Demian
or of Demian, to the cross-bar of the window and of gazing at it,
while the evening sun was shining through. The whole outline of the
face disappeared, but the reddish ringed eyes, the brightness of the
forehead and the strong red mouth glowed deeply and wildly from the
surface of the paper. I sat opposite it for a long time, even after the
light had died away. And by degrees the feeling came to me that this
was not Beatrice or Demian but--myself. The picture did not resemble
me--it was not meant to, I felt--but there was that in it which seemed
to be made up of my life, something of my inner self, of my fate or of
my dæmon. My friend would look like that, if I ever found another. My
mistress would look like that, if ever I had one. My life and death
would be like that. It had the ring and rhythm of my fate.
In those weeks I had begun to read a book which made a deeper
impression on me than anything I had read before. Even in later years
I have seldom chanced upon books which have made such a strong appeal
to me, except perhaps those of Nietzsche. It was a volume of Novalis,
containing letters and apothegms. There was much that I did not
understand. But the book captivated me and occupied my thoughts to an
extraordinary degree. One of the aphorisms now occurred to me. I wrote
it with a pen under the picture: “Fate and soul are the terms of one
conception.” That I now understood.
I frequently used to meet the girl I called Beatrice. I felt no emotion
on seeing her, but I was often sensible of a harmony of sentiment,
which seemed to say: we are connected, or rather, not you and I, but
your picture and I; you are a part of my destiny.
* * * * *
My longing for Max Demian was again eager. I had had no news of him
for several years. On one occasion only I had met him in the holidays.
I see now that I have failed to mention this short meeting in my
narrative, and I see that this was owing to shame and self-conceit on
my part. I must make up for it now.
So then, once in the holidays, I was parading my somewhat tired, blasé
self through the town. As I was sauntering along, swinging my stick and
examining the old, unchanged features of the bourgeois Philistines whom
I despised, I met my one-time friend. Scarcely had I caught sight of
him when I started involuntarily. With lightning rapidity my thoughts
were carried back to Frank Kromer. I hoped and prayed Demian had really
forgotten the story! It was so disagreeable to be under this obligation
to him--simply owing to a silly, childish affair--still, I was under an
obligation....
He seemed to be waiting to see whether I would greet him. I did, as
calmly as possible under the circumstances, and he gave me his hand.
That was indeed his old handshake! So strong, warm and yet cool, so
manly!
He looked me attentively in the face and said: “You’ve grown a lot,
Sinclair.” He himself seemed quite unchanged, just as old, just as
young as ever.
He proposed we should go for a walk, and we talked of secondary
matters, not of the past. I remembered that I had written to him
several times, without having received an answer. I hoped he had
forgotten this as well, those silly, silly letters. He made no mention
of them.
At that time there was no Beatrice and no picture, I was still in the
period of my dissipation. Outside the town I invited him to come with
me into an inn. He came. With much ostentation I ordered a bottle
of wine and filled a couple of glasses. I clinked glasses with him,
showing him how conversant I was with student drinking customs, and I
emptied my first glass at a gulp.
“Do you frequent public houses often?” he asked me.
“Oh yes,” I said with a drawl, “what else is there to do? It’s
certainly more amusing than anything else; after all.”
“You think so? Perhaps. It may be so. There’s certainly something very
pleasing about it--intoxication, bacchanalian orgies! But I find, with
most people who frequent public houses, this sense of _abandon_
is lost. It seems to me there is something typically Philistine,
bourgeois, in the public house habit. Of course, for just one night,
with burning torches, to have a proper orgy and drunken revel. But
to do the same thing over and over again, drinking one glass after
another--that’s hardly the real thing. Can you imagine Faust sitting
evening after evening drinking at the same table?”
I drank, and looked at him with some enmity.
“Yes, but everyone isn’t a Faust,” I said curtly.
He looked at me with a somewhat surprised air.
Then he laughed, in his old superior way. “What’s the good of
quarreling about it? In any case the life of a toper, of a libertine,
is, I imagine, more exciting than that of a blameless citizen. And
then--I have read it somewhere--the life of a profligate is one of
the best preparations for a mystic. There are always such people as
Saint Augustine, who become seers. Before, he was a sort of rake and
profligate.”
I was distrustful and wished by no means to let him take a superior
attitude towards me. So I said, with a blasé air: “Well, everyone
according to his taste! I haven’t the slightest intention of doing
that, becoming a seer or anything.”
Demian flashed a glance at me from half-closed eyes.
“My dear Sinclair,” he said slowly, “it wasn’t my intention to hurt
your feelings. Besides--neither of us knows to what end you drink.
There is that in you, which orders your life for you, and which knows
why you are doing it. It is good to realize this; there is someone in
us who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than
we do ourselves. But excuse me, I must go home.”
We did not linger over our leave-taking. I remained seated, very
dejected, and emptied the bottle. I found, when I got up to go, that
Demian had already paid for it. That made me more angry still.
