Steppenwolf
it occurred to me--so it is with every one. Just as I dress and go
out to visit the professor and exchange a few more or less insincere
compliments with him, without really wanting to at all, so it is with
the majority of men day by day and hour by hour in their daily lives
and affairs. Without really wanting to at all, they pay calls and carry
on conversations, sit out their hours at desks and on office chairs;
and it is all compulsory, mechanical and against the grain, and it
could all be done or left undone just as well by machines; and indeed
it is this never-ceasing machinery that prevents their being, like
me, the critics of their own lives and recognising the stupidity and
shallowness, the hopeless tragedy and waste of the lives they lead, and
the awful ambiguity grinning over it all. And they are right, right a
thousand times to live as they do, playing their games and pursuing
their business, instead of resisting the dreary machine and staring
into the void as I do who have left the track. Let no one think that
I blame other men, though now and then in these pages I scorn and
even deride them, or that I accuse them of the responsibility of my
personal misery. But now that I have come so far, and standing as I do
on the extreme verge of life where the ground falls away before me into
bottomless darkness, I should do wrong and I should lie if I pretended
to myself or to others that that machine still revolved for me and that
I was still obedient to the eternal child’s play of that charming world.
On all this the evening before me afforded a remarkable commentary.
I paused a moment in front of the house and looked up at the windows.
There he lives, I thought, and carries on his labours year by year,
reads and annotates texts, seeks for analogies between western Asiatic
and Indian mythologies, and it satisfies him, because he believes in
the value of it all. He believes in the studies whose servant he is; he
believes in the value of mere knowledge and its acquisition, because he
believes in progress and evolution. He has not been through the war,
nor is he acquainted with the shattering of the foundations of thought
by Einstein (that, thinks he, only concerns the mathematicians). He
sees nothing of the preparations for the next war that are going on
all round him. He hates Jews and Communists. He is a good, unthinking,
happy child, who takes himself seriously; and, in fact, he is much to
be envied. And so, pulling myself together, I entered the house. A maid
in cap and apron opened the door. Warned by some premonition, I noticed
with care where she laid my hat and coat, and was then shown into a
warm and well-lighted room and requested to wait. Instead of saying a
prayer or taking a nap, I followed a wayward impulse and picked up the
first thing I saw. It chanced to be a small picture in a frame that
stood on the round table leaning back on its paste-board support. It
was an engraving and it represented the poet Goethe as an old man full
of character, with a finely chiseled face and a genius’ mane. Neither
the renowned fire of his eyes nor the lonely and tragic expression
beneath the courtly whitewash was lacking. To this the artist had given
special care, and he had succeeded in combining the elemental force of
the old man with a somewhat professional make-up of self-discipline
and righteousness, without prejudice to his profundity; and had made
of him, all in all, a really charming old gentleman, fit to adorn
any drawing room. No doubt this portrait was no worse than others of
its description. It was much the same as all those representations
by careful craftsmen of saviours, apostles, heroes, thinkers and
statesmen. Perhaps I found it exasperating only because of a certain
pretentious virtuosity. In any case, and whatever the cause, this empty
and self-satisfied presentation of the aged Goethe shrieked at me at
once as a fatal discord, exasperated and oppressed as I was already. It
told me that I ought never to have come. Here fine Old Masters and the
Nation’s Great Ones were at home, not Steppenwolves.
If only the master of the house had come in now, I might have had the
luck to find some favourable opportunity for finding my way out. As
it was, his wife came in, and I surrendered to fate though I scented
danger. We shook hands and to the first discord there succeeded nothing
but new ones. The lady complimented me on my looks, though I knew only
too well how sadly the years had aged me since our last meeting. The
clasp of her hand on my gouty fingers had reminded me of it already.
Then she went on to ask after my dear wife, and I had to say that my
wife had left me and that we were divorced. We were glad enough when
the professor came in. He too gave me a hearty welcome and the awkward
comedy came to a beautiful climax. He was holding a newspaper to which
he subscribed, an organ of the militarist and jingoist party, and after
shaking hands he pointed to it and commented on a paragraph about a
namesake of mine--a publicist called Haller, a bad fellow and a rotten
patriot--who had been making fun of the Kaiser and expressing the view
that his own country was no less responsible for the outbreak of war
than the enemy nations. There was a man for you! The editor had given
him his deserts and put him in the pillory. However, when the professor
saw that I was not interested, we passed to other topics, and the
possibility that this horrid fellow might be sitting in front of them
did not even remotely occur to either of them. Yet so it was, I myself
was that horrid fellow. Well, why make a fuss and upset people? I
laughed to myself, but gave up all hope now of a pleasant evening.
