The Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Author:Hermann Hesse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

JUST AS THE GRAMOPHONE had befouled the air of intellectual asceticism in my study, just as the American dances had penetrated my cultivated world of music in a strange and disturbing, even crushing fashion, so new things—fearful things, devastating things—were beginning to penetrate my life from all sides, that life which had been so sharply delineated and strictly circumscribed until now. The Steppenwolf treatise and Hermine were right with their doctrine of the thousand souls, every day a few new souls showed up in me in addition to all the old ones, they made demands, made noise, and now I could see the madness of my old personality, I could see it clearly like a picture before my eyes. I had given exclusive priority to the few abilities and activities in which I happened to excel, and I had painted the picture of a Harry and lived the life of a Harry who was actually no more than a very finely trained specialist in poetry, music, and philosophy—as for the entire rest of my person, the whole remaining chaos of abilities, drives, and aspirations, I had found them burdensome, and had given them the name of Steppenwolf.

Nevertheless, this release from my delusion, this dissolution of my personality was by no means merely a pleasant and diverting adventure; on the contrary, it was often bitterly painful, almost unbearable. The gramophone often sounded truly diabolical in these surroundings, where everything else was tempered to such different tones. And sometimes, when I was dancing my one-steps in some fashionable restaurant among all the elegant playboys and charlatans, I felt like a traitor to everything that had ever been dear and sacred to me in life. If Hermine had left me alone for just eight days, I would have escaped in no time from all those tedious and ridiculous attempts at living a playboy lifestyle. But Hermine was always there; even though I didn’t see her every day, I was always being seen by her, guided, observed, examined—she could even read all the angry fantasies of rebellion and escape that were written on my face, and she did so with a smile.

With the progressive destruction of what I had once termed my personality, I also began to understand why, despite all my despair, I had always had such a terrible fear of death, and I began to realize that this dreadful and shameful fear of death was just another aspect of my old, mendacious, bourgeois existence. The Mr. Haller who had hitherto existed—the gifted writer, the connoisseur of Mozart and Goethe, the author of noteworthy reflections on the metaphysics of art, on genius and tragedy, on humanity, the melancholy hermit in his cell piled high with books—was subjected to self-criticism one piece at a time, and he came up short in every respect. This gifted and interesting gentleman, Mr. Haller, had preached reason and humanity and protested against the savagery of war, and yet during the war he had not allowed himself to be

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.