Fragment from The Youth

Hesse's Fragment aus der Jugendzeit ("Fragment from the Youth" or "from the Time of Youthfulness"), written circa 1907, was first published within the pages of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a Swiss literary journal. This short prose piece (essentially an autobiographical sketch of youth) originated as the revised first chapter of an early draft of Hesse's novel Gertrud. Its original German text was not included in any of Hesse's books at the time, though the story was later reprinted in collect...