Demian
CHAPTER SEVEN
MOTHER EVE
In the holidays I went once to the house in which, years before, Max
Demian and his mother had lived. An old lady was walking in the garden.
I entered into conversation and learned that the house belonged to
her. I enquired after the Demians. She remembered them very well. But
she did not know where they were living at that moment. As she felt
my interest, she took me into the house, searched through a leather
album and showed me a photograph of Demian’s mother. I scarcely had any
recollections of what she was like. But when I saw the little picture
my heart stood still. It was my dream picture! There it was, the tall,
almost masculine woman’s figure, resembling her son, with traits
of motherliness, traits which denoted severity, and deep passion,
beautiful and alluring, beautiful and unapproachable, demon and mother,
destiny and mistress. That was she!
I was filled with a wild wonder, when I learned that my dream picture
lived on earth! There was a woman, then, who looked like that, who
bore my fate in her features! Where was she? Where? And she was
Demian’s mother!
I started on my travels soon after. A strange journey! I went
restlessly from place to place as impulse directed, always in search of
this woman. There were days when I met shapes which reminded me of her,
and which resembled her. These shapes led me on through the streets
of strange towns, into railway stations, into trains, as in a tangled
dream. There were other days when I saw how useless my search was. Then
I sat inactive, anywhere, in a park or the garden of a hotel, in a
waiting room; I looked into myself and tried to make the picture live
in me. But it was now shy and elusive. I could not sleep, I only nodded
for a quarter of an hour or so on railway journeys through country
unknown to me. Once in Zürich, a woman followed me, a pretty, rather
forward woman. I scarcely noticed her and went on, as if she were air.
I would rather have died at once, than have shown sympathy for another
woman, even if only for an hour.
I felt that my destiny was leading me on. I felt that fulfillment was
nigh. I was mad with impatience, to think that I could do nothing to
help myself. Once at a station, I think it was at Innsbruck, I saw, at
the window of a train which was just moving out, a form which reminded
me of her, and I was miserable for days. And suddenly the form appeared
again to me at night in a dream. I woke up with a feeling as of shame,
realizing the fruitlessness and senselessness of my chase, and I went
home by the most direct route.
A couple of weeks later I matriculated in the University of H----.
Everything disappointed me. The course of lectures I followed, on the
history of philosophy, was just as vain and mechanical as the common
ground of student life. Everything was so much according to pattern,
one person did as the other, and the boyish faces, although inflamed
with a forced gaiety, looked so distressingly vacant. It was like the
gloss of a ready-made article! But I was free, I had the whole day to
myself, and lived quietly in a beautiful old building outside the town.
I had a couple of volumes of Nietzsche on my table. I lived with him,
feeling the loneliness of his soul, sensing his destiny, which impelled
him onwards unceasingly. I suffered with him, and was happy that there
had been one who had gone his way so inflexibly.
Late one evening I wandered through the town; an autumn wind was
blowing and I heard the student societies singing in their taverns.
Tobacco smoke rose in clouds through the open windows; songs were being
roared out, loudly and tensely; but the noise did not soar up, it fell
dully on the ear, and was lifelessly uniform.
I stood at a street corner and listened. From two cafés the flood of
song rolled forth into the night. Everywhere community, everywhere
this huddling together, everywhere this unloading of the burden of
destiny, this flight into the warm proximity of the herd!
Two men passed me by slowly. I caught a phrase of their conversation.
“Isn’t it just like an assembly of youths in a nigger village?” said
one. “They all do the same things. Even tattooing is in fashion. Look,
that’s the young Europe.”
The voice rang suggestively in my ear. I followed behind the two in the
dark street. One of them was a Japanese, small and elegant. I saw his
yellow smiling face shine under the lamp.
The other spoke again.
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s any better with you in Japan. People who do
not follow the herd are everywhere rare. There are a few here, too.”
Every word went through me. I felt pleasure and dread. I recognized the
speaker. It was Demian.
In the windy night I followed him and the Japanese through the dark
streets, listening to their conversation and enjoying the ring of
Demian’s voice. It had the old tone, the old, beautiful sureness and
tranquillity, and it had the same power over me. Now everything was
right. I had found him.
At the end of a street in the suburbs the Japanese took leave and
closed a house door behind him. Demian took the way back. I had
remained standing, and awaited him in the middle of the street. With
beating heart I saw him approaching erect and walking with an elastic
step. He wore a brown raincoat and carried a thin stick, hanging from
his arm. He advanced without altering his regular stride until he got
right up to me. He took off his hat, displaying his old, bright face
with the determined mouth and the peculiar brightness on the broad
forehead.
“Demian!” I called.
He stretched out his hand to me.
“So it’s you, then, Sinclair? I expected you.”
“Did you know I was here?”
