Demian
talents recognized by someone older than I was. When he called me a
clever rascal the effect was like a sweet, strong wine running through
me. The world lit up in new colors, thoughts came to me as from a
hundred sources, wit and fire blazed up in me. We spoke of masters and
schoolfellows, and I thought we understood one another wonderfully
well. We talked of Greeks and of pagans, and Beck wished absolutely
to draw me out on the subject of women. But on this point I could not
converse. I had no experience, nothing to relate. True, all that I
had felt and imagined was burning within me, but I could not impart
my thoughts, not even under the influence of wine. Beck knew much
more about girls, and I listened to his tales with glowing eyes. The
things I heard were unbelievable. What I should never have conceived
to be possible entered the sphere of commonplace reality and seemed
self-evident. Alphonse Beck, who was perhaps eighteen years old, was
already a man of experiences. Among other things, he told me that
girls liked boys to play the gallant with them, but in general were
too frightened to go any further. You could hope for more success with
women. Women were much cleverer. For instance, there was Mrs. Jaggelt,
who sold pencils and copybooks, who was much easier to deal with. All
that had happened behind the counter in her shop was unprintable in any
book.
I sat on captivated; my head was swimming. To be sure, I could not
exactly have loved Mrs. Jaggelt, but still, it was unheard of. It
seemed as if things happened, at least to older people, of which I had
never dreamed. There was a false ring about it, to be sure, everything
seemed more trivial and commonplace, and did not coincide with my own
ideas about love, but still, it was reality, it was love and adventure,
someone sat next to me who had lived it in experience, to whom it
seemed a matter of course.
Our conversation had reached a lower level, had deteriorated. I was
no longer a clever little fellow, I was just a mere boy listening
to a man. But even then--in comparison with what my life had been
for months and months, this was delicious, this was heaven. Besides,
as I gradually began to realize, all this was forbidden, absolutely
forbidden, everything from sitting in a public house, down to the
subject of our conversation. In any case, I thought I was showing
spirit; I was in revolt.
I can recollect that night with the greatest clearness. We both of us
wended our way home at a late hour under the dimly burning gas lamps
through the cool, damp night, and for the first time in my life I was
drunk. It was not agreeable, it was in the highest degree unpleasant,
but there was a sort of charm about it, a sweetness--it smacked of
orgy and revolt, of spirit and life. Beck bravely took me in hand, and
although he grumbled at me as being a bloody novice, he half carried,
half dragged me home, where, by good fortune, he was able to smuggle us
both through a window which stood open on the ground floor.
But a maddening pang accompanied the sobering up as I painfully awoke
after a short heavy sleep. I sat up in bed and saw that I was still
wearing my shirt. My clothes and shoes lay round about on the floor,
smelling of tobacco and vomit. And between headache, nausea and a
maddening thirst, a picture came before my mind on which I had not
set eyes for many a long day. I saw my home, the house where dwelt my
parents. I saw father and mother, my sisters and the garden. I saw
my peaceful, homely bedroom, the school and the marketplace. Demian
and the confirmation class--and all this was bright, lustrous, all
was wonderful, godly and pure, all that, I realized now, had until
yesterday belonged to me, had waited for me. But now, in this hour, it
was mine no longer, it spurned me and looked upon me with disgust. All
that was loving and intimate, all that I had received from my parents
since the first golden days of my childhood, each kiss mother had given
me, each Christmas, each godly bright Sunday morning there at home,
each flower in the garden, all that was laid waste, I had trampled on
it all with my foot! If the police had come for me then and had bound
me and led me away to the gallows as a desecrator and as the scum of
humanity, I should have acquiesced; should have gone gladly. I would
have found it right and fitting.
That was the state of my feelings. I, who had gone about despising the
world! I, who had been so proud in spirit and who had shared Demian’s
thoughts! So I appeared a filthy pig, to be classed with the scum of
the earth, drunk and befouled, disgusting and common, a dissolute
beast, carried away by abominable instincts. So I appeared, I who came
from those gardens whose bright flowers had been purity and sweet
gentleness, I who had loved Bach’s music and beautiful poetry! I could
still hear, with aversion and disgust, my own laugh, the drunken,
uncontrolled, convulsive and silly laugh which escaped me. That was I!
But in spite of everything there was a certain enjoyment in suffering
these torments. I had lived for so long a blind, dull existence, for
so long had my heart been silent, impoverished and shut up, that
even this self-accusation, this self-aversion, this entirely dreadful
feeling was welcome. At least it was feeling; flowers were flaring up,
emotion was quivering therein. I experienced in the midst of my misery
a confused sensation of liberation, of the approach of spring.
However, as far as outward appearances went, I was going fast down
the hill. The first debauch was soon followed by others. There was
much drinking at school, and other things not in accord with study.
