Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

“One ought to take pride in pain – all pain is a reminder of our exalted rank.” Marvellous! Eighty years before Nietzsche!

Even if I spent many more hours wandering around town, I could not avoid that moment when, returning to the door of my flat, to my desk with its books, to the sofa with the picture of the woman I loved above it,

it had become frighteningly clear to me just how important my relationship with the unknown girl was. Without being the least bit in love with her, I nonetheless thought of nothing but her, expected everything of her, was willing to sacrifice everything for her and lay it at her feet.

all individual human beings, instead of rocking themselves to sleep by mulling over false political questions as to who was the “guilty party”, ought to be taking a searching look at themselves, asking to what extent they themselves, by their mistakes, their failure to act and their habitual bad practices, have a share in the responsibility for the war and all the rest of the world’s miseries.

dancing called for the sort of qualities I totally lacked: gaiety, innocence, nonchalance, verve.

I was presently living to the full this part of my being and life, only a tenth – no, a thousandth of which had previously achieved fulfilment. It was now being allowed to flourish, unhampered by all the other figures that constituted my self, neither disturbed by the thinker, plagued by Steppenwolf, nor restricted in scope by the writer, the dreamer, the moralist in me.