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Hermann Hesse's Colonial Uncanny: Robert Aghion, 1913

From early twentieth-century Orient enthusiasts to 1970s hippies to contemporary scholars, Hermann Hesse’s readers associate him with the “East” yet generally ignore his earliest writings on the topic. We all know Siddartha, the “Indian” conclusion to The Glass-Bead Game, and The Journey to the East (with Timothy Leary’s introduction), but what about the peculiar book from 1913—Aus Indien (Out of India)—that set the stage for all of this? Inspired by Hesse’s only, 1911 trip to Southeast Asia, Out of India is a collection of reportage, poetry, and diary entries that culminates in the mixedgenre masterpiece Robert Aghion.1 Aghion begins as an essay, reciting a brief history of colonialism and missionarism, then transforms abruptly, in midparagraph, into a novella, telling us the story of Robert Aghion: a young pastor who voyages eagerly to India as a missionary and exoticist, only to become disillusioned with the “East” and give up his calling.