Singapore Dream and Other Adventures: Travel Writings from an Asian Journey

by Hermann Hesse, Sherab Chödzin Kohn (Translator)

Hermann Hesse's voyage to the East Indies, recorded in journal entries and other writings translated into English for the first time, describes the experiences that influenced his greatest works. “I knew but few of the trees and animals that I saw around me by name, I was unable to read the Chinese inscriptions, and could exchange only a few words with the children, but nowhere in foreign lands have I felt so little like a foreigner and so completely enfolded by the self-existing naturalness of life’s clear river as I did here.”   In 1911, Hermann Hesse sailed through southeastern Asian waters on a trip that would define much of his later writing. Hesse brings his unique eye to scenes such as adventures in a rickshaw, watching foreign theater performances, exploring strange floating cities on stilts, and luxuriating in the simple beauty of the lush natural landscape. Even in the doldrums of travel, he records his experience with faithful humor, wit, and sharp observation, offering a broad vision of travel in the early 1900s. With a glimpse into the workings of his mind through the pages of his journals, poems, and a short story—all translated into English for the first time—these writings describe the real-life experiences that inspired Hesse to pen his most famous works.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, Germany, Memoir, Essays

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 26, 2018

About the 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.

Reviews

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toward evening when we still had the tide, we went up a small brown side stream, where among the huts on stilts, the usual innocent, busy life was going on-net fishing of every kind, at which the Malays, as they are at bird catching and rowing, are true masters; multitudes of naked screaming children; small-time merchants on rafts with their soda water and syrup; sellers of Korans and tiny Mohammedan devotional pamphlets softly hawking their wares; and boys swimming.

It was a treat to read these collected writings from Nobel laureate Herman Hesse's 1911 trip to tropical southeast Asia while I was hunkered down during a week of subzero weather here in Montana. The short book consists of beautifully descriptive journal entries of his observations on the journey through the Suez Canal, time in Penang and Singapore, on Sumatra, and in Ceylon, a handful of poems, and a strong short story about a young English missionary to India, which Hesse intended to visit but didn't.

He's complex, expressing racial prejudices, but also disgust at Western airs of superiority and exploitation of the people and natural resources of Asia. I recommend for those interested in Hesse, travel writing, and the places visited.

[Mairita (Marii grāmatplaukts) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grāmata par to kā (iedomāto austrumu sajūsmināts) rietumu vīrietis mazliet viļas Āzijā. Beigās Hese ir tā piekusis no karstuma un dizentērijas, ka atmet ar roku un dodas mājās ātrāk kā plānots. Ļoti meistarīgi vides apraksti, tos bija prieks lasīt. Tomēr kopumā atstāja pavirša tūrista iespaidu. Grāmatas otrajā daļā daži dzejoļi un izdomāts stāsts par naivu misionāru.
Uzrakstīju plašāk: https://gramatas.wordpress.com/2020/0...

[mm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I had read all of Hermann Hesse's writings in my 20s but discovered this new translation earlier this year. A collection of travel essays through this region – Penang, Singapore, Indonesia and the then Ceylon – poetry and a short story, the book is mainly a 1911 travelogue.
What is interesting to me is that in his essays, he is candid about how he feels about the 'locals'. He shows admiration for the Chinese migrant and doesn't mask his disdain for the Indian migrant and the indigenous Malay, but this slowly changes as his travels continue and he isn't as rude as he is in the beginning while in Penang and Singapore. The other point is his observations of Kandy where one can almost see the workings of Siddharta happening. Almost.
I got the feeling his essay on Singapore is seen through an opiate stupor. He doesn't admit this in the essay but it is so evident in the telling. This is later confirmed when he later relates taking the drug while on a sea journey.
His attitude absolutely changes with the short story 'Robert Aghion', where the disdain is turned on the English expat in India. It is a beautiful short story that captures the colonial story brilliantly.
After 30+ years of first reading Hesse, he still interests me. I wonder if there are more in his cache left untranslated.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/174846...

…life is worth little; nature does not coddle and has no need to save…

Much can be learned from reading the works of Hermann Hesse. And if his ideas cannot be learned it may be possible that they at least be considered. Small efforts toward a departure from the unexamined life.

…Years ago I had gone into a small Gothic chapel in an Alsatian village, where the weak light, faintly colored, barely penetrated through the painted, dusty windowpanes, and looking up I saw with a great shock of fear a huge carved Christ hanging over me—on the cross, with grim red wounds and a bloody forehead.

