Summary: In simple, mesmerizing prose, Hermann Hesse tells of a journey both geographic and spiritual. H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah’s Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims’ ultimate destination is the East, the “Home of the Light,” where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into open conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, with H.H. bitterly blaming the others for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.
Kirkus Reviews
The story is really an inconsequential element of this dissertation. The author's membership in an organization called The League has been rescinded and he is seeking reentry. A loss of faith and vision is responsible for the subtle ostracism from the League and corresponds to the loss of a raison d'etre on the part of the erstwhile member. Coming across Leo, a member who had accompanied the League on the journey - an integral part of their lives - Hesse realizes that the journey which he had imagined terminated was going on all around him. The lack of faith had blinded his perception of it. Through a mortification of his ego, he is again accepted into the League. This mystical structure, the League, represents the spiritual community through which one gains happiness. Isolation, our common denominator, will never germinate into the fruits of a full life. One must join the brotherhood of man in their faith - not necessarily in God, or science - more appropriately, in their faith in each other. Only through involvement with others in a common vision can the solitude of a man be comforted and controlled. The vision while it is collective and, therefore, anonymous, still preserves the unique and precious design of the individual. Membership in the League will give meaning to his personal predispositions as well as comfort his isolation. This novel, written several years after Steppenwolf, has a market among intellectuals and college students.
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