Demian
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DEMIAN
_By_ HERMANN HESSE
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
Copyright, 1923
by
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
DEMIAN
_The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth_
By HERMANN HESSE
_I wanted only to try to live in obedience to the promptings which
came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?_
In order to tell my story, I must begin far back. If it were possible,
I should have to go back much further still, to the earliest years of
my childhood, and even beyond, to my distant ancestry.
Authors, in writing novels, usually act as if they were God, and could,
by a broadness of perception, comprehend and present any human story as
if God were telling it to Himself without veiling anything, and with
all the essential details. That I cannot do, any more than can the
authors themselves. But I attach more importance to my story than can
any other writer to his: because it is my own, and it is the story of
a human being--not that of an invented, possible, ideal or otherwise,
non-existent creature, but that of a real, unique, living man. What
that is, a real living man, one certainly knows less to-day than ever.
For men are shot down in heaps--men, of whom each one is a precious,
unique experiment of nature. If we were nothing more than individuals,
we could actually be put out of the world entirely with a musket-ball,
and in that case there would be no more sense in relating stories. But
each man is not only himself, he is also the unique, quite special,
and in every case the important and remarkable point where the world’s
phenomena converge, in a certain manner, never again to be repeated.
For that reason the history of everyone is important, eternal, divine.
For that reason every man, so long as he lives at all and carries out
the will of nature, is wonderful and worthy of every attention. In
everyone has the spirit taken shape, in everyone creation suffers, in
everyone is a redeemer crucified.
Few to-day know what man is. Many feel it, and for that reason die the
easier, as I shall die the easier, when I have finished my story.
I must not call myself one who knows. I was a seeker and am still,
but I seek no more in the stars or in books; I am beginning to listen
to the promptings of those instincts which are coursing in my very
blood. My story is not pleasant, it is not sweet and harmonious like
the fictitious stories. It smacks of nonsense and perplexity, of
madness and dreams, like the lives of all men who do not wish to delude
themselves any longer.
The life of everyone is a way to himself, the search for a road,
the indication of a path. No man has ever yet attained to
self-realization; yet he strives thereafter, one ploddingly, another
with less effort, each as best he can. Each one carries the remains
of his birth, slime and eggshells of a primeval world, with him to
the end. Many a one will remain a frog, a lizard, an ant. Many a one
is top-part man and bottom-part fish. But everyone is a projection
of nature into manhood. To us all the same origin is common, our
mothers--we all come out of the womb. But each of us--an experiment,
one of nature’s litter, strives after his own ends. We can understand
one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.
CHAPTER ONE
TWO WORLDS
I will begin my story with an event of the time when I was ten or
eleven years old and went to the Latin school of our little town. Much
of the old-time fragrance is wafted back to me, but my sensations
are not unmixed, as I pass in review my memories--dark streets and
bright houses and towers, the striking of clocks and the features of
men, comfortable and homely rooms, rooms full of secrecy and dread of
ghosts. I sense again the atmosphere of cosy warmth, of rabbits and
servant-girls, of household remedies and dried fruit. Two worlds passed
there one through the other. From two poles came forth day and night.
The one world was my home, but it was even narrower than that, for it
really comprised only my parents. This world was for the most part
very well known to me; it meant mother and father, love and severity,
good example and school. It was a world of subdued lustre, of clarity
and cleanliness; here were tender friendly words, washed hands, clean
clothes and good manners. Here the morning hymn was sung, and Christmas
was kept.
In this world were straight lines and paths which led into the future;
here were duty and guilt, evil conscience and confession, pardon and
good resolutions, love and adoration, Bible texts and wisdom. To this
world our future had to belong, it had to be crystal-pure, beautiful
and well ordered.
The other world, however, began right in the midst of our own
household, and was entirely different, had another odor, another
manner of speech and made different promises and demands. In this
second world were servant-girls and workmen, ghost stories and breath
of scandal. There was a gaily colored flood of monstrous, tempting,
terrible, enigmatical goings-on, things such as the slaughter house and
prison, drunken men and scolding women, cows in birth-throes, plunging
horses, tales of burglaries, murders, suicides. All these beautiful and
dreadful, wild and cruel things were round about, in the next street,
in the next house. Policemen and tramps passed to and fro, drunken
men beat their wives, crowds of young girls flowed out of factories
in the evening, old women were able to bewitch you and make you ill,
robbers dwelt in the wood, incendiaries were rounded up by mounted
policemen--everywhere seethed and reeked this second, passionate world,
everywhere, except in our rooms, where mother and father were. And
that was a good thing. It was wonderful that here in our house there
were peace, order and repose, duty and a good conscience, pardon and
love--and wonderful that there were also all the other things, all
that was loud and shrill, sinister and violent, yet from which one
could escape with one bound to mother.