I was among the youngest who carried on in this way, but from being
just tolerated and looked upon as a mere youngster, I soon rose to be
considered as a leader and a star. I was renowned as a daredevil and
could drink with the best. Once again I belonged entirely to the dark
world, to the devil, and I passed in this world for being a splendid
fellow.
But at the same time I was in a pitiful state of mind. I lived in a
whirl of self-destroying debauchery, and while I was looked up to by
my friends as a leader and the devil of a good fellow, as a cursed
witty and spirited drinking companion, my anxious soul was full of
apprehension. I remember on one occasion tears started to my eyes when,
on coming out of a tavern one Sunday morning, I saw children playing
in the street, bright and contented, with freshly combed hair, and
in their Sunday clothes. And while I amused and often terrified my
friends with monstrous cynicisms, as we sat at dirty tables stained
with puddles of beer, in low public houses, I had in my heart a secret,
deep reverence for everything at which I scoffed--inwardly I was
weeping bitterly at the thought of my past life, of my mother, of God.
There is a good reason for the fact that I was never one with my
companions, that I remained lonely even in their midst, that I suffered
in the manner above described. I was a hero of drinking bouts, with
the roughest of them, I was a scoffer after their own heart. I showed
courage and wit in my ideas and in my talks about masters, school,
parents, the church--I listened to their smutty stories unflinchingly
and even ventured one or two myself--but I was never about when my
boon companions went off with girls. I remained behind alone, filled
with an ardent desire for love, a hopeless longing, whereas to judge
from my conversation I must have been a hardened rake. No one was more
vulnerable, no one more chaste than I. And when from time to time I saw
young girls pass by in the town, pretty and clean, bright and charming,
they seemed to me like wonderful, pure dream women, a thousand times
too good and too pure for me. For a long time I could not bring myself
to enter Mrs. Jaggelt’s stationery shop, because I blushed when I saw
her and thought of what Alphonse Beck had told me about her.
The more I realized how different I was from the members of my new
set, how isolated I was in their midst, the less easy was it for that
very reason to break with them. I do not really know whether the
toping and bragging ever caused me much pleasure, and I could never
so accustom myself to hard drinking that I did not feel the painful
consequences after each bout. I was as if coerced into doing this. I
did it because I had to, because I was otherwise absolutely ignorant of
a course to follow, I knew not where to begin. I was afraid of being
long alone. I was frightened of the many tender, chaste, intimate moods
to which I constantly felt myself inclined, I was afraid of the tender
notions of love which so often came to me.
One thing I lacked most of all--a friend. There were two or three
schoolfellows whom I liked very much. But they belonged to the good set
and my vices had for a long time been a secret to no one. They avoided
me. With all I passed for a hopeless gamester under whose feet the very
earth quaked. The masters knew much about me, severe punishments were
several times inflicted on me, my final expulsion from the school was
waited for with more or less certainty. I knew that myself; for a long
time I had ceased to be a good pupil; I got through my work by hook or
by crook, with the feeling that the state of affairs could not last
much longer.
There are many ways by which God can make us feel lonely and lead us
to a consciousness of ourselves. With me it was in this way: it was
like a bad dream, in which I saw myself ostracized, foul and clammy,
creeping restlessly and painfully over broken beer glasses, down an
abominably unclean road. There are such dreams, when you imagine you
have set out to find a beautiful princess, but you stick in stinking
back streets full of rubbish and dirty puddles. So it was with me. In
this scarcely refined way I was destined to become lonely and to put
between myself and my childhood a locked door of Eden over against
which stood merciless sentinels on guard in beaming rays of light. It
was a beginning, an awakening of that homesickness, that longing to
return to my true self.
I was terribly frightened when my father, alarmed by a letter from my
house master, appeared for the first time in St. ---- and faced me
unexpectedly. When he came for the second time, towards the end of that
winter, I was hard and indifferent, I let him heap blame on me, I let
him beg me to think of my mother, I was unmoved. Finally he grew very
angry and said that if I did not turn over a new leaf he would have me
disgraced and chased out of the school, and would have me placed in a
reformatory. Little I cared! When he went away I felt sorry for him,
but he had accomplished nothing; he had found no approach to me, and
for a few moments I felt that it served him right.
I was indifferent as to what might become of me. In my peculiar and
unlovely manner, with my carrying on and my frequenting of public
houses, I was at odds with the world--this was my way of protesting.
I was ruining myself thereby, but what of it? Sometimes the case
presented itself to me in this wise: If the world had no use for such
as me, if there was no better place for us, if there were no higher
duties, then people like myself simply went to the devil. So much the
worse for the world.
The Christmas holidays of that year were exceedingly unpleasant. My
mother was terrified when she saw me again. I had grown taller, and
my thin face looked gray and ravaged by dissipation, with flabby
features and inflamed rings round the eyes. The first indications
of a moustache, and the spectacles which I had but lately taken to
wearing, made me look stranger still. My sisters started back and
giggled when they saw me. It was all very pleasant. Unpleasant was