Steppenwolf
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STEPPENWOLF
BY
HERMANN HESSE
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
BASIL CREIGHTON
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1929,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
This book contains the records left us by a man whom, according to
the expression he often used himself, we called the Steppenwolf.
Whether this manuscript needs any introductory remarks may be open to
question. I, however, feel the need of adding a few pages to those of
the Steppenwolf in which I try to record my recollections of him. What
I know of him is little enough. Indeed, of his past life and origins
I know nothing at all. Yet the impression left by his personality has
remained, in spite of all, a deep and sympathetic one.
Some years ago the Steppenwolf, who was then approaching fifty, called
on my aunt to inquire for a furnished room. He took the attic room on
the top floor and the bedroom next it, returned a day or two later with
two trunks and a big case of books and stayed nine or ten months with
us. He lived by himself very quietly, and but for the fact that our
bedrooms were next door to each other--which occasioned a good many
chance encounters on the stairs and in the passage--we should have
remained practically unacquainted. For he was not a sociable man.
Indeed, he was unsociable to a degree I had never before experienced
in anybody. He was, in fact, as he called himself, a real wolf of the
Steppes, a strange, wild, shy--very shy--being from another world
than mine. How deep the loneliness into which his life had drifted on
account of his disposition and destiny and how consciously he accepted
this loneliness as his destiny, I certainly did not know until I read
the records he left behind him. Yet, before that, from our occasional
talks and encounters, I became gradually acquainted with him, and I
found that the portrait in his records was in substantial agreement
with the paler and less complete one that our personal acquaintance had
given me.
By chance I was there at the very moment when the Steppenwolf entered
our house for the first time and became my aunt’s lodger. He came at
noon. The table had not been cleared and I still had half an hour
before going back to the office. I have never forgotten the odd and
very conflicting impressions he made on me at this first encounter. He
came through the glazed door, having just rung the bell and my aunt
asked him in the dim light of the hall what he wanted. The Steppenwolf,
however, first threw up his sharp, closely cropped head and sniffed
around nervously before he either made any answer or announced his
name.
“Oh, it smells good here,” he said, and at that he smiled and my aunt
smiled too. For my part, I found this manner of introducing himself
ridiculous and was not favourably impressed.
“However,” said he, “I’ve come about the room you have to let.”
I did not get a good look at him until we were all three on our way up
to the top floor. Though not very big, he had the bearing of a big man.
He wore a fashionable and comfortable winter overcoat and he was well,
though carelessly, dressed, clean-shaven, and his cropped head showed
here and there a streak of grey. He carried himself in a way I did not
at all like at first. There was something weary and undecided about it
that did not go with his keen and striking profile nor with the tone of
his voice. Later, I found out that his health was poor and that walking
tired him. With a peculiar smile--at that time equally unpleasant to
me--he contemplated the stairs, the walls, and windows, and the tall
old cupboards on the staircase. All this seemed to please and at the
same time to amuse him. Altogether he gave the impression of having
come out of an alien world, from another continent perhaps. He found it
all very charming and a little odd. I cannot deny that he was polite,
even friendly. He agreed at once and without objection to the terms
for lodging and breakfast and so forth, and yet about the whole man
there was a foreign and, as I chose to think, disagreeable or hostile
atmosphere. He took the room and the bedroom too, listened attentively
and amiably to all he was told about the heating, the water, the
service and the rules of the household, agreed to everything, offered
at once to pay a sum in advance--and yet he seemed at the same time
to be outside it all, to find it comic to be doing as he did and not
to take it seriously. It was as though it were a very odd and new
experience for him, occupied as he was with quite other concerns, to
be renting a room and talking to people in German. Such more or less
was my impression and it would certainly not have been a good one if
it had not been revised and corrected by many small instances. Above
all, his face pleased me from the first, in spite of the foreign air it
had. It was a rather original face and perhaps a sad one, but alert,
thoughtful, strongly marked and highly intellectual. And then, to
reconcile me further, there was his polite and friendly manner, which
though it seemed to cost him some pains, was all the same quite without
pretention; on the contrary, there was something almost touching,
imploring in it. The explanation of it I found later, but it disposed
me at once in his favour.
* * * * *
Before we had done inspecting the rooms and going into the
arrangements, my luncheon hour was up and I had to go back to business.
