Demian

by Hermann Hesse

Naturally I belonged to the bright and correct world, I was my parents’ child; but wherever I turned my eyes and ears, the other world was there and I lived in it, too, even though it was often unfamiliar and uncanny to me, even though I regularly got pangs of conscience and anxiety from it. In fact, at times I preferred to live in the forbidden world, and frequently my return home to the bright realm, no matter how necessary and good that might be, was almost like a return to someplace less beautiful, more boring and dreary.

Often while playing, playing good, inoffensive, permissible games, I became too excited and violent for my sisters to put up with; this led to arguments and unhappiness, and when anger overcame me at such times, I was a terror, doing and saying things whose vileness I felt deeply and painfully at the very moment I did and said them. Then came vexing, dark hours of regret and contrition, and then the awful moment when I asked to be forgiven, and then once again a ray of brightness, a silent, grateful sense of undivided happiness that would last hours or only moments.

At first I didn’t like it much, but at any rate it was something new. But soon, being unused to wine, I became very talkative. It was as if a window had opened inside me, letting the world shine in—how long, how terribly long

had been since I had gotten anything off my chest! Eventually I began rambling on, and in the thick of it I trotted out the story of Cain and Abel!

When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn’t inside us can’t excite us.”