm new to contributing to Wikipedia, so I apologize if I'm going about this wrong. I'd appreciate any feedback if needed.
In the beginning of this article, it says, "It was first published in 1922, after Hesse had spent some time in India in the 1910s." My understanding is that Hesse never actually stepped foot in India, ironically. In the introduction to the Dover Thrift Edition (isbn 0-486-40653-9)written by Stanley Applebaum, he says:
"Another dream that failed to stand up to reality was Hesse's quest in 1911 for some sort of roots in India, a country where both of his parents had lived and whose literature, religions, and philosophies were dear to him. The steamer he sailed on touched at ports in Ceylon, the Malayan island of Penang, Singapore, and Sumatra. Hesse suffered from the heat and from dysentery. He was away only a few months and never set foot in what we call India; English-language reference books that speak of a stay in India are carelessly mistranslating the German word Indien, which can also be an overall term covering Vorderindien(Hither India; i.e., our India) and Hinterindien(Farther India; i.e., Southeast Asia). Hesse himself referred to his destination variously as Indien, Asia, or Malaya. On his return he expressed disappointment, claiming that colonial rule had denatured the territory...."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.246.211.145 (talk) 02:46, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hesse in India? 

message: Hmm, I'm guessing allegorical buddha is not a literary genre. I could be wrong. Timjim7 (talk) 01:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genre 

message: The parents of River Phoenix named him after the River of Life in Siddhartha. Das Baz, aka Erudil 17:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: River

message: What's posted here is utter complete hogwash. It was not just a metaphor, it was a frighteningly accurate description of life itself. It's perhaps the most important psychological novel ever written. Perhaps on par with what ever Freud or Jung ever added. This entry is utterly pathetic.
I'm going to change this thing bit by bit. This entry is farcical and I will have none of it.
  —Preceding unsigned comment added by BennyMuller (talk • contribs) 22:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern psychology

message: Can anybody tell me if Siddhartha has been translated to Hindi or any other language of India? I'm in India for the next 3 weeks and would like to find a copy to add to my collection. — Hippietrail (talk) 05:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Siddhartha in Indian language translation 

message: would this go under musical references bit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddharta_(band)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.103.163.16 (talk) 00:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Musical references? 

message: I think some of the summary might be plagiarized.  The sentence that says "In Herman Hesse's Siddhartha" is a dead giveaway because it makes no sense to repeat that.  I searched this on Google, "experience is shown as the best way to approach understanding of reality and attain enlightenment," and I got a few hits but you never know with Google.F. Simon Grant (talk) 14:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism in summary? 

message: ‎113.199.169.2 changed the setting of the story to Nepal instead of India. Is this true? I always thought the story was in India. Could someone check this. Eatmark (talk) 00:18, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Nepal or India?

message: . 2405:204:8080:C623:0:0:2911:10A0 (talk) 13:56, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  વર્ણકલા 

message: The article contains the following:
Young Siddhartha: Son of Siddhartha and Kamala. Lives with Siddhartha for a time yet runs away to Adan.
However it contains no information about who, what or where Adan is. Not very encyclopaedic. Not soundly edited. 86.171.145.86 (talk) 02:17, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who, what or where is 'Adan'?