An Education in Happiness: The Lessons of Hesse and Tagore

Happiness "is neither a privilege of the few, nor a fleeting state of mind: it is hidden behind a door that every person can open once they have found it, at the end of an arduous journey of self-discovery." The two Nobel Prize-winning writers Rabindranath Tagore and Hermann Hesse are arguably very different: one comes to us from the core of Indian culture, the other from the very heart of Old Europe; the former is an eternal wanderer, the latter a determined armchair traveller. Still, there are extraordinary affinities between their works, and they both understood that the path to happiness is paved with small acts and simple notions. Flavia Arzeni’s book offers us an oasis of stability and calm in which we can find the answers to our fundamental concerns about life and happiness.