And the oddest thing was, how closely the two worlds bordered each
other, how near they both were! For instance, our servant Lina, as
she sat by the sitting-room door at evening prayers, and sang the
hymn with her bright voice, her freshly washed hands laid on her
smoothed-out apron, belonged absolutely to father and mother, to us,
to what was bright and proper. Immediately after, in the kitchen or in
the woodshed, when she was telling me the tale of the headless dwarf,
or when she quarreled with the women of the neighborhood in the little
butcher’s shop, then she was another person, belonged to the other
world, and was enveloped in mystery. It was the same with everything
and everyone, especially with myself. To be sure, I belonged to the
bright, respectable world, I was my parents’ child, but the other
world was present in everything I saw and heard, and I also lived in
it, although it was often strange and foreign to me, although one had
there regularly a bad conscience and anxiety. Sometimes I even liked
to live in the forbidden world best, and often the homecoming into the
brightness--however necessary and good it might be--seemed almost like
a return to something less beautiful, to something more uninteresting
and desolate. At times I realized this: my aim in life was to grow
up like my father and mother, as bright and pure, as systematic and
superior. But the road to attainment was long, you had to go to school
and study and pass tests and examinations. The road led past the other
dark world and through it, and it was not improbable that you would
remain there and be buried in it. There were stories of prodigal sons
to whom that had happened--I was passionately fond of reading them.
There the return home to father and to the respectable world was always
so liberating and so sublime, I quite felt that this alone was right
and good and desirable. But still that part of the stories which dealt
with the wicked and profligate was by far the most alluring, and if one
had been allowed to acknowledge it openly, it was really often a great
pity that the prodigal repented and was redeemed. But one did not say
that, nor did one actually think it. It was only present somehow or
other as a presentiment or a possibility, deep down in one’s feelings.
When I pictured the devil to myself, I could quite well imagine him
down below in the street, openly or in disguise, or at the annual fair
or in the public house, but I could never imagine him with us at home.
My sisters also belonged to the bright world. It often seemed to me
that they approached more nearly to father and mother; that they were
better and nicer mannered than myself, without so many faults. They had
their failings, they were naughty, but that did not seem to me to be
deep-rooted. It was not the same as for me, for whom the contact with
evil was strong and painful, and the dark world so much nearer. My
sisters, like my parents, were to be treated with regard and respect.
If you had had a quarrel with them, your own conscience accused you
afterwards as the wrongdoer and the cause of the squabble, as the
one who had to beg pardon. For in opposing my sisters I offended my
parents, the representatives of goodness and law. There were secrets
which I would much sooner have shared with the most depraved street
urchins than with my sisters. On good, bright days when I had a good
conscience, it was often delightful to play with my sisters, to be
gentle and nice to them, and to see myself under a halo of goodness.
That was how it must be if you were an angel! That was the most sublime
thing we knew, to be an angel, surrounded by sweet sounds and fragrance
like Christmas and happiness. But, oh, how seldom were such days and
hours perfect! Often when we were playing one of the nice, harmless,
proper games I was so vehement and impetuous, and I so annoyed my
sisters that we quarreled and were unhappy. Then when I was carried
away by anger I did and said things, the wickedness of which I felt
deep and burning within me, even while I was doing and saying them.
Then came sad, dark hours of remorse and contrition, the painful moment
when I begged pardon, then again a beam of light, a peaceful, grateful
happiness without discord, for minutes or hours.
I used to go to the Latin school. The sons of the mayor and of the head
forester were in my class and sometimes used to come to our house. They
were wild boys, but still they belonged to the world of goodness and of
propriety. In spite of that I had close relations with neighbors’ boys,
children of the public school, whom in general we despised. With one of
these I must begin my story.
One half-holiday--I was little more than ten at the time--I went
out with two boys of the neighborhood. A public-school boy of about
thirteen years joined our party; he was bigger than we were, a coarse
and robust fellow, the son of a tailor. His father was a drunkard, and
the whole family had a bad reputation. I knew Frank Kromer well, I
was afraid of him, and was very much displeased when he joined us. He
had already acquired manly ways, and imitated the gait and manner of
speech of the young factory hands. Under his leadership we stepped down
to the bank of the stream and hid ourselves from the world under the
first arch of the bridge. The little bank between the vaulted bridge
wall and the sluggishly flowing water was composed of nothing but