»I have always had a connection with butterflies and other fleeting and ephemeral beauties, while I have never succeeded in maintaining permanent, committed and so-called solid relationships,« writes Hermann Hesse in a letter from 1926. This preference, occasionally resembling an elective affinity, for »flowers and butterflies, / That are of everlasting things / a fleeting allegory« – as he says in one of his poems, has left its mark on Hesse’s entire oeuvre. This volume gathers the most alluring of his stories, recollections, contemplations and poems on butterflies.
