Interpretation of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse Siddhartha by Herman Hesse is an excellent book and is written with the spirit of mystery and wonder that also permeates most Buddhist teachings.


    At the end of the book, Siddhartha has attained what appears to be Nirvana.  He is sitting with his friend Govinda.
  Govinda has spent the entirety of his adult life seeking Nirvana, and he is lamenting about this to Siddhartha; practically begging for some guidance and teaching.
  Siddhartha, feeling great compassion for his friend's suffering, instructs him to kiss his [Siddhartha's] forehead.  Govinda finds this odd, but is compelled by a great love of Siddhartha to accept.  As he does this; he attains some kind of enlightenment -  and though it's always seemed to me to be less 'significant' or permanent than what Siddhartha has attained - it is still a profound and magical moment of transformation.


Does anyone know what Hesse intended us to derive from this sequence? Specifically, has he spoken upon this issue, or written about it? It's always been completely mysterious to me.

I'm looking for something more solid than unverified speculation.  I'm not opposed to opinions, but I'd like that any opinion be informed by some source - either Hesse, or another writing about Hesse's works.
The paper titled "Between reverence and revolt:
Hesse and the two faces of religion" suggests that Hesse was primarily a (Christian) Protestant.

It says for example that in his 1921 diary he wrote:


  “And now the whole of Buddhism increasingly appears to me to be
  a kind of Indian Reformation, an exact equivalent of the Christian one”


So far as I know, a primary Protestant belief is that people are saved by God (maybe by their love of God and/or by God's love): a Christian's duty (to God) is faith and obediance, which God rewards with salvation (perhaps miraculous salvation).

I think it's also (especially in contrast with pre-Reformation Catholicism) something to do with a personal relationship, unmediated by clergy (and perhaps by ritual), between each person and God.

I guess that influences this sentence:


   But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him.


You wrote, " It's always been completely mysterious to me." Perhaps that's because it's so Christian-influenced.