Rating: 
Summary: innocent
Review: "Gertrud" (this is the original German spelling) is a novel mainly about two things: love and music.Hesse had always some problems with describing love and feelings, and again he is always on the way to sentimentality (the last two chapters contain some of his stereotypical phrases I have learned to hate, with "odours of my youth" etc.). For luck he introduces one character (Lohe, a former teacher of the protagonist Kuhn) that stops him two times: when Kuhn is planning his suicide, he tells him in an ironical way that Kuhn seems to be suffering of an illness called "imagined loneliness". The other time, he offers Kuhn a book about Far East wisdom, but Hesse doesn't use this opportunity for praising this well-loved subject of his, but just leaves it misunderstood by Kuhn. Hesse doesn't find the best way of describing music either; I think he didn't really understand what he was writing about. He restricts himself to saying that the music makes some guys weep or that it is wonderful and full of feelings although the teachers refused it because it was full of technical mistakes, but nothing else, and so the idea of Kuhns music remains very vague (better descriptions are in Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus", where the author discussed anything with composers to give really detailed information of music that in a way is revolutionary and real artistry). Good thing about "Gertrud": in the ample descriptions of Kuhn's mental state are not only stereotypes about love, but also better descriptions of his despair and relief, his hopes and fears, his friendship with the musician Teiser and the lately awakening love to his old mother. Read this book, but don't think too much about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Poignant
Review: After reading, "Demian," "Narcissus and Goldmund", "Siddharta," and "Beneath The Wheel," it was a pleasant surprise to read something "light" from Hermann Hesse. Don't get me wrong. Even with the simple plot and autobigraphical narration of Kuhn, Hesse's philosophies pervade, especially on love, wisdom and growing old. "Gertrude" is a story about desires. Kuhn's desires to have his leg back, to live without loneliness, even a desire to change fate itself. All of these desires become centered in Gertrude Imothor whom he befriends and falls in love with as Kuhn was slowly rising in prominence as a composer. While Kuhn works on his opera, his friends, Muoth and Gertrude, fall in love. Finding about the affair, Kuhn becomes devastated but was soon distracted by a telegram sent about his ailing father. His father's death brings Kuhn back to the advice that he gave him the past summer. With renewed vigor, he accepts his fate and even composes a prelude for Muoth and Gertrude's wedding. Kuhn's opera becomes a success while Muoth and Gertrude's marriage crumbles. Gertrude, Muoth and Kuhn's desires interweave and create the tragic results to which all of them learn from. In the end, Kuhn learns from his experiences and even comes to accept his fate, as he relates in this passage:
"Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason with nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another and live to comfort each other."
Rating: 
Summary: "A Thought-Provoking Tale of Music, Love, and Egotism"
Review: Although hardly as recognized as the NARZISS AND GOLDMUND or the Novel prize winner THE GLASS BEAD GAME, GERTRUDE is one of Hermann Hesse's most beautifully written works that deserves distinction in its own right. The novel seems a rather short read at first glance, but its fast-moving nine chapters are much denser than its small volume. To fit this novel into one category would be difficult: it is a tragedy of two lovers and two friends; it is a tale of unrequited love; it is a reminiscence of a man who has matured from an indeterminate youth into adulthood; it is a testimony of the destructivity of egotism of man. This is a story of every significant aspect of a human being, that witnesses life's joys and sorrows in the most unfeigned, scrupulous way. In a retrospective manner, the story unfolds chronologically by the main character, Kuhn. The story starts as Kuhn recollects the adolescence and early adulthood of his life in a calm, bleak tone. Kuhn is a shy, remarkably observant youth, whose life has been "tuned to one-key note and directed solely to one star": music. Despite his passion, however, his future as a musician is only in vain. While Kuhn fritters away in depression and self-disillusionment, one day, a life-changing accident happens: one that changes the scale of life on which he lives, and it grants him the concentration and productive insight to express himself through writing his own music. It is a contradictory and rather ironic event, for it deprives him the joy of youth and yet this loss of youthful happiness becomes a path that leads him to become a productive artist. Life's sorrows and anguish transform into his main source of inspiration. One of the songs composed during that period leads him to the encounter with Muoth, the opera singer with an impetuous personality. Their relationship continually grows and deteriorates, as the story becomes increasingly complex with new characters introduced in almost every chapter. The philosophical depth and insight into life and human nature are the trademarks of Hesse, and they do not fail to form the centrepiece of this novel either. The story is really an emotional analysis of the impact of Muoth's impulsive and agonized personality on people around him, how Muoth's egotism and ill-guided passion affect them, eventually resulting in shattering their lives. A remark casually made by Kuhn's father strikingly coincides with Muoth's character: "Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assumes importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives." While the flowery prose often runs over several lines in one sentence, the sensitive writing of Hesse affords to remain clear and elegant. Kuhn's describing the impact of music on himself