This is an amazing book, first of all. I remember being awed by it when I first read it (sometime during junior year, possibly during the summer)... And apparently the last time I read it, I misspelled Demian's name to Damian EVERY SINGLE TIME. The hell was wrong with me? I spelled it correctly in the tag. And funny story, I must have read Fight Club right before it then too, because a quick scan shows that I quote it about ten gajillion times. And... Then I start talking about Paradise Lost. Okay. There's a reason why I don't reread my old posts.
So, first of all, at the time I originally read this, what awed me was the information about Abraxas, but there's so much more that amazed me this time, mostly in that it almost always seems like Hermann Hesse read my mind and wrote down what he saw there in his book. I mean, it's cool that my thoughts contributed to a book that won the Nobel prize, but you couldn't have asked permission? Or hooked me up with your time machine?
I don't think it seemed like that when I first read it, I don't think I really understood those parts of it (I don't really discuss them, and I don't really remember them, so...) but anyways.
Oh, and I attempted to read the introduction about Hesse, but I just lacked the attention span. I did get from it, however, that Hesse was bipolar and this is considered by many to be his most autobiographical work, so maybe it's not good that I'm nodding my head at almost everything he says. Oh well.
So, this book is about a boy named Emil Sinclair. It could be a coming-of-age story, and it partially is--if it went on, it would be one perfectly. You see, it goes up pretty much the usual loop of storytelling--you know, rising action/falling action/climax/et cetera--with maybe a few extra humps, but there's no 'falling action' really, just an implication... Well, I don't know. I guess it's still coming-of-age, just not your usual coming-of-age. It starts out when he's about ten, and ends probably when he's sixteen or seventeen... It ends during the first world war, so whatever the draft age would have been. So--let's go!
Hesse gives his own little prologue:
"Each man's life represents a road towards himself... No man has ever been entirely and completely himself" (2).
"We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone" (2).
Hesse starts his story by saying how he seemed to be aware of a dark world and a light world--the light world being that of his parents and sisters, the dark world coming from within himself, carried in by the house servants at times, but mainly a world of those that had gone astray. As a child, it scared him and made him feel guilty.
"There were stories of sons who had gone away, stories I read with passion. These stories always pictured the homecoming as such a relief and as something so extraordinary that I felt convinced that this alone was the right, the best, the sought-for thing. Still, the part of the story set among the evil and lost was more appealing by far, and--if I could have admitted it--at times I didn't want the Prodigal Son to repent and be found again" (5).
Sinclair's problems start when he tries to impress a bigger boy. He makes up a story about stealing apples, and the bigger boy informs him that the owner of that orchard has promised two marks to anyone who tells him who thieves of his orchard are. The boy demands that Sinclair pay him off so that he won't tell--but Sinclair only has some pfennigs. The boy then demands that Sinclair pretty much become his personal servant boy till the debt is paid--in actuality, till the boy says so. This plan is cut short, as Demian, a fellow classmate, just from watching, figures out the situation. Demian never reveals exactly what he said or did to Sinclair's tormentor to make him leave Sinclair alone, but yeah. Anyways, Demian first comes into Sinclair's scope after they learn the story of Cain and Abel. This is what originally blew my mind. I remember being awed. He explains the story of Cain being marked already, and the story forming around that, not how the Bible says God marked him. Maybe he had some strange characteristic that frightened or intimidated people and that was the mark--then the story grew up around him. Maybe the murder was true, and that was the real mark--people were afraid to mess with him and his children. Anyways, that stupefied me as a kid. I had never thought of the Bible like that. It amazed me. I was hooked.
"'People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest'" (24).
"'Ultimately all men are brothers'" (24).
"The question flashed through my mind whether Demian himself was not a kind of a Cain. Why does he defend Cain unless he feels an affinity with him?" (26). It becomes clear later that Cain and his mother seem to be marked in the same way. They think differently, they live differently, they are almost not human--angels, demons--Abraxases (I'll explain this later), more like. They are there own subculture, DemianStranger in a Strange Land, but with less orgies and crappy endings.
"'Cowards are constantly afraid, but you're not a coward, are you? Certainly, you're no hero either. There are some things you're afraid of, and some people, too. And that should never be, you should never be afraid of men'" (31).
"It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly" (41).
"Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth--which is our fate--only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise--which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams" (41). Sinclair is explaining the changes in the mind and feelings as one reaches and struggles through puberty.
"'Examine a person closely enough and you know more about him then he does himself'" (47).