I took my leave and left him to my aunt. When I got back at night,
she told me that he had taken the rooms and was coming in in a day or
two. The only request he had made was that his arrival should not be
notified to the police, as in his poor state of health he found these
formalities and the standing about in official waiting-rooms more than
he could tolerate. I remember very well how this surprised me and how
I warned my aunt against giving in to his stipulation. This fear of
the police seemed to me to agree only too well with the mysterious and
alien air the man had and struck me as suspicious. I explained to my
aunt that she ought not on any account to put herself in this equivocal
and in any case rather peculiar position for a complete stranger; it
might well turn out to have very unpleasant consequences for her. But
it then came out that my aunt had already granted his request, and,
indeed, had let herself be altogether captivated and charmed by the
strange gentleman. For she never took a lodger with whom she did not
contrive to stand in some human, friendly, and as it were auntlike or,
rather, motherly relation; and many a one has made full use of this
weakness of hers. And thus for the first weeks things went on; I had
many a fault to find with the new lodger, while my aunt every time
warmly took his part.
As I was not at all pleased about this business of neglecting to notify
the police, I wanted at least to know what my aunt had learnt about
him; what sort of family he came of and what his intentions were. And,
of course, she had learnt one thing and another, although he had only
stayed a short while after I left at noon. He had told her that he
thought of spending some months in our town to avail himself of the
libraries and to see its antiquities. I may say it did not please my
aunt that he was only taking the rooms for so short a time, but he had
clearly quite won her heart in spite of his rather peculiar way of
presenting himself. In short, the rooms were let and my objections came
too late.
“Why on earth did he say that it smelt so good here?” I asked.
“I know well enough,” she replied, with her usual insight. “There’s
a smell of cleanliness and good order here, of comfort and
respectability. It was that that pleased him. He looks as if he weren’t
used to that of late and missed it.”
Just so, thought I to myself.
“But,” I said aloud, “if he isn’t used to an orderly and respectable
life, what is going to happen? What will you say if he has filthy
habits and makes dirt everywhere, or comes home drunk at all hours of
the night?”
“We shall see, we shall see,” she said, and laughed; and I left it at
that.
And in the upshot my fears proved groundless. The lodger, though he
certainly did not live a very orderly or rational life, was no worry or
trouble to us. Yet my aunt and I bothered our heads a lot about him,
and I confess I have not by a long way done with him even now. I often
dream of him at night, and the mere existence of such a man, much as I
got to like him, has had a thoroughly disturbing and disquieting effect
on me.
* * * * *
Two days after this the stranger’s luggage--his name was Harry
Haller--was brought in by a porter. He had a very fine leather trunk,
which made a good impression on me, and a big flat cabin-trunk that
showed signs of having travelled far--at least it was plastered with
labels of hotels and travel agencies of various countries, some
overseas.
Then he himself appeared, and the time began during which I gradually
got acquainted with this strange man. At first I did nothing on my side
to encourage it. Although Haller interested me from the moment I saw
him I took no steps for the first two or three weeks to run across him
or to get into conversation with him. On the other hand I confess that
I did, all the same and from the very first, keep him under observation
a little and also went into his room now and again when he was out and
my curiosity drove me to do a little spy-work.
I have already given some account of the Steppenwolf’s outward
appearance. He gave at the very first glance the impression of a
significant, an uncommon, and unusually gifted man. His face was
intellectual, and the abnormally delicate and mobile play of his
features reflected a soul of extremely emotional and unusually delicate
sensibility. When one spoke to him and he, as was not always the case,
dropped conventionalities and said personal and individual things that
came out of his own alien world, then a man like myself came under his
spell on the spot. He had thought more than other men, and in matters
of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of
thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who
have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down,
or to appear always in the right.
I remember an instance of this in the last days he was here, if I
can call a mere fleeting glance he gave me an example of what I
mean. It was when a celebrated historian and art critic, a man of
European fame, had announced a lecture in the Aula. I had succeeded
in persuading the Steppenwolf to attend it, though at first he had
little desire to do so. We went together and sat next to each other.
When the lecturer ascended the platform and began his address, many
of his hearers, who had expected a sort of prophet, were disappointed
by his rather spruce and conceited air. And when he proceeded, by
way of introduction, to say a few flattering things to the audience,
thanking them for their attendance in such numbers, the Steppenwolf
threw me a quick look, a look which criticised both the words and
the speaker of them--an unforgettable and frightful look which spoke
volumes! It was a look that did not simply criticise that lecturer,