Hesse, Hermann

New York. 1970. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Printing. Previous Owner's Name Penned n Front,Otherwise Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket With Some Tears. 201 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Milton Glaser. keywords: Literature Translated Germany . FROM THE PUBLISHER - ‘In the beginning was the myth' is the opening sentence of PETER CAMENZIND, Hesse's first novel, originally published with great success in 1904 and now published for the first time in America. It is the prototype of all the lyric works of fiction by Hermann Hesse that new generations of readers are discovering for themselves. It tells the story of the adolescence and early manhood of a writer who leaves the Swiss mountain village where he was born and takes to the road to encounter the great world. In Italy, the country of his idol, St. Francis of Assisi, Camenzind feels at home for the first time. He makes one great friend, who is killed, falls in love first with Rösi, then Erminia, then Elizabeth, lives in dissipation in Paris, and turns more and more to drink as an escape from the pain of living. He finally finds peace of mind caring for a helpless cripple, Boppi. At the end Camenzind has returned to the village where he was born. ‘Almost all the prose works I have written are biographies of the soul,' Hermann Hesse has written, ‘monologues, in which a single individual is observed in relation to the world and to his own ego.' In PETER CAMENZIND Hesse's principal themes are man's rootedness in nature and the ideal of serving man in the spirit of St. Francis. Camenzind's self-love and his love of man coalesce, leading his restless spirit to inner tranquillity. inventory #4526