Between Christian Hagiography and Chinese Reclusion: Reconstructing Religiousness Through the Hermit Figure in Hermann Hesse’s Early Works

This paper takes Hermann Hesse’s Drei Legenden aus der Thebais and Der Dichter as its central subjects of study, examining, through comparison with German medieval literature and classical Chinese reclusion poetry, how he reworks the hermit figure by drawing on and departing from the Christian hagiographic tradition and Chinese Daoist reclusive culture, thereby reconstructing religiousness. The study finds that Hesse neither follows the hagiographic practice of demonstrating holiness through miracles, nor replicates the Chinese literati’s withdrawal from official and worldly affairs, nor the transcendent imagination of becoming an immortal. Instead, Hesse replaces miracles with labor and external demonic threats with psychological desires, transforming the saint-like hermit into a modern individual grappling with genuine human struggles. At the same time, drawing on the structure of the Bildungsroman, he reshapes the Chinese master figure into a spiritual mentor who guides self-awareness rather than religious redemption. Hesse seeks to shift “Religiousness” from an institutionalized, theocentric faith toward a personalized, internalized, and nature-grounded spiritual experience, thereby suggesting a possible literary path for modern people to find spiritual refuge and self-integration amid crises of faith and a rupture of meaning.