HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

The complex symbol of the river in Siddhartha offers us a further element of interest
and becomes a suggestive point of departure for our discussion in the next section.
The flow of the river, which fuses motion and stillness, thus projecting an image of
simultaneity, also describes the circular motion of the water cycle which, as a closed
line, conjures up images of eternity:
alle die Wellen und Wasser eilten, leidend, Zielen zu, vielen Zielen, dem
Wasserfall, dem See, der Stromschnelle, dem Meere, und alle Ziele wurden
erreicht, und jedem folgte ein neues, und aus dem Wasser ward Dampf und
stieg in den Himmel, ward Regen und stiirzte aus dem Himmel herab, ward
Quelle, ward Bach, ward Flufi, strebte aufs neue, flofi aufs neue. (SW 4, 461)
Siddhartha experiences a moment of revelation when he feels that, in the eternal
cycle of life and death, there is no discontinuity between his body and the pebble he
is holding in his hand. After his death, Siddhartha's body is going to decompose but,
once dissolved and merged with the soil, its particles could aggregate and form a
stone. Western philosophical tradition and Eastern spirituality seem to find common
ground in the idea of metamorphosis as expressed by Pythagoras in Ovid's
Metamorphoses:
Everything changes; nothing dies; the soul
Roams to and fro, now here, now there, and takes
What frame it will, passing from beast to man,
From our own form to beast and never dies.
As yielding wax is stamped with new designs
And changes shape and seems not still the same
Yet is indeed the same, even so our souls
Are still the same for ever, but adopt
In their migrations ever-vary ing forms. (Ovid XV, 357)
5.3 Circles, cycles, and spirals: Images of infinity
The connection between circular motion and eternity, and the pairing of closed lines
such as circles and mathematical symbols (e.g. the number '0', '8', or the lemniscate
'so'), with the idea of endless repetition are intuitive, transparent associations, the
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