Peter Camenzind

In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day. The novel is purely poetical, and its protagonist in time aspires to become a poet who invests the lives of men with reality in its most beautiful of forms. Peter Camenzind easily reminds one of Hesse's other protagonists, i.e. Siddhartha, Goldmund, and Harry Haller. Like them, he suffers deeply and undergoes many intellectual, physical, and spiritual journeys.