is one such example: "Oh, music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly only; you steep your being in it; it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to the benumbed!...For each pleasing harmony of clearly combined notes...charms and delights the spirit, and the feeling in intensified with each additional note; it can at times fill the heart with joy and make it tremble with bliss as no other sensual pleasure can do." Besides the admirably detailed descriptions of the characters and striking accounts of emotions, Hesse often exploits similes and metaphors to make the story even more vivid and beautiful; especially when talking about the relationship between Kuhn and Gertrude. As Gertrude comes up to Kuhn "as lightly as a bird and as naturally as a friend", Kuhn is drawn to Gertrude "as an early morning wanderer surrenders himself to the blue sky and the bright dew on the meadows", while the realization of his love for her is described as "the radiance and peace emerged through the raging storm of sound, revealing the light from behind the heavy clouds." Going through a series of fateful changes in his relationships with Muoth, Gertrude, his parents, and many other characters around himself, Kuhn experiences the joy and pain of life. Kuhn learns to plunge into "the swift creative current" in which he emerges to "the free heights of feeling, where pain and bliss are no longer separate from each other." Although the rather abrupt ending gives a feeling of insufficient resolution, the novel keeps its magnetic power to the end, leaving the reader questioning the very meaning of love and life itself. GERTRUDE, with its depth of insight and its beauty of the language, is a truly remarkable piece of literature to be enjoyed by many. Whew, that was long... CONCLUSION: Put on some Schumann and kick back on the couch with this book..it'll take your night away!
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and beautiful
Review: Because of its brevity and utterly compelling story, which unfolds almost forcefully, this makes a genuinely riveting read. At the same time, its sheer sadness and the strength of the main cahracter's struggle with life make it poignant and memorable. Not to be missed
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and beautiful
Review: Because of its brevity and utterly compelling story, which unfolds almost forcefully, this makes a genuinely riveting read. At the same time, its sheer sadness and the strength of the main cahracter's struggle with life make it poignant and memorable. Not to be missed
Rating:
Summary: This is a great book
Review: Gertrude is Hermann Hesse at his most accessible, most believable and most human. It is a simple but moving story for those who have experienced unrequitted love. It also touches the right buttons for those who are forever in search of happiness and who have never been able to find inner calm. Hesse's episodes with suicidal thought (a regular and autobiographical feature of his earlier works) and search for life's meaning are themes which he often searched out in his novels. This piece from 1910 is still has aged well, remains relevent and is very approachable 90 years later.
Rating:
Summary: Hesse connects with the broken hearted....
Review: Hesse tells the story of an emotional, soulful composer (Kuhn) seeking the woman that might end his loneliness and suffering. He finds that woman (Gertrude)only to find that love unrequited. Along the way he seeks solace in his friendships (Muoth) and his creation of an opera that is formulated from his heart. If you've ever loved someone so deeply and emotionally and then discovered by accident you were not loved the same way in return, you will identify with this book.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful story of an unrequited love.
Review: I have been wanting to read a work of Hesse's for a while, yet never found ample time until my summer vacation. It was my aunt who suggested that I read Gertrude and I, for once, am glad to have taken her advice. The book is narrated by a composer, Kuhn, and tells of his love for Gertrude, his friendship with the tempermental opera singer Muoth, and his passion for music. It is an excellent book that reads the way life does. I think the moral would be that one must, in life, take the good with the bad. I especially enjoyed this book because I could dentify with Kuhn's passion for music.
Rating:
Summary: THis is one of the most beautiful novel I 've ead
Review: I read this book when I was 12 years old then I completely forgot what hesse really want to write about . as I failed my first and probably last unrequited love,i could find some consolement from this novel.. it talked about touching,subtle,pure,and innocent love which perhaps most people ignored its value noadays.. anyway,it's a book highly recommended to those who now having love sick and still beieve there are pure love without lust ..
Rating:
Summary: A Note of Caution to All Prospective Readers:
Review: It is all too easy to come away from Gertrude, Hesse's earliest fictional memoir, unchanged. Although all will undoubtedly be touched on some level by at least a few of the poignant, youthful anecdotes with which the novel abounds, one should nevertheless resist the temptation to write it off as another "touching story of humanity."* Beneath the heavy sentimentality and beyond the short-winded elations of men, at the heart of the novel, is the idea that pleasure and pain arise from the same source and are aspects of the same force. With this view, the story of a crippled composer, Kuhn, and his unrequited love for Gertrude takes on an expository tone, delving at points into the very nature of pleasure and pain themselves. With that in mind, enjoy the novel and the experience and take full advantage of the multitude of opportunities Hesse affords you to contemplate the nature of these basic, human concepts. * I quote reviewer "Savygal007" (who apparently maintains the interpretation I caution against)
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