赫尔曼·黑塞是一位风格独特、充满张力的思辨作家。二十世纪上半叶，随着西方人文危机爆发，他本人亦陷入生存与精神危机，由此引发关于存在意义、主体地位和生命价值的写作与思考，并在结构反复和观念深化中，呈现三个关键主题：自我、自由和游戏。这三个主题尤其显见于黑塞成熟时期主要作品。

本文以黑塞成熟期四部关键作品为线索，以与作品或作者切实相关的历史化思想传承和现实性思想交锋为参照，以自我、自由和游戏为概念目标，考察黑塞作品的文脉来源与理论位置，并探赜个案研究之于存在意蕴的启示限度。其中，文脉来源包括德国古典哲学、浪漫主义美学、非理性主义思潮；现实影响包括存在探索、精神分析和文坛交往。在这个基础上，本文旨为理解三大主题及共通的存在问题提供历史意识与观念镜像。

本文共分五章，前四章分别锁定黑塞二十世纪前四十年四部代表作，历史上分别对应一战、魏玛危机、纳粹集势和二战，内容上分别聚焦自我拯救、存在探索、艺术升华和对立融合。四章层层递进，从自我弃绝、自我认识、自由意志至游戏融通。第五章打开现实维度，从文本到文人交往，从文人交往到思想分歧，犹如一条理论通往现实的小径，与前四章形成必要延展与对照。

第一章以《克林索尔的最后夏天》自我绝弃为主题，探索尼采思想和东方文化之于黑塞书写自我拯救的精神限度。第二章以《悉达多》自我认识为主题，并以海德格尔同时期、同类型，以宗教为“脚手架”的存在议题为参照，辨析存在主体地位和存在路径可能。第三章以《纳齐斯与戈德蒙》自性升华为主题，且结合黑塞与荣格就弗洛伊德“升华”概念产生的分歧，叩问自我立法与非我立法之异。第四章以《玻璃球游戏》里西方思想史概述为基本背景，在思想历史长轴中展开主题分析，考察“游戏”综合融通的效力，并对前三章自我、自由议题进行必要的理论深化与思想回望。第五章以T. S. 艾略特在《荒原》中对黑塞《混沌一瞥》的参引，为阐释黑塞自我意识、自由意志和游戏融通打开新维度、新视野。相比之下，第四章从黑塞晚年巨著《玻璃球游戏》出发，对本文聚焦的三大主题做出综合，因此体量最大；第五章则以他者为镜，拉开阐释距离，对黑塞观念的现实有效性提出批判。因此，本文结构也以张力之势展开，贴合所述议题规律，呈现对立之美，即游戏愿景。

本文认为，自我、自由和游戏这三个关键主题，在黑塞作品里始终呈现两难境地。黑塞渴望尼采意义上的自我立法，却又受宗教影响规约于非我权威和不可知力；探索自由，却无法在浪漫派幻想的无限自由和古典派倡导的有限自由中找到平衡，无法解释康德意义上法则与自由的根茎关系；希望以游戏融通个人、时代和西方思想里种种对立要素与对立精神，却在漫扩无垠、无所不包，且缺乏必要辨析的游戏概念里，为融通描绘了一张浪漫特色浓郁的观念蓝图，使其本质上成为一场想象力的游戏。在这个意义上，黑塞与同时代思想家，如海德格尔、弗洛伊德、荣格及艾略特的思想交锋或现实交往，犹如必然盘错交叉的应对西方现代虚无的不同方案路径。

Hermann Hesse is a writer with distinctive characteristics, unique style and full of tension elements in the western literary world. In the first half of the 20th century, he was deeply involved in the crisis of existence and humanity, which led to the discussion of the value of life, the meaning of existence, the status of subject and free will. In the process of structural repetition and conceptual deepening, he presented three key themes: Self (Selb), Freedom (Freiheit) and Game (Spiel). These three themes are particularly present in Hermann Hesse’s mature works.

This paper takes four major works of Hesse’s mature period as the clue, takes historical inheritances and realistic clashes related to Hesse and his works as the reference, takes Self, Freedom and Game as the conceptual goals, explores the significance of ideological history of Hesse’s works, and deeply explores the enlightenment limit of the case study to the existential sense. The research objective of this paper is to provide conceptual mirror and ideological reference for the understanding of common issues by discussing the ideological value of Hesse’s works in the long axis of history. The common issues are how to grasp the sense of Self, how to achieve the Free Will, and how to keep balance in the spirit of the Game.

This paper is divided into five chapters. The first four chapters focus on the four representative works of Hesse from the 1910s to 1940s, which correspond to the First World War, the crisis of the Weimar Republic, the rise of Fascism and the Second World War respectively in history. In terms of content, they respectively focus on self-salvation, existential value, artistic sublimation and opposite fusion. The fifth chapter opens the realistic dimension of the text, from the text to the communication of the literati, and then from the communication of the literati to the ideological differences, and finally forms the necessary criticism of the first four chapters.

The first chapter explores the spiritual limits of Nietzsche’s thought and Eastern traditional culture to Hesse’s self-salvation with the theme of self-rendition in Klingsors letzter Sommer. The second chapter takes Siddhartha’s self-knowledge as the theme, and Heidegger’s existential issues of the same period and type, with religion as the “scaffolding”, to distinguish the status of the subject of existence and the possibility of the path of existence. The third chapter takes the artistic sublimation of Narzi? und Goldmund as the theme, and combines the differences between Hesse and Jung on Freud’s concept of “sublimation” to inquire about the differences of self-identity between self-legislating and non-self-legislating. The fourth chapter is based on the history of Western thought of Das Glasperlenspiel, and analyzes many opposing elements in the long axis of history, inspects the effectiveness of the integration of Game, and makes necessary retrospection of the tension space in the above three chapters. The fifth chapter, based on T. S. Eliot’s reference to Hesse’s Blick ins Chaos: Drei Aufs?tze in The Waste Land, opens a new dimension and a new vision for the interpretation of Hesse’s self-consciousness, free will and game integration. The fourth chapter starts from Hesse’s great works in his late years and synthesizes the significance of his works and the issues of ideological history. The fifth chapter opens up the distance of interpretation and criticizes the realistic validity of Hesse’s ideas. Therefore, the structure of this paper is also developed with tension, which fits into the law of the issue and presents the beauty of the opposition, namely the vision of the Game.

This paper argues that Self, Freedom and Game present a constant dilemma in Hesse’s works. He desires to legislate for Self, but the Self is subject to authority and unknowable power. He explores freedom, but he could not find a balance between the absolute freedom of the Romantic fantasy and the limited freedom advocated by the Classical school, and he could not explain the relationship between law and freedom in the Kantian sense. He hopes to integrate all kinds of opposing elements and spirit in individuals, times and western thought through the Games. However, he draws a conceptual blueprint in Schelling’s sense, which is extensive, all-inclusive and lacks necessary discrimination, making it essentially the Game of imagination. Thus, the interaction of Hesse and his contemporary thinkers, such as Heidegger, Freud, Jung, and T. S. Eliot, is like the inevitable crossroads of different solutions to the modern nihilism.