from Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse

I recently came across a passage in the afore mentioned novel by Mr. Hesse that was particularly exciting to me as it clearly communicates something I have felt, but could probably never fully realize with language myself. I find it also to be quite fitting in the context of what we do as a band and the subject matter of most of our songs: love. This is the opening paragraph of chapter two in Peter Camenzind, by Hermann Hesse. This was his first novel published in 1904.

"As for love, I must confess to having retained a youthful attitude to it all my life. For me, the love of women has been a purifying act of adoration, a flame shooting straight up from my melancholy, my hands stretched in prayer toward the blue heavens. Owing to my mother's influence and my own indistinct premonitions, I venerated womankind as an alien race, beautiful and enigmatic, superior to men by virtue of inborn beauty and constancy of character, a race which we must hold sacred. For, like stars and blue mountain heights, they are remote from us men and appear to be nearer to God."


Thanks, Hermann.


-Brian