The Studies Of Water Images In Hesse’s Works

Hermann Hesse is a writer and poet of contemporary Swiss German origin.He is famous all over the world for his attention to the growth of individual mind and safeguarding human dignity.His works mainly focus on the individual spiritual growth of citizens,artists and intellectuals.Many works can be regarded as his own spiritual biography of self-analysis.The reason why Hesse’s works are widely concerned in the world is that he combines the humanitarian thoughts of east and west,and the water image in his works also embodies this characteristic.“Water” is a common image in Eastern and Western literary works.Water itself is a natural material.In the long-term accumulation of human culture,water imagery has formed a rich connotation.For example,In Taoist thought,Laozi uses “water” as a metaphor and “water” as a virtue.In the history and culture of East and West,the main symbolic meaning of “water” is: the source of life,death,new life after purification.At the same time,the female(or maternal)meaning of water is also the common point of the water image between east and west.The “water” in Hesse’s works has both eastern and western cultural implications,and its symbolic meanings are mainly embodied in: the fate of life,the new way out of spirit and culture,the harmony and unity of Life.Hesse focuses on the situation of the individual and the right to survive,and his works often explores the survival plight of the vulnerable groups.In the face of this survival dilemma,“water” became the home of their lives and the shelter of their souls.Young people,women and small citizens were all vulnerable groups.Under the social background of that time,those who lacked their voice would struggle between individuals and society.They could not maintain a balance between obtaining social identity and the pursuit of their real self.Finally,they chose to die.By describing individual deaths in the water,Hesse pointed the finger at the educational system and social order that drove them to death.Death in the water is an indictment of the status quo of individual survival,and “water” is a symbol of the return to the source of life.Influenced by the romantic faction,Hesse felt some of his early works,but he experienced the war and engaged in the rescue of prisoners of war,has been actively looking for a new way out of spirit and culture.In the Bible,“water” has a symbolic meaning of regeneration,and after baptism,the spirit is purified and sublimated.With the help of the purification and baptism function of “water” in religion,Hesse proposed his own ideas from the spiritual and cultural aspects.In two artistic fairy tales,Flute Dream and Europeans,Hesse explores how individuals save themselves in a spiritual crisis and how to rebuild meta-culture after the war Europe.Water regeneration is the new life of spirit and culture.Hesse has placed his own ideals through the water image.From Siddhartha to The Glass Ball Game,Hesse’s works has strong oriental colors,“water” metaphor for the harmony and unity of life.The river is the core image in Siddhartha,and the protagonist’s spiritual growth is closely related to the river.The river is a symbol of the threshold,but also a symbol of the unity of all things.In Siddhartha,Hesse combines the romantic tradition with the oriental religious philosophy,and the water image has obvious eastern and western cultural implications.Glass Ball Game is a long masterpiece of the integration of eastern and western cultures in Hesse’s later years.It is a series of symbols and metaphors woven into utopia.“Water” is one of the important images,which is closely connected with the fate of the protagonist,Knesset,carrying the function of revealing the main theme of the novel and the fate of the characters.From the symbolic meanings of these three “water”,we can see the changes of Hesse’s thought and creation,just as the symbols of water image are dialectical and unified,so is Hesse’s thought.The “water” in his works has a universal cultural significance.By studying the water image in the works of different periods of Hesse,we can grasp more clearly the development and change of Hesse thought,the influence of eastern and western culture on Hesse creation,and the unique value of water image in Hesse works.