Customer Reviews

Peter Camenzind: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As far as Hesse goes, he is one of my favorite authors of all-time, and so I have to say that "three stars" is only relative to his later masterpieces which all deserve five. Three stars means this is a good novel (well worth reading), but only mediocre in relation to the more highly developed and complex novels Hesse would begin writing with Demian, or perhaps even Rosshalde. Peter Camenzind is a bildungsroman (a novel of youth) mirroring Hesse's own youth, making it an essential novel to read if you're at all interested in Hesse's development as an author (this is his first full-length novel). It stands on its own as an interesting biography of a young man's life journey, relating his unique and picturesque village life in the Swiss Alps, his first romantic love interests, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. We follow Peter Camenzind from his rural village life into the city life of a student, traveller, and worker. He meets various influential personalities along the way, especially the student Richard, with whom he has many artistic and philosophical discussions in cafes and taverns. Wandering in Tuscany, he will be taken in by the sweet Signora Nardini with whom he spends many fruitful hours; and in the end, will meet and care for Boppi, a helpless hunchback who will change his life forever.

The deeper purpose of this novel seems clear when one looks at it as a sort of therapeutic expurgation by a 26 year old Hesse. On the whole it is somewhat scattered and unbalanced, and I wished that the characters Peter meets were more fully developed (especially the women). Sometimes the peripheral scenery begs for more detail and interaction (for example, Hesse skips out on Peter's Parisian adventures altogether!). Nevertheless, there are many poetic and sentimental flourishes here which are extraordinarily delightful to read, making Peter Camenzind a diamond in the rough. Most importantly, you'll find Hesse's own lifelong statement of purpose in Chapter 7: "As you know, it had been my hope to write a work of some length in which I intended to bring closer to people the grandiose and mute life of nature, that they might love it." This type of novel which focuses on one individual's growth is common in German and European literature and is a genre some American readers may or may not find enjoyable. I for one, find them highly interesting and instructional because of their absolute concentration upon one individual's life and times, and often find myself attached to the main character by the end of the novel; which was the case with Peter Camenzind even on my second reading. Read Peter Camenzind for Hesse's burgeoning poetry, the introduction of themes and motifs such as the quest for religion and meaning, which he will repeat later on, and most importantly, for the shear pleasure of reading a quality novel you will want to read more than once.

I love this novel so much. The very first paragraph gripped me and made me feel very small in a great way. Hesse's description of the mountain range that forms the character of Peter Camenzind is stunning. Like most of Hesse's work, this is a tale of travel and growth of a wandering soul searching for something meaningful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes truly crafted literature.

Hesse never fails in aesthetics in his language. Especially after reading modern American novels, whose language is filled with profanity and vulgarity, Hesse's works are like fresh mountain water. This book doesn't fail you either in that respect. It is simple, very easy to read, nothing heavy, yet it has enough depth to satisfy your intellectual spiritual needs. It came to me like a relief especially after reading Faulkner's Light in August.

Although the plot is simple, his quest for love and growth is so sincere, so pure and fresh, which really is the power of this novel, and that power captivates the reader's heart.

The protagonist Peter Carmenzind is naive and touchy and single-minded youth, destined to spend his life as a wanderer/bachelor. He doen't quite fit in the society/community in which he was born and raised, nor in the society in which he seeks refuge in the future. He finds love and friendship in one person at a time (he is not a wide and shallow socialite), but he loses each of them one by one, and he goes through turmoil each time, and falls into heavy drinking. Gradually he regains strength and finds true love and devotion to humanity.

What is so compelling is that each time he finds someone to love, whether it be romantic love or friendship, he devotes himself single-mindedly, and loves that person with his whole heart. That's why he's so devastated when he loses love.

His devotion to the cripple Boppi is particularly moving. This kind of love is rarely written about in novels these days.

The beginning part is sort of slow, with the descriptions of landscapes, general characteristics of the village and its people, but Hesse's poetic language makes it so musical and pleasant. One hardly cares if the story ever moves forward or not. HIs love of nature and life, which is the core of his language, is well established in this work.

It is a work that Hesse had written when he was young, and one can tell that, but it is still a great work. The protagonist is growing after each crisis, and the reader will grow with him. One of my professors said that Hesse is probably the only writer that would make you feel good after reading, and I have to agree with him 100%. You will meet young, promising, uncontaminated Hesse in this book, which will make you feel really good.

