Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature

Before we begin: I know the Dick Allen Research Department is Dayn Perry’s domain, almost exclusively, but I’ve only ever wanted to make Dayn Perry proud, and Carson Cistulli happy.

Let us begin: In which the Royal We insert Dick Allen’s name into various works representative of the Western Canon, thus adding to those various works the patina of blessedness.

Today’s episode: Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha,” the lyrical tale of the lifelong spiritual journey of an Indian man during the time of the Buddha …

While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Dick Allen was listening
with a quiet face, Dick Allen’s listening gave Siddhartha a stronger
sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from
his counterpart. To show his wound to this listener was the same as
bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the
river. While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,
Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Dick Allen, no
longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,
that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,
that he was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha stopped thinking
of himself and his wound, this realisation of Dick Allen’s changed
character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered
into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Dick Allen had already been like
this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite
recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
He felt, that he was now seeing old Dick Allen as the people see the
gods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding his
farewell to Dick Allen. Thorough all this, he talked incessantly.

This has been the latest episode of Inserting Dick Allen’s Name Into Works of Literature.