Steppenwolf
again from my wanderings to the living heart of the world. Sadly and
yet deeply moved, I set myself to recall the last of these experiences.
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of
the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped
through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped
all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted
all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very
long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at
night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it
now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading
my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was
blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks
as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more.
Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in
verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to
think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished;
and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old
brittle husk. Once it came to me while reading a poet, while pondering
a thought of Descartes, of Pascal; again it shone out and drove its
gold track far into the sky while I was in the presence of my beloved.
Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of
this life we lead, in this besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness,
with its architecture, its business, its politics, its men! How could I
fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one
of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures? I cannot remain for
long in either theatre or picture-house. I can scarcely read a paper,
seldom a modern book. I cannot understand what pleasures and joys they
are that drive people to the overcrowded railways and hotels, into the
packed cafés with the suffocating and oppressive music, to the Bars and
variety entertainments, to World Exhibitions, to the Corsos. I cannot
understand nor share these joys, though they are within my reach, for
which thousands of others strive. On the other hand, what happens to
me in my rare hours of joy, what for me is bliss and life and ecstasy
and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in
life it finds it absurd. And in fact, if the world is right, if this
music of the cafés, these mass-enjoyments and these Americanised men
who are pleased with so little are right, then I am wrong, I am crazy.
I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast
astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that
is strange and incomprehensible to him.
With these familiar thoughts I went along the wet street through one
of the quietest and oldest quarters of the town. On the opposite side
there stood in the darkness an old stone wall which I always noticed
with pleasure. Old and serene, it stood between a little church and an
old hospital and often during the day I let my eyes rest on its rough
surface. There were few such quiet and peaceful spaces in the centre
of the town where from every square foot some lawyer, or quack, or
doctor, or barber, or chiropodist shouted his name at you. This time,
too, the wall was peaceful, and serene and yet something was altered
in it. I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic
arch in the middle of the wall, for I could not make up my mind whether
this doorway had always been there or whether it had just been made. It
looked old without a doubt, very old; apparently this closed portal
with its door of blackened wood had opened hundreds of years ago onto
a sleepy convent yard, and did so still, even though the convent was
no longer there. Probably I had seen it a hundred times and simply not
noticed it. Perhaps it had been painted afresh and caught my eye for
that reason. I paused to examine it from where I stood without crossing
over, as the street between was so deep in mud and water. From the
sidewalk where I stood and looked across it seemed to me in the dim
light that a garland, or something gaily coloured, was festooned round
the doorway, and now that I looked more closely I saw over the portal a
bright shield, on which, it seemed to me, there was something written.
I strained my eyes and at last, in spite of the mud and puddles, went
across, and there over the door I saw a stain showing up faintly on
the grey-green of the wall, and over the stain bright letters dancing
and then disappearing, returning and vanishing once more. So that’s
it, thought I. They’ve disfigured this good old wall with an electric
sign. Meanwhile I deciphered one or two of the letters as they appeared
again for an instant; but they were hard to read even by guess work,
for they came with very irregular spaces between them and very faintly,
and then abruptly vanished. Whoever hoped for any result from a display
like that was not very smart. He was a Steppenwolf, poor fellow. Why
have his letters playing on this old wall in the darkest alley of the
Old Town on a wet night with not a soul passing by, and why were they
so fleeting, so fitful and illegible? But wait, at last I succeeded in
catching several words on end. They were:
MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
I tried to open the door, but the heavy old latch would not stir. The
display too was over. It had suddenly ceased, sadly convinced of its
uselessness. I took a few steps back, landing deep into the mud, but
no more letters came. The display was over. For a long time I stood
waiting in the mud, but in vain.
Then, when I had given up and gone back to the alley, a few coloured
letters were dropped here and there, reflected on the asphalt in front
of me. I read:
FOR MADMEN ONLY!
My feet were wet and I was chilled to the bone. Nevertheless, I stood
waiting. Nothing more. But while I waited, thinking how prettily the
letters had danced in their ghostly fashion over the damp wall and
the black sheen of the asphalt, a fragment of my former thoughts came
suddenly to my mind; the similarity to the track of shining gold which
suddenly vanishes and cannot be found.
