Demian
won’t find any spirits, either.”
Disappointed, and suddenly become dumb, the little fellow looked at me.
Then his look suddenly glowed with hate, he made a grimace at me and
cried with rage: “Ah, you’re a nice sort of saint! You have your vice
as well, I know! You pretend to wisdom, and secretly you stick in the
same filth as I and all of us! You’re swine, swine, like myself. We are
all swine!”
I went away and left him standing there. He made two, three steps in my
direction, then he stopped, turned round and ran away. I felt sick from
a feeling of pity and horror. I could not get rid of the feeling until
I got home to my little room, and placing my few pictures before me, I
surrendered myself up with passionate fervor to my dreams. My dreams
came back at once, the dream of front door and crest, of mother and the
strange woman, and I saw the features of the woman so very clearly
that I began to draw her picture the same evening.
In a few days this drawing was finished, painted in as if unconsciously
in dreamy quarter-of-an-hour periods. In the evening I hung it on
the wall, put the reading lamp in front of it, and stood before it
as before a spirit with whom I had to fight until victory should be
decided one way or the other. It was a face similar to the former,
resembling my friend Demian, in certain traits even resembling myself.
One eye stood perceptibly higher than the other, the look passed over
me, sunk in a staring gaze, full of destiny.
I stood before it. Such was my inward exertion that I became cold to
the marrow. I questioned the picture, I abused it, I caressed it,
I prayed to it. I called it mother, I called it beloved, called it
strumpet and whore, called it Abraxas. Meanwhile words of Pistorius
crossed my mind, or of Demian? I could not recollect on what occasion
they had been spoken, but I thought I heard them again. They were the
words of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. “I will not let thee
go, except thou bless me.”
The painted face in the lamplight changed at each appeal. It was bright
and shining, was black and gloomy; it closed pale lids over dead eyes,
opened them again and flashed a burning look. It was woman, man, girl,
was a little child, an animal, vanished to a speck, was again tall and
clear. At last, in response to a strong inward prompting, I closed my
eyes, and saw the picture inwardly in me, stronger and more powerful.
I wished to kneel down before it, but it was so much within me, that I
could separate it from myself no more; it seemed as if it had entirely
identified itself with me.
Then I heard a loud confused roar as of a spring storm. I trembled
in an indescribably new feeling of fear and excitement. Stars darted
before me and died out, recollections even of the first forgotten years
of my childhood, of a time further back still, of a pre-existence
and the early stages of existence, pressed through me. But the
recollections which seemed to piece together my life’s whole history
even to its most secret details did not cease with yesterday and
to-day, they went farther, mirrored the future, tearing me away from
to-day, changing me into new forms of life, of which the pictures were
very bright and blinding. But of none of them could I call up a just
image later.
In the night I woke up out of a deep sleep. I was dressed and lying
transversely across the bed. I struck a light, feeling that I must try
to remember something important that had happened. I knew nothing of
the hours just passed. I turned on the light, and recollection came
back gradually. I looked for the picture. It was not hanging on the
wall, neither was it lying on the table. I thought confusedly that I
must have burned it. Or was it a dream, that I had burned it in my
hands and had eaten the ashes?
A great inquietude convulsed me and drove me forth. I put on my hat,
went out of the house and down the street, as if under coercion.
I walked and walked through streets and squares as if blown along
by a storm, I listened in front of the gloomy church of my friend,
searched in obedience to a blind impulse, without knowing what I was
looking for. I went through a suburb, where brothels stood. Here and
there a light was still shining. Further on stood new buildings and
brick heaps, covered in part with grey snow. I went on through this
wilderness, driven forward by a strange impulse, like a man walking in
a dream. The thought of the new building in my native town crossed my
mind, that building to which my tormentor Kromer had drawn me to settle
accounts with him. In the grey night a similar building stood there in
front of me, its black doorway yawning wide. I was drawn towards it,
but wanted to shun it and stumbled over sand and rubbish. The impulse
was stronger than I, I had to go in.
I staggered over planks and broken bricks into the deserted room. There
was a mouldy smell of damp, cold stones. A heap of sand lay there, a
grey bright speck, otherwise all else was dark.
Suddenly a terrified voice called to me: “In God’s name, Sinclair,
where have you come from?”
And a human figure rose out of the darkness close to me, a little thin
shape like a ghost. I recognized, while yet my hair was standing on
end, my school companion Knauer.
“How did you get here?” he asked, as if mad with excitement. “How have
you been able to find me?”
I did not understand.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” I said, dazed. I spoke with difficulty, the
words came from me painfully, as if from dead, heavy, frozen lips.
“You weren’t looking for me?”
“No. I was drawn here. Did you call me? You must have called. But what
are you doing here? It’s still night.”
He put his thin arms convulsively round me.
“Yes, night. But it must soon be morning. Oh, Sinclair, to think that
you didn’t forget me! Can you ever forgive me?”
