Butterflies An Anthology of Writings

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.