We have come a long way, and it is very good that we—a very small fraction of humanity—no longer have utter need of either one of these two, either the bloody Cross or the smoothly smiling Buddha. We must go further in overcoming them and the other gods and learn to do without them. But it would also be very good if one day our children, who have grown up without gods, should again find the courage and the joy and the energy of the soul to erect such clear, huge, unambivalent monuments and symbols of their inner life.

The opening travelogue was beneficial and interesting. The mediocre poetry and short fiction that followed was not. Fortunately Hesse’s memoir was the bulk of the collected text. His short fiction and poetry mercifully was brief.

…I had looked into the eyes of dying persons and into the calyxes of flowers—not with the desire to explain these things, but only with the need to be there and, yes, not to miss any of these rare moments in which the great voice spoke to me and in which I and my life and sensibilities disappeared and were of no worth, because they became merely a thin, superficial overtone of the deep thunder or the even deeper silence of inconceivable occurrence.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a light quick read. A travelogue of a journey in Southeast Asia in 1911 when the region was dominated by colonial empires by a German who would win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. As a fan of Somerset Maugham it reminded me of the stories Maugham wrote about the region twenty years later though more philosophical and less insightful into human nature. Hess is anti-colonial and takes a keen interest in the local society for it's own sake and the short fiction is about a European missionary who comes to India and, upon coming to terms with the grandeur and subtlety of Indian civilization realizes he has been sent on a fools errand and instead decides to study rather than to preach.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truth be told, I picked this book up on a whim, purely because of the title. Notwithstanding Hermann Hesse's fame, I'd never read any of his books before.

Singapore Dream and Other Adventures is an account of Hesse's travels in Asia in 1911, when Hesse was 34 years old. Hesse and a friend sailed from Italy to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) via the Suez Canal, then onto Penang. In Southeast Asia, they visited Penang, Singapore, and Jambi and Palembang in Sumatra, before heading back to Ceylon and then returning home. I suppose on one level, it could fascinating to read a description of Southeast Asia in the early 20th century. How Palembang was once a "city on stilts" that turned into "a magnificent fairy-tale scene" when the tide came in but would be stuck in "gray viscous filth that stinks phenomenally" when the tide rolled out.

But I found it hard to get past the condescending and racist lens with which Hesse viewed the locals. The Chinese he regarded with some measure of admiration. The Chinese are industrious and smart. Hesse describes them as "secret masters of the East", their theatre a spectacle where "everything was measured, studied, ordered and carried out with some accordance with ancient, sacred laws, and carried out with rhythmic, stylized ceremony. Every gesture was exact and performed with calm devotion, each studied movement was prescribed and full of meaning and accompanied by expressive music. In Europe there is not one opera house in which the music and the movements of the figures on stage go together so faultlessly, so precisely, and with such marvelous harmony as here on this wooden stage". But his admiration is most likely limited to merchants and artisans. Coolies are more like magnificent beasts of burden:

"There's nothing more lively than going for a ride [in a rickshaw] in Singapore…you have the calming sight of the coolie who's pulling you, his back bouncing up and down to the cadence of his swaying trot. It is a very nice, naked, golden brown Chinese back, and below it is a pair of naked, strong, athletically developed legs of the same colour, with between them, wash-faded bathing shorts of blue linen, the color of which goes exquisitely well with the yellow body and the brown street."

By contrast, the Malays for Hesse were like guileless children at best, beasts at worst, who had:

"the kind of gullibility characteristic of black Africans, fall for every imported article on offer and dress like housemaids on a Sunday." Or how one might be "captivated by the good-natured childlike quality of most Malays", "the subservient Malay", "the kindhearted, handsome Malaysia, kept in strict submission b the Dutch, polite and pliable."

And let's not forget the Singhalese:

"You scold them and they make a face like a troubled child; you give them an order and they begin working with fake, overdone zeal; you tell them a joke and their laughter spreads broadly and blissfully over their whole face. They all have the same beautiful beseeching eyes, and they all retain a vestige of primitive innocence and unaccountability in their light, flighty state of mind. They forget important things in the course of a meal, and they lose themselves in games so totally that they sometimes get very serious about them and kill each other.

…It was also beautiful and thought provoking to see all these people at their religious practices - Hindu, Mohammedan and Buddhist…Their religion might be inferior, spoiled, externalised or denatured, but it is mighty and omnipresent like the sun and the air."

