Demian
“liberty” and “happiness” behind them, in the past, for fear of being
reminded of their own responsibility, of being warned they were not
striking out for themselves, but merely going the way of all the world.
Two or three years passed in drinking and jollification, and then they
crept under the common shelter and became serious gentlemen in the
service of the state. Yes, it was rotten, our whole system was rotten
and these student sillinesses were less stupid and not so bad as a
hundred others.
However, when I reached my distant dwelling and went to bed, all these
thoughts had flown. Everything else was in suspense as I looked forward
to the fulfillment of the promise made to me that day. As soon as I
wished, in the morning if I liked, I could see Demian’s mother. Let
the students hold their drinking bouts and tattoo their faces, let the
world be rotten and on the brink of ruin--what had that to do with me?
I was waiting for one single thing, that my fate might meet me in a new
picture.
I woke up late in the morning from a deep sleep. The day broke for
me as a solemn festal day, such as I had not experienced since the
Christmas celebrations of my boyhood. I was full of a deep unrest, yet
entirely without fear. I felt that an important day had broken for
me. I saw and felt the world around me changed: it was full of secret
portent, expectant and solemn. Even the gently falling autumn rain was
beautiful, full of the quiet, glad, serious music of a festal day. For
the first time the outer world was in tune with my inner world--then it
is a feast-day for the soul, then living is worth while! No house, no
shop window, no face in the street disturbed me. Everything was as it
had to be, but did not wear the empty features of every day and of the
habitual. It was like expectant nature, standing full of awe to meet
its fate. Thus, as a little boy, I used to see the world on the morning
of a great feast-day, at Christmas or at Easter. I had not known that
this world could still be so beautiful. I had been accustomed to
living shut up in myself, and to content myself with the idea that my
understanding for the outside world had been lost, that the loss of
glistening colors was inevitably connected with the loss of childish
vision.
So the hour came when I found again that garden in the suburbs, at
the gate of which I had taken leave of Max Demian the night before.
Concealed behind trees in a grey mist of rain stood a little house,
bright and homely, tall flowers stood behind a big glass partition,
and behind shining windows were dark room walls with pictures and
bookcases. The front door led immediately into a little hall, and a
silent old servant, black, with white apron, showed me in and took my
raincoat from me.
She left me alone in the hall. I looked about me. I looked round; and
immediately I was in the middle of my dream. On the dark wood wall
above a door, under glass and in a black frame, hung a picture I knew
well, my bird with the golden yellow hawk’s crest, forcing its way out
of the sphere. Much moved, I remained standing. My heart felt glad and
sorry, as if in that moment everything I had done and had experienced
came back to me as answer and fulfillment. Like a lightning flash a
crowd of pictures passed through my soul: my home, the house of my
father, with the old stone crest over the arch of the door, the boy
Demian drawing the crest, myself as a boy, fearsome under the evil
spell of my enemy Kromer, myself, as a youth, at the table in my little
room at school painting the bird of my dream, the soul caught in a web
of its own weaving, and everything, everything up to this moment found
echo in me again, and was confined, answered, approved.
With misty eyes I stared at my picture and read in the book of my soul.
My glance dropped. In the open door under the picture of the bird stood
a tall lady in a dark dress. It was she.
I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a
friendly way beneath features like her son’s, timeless and without
age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment, her greeting
meant home-coming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She
seized both mine with her strong, warm ones.
“You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you!”
Her voice was deep and warm, I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I
looked up in her tranquil face, into the black eyes of unfathomable
depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore
the sign.
“How glad I am!” I said to her and kissed her hands. “I believe I have
been on my way all my life long--but now I have come home.”
She smiled in a motherly way.
“One never comes home,” she said gently. “But where friendly roads
converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home.”
She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her.
Her voice and her words were like those of her son, and yet quite
different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured. But just
as Max in years past had made on no one the impression of being a mere
boy, so his mother did not look like the mother of a grown-up son, so
young and sweet was the breath of her face and hair, so smooth her
golden skin, so blossoming her mouth. More queenly still than in my
dream she stood before me. Her presence was love’s happiness, her look
was fulfillment.
This, then, was the new picture, in which my fate displayed itself, no
longer severe, no longer isolating, but mature and full of promise.
I took no resolutions, I made no vows. I had attained an end, I had
reached a point of vantage on the way, from which the further road
displayed itself, broad and lovely, leading on to lands of promise,
shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of
delight. Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman’s existence
in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence. Whether she
would be to me mother, mistress, goddess--what mattered it as long as
she was present! As long as my way lay near to hers!
She indicated my picture of the hawk.