"'If I'm not master of my own will, then I'm in no position to direct it as I please'" (47). Demian is remarkably perceptive, to the point where it seems as though he can read minds and control people. This is not the case--he just studies people. He finds it easy to figure out what makes them tick, and predict and guide their movements that they probably would make anyways in a way that seems like some sort of psychic power. It's pretty interesting.
There's another interesting take on religious stories Demian has--this time it's the story of Jesus's crucifixion. Jesus was crucified with two other men, two thieves. One man repents to Jesus, and Jesus promises him a place in the kingdom of heaven. Of course, in Sunday school, you are taught that this is the 'good' thief, because he accepted Jesus into his life and repented and all of that, and it's to show that repentance will cover all your sins, no matter what. Demian thinks it's ridiculous--"'What's the sense of repenting if you're two steps from the grave?'" (51). He thinks that it is pathetic and that all it does is show that the thief was a coward. He doesn't feel bad, not really, he just doesn't want to suffer. He is a coward. Therefore, the other thief is the better man, because he is willing to stay stolid and reap what he has sowed.
"'I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place'" (52). The natural things that Demian means are things that are suppressed and considered to be the devil's works--things like sexual desire. I want to point out that over that last sentence I have the note "Abraxas"--this was written in the book this time around. I had forgotten that this was the book I had learned about Abraxas in! Abraxas was a Gnostic god capable of the kindest or most evil of acts. He is the equivalent to God or the devil, or any one side of a yin yang--he is all. The "'uniting of godly and devilish elements'" (80). Demian himself is incomplete, as is Sinclair--Sinclair doesn't quite become Abraxas until the very end of the book. I know that sounds strange--and of course it is meant to be a metaphor--but I'll explain it when I get there.
Secondly, although what Demian is saying probably seems like blasphemy, it makes sense. God created everything, including the devil. If everything is supposed to have a spark of the divine... Well!
"'Each person must stand on his own feet'" (54).
When Sinclair goes away to college, he feels lost and adrift. He starts drinking heavily, becomes a lover of bars (I find it interesting that this is where he falls to, whereas Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in almost the same exact situation does not fall to the drink, but to prostitutes) and makes drinking buddies with the scum of the earth. He is lost and floundering.
"I simply did what I had to do, because I had no idea what to do with myself otherwise. I was afraid of being alone for long, was afraid of the many tender and chaste moods that would overcome me, was afraid of the thoughts of love surging up in me " (65).
"What I missed above all else was a friend" (65).
Eventually he does redeem himself--he sees a girl that he names Beatrice, after Dante's Beatrice, that he falls in love with from afar. He admires her figure, her face; he sees her as something divine, to be venerated. He cleans himself up completely, stays away from the bars, improves his dress and mannerisms, picks his grades up in school--and so on. He also begins to paint again, and in attempting to paint her he paints instead a holy image, altogether not male or female, but amazingly beautiful and touching.
"That's what my friend would look like if I were to find one ever again. That's what the woman I would love would look like if ever I were to love one. That's what my life and death would be like, this was the rhythm of my fate" (72).
Thinking back, he remembers running into Demian during one of his debauchery-filled nights, and Demian tells him that the sensualists and "men of the world" make the best saints when they turn. I believe it.
"'Who would be born must first destroy a world'" (78).
Later Sinclair learns about Abraxas in school, and even later he meets a man named Pistorious who teaches him even more about the strange god. However--again--we will get there in time.
"The figure of Beatrice with which I occupied myself so intimately and fervently gradually became submerged or, rather, was slowly receding, approaching the horizon more and more, becoming more shadowy and remote, paler. She no longer satisfied the longings of my soul. In the peculiar self-made isolation in which I existed like a sleepwalker, a new growth began to take shape inside me. The longing for life grew--or rather the longing for love. My sexual drive, which I had sublimated for a time in the veneration of Beatrice, demanded new images and objects. But my desires remained unfulfilled and it was more impossible than ever for me to deceive my longings and hope for something from the women with whom my comrades tried their luck. I dreamed vividly again, more in fact by day than at night. Images, pictures, desires arose freely within me, drew me away from the outside world so that I had a more substantial and livelier relationship with the world of my own creation, with these images and longings and shadows, than with the actual world around me" (81). So... If you switched genders and stuff around, this could be me writing. Seriously. Hermann Hesse literally just wrote brain processes of mine out for everyone to see.
