Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings

Hermann Hesse understood trees to be symbols of transcendence and rebirth, of instinctive growth present in all natural life. This elegant collection of his essays, poems, and passages on trees, accompanied by thirty-one of his watercolor illustrations, reveals his inspired thoughts on nature, spirituality, and self-knowledge. Together, his writings and paintings mirror the seasons and landscapes as he experienced them, and help remind us that trees’ annual rings are representations of our own days’ struggle, happiness, and purpose. In the author’s words: “They struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws . . . Whoever has learned to listen to trees no longer wants to be one. He wants to be nothing except who he is.”

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Trees 1 My Heart Greets You* 5 Good Friday 7 The Old Copper Beech* 9 Movement and Stillness in Harmony* 13 Flowering Branch 17 The Miracle of Rebirth* 19 Spring Night 23 Chestnut Trees 25 Dream 33 The Peach Tree 35 In Full Flower 39 Hermits and Warriors* 41 Shackled Power and Passion* 43 The Birch 45 May in the Chestnut Forest 46 The Black Forest 51 “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer 53 Uprooted* 56 Page from a Diary 58 Linden Blossoms 61 Lament for an Old Tree 67 Vagrant Hostel 76 Opposites 79 Night with Mountain Wind 85 The Little Path 88 Summer Afternoon at an Old Country House 93 Elegy in September 94 At Bremgarten Castle 95 Natural Forms* 97 Tree in Autumn 99 Pruned Oak 101 A Stray Son of the South* 102 From “Description of a Landscape” 103 Withered Leaf 115 Between the Hourglass and the Withered Leaf* 117 In the Fog 118 A Broken Branch Creaks 119 Wanderer in Late Autumn 120 Afterword by Volker Michels 123 Sources 131 List of Plates * Titles followed by an asterisk were supplied by the German editor,  Volker Michels, for untitled poems or excerpts from longer works.

About the Author :
Hermann Hesse was born in 1877 in Calw, Germany. He grew to become a celebrated author and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. As the son of missionaries, he developed a fascination with self-discovery and spiritual explorations, an interest also likely due in part to his lifelong struggle with depression, which led him to study Sigmund Freud and, later, to undergo psychoanalysis with Carl Jung. In 1912 he moved to Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known books, including the classic Siddhartha; composed poetry; and painted landscapes. He passed away in 1962 in Montagnola, Switzerland. Hesse is one of the most widely translated authors of the twentieth century; his work continues to have influence worldwide. Damion Searls is a prize-winning translator of fifty books from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch. Liveright published his translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet in 2020. VOLKER MICHELS edited the first complete edition of Hermann. Hesse’s writings, consisting of approximately fifteen thousand pages in twenty volumes. He is the world’s foremost authority on Hesse’s work and also manages the Nobel laureate’s literary and artistic estate.

Review :
" Superbly illustrated with 31 full-color watercolors painted by Hermann Hesse, 'Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings' is extraordinary and unreservedly recommended. " ""... one of humanity’s most beautiful love letters to trees…" "A testament to [Hesse’s] love affair with nature, trees in particular… [that] will reawaken your own infatuation with the natural world and urge you to defend it."