Those who want to only invest their time in an author's choicest works would probably skip ahead, in Hesse's case, to Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Magister Ludi. Those are titles I read years ago, and though their impressions are no longer fresh, I remember them as masterpieces. If you are a serious Hesse admirer, you will lose nothing by reading Peter Caminzind, and will gain added perspective on his later works through this expression of his early development as writer and metaphysician. Written when the author was 27, this was his first novel. This is a very easy book to read, but is by no means a shallow one. It is a book of great strengths but also, I think, some serious weaknesses. If this were the only book Hesse had written, I would still consider him a great writer. Because the style and clarity of the book make for such ease of reading, it is essential to take some time with its descriptions of nature, which are very poetic and beautiful. I think the imagery conjured up by Hesse's prose is as effective, or even more so, as formal poetry which has the same intent. This is a book which truly pays homage to nature and seeks to elicit the same appreciation for it that the author feels. This notion that there is a need for us to feel a love of nature - mountains, meadows, clouds, streams, lakes, weather - is a major theme of the book, every bit as pronounced as the coming-of-age theme. The insistence is there that we experience this love in a deep spiritual way, not through mere sentimentality. This need to experience a profound relationship to nature is tied closely to the protagonist's search for his own spiritual identity. He senses that his need to express love is incomplete, and as he progresses through his youth and young adulthood, he comes to realize he must extend this love to people. His upbringing in an isolated mountain village has instilled in him traits which are the very opposite of gregariousness and empathy for fellow man. The novel is the chronicle of the struggles and torments Camenzind suffers in evolving toward a state of mind where he can shed his aloofness, disdain, and mistrust of humanity. One thing that helps him to forge a link to mankind is his secret desire to compose a great poetic work which will show the rest of humanity how to love nature as he does. In the novel this remains a future prospect , but he does begin to reach out for love and friendship by abandoning the intellectual society he had frequented, and seeking a more common human bond. He finds this through taking care of real human needs for others. There are many passages in the book which I find moving, beautiful, and profound, and which caused me to pause in my reading to reflect on them before moving on. But the main weakness which I see in this novel is that it is so internalized, that sometimes the states of mind it describes seem to be rather arbitrary and based more on subjective moods than causes the reader can relate to. The hero describes many episodes of melancholy, feelings of failure and defeat, and revulsion for humanity. Then he experiences feelings of rebirth, renewal of interests and energy, and hope. It seems we are seeing the workings of a mind which dwells too much in itself and which is too ruled by its own limitations of perception. Thus, I think there is a lack of clarity as to why some of his changes in attitude take place, other than that he just became sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I thought the condition of the hero at the close of the novel did not seem to represent a major level of illumination, but was still a provisional, though higher plateau of existence. This would be a natural consequence of being the work of a still very young author, and it is actually admirable that Hesse did not try to overreach himself with unrealistic accomplishments for his protagonist. It is a remarkable first novel and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys literary works which feature the quest for self-knowledge.

"In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self expression, invested the soul of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day."

I found this book by complete accident at an independent bookstore in Manhattan. It was a happy accident, complete serendipity. I was not familiar with this work, the first novel by the esteemed author, Herman Hesse and was not particularly impressed with the title. I picked it up anyway as I was a fan of Hesse's having read Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Demian and Magister Ludi, in my own wayward and misspent youth. I just recently revisited Steppenwolf and found it to be compelling as ever. About a year later, I got around to reading it. It was worth the wait. I loved it! Like all of Hesse's work, it concerns a protagonist that struggles with the duality of his own nature; that of a carnal, hedonistic, lustful human being, and the softer nature loving spiritual side. In this novel, Hesse traces the travels and travails, both spiritual and physical, of Peter Camenzind, a young man born in a small mountain village in Switzerland. He leaves his village to go to university and aspires to be a poet. He falls in love with a beautiful woman who is love with another man, which breaks his heart. He becomes close friends with Richard who later drowns. Peter turns bitter, becomes a wanderer, too much and suffers from spiritual malaise. He is aware of his own wretched existence. He forms a friendship with an invalid named Boppi, who restores his humanity to him. After Boppi's death, Peter returns to his village and care for his father. He then begins to plan his great life's work of becoming a poet.

