My last day in Germany was set aside as a fun day. My wonderful hostess Elke Wedig offered all kinds of options from trail rides to swimming in a beautiful lake to touring around the nearest city Stuttgart (which, she informed me, comes from an old German phrase that means garden of the mares). I chose the nerdiest possible option: a visit to the ancient Cistercian monastery Maulbronn where the German writer Hermann Hesse went to boarding school. Ive been a big fan of Hesse since I read his book Siddhartha when I was 10. It was my first encounter with Eastern spiritual ideas. (For someone who later wrote a book called The Tao of Equus, this was an important literary influence.) When Elke told me that Hesses book Beneath the Wheel, was based on his experiences at Maulbronn, I jumped at the chance to, well, walk in his footsteps. The monastery was built over hundreds of years, and everything there---from the arches to the doorways to the faded archetypal images on the walls---is a major work of art imbued with a sense of soulful dedication. I downloaded Beneath the Wheel to begin reading it that very night (ahh the instant gratification of technology). I was intrigued to find that this autobiographical-based work of fiction shows very clearly how scholarships to schools of higher education such as Maulbronn became a particularly stressful kind of indentured servitude for the brilliant students who were chosen for this honor. Fascinating!
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 16:43:05 +0000
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