"I was always preoccupied with myself. And I longed desperately to really live for once, to give something of myself, to enter into a relationship and battle with it. Sometimes when I ran through the streets in the evening, unable to return before midnight because I was so restless, I felt that now at this very moment I would have to meet my beloved--as she walked past me at the next street corner, called to me from the nearest window. At other times all of this seemed unbearably painful and I was prepared to commit suicide" (84). Again. Hermann. Please ask permission next time.
"'Everything else is so moral that I'm looking for something that isn't'" (86).
So Sinclair eventually meets Pistorius, and Pistorius teaches him more about Abraxas. Pistorious becomes a sort of mentor for Sinclair, but as he learns more and matures he begins to see Pistorious as a dead end--Pistorious understands greatness, perhaps, but couldn't possibly have the skills to achieve it. Thus, Sinclair begins to loathe him and they grow apart--are very much forced apart by Sinclair. Though Sinclair doesn't mean consciously to do this and even feels guilty afterwards, it was undoubtedly seen as a necessary act to drive him back to Demian--so his unconscious self acted to do so. This would make sense with the book--and this is all I'll really say about Pistorious before moving on. he doesn't interest me much.
"'We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us'" (105).
When he and Pistorious finally break apart, he (Sinclair) says that "During that walk I felt for the first time the mark of Cain on my forehead" (110).
"Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find the way to himself" (111).
So he finds Demian again--Demian:
"'For a hundred years or more Europe has done nothing but study and build factories! They know exactly how many ounces of powder it takes to kill a man but they don't know how to pray to God, they don't even know how to be happy for a single contented hour'" (118).
"Let the students have their drunken orgies and tattoo their faces; the rotten world could await its destruction--for all I cared. I was waiting for one thing--to see my fate step forward in a new guise" (120). Hermann, how are you in my head, you need to stop, it's wigging me out.
Well... Sinclair visits Demian to stay with him and his mother over the holidays. That fate's guise is Demian's mother, Eva--almost immediately he loves her.
"'How glad I am,' I said and kissed her hands. 'I believe I have been on my way my whole life--and now I have come home.' She smiled like a mother. 'One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time'" (122).
"'It is always difficult to be born'" (123).
"'There is no dream that last forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one'" (124).
"'Your fate loves you. One day it will be entirely yours--just as you dream it--if you remain constant to it'" (124).
That's all her. The next bit is from Sinclair, and the dialogue is her's, of course: "At times I was dissatisfied with myself and tortured with desire: I believed I could no longer bear to have her near me without taking her in my arms. She sensed this, too, at once. Once when I had stayed away for many days and returned bewildered she took me aside and said: 'You must not give way to desires which you don't believe in. I know what you desire. You should, however, either be capable of renouncing these desires or feel wholly justified in having them. Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come'" (129).
"'Love must not entreat... or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract. Sinclair, your love is attracted to me. Once it begins to attract me, I will come. I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won'" (130).
"'But at present you alternate between desire and renunciation and are afraid all the time. All that must be overcome'" (130).
"Little by little, sensual and spiritual love, reality and symbol began to overlap" (131).
"'No one dreams anything that doesn't "concern him personally"'" (135).
So--the book begins to wrap up when the first world war begins to really begin boiling. "How strange that the stream of the world was not to bypass us any more, that it now went straight through our hearts" (141).
Demian is drafted, and shortly after Sinclair is as well. Sinclair is at one point wounded badly, but drags himself--or is dragged, it's not entirely clear--into a building full of other wounded men. On the mattress next to him lays Demian. Now we get to what I meant by saying Sinclair becomes Abraxas. Demian explains to Sinclair that when Sinclair needs Demian and calls for him he won't come to him physically anymore--that he will be inside of Sinclair to answer to his call. As a sort of conscious. Demian gives Sinclair a light kiss from his mother and Sinclair, exhausted, falls asleep. When he wakes in the morning, Demian is gone and there is another in his bed. The end: "Dressing the wound hurt. Everything that has happened to me since has hurt. But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into myself where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master" (145).
MLA Citation Information: Hesse, Hermann. Demian. Perennial Classics: New York, 1999.
Read this book. Go ahead, do it. I'm biased, but I think it's worth a spin. It's not my fault that Hermann Hesse was writing about me just with a gender swap. Seriously.
Answer to last post's cryptic lyrics: Moonage Daydream by David Bowie
Answer to this post's cryptic lyrics: All the lights are fading now--if I'm dreaming all my life
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