From-death-to-birth

Life and death are two sides of human existence. Pay attention to the death is to show better concerns for life. Two world wars caused enormous disasters in the 20th century, people losing belief, spirit falling apart.The whole culture is collapsing, Europe is moving towards downfall, the mankind is facing the great predicament of existence, and the death is threatening people's daily life. In the face of all these, writers, as the prophet and initiator of human spirit, regard death as the vein of their creative work and as the focus of their caring for art, in order to understand the situation of the mankind through death, question the meaning of the life, and demonstrate profound caring for reality. Hesse is exactly such a writer. Besides, the positive meaning of Hesse's work is that he not only makes great efforts to arouse reader's introspection of reality with the death in his creative work, but also contains the inherent spirit of surmounting in his death view -not merely in confronting death with transcendental attitude, but also in opening up a way of hope that leads to survival in the thistles and thorns of the death.As for such a writer who shows great positive meaning and spirit of caring for reality, Hesse has been paid great attention to in the west world, but he was ignored in the critical circles of our country.There were few research and criticism on him, not to mention the exclusive discussion of the theme of death he created. This paper probes into the connotation and expression of the death in Hesse's novels from two aspects of contents and forms, and discusses the transcendental spirit of death consciousness, based on the theories of death philosophy and death aesthtics.