Demian

by Hermann Hesse

For a long time I zealously sought to follow up the trail of ideas farther, without success. In addition, I rummaged through a whole library to find out more about Abraxas, but in vain. However, it was not my nature to concentrate my energies on a methodical search after knowledge, a search which would reveal truths of a dead, useless, documentary kind.

The figure of Beatrice, which had for a certain time occupied so much of my attention, vanished by degrees from my mind, or rather receded slowly, drawing nearer and nearer to the horizon, becoming paler, more like a shadow, as it retreated. She satisfied my soul no longer. A new spiritual development now began to take place in the dreamy existence I led, this existence in which I was strangely wrapped up in myself. The longing for a full life glowed in me, or rather the longing for love. The sex instinct, which for a time had been merged into my worship of Beatrice, required new pictures and aims. Fulfillment was denied me, and it was more impossible than ever for me to delude myself by expecting anything of the girls who seemed to have the happiness of my comrades in their keeping. I again dreamed vividly, even more by day than by night. Images presented themselves to me, desires in the shape of pictures rose up in my imagination, withdrawing me from the outside world, so that my relations with these pictures, with these dreams and shadows, were more real and more intimate than with my actual surroundings.

A certain dream, or play of fantasy, which recurred to me, was full of significance. This dream, the most important and the most enduring of my life, was as follows: I returned home—over the front door shone the crest with the yellow bird on the blue ground—my mother came to meet me—but as I entered and wished to embrace her, it was not she, but a shape I had never before seen, tall and powerful, resembling Max Demian and my painting, yet different, and quite womanly in spite of its size. This figure drew me towards it, and held me in a quivering, passionate embrace. Rapture and horror were mixed, the embrace was a sort of divine worship, and yet a crime as well. Too much of the memory of my mother, too much of the memory of Max Demian was contained in the form which embraced me. The embrace seemed repulsive to my sentiment of reverence, yet I felt happy. I often awoke out of this dream with a deep feeling of contentment, often with the fear of death and a tormenting conscience as if I were guilty of a terrible sin.

It was only gradually and unconsciously that I realized the connection between this mental picture and the hint which had come to me from outside concerning the god of whom I was in search. However, this connection became closer and more intimate, and I began to feel that precisely in this dream, this presentiment, I was invoking Abraxas. Rapture and horror, man and woman, the most sacred things and the most abominable interwoven, the darkest guilt with the most tender innocence—such was the dream picture of my love, such also was Abraxas. Love was no longer a dark, animal impulse, as I had felt with considerable anxiety in the beginning. Neither was it a pious spiritualized form of worship any longer, such as I had bestowed upon the picture of Beatrice. It was both—both and yet much more, it was the image of an angel and of Satan, man and woman in one, human being and animal, the highest good and lowest evil. It was my destiny, it seemed that I should experience this in my own life. I longed for it and was afraid of it, I followed it in my dreams and took to flight before it; but it was always there, was always standing over me.

The next spring I was to leave school and go to some university to study, where and what I knew not. A small moustache grew on my lip, I was a grown man, and yet completely hopeless and aimless. Only one thing was firm: the voice in me, the dream picture. I felt it my duty to follow this guidance blindly. But it was difficult, and daily I was on the point of revolting. Perhaps I was mad, I often used to think; perhaps I was not as other men? But I could do everything the others did; with a little pains and industry I could read Plato, I could solve a trigonometrical problem or work out a chemical analysis. Only one thing I could not do: Discover the dark, concealed aim within me and make up my mind, as others did—others, who knew well enough whether they wanted to be professors or judges, doctors or artists. They knew what career to follow and what advantages they would gain by it. But I was not like that. Perhaps I would be like them some day, but how was I to know? Perhaps I should have to seek and seek for years, and would make nothing of myself, would attain no end. Perhaps I should attain an end, but it might be wicked, dangerous, terrible.

I wanted only to try to live in obedience to the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

I often made the attempt to paint the powerful love-figure of my dream. But I never succeeded. If I had been successful I would have sent the picture to Demian. Where was he? I knew not. I only knew there was a bond of union between us. When should I see him again?

The pleasant tranquillity of those weeks and months of the Beatrice period was long since gone. I thought at that time I had reached a haven and had found peace. But it was ever so—scarcely did I begin to adapt myself to circumstances, scarcely had a dream done me good, when it faded again. In vain to complain! I now lived in a fire of unstilled desires, of tense expectation, which often rendered me completely wild and mad. I frequently saw before me the picture of my dream-mistress with extraordinary clearness, much more clearly than I saw my own hand. I spoke to it, wept over it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt before it in tears. I called it my beloved and felt its ripe kiss of fulfilled desire. I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It invited me to the tenderest dreams of love and to the most horrible abominations—nothing was too good and precious for it, nothing too bad and vile.

I passed the whole of that winter in a state of inward tumult difficult to describe. I had long been accustomed to loneliness—that did not depress me. I lived with Demian, with the hawk, with my picture of the big dream-figure, which was my fate and my mistress. It sufficed to live in close communion with those things, since they opened up a large and broad perspective, leading to Abraxas. But I was not able to summon up these dreams, these thoughts, at will. I could not invest them in colors, as I pleased. They came of themselves, taking possession of me, governing me and shaping my life.

I was secure in so far as the outside world was concerned. I was afraid of no one. My schoolfellows had learned to recognize that, and observed a secret respect towards me, which often caused me to smile. When I wished, I could penetrate most of them with a look, thereby surprising them occasionally. Only, I seldom or never wanted to do this. It was my own self which occupied my attention, always myself. And yet I longed ardently to live a bit of real life, to give something of myself to the world, to enter into contact and battle with it. Sometimes as I wandered through the streets in the evening and could not, through restlessness, return home before midnight, I thought to myself: Now I cannot fail to meet my beloved, I shall overtake her at the next corner, she will call to me from the next window. Sometimes all this seemed to torture me unbearably, and I was quite prepared to take my own life some day.