* * * * *
This little event recurred to my thoughts, which were full of Demian.
And the words he had spoken in the inn came back to my mind, retaining
all their old freshness and significance: “It is good to know there is
one in us who knows everything!”
I looked at the picture hanging in the window, now quite dark. The
eyes glowed still. It was Demian’s look. On it was the look of the one
inside me, who knows all.
Oh, how I longed for Demian! I knew nothing of his whereabouts, for me
he was unattainable. I knew only that he was supposed to be studying
somewhere or other, and that after the conclusion of his school career
his mother had left the town.
I called up in my mind all my reminiscences of Max Demian, from the
Kromer affair onwards. A great deal he had formerly said came back
to me. To-day everything still had a meaning, all was of real concern
to me! And what he had said at our last, not very agreeable, meeting,
about the libertine and the saint, suddenly crossed my mind. Was it not
just so with me? Had I not lived in filth and drunkenness, my senses
blunted by dissipation, until a new life impulse, the direct contrary
of the old, awoke in me, namely the desire for purity, the longing to
be saintly?
So I went on, from reminiscence to reminiscence. Night had long since
fallen, and outside it was raining. In recollection, as well, I heard
it rain; it was the hour under the chestnut trees when he first
questioned me concerning Frank Kromer, so guessing my first secrets.
One after another these souvenirs came to mind, conversations on the
way to school, the confirmation class. And then I recollected my very
first meeting with Max Demian. What had we been talking about? I could
not for the moment recollect, but I took my time, I thought deeply. At
last I remembered. We were standing in front of our house; after he
had imparted to me his opinion about Cain. Then he spoke to me about
the old, almost obliterated crest which stood over the door, in the
keystone which widened as it got higher. He said it interested him and
that one ought not to let such things escape one’s notice.
That night I dreamt of Demian and of the crest. It changed perpetually,
now Demian held it in his hands, now it was small and grey, now very
large and multicolored, but he explained to me that it was always one
and the same. But at last he forced me to eat the crest. As I swallowed
it, I felt with terror that the bird on the crest was alive inside me,
my stomach was swollen and the bird was beginning to consume me. With
the fear of death upon me, I commenced to struggle. Then I woke up.
I felt relieved. It was the middle of the night, and I heard the rain
blowing into the room. I got up to close the window; and in doing
so trod on a bright object which lay on the floor. In the morning I
found it was my painting. It was lying there in the wet and had rolled
itself up. In order to dry it I stretched it out between two sheets of
blotting paper and placed it under a heavy book. When I looked at it
the next day it was dry. But it had changed. The red mouth had paled
and had become smaller. Now it was exactly Demian’s mouth.
I now began to paint a new picture, namely, that of the bird on the
crest. I could not recollect any more what it really looked like,
neither could I form a clear image of the whole, as even if one stood
directly in front of our door, the crest was scarcely recognizable, it
was so old and had several times been painted over. The bird stood or
sat on something, perhaps on a flower, or on a basket or nest, or on a
tree-top. I did not bother about that, and began with the part I could
picture clearly. In answer to a confused prompting, I began straight
away with strong colors; on my paper the head of the bird was golden
yellow. I continued my work at intervals, when I was in the mood for
it, and after a few days the thing was completed.
Now it was a bird of prey, with a sharp, bold hawk’s head. The lower
half of the body was fixed in a dark terrestrial globe, out of which
it was working to escape, as if out of a giant egg. The background was
sky-blue. The longer I gazed at the sheet, the more it seemed to me
this was the colored crest which I had visualized in my dream.
It would not have been possible for me to have written a letter to
Demian, even if I had known where to send it. But I decided, acting
under a suggestion which came to me in a dreamy sort of way, as under
all my promptings of that period, to send him the picture with the
hawk--whether it would reach him or not. I wrote nothing thereon, not
even my name. I carefully cut the border, bought a large paper cover
and wrote on it my friend’s former address. Then I sent it off.
The approach of an examination caused me to work harder than usual
in school. The masters had again received me into grace, since I had
suddenly changed my vile conduct. I was not, even now, by any means a
good pupil, but neither I nor anyone else seemed to remember that, half
a year before, my expulsion from the school had been imminent.
My father now wrote to me as formerly, adopting his old cheerful tone,
without reproaches or threats. Yet I had no impulse to explain to him
or to anyone how the change was brought about. It was merely chance
that this change coincided with the wishes of my parents and the
masters. It did not bring me into closer contact with the others but
isolated me still more. I myself was ignorant of the tendency of the
change in me, it might be leading me to Demian, to a distant fate. It
had begun with Beatrice, but for some time past I had been living in
quite an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughts of Demian, so
that she quite disappeared from my mind, as she did from my view. I
should not have been able to say a word to anyone of my dreams, of my
expectations, of the inner change realized in me, not even if I had
wished to do so.