Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

‘I don’t know. To be fair to the world I’d like to think that it is merely true of the present day, just a sickness, a temporary misfortune. The political leaders are resolutely and successfully working to bring about the next war while the rest of us are dancing the foxtrot, earning money and eating fancy chocolates. In an age like this the world is bound to look well and truly lousy. Let’s hope other ages were better and will be better again, richer, broader, deeper. But all that’s of little use to us. And perhaps it has always been like this …’ ‘Always like today? Always a world fit for politicians, conmen, waiters and playboys, a world where there is no air fit for human beings to breathe?’ ‘Who knows? I don’t, nobody does. It makes no difference anyway. But now I’m wondering what it must have been like for your great favourite Mozart, whom you’ve told me about from time to time, even reading to me from his letters. How was it for him? Who was ruling the world in his day, creaming off the best, setting the tone, and considered important? Was it Mozart or the profit-seekers, Mozart or shallow, run-of-the-mill types? And how did he die? How did they bury him? And I think it has perhaps always been like that and always will be. And the subject they call “World History” in schools and the things you have to learn off by heart in them in order to be educated – all those heroes, geniuses, great deeds and sentiments – is just a confidence trick devised by the schoolteachers f...

Steppenwolf