It's very hard to read this in 2020. I suppose the one thought provoking bit in Singapore Dream and Other Adventure's was Hesse's observation about how travel was seen as rare and noteworthy in Europe, but unexceptional in Asia, where travelling for trade or migrating to seek one's fortunes was commonplace. So a European might regard a 6 to 8 hour train ride as noteworthy but for Asians - Chinese coolies, Muslim pilgrims, etc - travelling by ship for three weeks was fairly unremarkable.

Given the colonialist and racist lens of Singapore Dream and Other Adventures, Robert Aghion came as a bit of a surprise. The protagonist, Aghion, is an earnest and devout man who is a keen amateur naturalist. Aghion seeks to carve out a vocation as a missionary in India but finds himself offended by the haughty imperialism and exploitative disregard that the Europeans have for the locals, and drawn to the spiritualism, warmth and self-possession of the locals. Quite the opposite of Hesse's sketches and essays from his Ceylon and SEA tour.

Robert Aghion notwithstanding, this collection is probably best saved for Hesse fans.

[Jrobertus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hesse, author of such classics as Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, took a trip to Singapore, Sumatra and Ceylon in 1911. This is mostly a travel journal of what he saw and experienced there. He is a fierce critic of colonialism and mostly sympathetic to the local customs, but he suffered from the heat and disease. The book also has a number of his poems about the place and finishes with a short story about a minister who arrives in mid 18th century and has doubts about his mission and the morality of disrupting the local beliefs. This is clearly a metaphor for Hesse's own feelings. I enjoyed his writing style and century old observations of a culture now gone.

[Robert Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book. Re-read it on the way to Indonesia/Japan. Text is more sparing than Conrad (by a lot) and gets to the point quick and intensely. Best essays are the last two where he is on his way home and listing the best memories and thoughts.

In the introduction is describes how Hesse took just over two weeks to go from Germany to Sri Lanka, and comparing this to his forebearers in 1869 took over 150 days to reach india, from Germany. I am flying, while reading this, with five legs (ORD-SEA-HND-CGK-UPG-SOQ), to Sorong Indonesia and taking just over 38 hours.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting mainly because I live where this is largely about and have visited a lot of the places mentioned. Uncomfortable sometimes to read the way he wrote about people of different races and cultures, but paints a true and realistic picture of his personal thoughts and reflects the context in which it was written.

[Gary Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is best for Hesse aficionados more than anyone. If you know Hesse's career, we've heard about his trip in 1911, sailing from Genoa through the Suez Canal and then on to Ceylon and the East Indies, as they were then called. This trip is what helped solidify his turn toward the east and Indian spirituality in general. But not until now have we been able to read his writings from that trip translated into English.

It's a simple book. Short sketches, travel writing and reports from Ceylon and what's now Southeast Asia, Singapore, Penang and Indonesia, all rendered with meditative clarity. We see him developing a thorough disdain for the apparatus of colonialism and western exploitation of "the east" in general. This appears in the travel writing, the poems and the short fiction story at the end, the later of which features some scathing ridicule, ala Orwell or Sinclair Lewis, of the grotesque hypocritical religiosity of the Christian missionary endeavor to convert all the "heathens" and "savages" in India.

The poems and some of the travel writing contain early snippets of themes Hesse would later employ in many of his works -- homesickness, alienation, inability to feel at home anywhere, healing aspects of Eastern spirituality, man's inclination to wander, in-depth reportage from the interior landscape, the failure of western thought in general, etc.

All in all, we get some key glimpses into that part of the world, when colonialism was still ravaging the landscape in full, revealing earlier versions of Singapore, Malaysia and Ceylon that simply don't exist anymore.

If you're already a Hesse fan, you'll find it a necessary addition to his catalog.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's an interesting exercise trying to read a past novelist's personal thoughts and travels, keeping it within a historical context and seeing if it retains value in spite of the changing morals and norms in the intervening time. There is some pretty writing and a few insightful bits in here, but mostly it's hard to get passed the racism. The preface tries to make Hesse seem progressive for his time in his condemnation of European colonialism, but the sort of paternalistic, patronizing attitude he takes towards "child like" Asian peoples is just another flavor of racism. I suppose he had the insight to see how colonialism was destroying the souls of the colonizers and the colonized alike, but this was expressed better and more forcefully by other writers of the time. Honestly I'm surprised how contemptuously he seems to have held Asian peoples (or at least the non-Chinese) in these writings, given the strong veneration of Buddhist traditions in Siddartha. But I suppose writing a novel set in a place is a far cry from actually respecting that place or its people.