I was freezing and walked on following that track in my dreams, longing
too for that doorway to an enchanted theatre, which was for madmen
only. Meanwhile I had reached the Market Place, where there is never a
lack of evening entertainments. At every other step were placards and
posters with their various attractions, Ladies’ Orchestra, Variété,
Cinema, Ball. But none of these were for me. They were for “everybody,”
for those normal persons whom I saw crowding every entrance. In spite
of that my sadness was a little lightened. I had had a greeting from
another world, and a few dancing, coloured letters had played upon my
soul and sounded its secret strings. A glimmer of the golden track had
been visible once again.
I sought out the little ancient tavern where nothing had altered since
my first visit to this town a good twenty-five years before. Even the
landlady was the same as then and many of the patrons who sat there in
those days sat there still at the same places before the same glasses.
There I took refuge. True, it was only a refuge, something like the
one on the stairs opposite the araucaria. Here, too, I found neither
home nor company, nothing but a seat from which to view a stage where
strange people played strange parts. None the less, the quiet of the
place was worth something; no crowds, no music; only a few peaceful
townsfolk at bare wooden tables (no marble, no enamel, no plush, no
brass) and before each his evening glass of good old wine. Perhaps this
company of habitués, all of whom I knew by sight, were all regular
Philistines and had in their Philistine dwellings their altars of the
home dedicated to sheepish idols of contentment; perhaps, too, they
were solitary fellows who had been sidetracked, quiet, thoughtful
topers of bankrupt ideals, lone wolves and poor devils like me. I could
not say. Either homesickness or disappointment, or need of change drew
them there, the married to recover the atmosphere of his bachelor days,
the old official to recall his student years. All of them were silent,
and all were drinkers who would rather, like me, sit before a pint of
Elsasser than listen to a Ladies’ Orchestra. Here I cast anchor, for
an hour, or it might be two. With the first sip of Elsasser I realised
that I had eaten nothing that day since my morning roll.
It is remarkable, all that men can swallow. For a good ten minutes I
read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who
chews and munches another’s words in his mouth, and gives them out
again undigested, to enter into me through my eyes. I absorbed a whole
column of it. And then I devoured a large piece cut from the liver
of a slaughtered calf. Odd indeed! The best was the Elsasser. I am
not fond, for every-day at least, of racy, heady wines that diffuse a
potent charm and have their own particular flavour. What I like the
best is a clean, light, modest country vintage of no special name. One
can carry plenty of it and it has the good and homely flavour of the
land, and of earth and sky and woods. A pint of Elsasser and a piece
of good bread is the best of all meals. By this time, however, I had
already eaten my portion of liver (an unusual indulgence for me, as I
seldom eat meat) and the second pint had been set before me. And this
too was odd: that somewhere in a green valley vines were tended by
good, strong fellows and the wine pressed so that here and there in the
world, far away, a few disappointed, quietly drinking townsfolk and
feckless Steppenwolves could sip a little heart and courage from their
glasses.
For me, at least, the charm worked. As I thought again of that
newspaper article and its jumble of words, a refreshing laughter rose
in me, and suddenly the forgotten melody of those notes of the piano
came back to me again. It soared aloft like a soap-bubble, reflecting
the whole world in miniature on its rainbow surface, and then softly
burst. Could I be altogether lost when that heavenly little melody had
been secretly rooted within me and now put forth its lovely bloom with
all its tender hues? I might be a beast astray, with no sense of its
environment, yet there was some meaning in my foolish life, something
in me gave an answer and was the receiver of those distant calls from
worlds far above. In my brain were stored a thousand pictures:
Giotto’s flock of angels from the blue vaulting of a little church in
Padua, and near them walked Hamlet and the garlanded Ophelia, fair
similitudes of all sadness and misunderstanding in the world, and
there stood Gianozzo, the aeronaut, in his burning balloon and blew a
blast on his horn, Attila carrying his new headgear in his hand, and
the Borobudur reared its soaring sculpture in the air. And though all
these figures lived in a thousand other hearts as well, there were ten
thousand more unknown pictures and tunes there which had no dwelling
place but in me, no eyes to see, no ears to hear them but mine. The
old hospital wall with its grey-green weathering, its cracks and
stains in which a thousand frescoes could be fancied, who responded
to it, who looked into its soul, who loved it, who found the charm of
its colours ever delicately dying away? The old books of the monks,
softly illumined with their miniatures, and the books of the German
poets of two hundred and a hundred years ago whom their own folk have
forgotten, all the thumbed and dampstained volumes, and the works in
print and manuscripts of the old composers, the stout and yellowing