August 21, 2008

HHH: Herman Hesse on Hatred

Herman Hesse was a German writer and painter during the rise of Nazi Germany. From the end of the 1930s, German journals stopped publishing Hesse's work, and his work was eventually banned by the Nazis. He lived in one of the most hateful political environments of the 20th Century and here's what he had to say about hate:

"If you hate a person you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What is not part of ourselves does not bother us."

Interested in more from Herman Hesse? Check out Siddharthta (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), or The Glass Bead Game (1943). The last of these one the Nobel Prize.