Autism in the writings of Hermann Hesse

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Siddhartha, Demian, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game... these are all masterpieces that I have enjoyed by the Nobel laureate writer Hermann Hesse. I couldn't help the feeling that Hesse had Asperger and this is the reason his thoughts resonated very well with mine.
I found his name mentioned in a few lists that enumerate possible prestigious Aspies from history. Yet, to my best knowledge, nobody has ever written a book that discusses his case in depth.
So I decided I may as well write it!
I will be updating this thread as I proceed.

The only one of Hesse's books I've read was Siddhartha, which I read back in college for a class on religion. While I admit I had never picked up on the subject of autism in the book (I was hardly looking for it), that doesn't mean it isn't there. Many people in the arts, including writing, are on the spectrum.

Siddhartha is probably Hesse's most famous novel. The subject of Autism is totally absent, at least on the surface...

Autism makes the person affected by it, at least to a certain degree, unattached. Indeed, an autistic person might find their emotions complicated and enigmatic, and wonder why they are not so attached to their surroundings and culture as the neurotypicals.

Since Buddhism preaches unattachment, an aspie is the perfect Buddhist initiate. Hesse, however, rebelled against Buddhism and against his innate "Buddhist" character.
The titular protagonist of Siddhartha is a would-be Buddhist student who drops out of Buddhist to pursue a life of passion and worldly attachment.
By the end of the book, it is he, not his friend who stood fast to Buddhism, who has finally reached "enlightenment." Hesse's message is simple; do not be ashamed of holding to things. The world may be non-permanent and passing (Anicca) but so are you, and there is no shame when the non-permanent is attached to the non-permanent.
Buddhism definitely appealed to Hesse's aspie nature, but by the time he wrote this book he could see far beyond the appeal of the teachings. In revolting against Buddhism, the wise man was rebelling against his own nature.

I read the first couple chapters of Steppenwolf, but it seemed uncomfortably familiar, so I stopped reading it. I felt uneasy reading the description of Harry Haller and how a part of him wanted nothing to do with the "bourgeois," but at the same time, he would sit on the stairs and study the neighbors entry and what a simple and unburdened mind it must take to carefully dust the plastic plants and longed for that simplicity. It's like he felt both above and below this world at the same time. I can't explain it. I just didn't want to read anymore after the second chapter. I know Herman Hesse notoriously claimed that Steppenwolf had always been misunderstood, so I guess I'll never know if I am one of the few who got it right or just another schmuck who put my own spin on it.

Those who thought that the book promoted drug abuse and orgies are the ones who misunderstood it. You are not "another schmuck" who put her spin on it. Proof? Countless hints scattered throughout all Hesse's work.



Guess what? We refer to those in this forum as "the Neurotypicals." Our internal conflicts which we thought were so novel, private and never-seen-before were known to people who lived centuries before us


An Aspie's longing for the simple Neurotypical life.


Isn't that precisely what we feel towards NTs? We dismiss them as simpletons yet we feel estranged and alienated when we feel that we are not "one of them?"



If it disturbed you all that much then don't you even touch Demian. This is when Hesse's Autism screams out loud.

I still don't know if I should write that book. Would you guys read it?

I can't ever claim to have known much about Hesse himself. I didn't realize that's what people had took the book for. I just read an introduction that he always claimed it had been misunderstood, but it didn't go into detail about what precisely people had taken it to mean. I also read it long before the idea of Asperger's had been brought up to me. At the time I just had thoughts and feelings that I couldn't articulate other than to say I feel very far away from people. The opening chapters of that book were just an eerie echo of that reality and it was more or less depressing to me, at least at the time, but that could also be due to the fact that I had no explanation for why I couldn't connect with people or feel attached to anyone.

And yes, you are right that there is nothing new under the sun. None of us are as novel as we like to believe. J.D. Salinger was annoyed when Catcher in the Rye was published and it resonated with so many people (even though that meant it sold millions of copies). He was somewhat disappointed that so many people had been thinking the same thing. But I kinda get that.