SOURCE: “Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha: Some Critical Objections,” in Monatshefte, Vol. LXIII, No. 2, Summer, 1971, pp. 117–24.

In the following essay, Butler opposes Hesse's presentation of human existence in Siddhartha, adding that he finds the novel “laboured and unconvincing.”

Like all the novels on which Hesse's reputation chiefly rests, Siddhartha is a fictitious biography. A sort of Bildungsroman, it records the passage of a special individual through selected key experiences until he attains to a position of competence in dealing with what little life is left to him. The nature of Siddhartha's preoccupations and development, and the stylistic devices used to relate them, suggest that the work is the repository of certain truths regarding human existence in general; and so the question naturally arises as to how acceptably Hesse presents and discusses them. In order to decide this, what is being offered must be defined as exactly as possible. In this...