'Oxherding Tale' and 'Siddhartha:' philosophy, fiction, and the emergence of a hidden tradition

African American Review, Winter, 1996 by Rudolph P. Byrd

Of the several points of convergence between Siddhartha and Oxherding Tale, structure and intellectual concerns are preeminent. Like Siddhartha, Oxherding Tale is a novel in two parts in which compression is the operative word. Both are densely layered works, Oxherding Tale even more so than Siddhartha, in which arcane knowledge constitutes the core concern. As artists, Hesse and Johnson are engaged in an experiment whose objective is to join philosophy and literature. While I will have more to say about this shared intellectual endeavor later in this essay, for the moment I would like to emphasize the centrality of Buddhism for both novels, although Johnson extends his zone of inquiry to include Hinduism and Taoism.

In addition to sharing structure and intellectual preoccupations, Siddhartha and Oxherding Tale are both historical novels. Hesse's emphasis is upon an historical figure, while Johnson's emphasis is upon an historical era. Siddhartha, Hesse's questing and questioning protagonist, is in many ways the fictional counterpart to the Buddha himself, who, according to scholars, was Sakyamani Gautama, born in India in the sixth century B.C.E. Like Gautama, Siddhartha is a member of the Indian elite, a Brahmin born to luxury and power. Hesse writes that the "handsome Brahmin's son" was expected to become a "great learned man, a priest, a prince among Brahmins." "Love stirred in the hearts of the young Brahmins' daughters when Siddhartha," writes Hesse, "walked through the streets of the town, with his lofty brow, his king-like eyes and his slim figure" (3-4). Inevitably, Siddhartha, like Gautama, becomes disillusioned with his privileged existence. Both men discover that an existence framed by temporal realities is meaningless. After encountering a group of Samanas, peripatetic renunciates, "lean jackals in the world of men" around whom "hovered an atmosphere of still passion, of devastating service of unpitying self-denial" (9), Siddhartha makes the fateful decision to leave his father's palace and to join them. While his commitment to the Samana's life of self-denial is genuine and deep, Siddhartha remains dissatisfied. He does not discover in ascetism the much sought after release from samsara, or the cyclical nature of existence. In these particulars, Hesse remains faithful to the fragmented history in which Gautama, the Buddha, is enshrouded.

Hesse introduces, however, a significant variation in a novel based in large measure upon the life of Gautama. While Siddhartha's life corresponds in many ways to the life of this historic figure, Hesse's protagonist is not, it seems, the Buddha. Doubtless anticipating the injunctions and denunciations from scholars and practioners of Buddhism, Hesse creates the character of Gotama, who is called "the Illustrious, the Buddha" (120). While Siddhartha recognizes that Gotama is a holy man, for never had he "esteemed a man so much, never had he loved a man so much," he does not, like his friend and companion Govinda, become a disciple of Gotama, whose name and divine attributes recall Gautama. While respectfully acknowledging the patently enlightened state of the "Illustrious One," Siddhartha apprehends the flaw in the otherwise flawless teachings of Gotama. The teachings do not contain, so the Brahmin's son asserts in conversation with Gotama, "'the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced'" at the moment of enlightenment (34). While the teachings or doctrine are important, individual effort is more important in attaining moksha, or release from samsara. In his artful reconstruction of aspects of the life of the Buddha, Hesse illustrates one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism. And in the process, he avoids the censure of the purists who would doubtless find the freedom of the artist in the domain of history problematic, and he invests his novel with the dramatic tension and conflict so essential to its sense of unity and coherence.