Siddhartha

Author(s): Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner
Publisher: Macmillan India

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often thought about it. But how will he, who is so hardhearted, go on in this world? Will he not consider himself superior, will he not lose himself in pleasure and power, will he not repeat all his father's mistakes, will he not perhaps be quite lost in Sansara?
The ferryman smiled again. He touched Siddhartha's arm gently and said: 'Ask the river about it, my friend! Listen to it, laugh about it! Do you then really think that you have committed your follies in order to spare your son them? Can you then protect your son from Sansara? How? Through instruction, through prayers, through exhortation? My dear friend, have you forgotten that instructive story about Siddhartha, the Brahmin's son, which you once told me here? Who protected Siddhartha the Samana from Sansara, from sin, greed and folly? Could his father's piety, his teacher's exhortations, his own knowledge, his own seeking, protect him? Which father, which teacher, could prevent him from living his own life, from soiling himself with life, from loading himself with sin, from swallowing the bitter drink himself, from finding his own path? Do you think, my dear friend, that anybody is spared this path? Perhaps your little son, because you would like to see him spared sorrow and pain and disillusionment? But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest.'
Never had Vasudeva talked so much. He thanked him in a friendly fashion, went troubled to his hut, but could not sleep. Vasudeva had not told him anything that he had not already thought and known himself. But stronger than his knowledge was his love for the boy, his devotion, his fear of losing him. Had he ever lost his heart to anybody so completely, had he ever loved anybody so much, so blindly, so painfully, so hopelessly and yet so happily?
Siddhartha could not take his friend's advice; he could not give up his son. He allowed the boy to command him, to be
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disrespectful to him. He was silent and waited; he began daily the mute battle of friendliness and patience. Vasudeva was also silent and waited, friendly, understanding, forbearing. They were both masters of patience.
Once, when the boy's face reminded him of Kamala, Siddhartha suddenly remembered something she had once said to him a long time ago. You cannot love,' she had said to him and he had agreed with her. He had compared himself with a star, and other people with falling leaves, and yet he had felt some reproach in her words. It was true that he had never fully lost himself in another person to such an extent as to forget himself; he had never undergone the follies of love for another person. He had never been able to do this, and it had then seemed to him that this was the biggest difference between him and the ordinary people. But now, since his son was there, he, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. He was madly in love, a fool because of love. Now he also experienced be latedly, for once in his life, the strongest and strangest passion: he suffered tremendously through it and yet was uplifted, in some way renewed and richer.
He felt indeed that this love, this blind love for his son, was a very human passion, that it was Sansara, a troubled spring of deep water. At the same time he felt that it was not worthless, that it was necessary, that it came from his own nature. This emotion, this pain, these follies also had to be experienced.
In the meantime, his son let him commit his follies, let him strive, let him be humbled by his moods. There was nothing about his father that attracted him and nothing that he feared. This father was a good man, a kind gentle man, perhaps a pious man, perhaps a holy man- but all these were not qualities which could win the boy. This father who kept him in this wretched hut bored him, and when he answered
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