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Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962

"Siddhartha"

In those moments,
he had a dream:
Kamala owned a small, rare singing bird in a golden cage. Of this bird,
he dreamt. He dreamt: this bird had become mute, who at other times
always used to sing in the morning, and since this arose his attention,
he stepped in front of the cage and looked inside; there the small bird
was dead and lay stiff on the ground. He took it out, weighed it for a
moment in his hand, and then threw it away, out in the street, and in
the same moment, he felt terribly shocked, and his heart hurt, as if he
had thrown away from himself all value and everything good by throwing
out this dead bird.
Starting up from this dream, he felt encompassed by a deep sadness.
Worthless, so it seemed to him, worthless and pointless was the way he
had been going through life; nothing which was alive, nothing which was
in some way delicious or worth keeping he had left in his hands. Alone
he stood there and empty like a castaway on the shore.
With a gloomy mind, Siddhartha went to the pleasure-garden he owned,
locked the gate, sat down under a mango-tree, felt death in his heart
and horror in his chest, sat and sensed how everything died in him,
withered in him, came to an end in him. By and by, he gathered his
thoughts, and in his mind, he once again went the entire path of his
life, starting with the first days he could remember.


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