“You have never given Max more pleasure than by sending this bird,”
she said musingly. “And I was pleased as well. We expected you, and
when the picture arrived we knew that you were on the way to us. When
you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son came one day from school and
said: ‘There’s a boy who has the sign on his forehead, he must be my
friend.’ That was you. You have not had an easy time of it, but we had
confidence in you. Once in the holidays when you were at home, Max met
you again. You were at that time about sixteen years old. Max told
me----”
I interrupted: “Oh, that he should have told you that. It was the most
miserable time I have had!”
“Yes, Max said to me: ‘Now Sinclair has the hardest time before him. He
is making an attempt to escape to the community, he has even taken to
drinking with the others; but he won’t succeed in that. His sign has
become dulled, but it shines secretly.’ Was not that the case?”
“Oh yes, it was, exactly. Then I found Beatrice, and finally a guide
came to me. His name was Pistorius. For the first time it was clear to
me why my boyhood was so bound up with Max’s, why I could not break
away from him. Dear lady--dear mother, at that time I often thought I
should have to take my life. Is the way so hard for everyone?”
She let her fingers stray through my hair, as gently as if a light
breeze were blowing.
“It is always hard, to be born. You know, it is not without effort that
the bird comes out of the egg. Look back and ask yourself: was the way
then so hard?--only hard? Was it not beautiful as well? Could you have
had one more beautiful, more easy?”
I shook my head.
“It was hard,” I said, as if in sleep, “it was hard, until the dream
came.”
She nodded and looked at me penetratingly.
“Yes, one must find one’s dream, then the way is easy. But there is
no dream which endures for always. Each sets a new one free, to none
should one wish to cleave.”
I started. Was that already a warning? Was that already a warding-off?
But no matter, I was ready to let myself be led by her, and not enquire
after the end.
“I do not know,” I said, “how long my dream is to last. I wish it would
be forever. My fate received me under the picture of the bird, like a
mother, and like a mistress. To it I belong and to no one else.”
“As long as the dream is your fate, so long must you remain true to
it,” she said, in earnest confirmation of my remark.
I was very sad, and I wished ardently to die in this hour of
enchantment; I felt the tears--for what an interminably long time had I
not wept--rise irresistibly and overmaster me. I turned violently away
from her. I stepped to the window, and looked out, my eyes blinded with
tears, away over the flower-pots.
I heard her voice behind me; it rang out calmly and yet was so full of
tenderness, like a cup filled to the brim with wine.
“Sinclair, what a child you are! Of course your fate loves you. One day
it will belong to you entirely, just as you dreamt it, if you remain
true to it.”
I had composed myself and turned my face to her again. She gave me her
hand.
“I have a few friends,” she said, smiling, “very few, very close
friends, who call me Mother Eve. You may call me so as well, if you
like.”
She led me to the door, opened it and indicated the garden. “You will
find Max out there, I think.”
I stood under the tall trees, stunned and stupefied. I knew not whether
I was more awake or more dreaming than ever. Softly the rain dripped
from the branches. I went slowly through the garden, which stretched
far along the river bank. At last I found Demian. He stood in an open
summer house. Naked to the waist, he was doing boxing exercises with a
little sack of sand hung from a beam.
Astonished, I remained standing there. Demian looked magnificent; his
broad chest, the firm manly head, the uplifted arms were strong and
sturdy. The movements came from the hips, the shoulders, the joints of
the arm, as easily as if they bubbled out of a spring of strength.
“Demian!” I called. “What are you doing there?”
He laughed gaily.
“I am exercising. I have promised to box with the little Jap; the
fellow is as agile as a cat, and naturally just as sly. But he won’t be
able to manage me. I owe him just one little beating.”
He drew on shirt and coat.
“You have already seen mother?” he asked.
“Yes, Demian, what a marvellous mother you have! Mother Eve! The name
suits her perfectly; she is like the mother of all being.”
He gazed for an instant musingly in my face.
“You know her name already? You ought to be proud, young friend.
You are the only one to whom she has said it in the first hour’s
acquaintance.”
From this day on I went in and out of the house like a son and a
brother, but also like a lover. When I closed the gate behind me, even
when I saw the tall trees of the garden emerge in the distance, I was
happy. Outside was “reality,” outside were streets and houses, human
beings and institutions, libraries and lecture rooms--here inside were
love and the life of the soul, here was the kingdom of fairy stories
and dreams. And yet we lived by no means shut off from the world. In
thought and word we often lived in its midst, only on another plane. We
were not separated from the majority of creatures by boundaries, but
rather by a different sort of vision. Our task was to be, as it were,
an island in the world, perhaps an example, in any case to proclaim
that it was possible to live a different sort of life. I, who had been
isolated for so long, learned to what extent community of feeling is
possible between people who have experienced complete loneliness. I no
longer desired to be back at the tables of the happy, at the feasts