The book is the perfect length for a novel, in my opinion, coming in at exactly 200 pages comprised of eight chapters. Peter Camenzind is written in a simple, lyrical manner that that wastes no words yet is complex and quite compelling.

Peter Camenzind, a farmers son in a remote village, gains a scholarship that eventually leads him to university in Zurich. Whilst his true love is for nature, he feels compelled to pursue the intellectual. He drowns his social inabilities in drink.He idealizes women and finds only unhappiness.He is an unsatisfied writer, but redeems himself and finds an Assisian love for all things after befriending the cripple Boppi.He then returns home in contentment....

Hesse's first novel reads so easily and packs so much of the fabric of his future great works into 180 odd pages. His ideal that man, of all the creatures on earth, needs to marry philosophy and art with nature to achieve happiness; our journey from the egoism and vanities of our youth-where we view ourselves as vital and important-even God like- and the frustrations that brings, to an acceptance of merely being a part of a beautiful nature. How we follow the biblical blueprint of leaving paradise only to spend our lives searching for it and reaching it only at the end.

Hesse influenced me a lot as a teenager and coming back to him-and his first novel-rekindled the self awareness and ideas he invoked and reminded how great ideas can be written in accessable stories and language.

Hesse has written greater books (or went on from here to write them!) but this is a great starting point that has all of the main ingredients of Hesse.

Peter Camenzind is the earliest fictional work of Great Hermann Hesse who has been always one of my favirite authors. I have read Hesse works in reverse choronological order. In comparison to his later works such as Magister Ludi, the plot and prose style are unrefined ,yet they are unadulterated as well as contains leitmotives that Hesse recurs consistently in his later works.

The story is very simple and follows a typical pattern of Bildungsroman, e.i a youth finds his purpose of life and identity through a vissitude of life. In case of Peter, it's quite a journey .Story begins with quintesential Hessian phrase ""In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day".

Peter left his alphine hometown for searching for the world with an aspiration to become a poet. He meets Richard and shares intense friendship with him ,while hopelessly fell for a woman who teaches first pain of unrequited love. After the tragic death of Richard and a series of unrequited love as well as his journey to Italy, Peter a bit by bit understands the meaing life and nature of love. Each episode clearly shows different aspects of love and when it comes to his devotion to Boppi , it shows to where Hesse's love finally directed. Throughout this book, spritual crisis and overcoming that very crisis not only widens Peter's view on life and but also encourages him to find the ultimate meaning of life which poem is only a medium of representation. I am especially moved by Peter's devotion for Boppi that is not originated from mere pity but Peter's love for humanity.

There are distinctive influence of Plato, Schopenhauer , and Nietzche's philosophies which slowly supplanted by Indian and Chinese philosophy in his later works.

this is perhaps only novel that makes you experience all vissitude of life within a couple hours of reading.It's worth reading and you won't regret.

Like most of Hesse's pre-'Demian' novels, this too is rather simplistic and forgettable, even without being compared to the greatnesses which were to come. His early novels are sweet, touching, sincere, and thoughtful, but the plots still aren't as complex or mature as those in his later glories. We follow Swiss mountain boy Peter Camenzind through his youth and early manhood, through his delight and joy in life in his native hamlet, including his first unrequited love, to his idealistic and happy sojourn in Italy with his dear friend Richard (where he once again falls victim to unrequited love), to dissipation in France and yet a third unhappy unrequited love, to a truly touching friendship with an older crippled hunchback named Boppi, and finally back to his native village to care for his aging father and to continue pursuing his dreams of being a journalist and a writer. It's an extremely autobiographical novel, though because it's a first novel, the plot is incredibly simplistic and not very complex or mature; just following the life and loves of a simple Swiss mountain boy. Probably the most memorable part of the book for me, apart from Peter's friendship with Boppi, is when Frau Camenzind dies in the night while Peter is sitting on the bed without even waking his father up to tell him his own wife is dying. When Herr Camenzind wakes up and finds out what has happened, he is furious that Peter didn't call a priest to administer Last Rites, though father and son aren't on the outs for long and soon they're going out drinking together. (The other most memorable part is the classic opening line, "In the beginning was the myth.") The events are interesting and well-described, just not as well-developed or multifaceted as they would be in Hesse's later masterpieces.