In the end there is neither enough interesting description of the traveling / places traveled nor is there enough of the poetic insight into the human condition I had come to expect from Hesse's novels. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and made me lose respect for Hesse as an author and as a person. I guess there's a reason that this was only translated into English in the past few years.

[Desi Pilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finis this book fast enough. Sadly, I have lost all confidence in translated books. At least that’s what I chalk this up to. The entire time I felt as if I was drunk when I tried to read the short writings. There were words on the page, and the words formed sentences, but none of it seemed to make any sense. The text is written in such an unnatural and incomprehensible way.

It is also way too descriptive for my liking. Hesse spends all his energy trying to paint a picture of the imagery, when I would have much preferred actual content. For example, the short story at the end of the book is fairly decent. There is a semblance of a plot (though there is no real resolution to the arc), and I wish the entire book had been written in that style. Yet even there, he lost me for a few pages when Hess breaks to describe a dream in all sorts of unnecessary detail and metaphor and imagery.

This book was a complete waste of time, and if nothing else, I hope this review acts as a mark of contrast to all the positive reviews.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Everywhere treasures are on display, and all of that belongs to anyone who knows how to take visual pleasure in it, because whether I spend a hundred dollars or ten thousand, what I get for all my money is still only a single handsome item, which I soon enough might find disappointing. And so of that great tableau of heaped treasures, of all the great, colorful gleam and glitter of the Asian bazaar, all I can bring home with me to the West is a glowing reflected image in my memory. So if later at home I were to unpack a chest full of Chinese and Indian things, or ten chests, it would be like I had brought home a bottle or twenty bottles of water from the ocean. Even if I were to bring home a hundred tons of it, it would not be the ocean."—from the essay "Visual Pleasures"

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the shorts from Hesse's travel diaries are interesting in that they give a glimpse and snapshot of the world in the early twentieth century during the height of Western imperialism, I found the short story 'Robert Aghion', which made up half of this slim book to be the highlight of the collection. Hesse excels more at writing fiction, when his observations of reality can all be put together conveniently and concisely in a story. It is a story heavily critical of the colonialist attitude of superiority over other races and cultures so prevalent in his time, and thus draws comparison with his contemporaries like Orwell and Maugham.

[Charlotta Liukas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travelogues, poems and a short story from Hesse’s first trip to Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka in 1911. This book was translated in 2018, begging the question if the world needs more colonial literature. To his credit, Hesse in his diary and thoughts comes across as a humanist and is respectful of the Asian subjects he writes about.

I picked this up on a pretty-cover whim at the local library, enjoyed Hesse’s clear writing style, and am planning to read more of his work as a part of a project to read more German speaking authors.

[Clifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I happened to notice this book while browsing the Shambala catalog. A lifelong Hesse fan and a former expat resident of Singapore, the title interested me. It turned out to be especially relevant to a book I'm writing. The slim volume is mostly essays written about a voyage Hesse took to Asia in 1911, with stops in India, Ceylon, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaya. (It also includes some related poetry and one short story about an English missionary in India.) This is fine travel writing from an earlier era, and vintage Hesse.

[Noam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth it for the absolutely perfect story, Robert Aghion, alone... the rest ranges from descriptive journal entries to fascinating, otherworldly journal entries. Lots of journal entries! Story so good it makes you want to give up on ever being able to do anything yourself, but also gently inspires and encourages you! Every book I read by Hesse blows me away anew and reminds me of why I love the man so much.

[Arjun Butani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Singapore Dreams and Other Adventures is a set of writings documenting Hesse’s journey from Europe to the south Asian ports of Ceylon, Singapura, Malaya and Siam. This book is all about the old world charm of South East Asia.

If you are looking to read about the damp tropics, the charm of the British and Dutch colonies, the Peranakan cultures, and the islands dotting the emerald seas, then this is the best pick for you.

[Leilani Fairweather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty interesting collection of essays from his travels followed by some poems & a short story. I liked it but found it pretty hard to get passed observations and musings that are really racist by today's standards. Just a bit uncomfortable too uncomfortable to read for me to guy enjoy

[Jenni Ho-Huan]

A surprising find! Of course, Sg was a fascination! Now why don't they teach that in school!

[Guilherme · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth for its last short story.

[Joyce Chang Lilian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unreal truths.

[Krishnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ok travel diary. Though nothing remarkable or memorable of note inside.

[Leo W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting period piece, but didn't have me rummaging through old college debris looking for a copy of Siddhartha.