“I did not know for certain, but I hoped it might be true. I saw you
first this evening. You have been behind us the whole time.”
“You recognized me then at once?”
“Of course. You’re very much changed to be sure; but you have the sign.
We used to call it the mark of Cain, if you recollect. It is our sign.
You have always had it; for that reason I became your friend. But now
it is clearer.”
“I did not know. Or rather I did. I once painted a picture of you,
Demian, and was astonished that it was also like me. Was that the sign?”
“That was it. It’s fine that you are here now! My mother will be glad
as well.”
I started.
“Your mother? Is she here? She doesn’t know me a bit.”
“Oh, she knows of you. She will know, without even my asking her, who
you are. You haven’t let me hear from you for a long time.”
“Oh, I often wanted to write, but nothing came of it. For some time
past I have felt I should find you. I was waiting for it every day.”
He pushed his arm through mine and we went on. Tranquillity seemed to
emanate from him and pass on to me. We were soon chatting together as
formerly. We mentioned our schooldays, the confirmation class and that
unlucky meeting of ours in the holidays--only no mention was made of
the earliest and closest bond between us, of the affair with Frank
Kromer.
Unexpectedly we found ourselves in the middle of a singular and ominous
conversation. Having recalled Demian’s discourse with the Japanese,
we spoke of student life in general and from that we had branched
off to something else, which seemed to be rather out of the way of
the former trend of our talk. Nevertheless, from Demian’s manner of
introducing the subject, there seemed to be no lack of coherence in our
conversation.
He spoke of the spirit of Europe, and of modern tendencies. Everywhere,
he said, reigned a desire to come together, to form herds, but nowhere
was freedom or love. All this life in common, from the student clubs
and choral societies to the state, was an unnatural, forced phenomenon.
The community owed its origin to a sense of fear, of embarrassment, to
a desire for flight; inwardly it was rotten and old, and approaching a
general break-up.
“Community,” Demian said, “is a beautiful thing. But what we see
blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the
mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time the world will be
remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds.
Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another--the
masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the
intellectuals for theirs! And why are they afraid? One is only afraid
when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they
have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who
are afraid of the unknown in themselves! They all feel that the laws
of their life no longer hold good, that they are living according to
outworn commandments. Neither their religion nor their morals conform
to our needs. For a hundred years and more Europe has simply studied
and built factories. They know exactly how many grams of powder it
takes to kill a man, but they do not know how to pray to God. They
have no idea how to amuse themselves, even for an hour. Look at these
students drinking in their tavern! Or take any place of amusement
where rich people go! Hopeless! My dear Sinclair, no cheerfulness,
no serenity can come of all that. These creatures, who move about so
uneasily in crowds, are full of fear and full of wickedness, no one
trusts the other. They adhere to ideals which have ceased to exist,
and they stone everyone who proposes a new one. I feel that there
are troubles ahead of us. They will come, believe me, they will come
soon! Of course the world won’t be bettered! Whether the workmen kill
the manufacturers, or whether the Russians and Germans shoot at one
another, it will only be a change of proprietors. But it will not be
in vain. It will free the world from the chains of present-day ideals,
there will be a clearing away of Stone-Age gods. The world, as it is
now, wants to die, it wants to perish, and it will.”
“And what will happen to us then?” I asked.
“To us? Oh, perhaps we shall perish as well. They can also murder
people in our position. Only we shall not be entirely wiped out.
The will of the future will realize itself from what remains of our
influence, or with the aid of those of us who survive. The will of
humanity will make itself felt, which our Europe has for a long time
past tried to drown in its sale yard of scientifically manufactured
articles. And then it will be seen that there is nothing in common
between the will of humanity and that of our present-day communities,
of the states and peoples, of the societies and churches. But what
nature wills with man, is written in the individual few, in you and in
me. It is found in Jesus, in Nietzsche. For these (the only important
currents of thought which naturally can alter their course each day)
there will be place when the present-day communities break up together.”
It was late when we made a halt before a garden by the river.
“We live here,” said Demian. “Come and see us soon! We shall expect
you.”
I cheerfully wended my long way home through the night, which had
become cold. Here and there brawling students were lurching through
the town. I had often felt, sometimes with a feeling of privation,
sometimes with scorn, the contrast between their curious sort of
gaiety and my lonely life. But now, tranquil and strong in a sense of
secret power I felt as never before how little that affected me, how
far removed was their world from mine. I reminded myself of officials
of my native town, worthy old gentlemen, who clung to memories of the
semesters they had passed in drinking, as they would to memories of a
blissful paradise, and who practised a cult, calling up reminiscences
of the vanished “freedom” of their University life with all the
seriousness which some poet or other romantic would devote to an
account of his childhood. Everywhere the same! Everywhere they sought