Siddhartha Becomes a Merchant

Siddhartha Becomes a Merchant is the pivotal phase in which the former Samana, having left the Buddha and his own ascetic past, deliberately enters the world of commerce, wealth, and sensual pleasure. This period, which occupies the middle portion of Hermann Hesse's novel, is not a detour but a necessary descent: Siddhartha must fully immerse himself in the life of the "childlike people"—their desires, their greed, their suffering—in order to later transcend it. His time as a merchant, under the tutelage of the wealthy Kamaswami and alongside the courtesan Kamala, transforms him from a detached observer into a man deeply entangled in the very Sansara he once scorned, setting the stage for his eventual spiritual crisis and rebirth.

Entry into the World of Commerce

Siddhartha's transition into merchant life is orchestrated by Kamala, who directs him to Kamaswami, the richest merchant in the city. Arriving at Kamaswami's rich house, Siddhartha is led between precious carpets into a chamber where he awaits the master. Kamaswami, a swiftly moving man with very gray hair, intelligent, cautious eyes, and a greedy mouth, immediately questions the former Samana's suitability for trade, asking if he has become destitute. Siddhartha replies that he is without possessions but voluntarily so, and therefore not destitute. When pressed on what he can give, Siddhartha states his three core abilities: "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." He explains that fasting is useful because when a person has nothing to eat, he can wait calmly without impatience, allowing hunger to besiege him while he laughs about it. Impressed, Kamaswami tests Siddhartha's literacy by handing him a scroll with a sales-contract, which Siddhartha reads aloud. He then writes on a piece of paper: "Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better." Kamaswami praises his writing and invites him to live in his house. From then on, Siddhartha is provided with clothes, shoes, and a daily bath; he eats only once a day, neither meat nor wine. He learns about trade, merchandise, storage-rooms, and calculations, but he never becomes subservient to the merchant, forcing Kamaswami to treat him as an equal, or even more than an equal.

The Detached Merchant

Siddhartha approaches business with a fundamental detachment that baffles and frustrates Kamaswami. He looks upon all commercial affairs as if they were a game, the rules of which he learns precisely, but whose contents do not touch his heart. Kamaswami observes to a friend that Siddhartha is no proper merchant and will never be one, for there is never any passion in his soul when he conducts business. Yet he possesses a mysterious quality—whether a good star of his birth, magic, or something learned among the Samanas—that makes success come to him all by itself. He is never afraid of failure, never upset by a loss. Following a friend's advice, Kamaswami offers Siddhartha a third of the profits but also liability for a third of the losses, hoping to make him more zealous. Siddhartha cares little: when he makes a profit, he accepts it with equanimity; when he makes losses, he laughs and says, "Well, look at this, so this one turned out badly!" On one occasion, he travels to a village to buy a large harvest of rice, but finds it already sold to another merchant. Instead of returning immediately, he stays for several days, treating the farmers to drink, giving copper-coins to their children, joining a wedding celebration, and returning extremely satisfied. Kamaswami scolds him for wasting time and money, but Siddhartha replies that he has gotten to know many kinds of people, received kindness and trust, and found friendship. He tells Kamaswami that if he had been the merchant, he would have returned annoyed and in a hurry, losing time and money; instead, he has had good days, learned, had joy, and neither harmed himself nor others by annoyance and hastiness. When Kamaswami later claims that Siddhartha learned everything he knows from him, Siddhartha retorts: "What I've learned from you is how much a basket of fish costs and how much interests may be charged on loaned money. These are your areas of expertise. I haven't learned to think from you, my dear Kamaswami, you ought to be the one seeking to learn from me."

The Life of Sensual Pleasure

While the business provides the means, the true purpose of Siddhartha's worldly life is found with Kamala. Daily, at the hour appointed by her, he visits the beautiful courtesan, wearing pretty clothes and fine shoes, and soon brings her gifts. From her red, smart mouth and tender, supple hand, he learns the art of love thoroughly, starting with the basics. She teaches him that pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, however small, has its secret that brings happiness to those who know it and unleash it. She teaches that lovers must not part without one admiring the other, without being just as defeated as they have been victorious, so that neither feels fed up or bored. Siddhartha becomes her student, her lover, her friend, and it is here, with Kamala, that the worth and purpose of his present life resides, not with the business of Kamaswami. Kamala recognizes that despite his immersion in worldly pleasures, Siddhartha remains fundamentally a Samana at heart. She tells him thoughtfully, "You are the best lover I ever saw. You're stronger than others, more supple, more willing. You've learned my art well, Siddhartha. At some time, when I'll be older, I'd want to bear your child. And yet, my dear, you've remained a Samana, and yet you do not love me, you love nobody." Siddhartha agrees, saying that people like them—those who practice love as a craft—cannot love; only the childlike people can, and that is their secret.

