Good point Murrill!

I trust you are finding the story to be far less tedious than the introduction was......

Hesse, I am enjoying the chapter, but that have something to do with my attitude: I find it easier to absorb if I don't try to analyze it to death. Ionce received some good advice from a teacher: Don't force it; just let your mind work.

Excellent advice....

Back in the day there was a kids toy called "Chinese Handcuffs". It was a woven, hollow bamboo cylinder that you inserted your left and right forefingers into. If you tried to pull your fingers apart forcefully, the bamboo would only contract and seize your fingers more forcefully.....if you just eased the fingers out in a relaxed manner they emerged easily.....

Great toy!

I remember that toy!

hesse wrote:

Does anyone know of a site that prints novels and poems to be read online for free?

Not sure if you can use this, but I got a free copy of Siddhartha for my iPad/Kindle today....

Not sure which translation it is yet......

We're still early in the book, but it seems that Hesse is beginning to make a point here of moderation. Perhaps he is pointing out that to be centrist is better than swinging to the opposite ends of the pendulum.

Think of moderation as balance, as in the balance of nature, which strives to extinguish extremes in favor of equilibrium ......

@Hesse.....I'm looking for Hesse's poem Hours in the Garden. I'd like to read it. The Ziolkowski Foreword mentions that Hesse gives somewhat of an explanation of the GBG in the poem and that Hesse means the game to be much more unorganized than the Introduction seems to lead the reader to believe.

I'll try to find it for you....

Here's a link to some of Hesse's poems.....

http://www.poemhunter.com/hermann-hesse/

I would also suggest you fast forward to the back of the book, to Knecht's Posthumous Writings, which contain 2 or 3 poems directly related to TGBG.....

@Hesse....thanks. I did read the poems at the back, but particularly want to read Hours in the Garden.

I'm on Ch.3 now. Would you suggest reading the Lives at the back of the book now or later, or, maybe it doesn't make any difference?

I'm on Ch.3 now. Would you suggest reading the Lives at the back of the book now or later, or, maybe it doesn't make any difference?

I would not suggest that, I think to get the full effect of those lives requires finishing the story.....

Music remains a dominant theme. It seems that Knecht's time with the Master--the periods spent in the shared language of music--enlightens and enhances his spirit. He is introduced to the notion that things are not what they seem: The "free" courses are anything but; the passionate are actually at odds with their center. "What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world." (pg. 82) I like that: The ebullient and effusive are just loud and misdirected; they are not centered.

I call myself a spiritual atheist," which some might think is an oxymoron. I do not subscribe to an organized religion, to a diety, to dogma: The story is mine. I have often described spirituality as my relationship with the universe, one in which I am right-sized, neither too large or too small. But I think that the author puts it well when he says that "...every brick derives its meaning only from its place in the whole."