Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse's most famous novel, portrays a man who is at once irrevocably cut off from and inextricably dependent on society. In the "Treatise on the Steppenwolf," Hesse digresses from the plot of the novel to analyze his protagonist and, in so doing, comments brilliantly on the predicament of modern man. Jaroslav Bradac, a gifted Czech artist, has captured in forty-five magnificent paintings the essence of Hesse's work. In this book are reproduced his paintings and the full text of the "Treatise on the Steppenwolf." Mr. Bradac created and directed the animated version of the "Treatise" in the film of Steppenwolf.
Author
Many works, including Siddhartha (1922) and Steppenwolf (1927), of German-born Swiss writer Hermann Hesse concern the struggle of the individual to find wholeness and meaning in life; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946. Other best-known works of this poet, novelist, and painter include The Glass Bead Game , which, also known as Magister Ludi, explore a search of an individual for spirituality outside society. In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Young Germans desiring a different and more "natural" way of life at the time of great economic and technological progress in the country, received enthusiastically Peter Camenzind , first great novel of Hesse. Throughout Germany, people named many schools. In 1964, people founded the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis, awarded biennially, alternately to a German-language literary journal or to the translator of work of Hesse to a foreign language. The city of Karlsruhe, Germany, also associates a Hermann Hesse prize.