The Gradual Corruption and the Game of Dice

Over the years, Siddhartha's detachment slowly erodes. He learns to trade, to use his power over people, to enjoy himself with a woman, to wear beautiful clothes, to give orders to servants, to bathe in perfumed waters. He learns to eat tenderly prepared food—fish, meat, poultry, spices, sweets—and to drink wine that causes sloth and forgetfulness. He learns to play with dice and on a chess-board, to watch dancing girls, to be carried in a sedan-chair, to sleep on a soft bed. Yet he still feels different from and superior to the others, watching them with mocking disdain. But slowly, as the harvest seasons and rainy seasons pass, his mockery becomes more tired, his superiority more quiet. He begins to assume something of the childlike people's ways—their childlikeness and fearfulness—and he envies them for the importance they attach to their lives, the passion in their joys and fears, the sweet happiness of being constantly in love. But he cannot learn this joy; instead, he learns the unpleasant things: he stays in bed late, feels unable to think and tired, becomes angry and impatient with Kamaswami's worries, laughs too loud when he loses at dice. His face, once smart and spiritual, rarely laughs and assumes the features of discontent, sickliness, ill-humor, sloth, and lack of love. The disease of the soul that rich people have grabs hold of him. The bright, reliable voice inside him that had guided him in his best times becomes silent. He is captured by the world, by lust, covetousness, sloth, and finally by greed—the vice he had once most despised. Property, possessions, and riches become a shackle and a burden. He begins to play dice for money and precious things with increasing rage and passion, becoming a feared gambler who stakes high and audaciously. He plays due to a pain in his heart; losing and wasting his wretched money brings him an angry joy, a way to demonstrate his disdain for wealth. He gambles with high stakes and mercilessly, hating himself, mocking himself, winning thousands, throwing away thousands, losing money, losing jewelry, losing a house in the country, winning again, losing again. The fear he feels while rolling the dice—the terrible, petrifying fear of losing high stakes—he loves and seeks to renew, increase, and heighten, for in this feeling alone he still finds something like happiness, intoxication, an elevated form of life in the midst of his saturated, lukewarm, dull existence. After each big loss, he pursues trade more zealously, forces his debtors more strictly, to continue gambling and squandering. He loses his calmness, his patience, his kindness towards beggars, his disposition for giving. He who gambled away tens of thousands at one roll of the dice and laughed becomes more strict and petty in business, occasionally dreaming at night about money. He flees from this ugly spell into new games, into numbing his mind with sex and wine, and from there back into the urge to pile up possessions, running in a pointless cycle, growing tired, growing old, growing ill.

The End of the Game

The merchant phase culminates in a crisis of disgust. Siddhartha's soul has kept turning the wheel of asceticism and thinking for a long time, but slowly it turns hesitantly and is close to coming to a standstill. The world and sloth have entered his soul like humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and making it rot. He realizes that the game is over, that he cannot play it any longer. Shivers run over his body; inside him, something has died. He leaves his garden, his city, and never comes back. Looking back, he later reflects that he had boasted to Kamala of three noble and undefeatable feats: fasting, waiting, and thinking. These had been his possession, his power and strength, his solid staff. But now, none of them is his any more. For the most wretched things—sensual lust, the good life, riches—he has given them up. He has become a childlike person, starting again at the beginning, void and naked and stupid. Yet he feels a great urge to laugh about himself and about this strange, foolish world. The descent into commerce and sensuality, he comes to understand, was necessary: he had to pass through stupidity, vices, errors, disgust, disappointments, and woe to become a child again and to be able to start over. He had to sin to be able to live again. The merchant phase is thus not a fall from grace but a crucial, painful education that strips away his arrogance and prepares him for the wisdom of the river.