I have a clear recollection of the moment when the professor spoke of
Haller as a traitor to his country. It was then that the horrid feeling
of depression and despair which had been mounting in me and growing
stronger and stronger ever since the burial scene condensed to a dreary
dejection. It rose to the pitch of a bodily anguish, arousing within me
a dread and suffocating foreboding. I had the feeling that something
lay in wait for me, that a danger stalked me from behind. Fortunately
the announcement that dinner was on the table supervened. We went into
the dining room, and while I racked my brains again and again for
something harmless to say, I ate more than I was accustomed to do and
felt myself growing more wretched with every moment. Good heavens, I
thought all the while, why do we put ourselves to such exertions? I
felt distinctly that my hosts were not at their ease either and that
their liveliness was forced, whether it was that I had a paralysing
effect on them or because of some other and domestic embarrassment.
There was not a question they put to me that I could answer frankly,
and I was soon fairly entangled in my lies and wrestling with my nausea
at every word. At last, for the sake of changing the subject, I began
to tell them of the funeral which I had witnessed earlier in the day.
But I could not hit the right note. My efforts at humour fell entirely
flat and we were more than ever at odds. Within me the Steppenwolf
bared his teeth in a grin. By the time we had reached dessert, silence
had descended on all three of us.
We went back to the room we had come from to invoke the aid of coffee
and cognac. There, however, my eye fell once more on the magnate of
poetry, although he had been put on a chest of drawers at one side
of the room. Unable to get away from him, I took him once more in my
hands, though warning voices were plainly audible, and proceeded to
attack him. I was as though obsessed by the feeling that the situation
was intolerable and that the time had come either to warm my hosts up,
to carry them off their feet and put them in tune with myself, or else
to bring about a final explosion.
“Let us hope,” said I, “that Goethe did not really look like this.
This conceited air of nobility, the great man ogling the distinguished
company, and beneath the manly exterior what a world of charming
sentimentality! Certainly, there is much to be said against him. I have
a good deal against his venerable pomposity myself. But to represent
him like this--no, that is going too far.”
The lady of the house finished pouring out the coffee with a deeply
wounded expression and then hurriedly left the room; and her husband
explained to me with mingled embarrassment and reproach that the
picture of Goethe belonged to his wife and was one of her dearest
possessions. “And even if, objectively speaking, you are right, though
I don’t agree with you, you need not have been so outspoken.”
“There you are right,” I admitted. “Unfortunately it is a habit, a vice
of mine, always to speak my mind as much as possible, as indeed Goethe
did, too, in his better moments. In this chaste drawing-room Goethe
would certainly never have allowed himself to use an outrageous, a
genuine and unqualified expression. I sincerely beg your wife’s pardon
and your own. Tell her, please, that I am a schizomaniac. And now, if
you will allow me, I will take my leave.”
To this he made objections in spite of his perplexity. He even went
back to the subject of our former discussions and said once more how
interesting and stimulating they had been and how deep an impression my
theories about Mithras and Krishna had made on him at the time. He had
hoped that the present occasion would have been an opportunity to renew
these discussions. I thanked him for speaking as he did. Unfortunately,
my interest in Krishna had vanished and also my pleasure in learned
discussions. Further, I had told him several lies that day. For
example, I had been many months in the town, and not a few days, as I
had said. I lived, however, quite by myself, and was no longer fit for
decent society; for in the first place, I was nearly always in a bad
temper and afflicted with the gout, and in the second place, usually
drunk. Lastly, to make a clean slate, and not to go away, at least, as
a liar, it was my duty to inform him that he had grievously insulted me
that evening. He had endorsed the attitude taken up by a reactionary
paper towards Haller’s opinions; a stupid bull-necked paper, fit for
an officer on half-pay, not for a man of learning. This bad fellow
and rotten patriot, Haller, however, and myself were one and the
same person, and it would be better for our country and the world in
general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood
for reason and the love of peace instead of heading wildly with a blind
obsession for a new war. And so I would bid him good-bye.
With that I got up and took leave of Goethe and of the professor. I
seized my hat and coat from the rack outside and left the house. Loud
in my soul the wolf howled his glee, and between my two selves there
opened an immense field of operations. For it was at once clear to me
that this disagreeable evening had much more significance for me than
for the indignant professor. For him, it was a disillusionment and
a petty outrage. For me, it was a final failure and flight. It was
my leave-taking from the respectable, moral and learned world, and a
complete triumph for the Steppenwolf. I was sent flying and beaten from
the field, bankrupt in my own eyes, dismissed without a shred of credit
or a ray of humour to comfort me. I had taken leave of the world in
which I had once found a home, the world of convention and culture, in
the manner of the man with a weak stomach who has given up pork. In a
rage I went on my way beneath the street lamps, in a rage and sick unto
death. What a hideous day of shame and wretchedness it had been from
morning to night, from the cemetery to the scene with the professor.
For what? And why? Was there any sense in taking up the burden of more