Demian

by Hermann Hesse

My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.

Because Demian would have demanded more of me than my parents demanded, much more; by means of inducements and admonitions, sarcasm and irony, he would have tried to make me more self—reliant. Oh, I know it today: nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!

Just like almost all parents, mine offered no help for my awakening life-urges, which weren’t discussed. All they did—and this, with inexhaustible pains—was to aid me in my hopeless attempts to deny reality and keep on residing in a child’s world that was becoming more and more unreal and falsified.

You see, no one has free will, even though the pastor implies that. The other fellow can’t think what he wants to, nor can I make him think what I want him to. But it is possible to observe someone carefully, and then you can often say pretty accurately what he’s thinking or feeling, and then you can generally fore-see what he’ll do the next minute.

But now I say: if females occurred as frequently as males among those moths, they wouldn’t have that subtle nose! They have it solely because they’ve trained themselves for it. When an animal or person focuses all his attention and all his willpower on a given objective, he achieves it. That’s all there is to it.

If, for example, a moth of that type wanted to focus its willpower on a star or some such thing, it wouldn’t be able to. But it never tries to. It’s only out after things that have meaning and value for it, things it needs and absolutely must have. And then it even accomplishes the unbelievable—it develops a magical sixth sense that no other animal possesses!

I can fantasize about this and that, I can imagine I just must get to the North Pole, or something like that, but I can only accomplish it and will it strongly enough If the total wish is in my mind, when my being is really completely filled with it. The moment that’s the case, the moment you attempt a task that something inside you orders you to do, you’ll succeed, you can harness your willpower like a trusty draft horse.

“It was like this: I myself wasn’t clear about what I wanted, when I felt the urge to move away from my first seat. I only knew I wanted to sit farther back. It was my will to come to you, but I had not yet become conscious of it. At the same time your own will pulled along and helped me out. Only when I was sitting in front of you did it occur to me that my wish was only half-fulfilled—I noticed that my desire had really only been to sit next to you.”

If you want to get something out of anybody, and he doesn’t get nervous when you unexpectedly stare hard into his eyes, give up. You won’t get anything out of him, never! But that’s very rare. Actually I know only one person that it doesn’t work on for me.”

Even where I had doubts, I still knew enough from the whole experience of my childhood about the reality of a pious life such as my parents led, for instance; I knew it was neither unworthy nor hypocritical. Instead, I constantly retained the most profound respect for religiosity.

“We’re talking too much,” he said with unaccustomed gravity. “Smart talk has no value, none at all. It just leads you away from yourself. To depart from yourself is a sin. A person must be able to crawl away into himself completely, like a turtle.”

It was a volume of Novalis, with letters and aphorisms, many of which I didn’t understand, though they all had a marvelous, spellbinding attraction for me. Now one of the sayings occurred to me. I wrote it in ink under the portrait: “A man’s fate and his character are two names for the same concept.” Now I had understood it.

“My dear Sinclair,” he said slowly, “it wasn’t my intention to say anything unpleasant to you. Besides, the purpose for which you’re now drinking your glasses of wine, neither I nor you know. The thing in you that constitutes your life, already knows why. It’s so good to know this: that inside us there’s a self that knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves do.—But excuse me, I must get home.”

“The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.”

But it seems that Abraxas has a much greater significance. We may look upon the name as that of a deity who had the symbolic task of combining the godlike and the devilish.”

All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?

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

what we dislike in others is what we dislike in ourselves

I was a gamble of Nature, a throw of the dice into an uncertain realm, leading perhaps to something new, perhaps to nothing; and to let this throw from the primordial depths take effect, to feel it will inside myself and adopt it completely as my own will: that alone was my vocation. That alone!

A person is afraid only when he isn’t at one with himself. They’re afraid because they have never accepted themselves. A community consisting exclusively of people afraid of the unknown in themselves!

“No one ever arrives home,” she said amiably. “But when the paths of friends meet, the whole world looks like home for a while.”

“Yes, Max said to me: ‘Now Sinclair has his hardest time ahead of him. He’s trying once more to escape into society, he’s even become a taverngoer; but he won’t succeed. His mark is hidden, but it burns him in secret.’ Wasn’t that so?”

“It’s always difficult to be born. As you know, the bird must make an effort to break out of the egg. Think back and ask: Was the path really that difficult? Merely difficult? Wasn’t it also beautiful? Could you have thought of a more beautiful or easier one?”

“It was difficult,” I said, as if asleep, “it was difficult until the dream came.” She nodded and looked at me penetratingly. “Yes, one must find one’s dream, then the path becomes easy. But no dream lasts forever, each one is replaced by a new one, and you shouldn’t try to hold onto any of them.”

“Sinclair, you’re a child! You know that your destiny loves you. One day it will be all yours, just as in your dreams, if you remain faithful.”

We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awaking, and we were striving for an ever more perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd.

too, strove; they, too, showed signs of strength and greatness. But, as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature’s determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same.

them mankind—which they loved as much as we did—was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect ...

They brought along books, translated texts in ancient languages for us, showed us illustrations of old symbols and rites, and taught us to see that mankind’s entire treasury of ideals up to now has consisted of the dreams of the unconscious soul, dreams in which mankind has gropingly followed the premonitions of its culture possibilities.

And there was only one thing we conceived as our duty and destiny: for each of us to become so completely himself, so completely in harmony with the creative germ of Nature within himself, living in accordance with its commands, that the uncertain future would find us ready for any eventuality, whatever it might bring.

But no one’s there when a new ideal, a new, possibly dangerous and unfamiliar stirring of growth knocks at the door. We will be those few who are there and go along. That’s what we’re marked for—as Cain was marked to arouse fear and hatred, and to drive the people of those days out of their idyllic narrow confines into perilous distances.

the people who have affected the course of mankind, all of them without exception, were only capable and influential because they were prepared for their destiny.

He had loved and, by doing so, had found himself. But most people love in order to lose themselves.

Those primal feelings, even the wildest of them, weren’t directed against the enemy; their bloody results were merely an outward materialization of people’s inner life, the split within their souls, which desired to rage and kill, destroy and die, so that they could be reborn. A gigantic bird was fighting its way out of the egg, and the egg was the world, and the world had to fall to pieces.

“Young Sinclair, pay attention! I’m going to have to depart. Perhaps you’ll need me again sometime, to protect you from Kromer or something else. If you call me then, I will no longer come riding so crudely on a horse or on a train. Then you’ll have to listen within yourself, and you’ll notice that I’m inside you.