“What then?”
“Ah, I was so hateful!”
Then I recollected our conversation. Had that taken place four, five
days ago? It seemed to me like a lifetime. But suddenly I knew all. Not
only what had occurred between us, but also why I had come and what
Knauer wanted to do there.
“You wanted, then, to take your life, Knauer?”
He shuddered through cold and fear.
“Yes, I wanted to. I don’t know whether I could have. I wished to wait
until the morning came.”
I drew him into the open. The first oblique rays of day glimmered
indescribably cold through the grey atmosphere.
I led the boy on my arm a little way. I heard my own voice saying: “Now
go home, and don’t say anything to anybody. You were on a false track,
a false track! And we are not swine, as you think. We are men. We make
gods, and we wrestle with them, and they bless us.”
Silently we went on, and separated. When I came home it was day.
The best that mystery in St. ---- had yet to give me was the hours with
Pistorius at the organ or by the chimney fire. We read a Greek text
about Abraxas together. He read to me portions of a translation of the
Veda and taught me to say the sacred “Om.” However, it was not this
learned instruction which was of service to my inner self, but rather
the contrary. What did me good was the self-progression I made, the
increasing confidence in my own dreams, thoughts and presentiments, and
the consciousness of the power that I carried in me.
I had an excellent understanding with Pistorius in every way. I needed
only to think intently of him, and I could be sure that he, or a
greeting from him, would come to me. I could ask him, just as I could
Demian, something or other, without his being there in person. I
needed only to imagine his presence and to put my questions to him as
intensive thoughts. Then all the soul-force I had put into the question
came back to me as answer. Only it was not the person of Pistorius
which I called up in my imagination; nor that of Max Demian, but it
was the picture I had painted and of which I had dreamed. It was the
half-man, half-woman, dream picture of my dæmon, to which I called. It
lived now not only in my dreams, it was no longer painted on paper, but
it was in me, as a desire-picture and an enhancement of my spiritual
self.
The relation into which the unsuccessful suicide Knauer entered with
me was peculiar and sometimes amusing. Since the night I had been sent
to him, he dogged my steps like a faithful servant or hound, sought
to attach himself to me and followed me blindly. He came to me with
curious questions and wishes. He wanted to see spirits, to learn the
Cabbala, and he did not believe me when I assured him I understood
nothing of all these things. He credited me with being able to do
anything. But it was singular that he often came to me with his queer
and silly questions just at the moment when I myself had a mental knot
to be disentangled. His moody ideas and concerns often gave me the cue,
the impulse which helped me in the solution of my own problems. He was
often tiresome and I imperiously drove him away. I felt, however,
that he had been sent to me, and what I gave to him, I received
twofold in return. He also was a guide, or rather a way. The mad books
and publications he brought me, and in which he sought the key to
happiness, taught me more than I realized at the time.
This Knauer vanished later from my path, neither did I miss him. No
arrangement, no understanding was necessary with him. But it was with
Pistorius. Towards the close of my school career in St. ---- I lived
through another peculiar experience with my friend.
Even innocuous, innocent people are not altogether spared the shock
of a conflict. Even they come once in their lives in conflict with
the beautiful virtues of piety and gratitude. Each must make the step
which parts him from his father, from his teachers. Each must once feel
something of the bitterness of loneliness, though most people cannot
support it for long and soon creep back to their homes again. It was
not a great struggle for me to part from my parents and their world,
the “bright” world of my beautiful childhood. But slowly and almost
imperceptibly I had got further from them and become more of a stranger
to them. I regretted it; it often caused me bitter hours during my
visits home; but it was not deep. I could bear it.
But when we have offered love and reverence of our own accord, and
not out of habit, when we have been disciples and friends with our
innermost feelings--then it is a bitter and terrible moment when the
realization is suddenly brought home to us that the guiding current of
our life is bearing us away from those we love. Then every thought of
ours which rejects our friend and teacher enters our own heart like a
poisoned sting, every blow of self-defense strikes back into our own
face. Then he who felt that the dictates of his own conscience were an
authentic guide reproaches himself with the terms “faithlessness” and
“ingratitude.” Then the terrified heart flees anxiously back to the
valleys of childhood virtues, and cannot believe that the rupture must
take place, that another bond must be severed.
In the course of time a feeling had slowly developed in me which
refused to recognize my friend Pistorius unconditionally as my guide.
What I experienced in the most important moments of my youth was my
friendship with him, his counsel, his consolation, his proximity.
God had spoken to me through him. Through him my dreams returned to
me, from his mouth came their explanation, from him I learned their
significance. He had given me the courage to realize myself. And now,
alas, I felt a growing opposition against him. In his conversation he
evinced too clearly a desire to instruct me. I felt it was only one
side of my nature that he thoroughly understood.
There was no quarrel, no scene between us, no rupture. I said to him