Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings

By Hermann Hesse
Translated from the German by Damion Searls

“One of humanity’s most beautiful love letters to trees.” ―The Marginalian

“Nature frequently brings out our deepest thoughts, but few can express those thoughts better than Hermann Hesse does in this anthology.” —New York Journal of Books

An elegant collection of Hermann Hesse’s essays, poems, and passages on the subject of trees and nature, accompanied by thirty-one of his watercolor illustrations.

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.”

Hardcover 
136 pages | 31 full-color watercolors from Hermann Hesse
Kales Press, 2022
5.3 x 0.7 x 7.4 inches
ISBN 9781737832713     
Anthology, Nature Writing