34 pages • 1 hour read
Hermann HesseJourney to the East
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
H.H.
H.H. is the narrator of the novel, and it is worth nothing that the initials H.H. are those of the book’s author, Hermann Hesse. Much of The Journey to the East can be read as a meditation on the creative process, or more specifically, the act of writing a novel—or reconstructing a history contingent on memory—as a metaphor for a journey. When the novel begins, H.H. announces his intentions to write a history of the Journey to the East, which he undertook as part of a group called the League. He describes himself as a violinist and a storyteller, and one of his responsibilities is to provide music for the group. His unique goal on the Journey is to win the favor of Princess Fatima.
After Leo’s disappearance, H.H. undergoes the same doubts and trials of faith as the rest of the group’s members. When he returns to his post-Journey life, he is listless, uninspired, and given to periods of despair. As his work on the manuscript stalls, he contemplates suicide. During a conversation with a historian and author named Lukas, he is given the idea to look up any Leos in the phone directory. He finds one in the neighborhood of Seilergraben and visits. There, he sees that the tenant is Leo from the Journey. However, this Leo is lukewarm towards him and refuses to discuss the League in detail or to confirm H.H.’s memories. H.H. spends that night writing a lengthy letter to Leo in which he details all the grievances he has against him.
In the morning, Leo is there and summons H.H. before the High Throne to be judged. H.H. is astonished and relieved to learn that the League still exists. He is given access to the League archives as a test of faith, after learning that Leo’s disappearance itself was a test that the group failed. As H.H. reads about himself in the archives, he learns that other members of the group attempted to write accounts of the Journey, but their versions differ greatly from his. As the book concludes, he sees that he must begin to disappear so that Leo can continue to grow. Then he looks for a place to lie down and sleep.
Leo
When first introduced in the novel, Leo is a servant to the group. He carries their baggage. Leo is always described as pleasant, but he is not given any particular importance in H.H.’s story until he and H.H. have a discussion about art, artists, and immortality. Leo’s opinion that artists must serve in order to gain immorality and live on through one’s creations is something that H.H. ponders often while attempting to write the manuscript of the Journey to the East later. Leo’s role becomes more vital when he disappears in the Morbio Inferiore. The members of the group remember his as indispensable once he is gone, and they blame him for taking one precious object from each of them. They suspect him of being bribed and of having malicious intentions from the beginning of the journey.
Later, H.H. meets Leo again at his apartment. Leo claims to recognize him and verifies that they shared an experience together on the Journey. After H.H. writes Leo a long letter explaining all of the grievances he has against him, Leo visits him and says that he has been summoned for judgment before the High Throne of the League, where it will be revealed that Leo the servant is also Leo the President of the League. He rules, but he also serves.
The novel’s final sentences imply that Leo’s growth is one of the byproducts of H.H.’s life. H.H. must grow smaller so that Leo can grow. Because Leo can be read as a symbol of a servant and a leader, H.H.’s taking on of a lesser role is a sign that he is ready to do whatever must be done in order to bring greater acts of service, and leadership, into the world.
Lukas
Lukas is a historian and author with whom Leo confers during the problematic writing of his account of the Journey to the East. Lukas had written a book about his experiences on the front lines of a war, and he had experienced bouts of uncertainty similar to those of H.H. during the writing process. Lukas says that when the writing was going badly, and when he thought that he could not reconstruct his memories, he felt suicidal. Persevering with the writing was allegedly the only thing that saved his life. Lukas insists that forgetting is mankind’s strongest desire, which is what makes historical writing so difficult. He suggests to H.H. that he is focusing on the wrong angles for his writing. Rather than recreate an accurate timeline, he should simply focus on representing whatever fragments he can recall as accurately as possible. He gives H.H. a phone directory and tells him that he should check it to see if there are any Leos in it, which leads H.H. to rediscover Leo from the Journey.
As a historian, Lukas represents an academic approach to writing and an insistence on craftsmanship and scholarship. He assures H.H. that his account of the Journey to the East cannot have the same intellectual rigor, and so he should not pursue it. Lukas’s statements that writing the book was necessary for saving his life also foreshadow the relief H.H. will feel when he finally begins to write whatever he can remember, without worrying about how it will be received by anyone but himself.
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