Demian

by Hermann Hesse

I drew him into the open. The first oblique rays of day glimmered indescribably cold through the grey atmosphere.

I led the boy on my arm a little way. I heard my own voice saying: “Now go home, and don’t say anything to anybody. You were on a false track, a false track! And we are not swine, as you think. We are men. We make gods, and we wrestle with them, and they bless us.”

Silently we went on, and separated. When I came home it was day.

The best that mystery in St. —— had yet to give me was the hours with Pistorius at the organ or by the chimney fire. We read a Greek text about Abraxas together. He read to me portions of a translation of the Veda and taught me to say the sacred “Om.” However, it was not this learned instruction which was of service to my inner self, but rather the contrary. What did me good was the self-progression I made, the increasing confidence in my own dreams, thoughts and presentiments, and the consciousness of the power that I carried in me.

I had an excellent understanding with Pistorius in every way. I needed only to think intently of him, and I could be sure that he, or a greeting from him, would come to me. I could ask him, just as I could Demian, something or other, without his being there in person. I needed only to imagine his presence and to put my questions to him as intensive thoughts. Then all the soul-force I had put into the question came back to me as answer. Only it was not the person of Pistorius which I called up in my imagination; nor that of Max Demian, but it was the picture I had painted and of which I had dreamed. It was the half-man, half-woman, dream picture of my dæmon, to which I called. It lived now not only in my dreams, it was no longer painted on paper, but it was in me, as a desire-picture and an enhancement of my spiritual self.

The relation into which the unsuccessful suicide Knauer entered with me was peculiar and sometimes amusing. Since the night I had been sent to him, he dogged my steps like a faithful servant or hound, sought to attach himself to me and followed me blindly. He came to me with curious questions and wishes. He wanted to see spirits, to learn the Cabbala, and he did not believe me when I assured him I understood nothing of all these things. He credited me with being able to do anything. But it was singular that he often came to me with his queer and silly questions just at the moment when I myself had a mental knot to be disentangled. His moody ideas and concerns often gave me the cue, the impulse which helped me in the solution of my own problems. He was often tiresome and I imperiously drove him away. I felt, however, that he had been sent to me, and what I gave to him, I received twofold in return. He also was a guide, or rather a way. The mad books and publications he brought me, and in which he sought the key to happiness, taught me more than I realized at the time.

This Knauer vanished later from my path, neither did I miss him. No arrangement, no understanding was necessary with him. But it was with Pistorius. Towards the close of my school career in St. —— I lived through another peculiar experience with my friend.

Even innocuous, innocent people are not altogether spared the shock of a conflict. Even they come once in their lives in conflict with the beautiful virtues of piety and gratitude. Each must make the step which parts him from his father, from his teachers. Each must once feel something of the bitterness of loneliness, though most people cannot support it for long and soon creep back to their homes again. It was not a great struggle for me to part from my parents and their world, the “bright” world of my beautiful childhood. But slowly and almost imperceptibly I had got further from them and become more of a stranger to them. I regretted it; it often caused me bitter hours during my visits home; but it was not deep. I could bear it.

But when we have offered love and reverence of our own accord, and not out of habit, when we have been disciples and friends with our innermost feelings—then it is a bitter and terrible moment when the realization is suddenly brought home to us that the guiding current of our life is bearing us away from those we love. Then every thought of ours which rejects our friend and teacher enters our own heart like a poisoned sting, every blow of self-defense strikes back into our own face. Then he who felt that the dictates of his own conscience were an authentic guide reproaches himself with the terms “faithlessness” and “ingratitude.” Then the terrified heart flees anxiously back to the valleys of childhood virtues, and cannot believe that the rupture must take place, that another bond must be severed.

In the course of time a feeling had slowly developed in me which refused to recognize my friend Pistorius unconditionally as my guide. What I experienced in the most important moments of my youth was my friendship with him, his counsel, his consolation, his proximity. God had spoken to me through him. Through him my dreams returned to me, from his mouth came their explanation, from him I learned their significance. He had given me the courage to realize myself. And now, alas, I felt a growing opposition against him. In his conversation he evinced too clearly a desire to instruct me. I felt it was only one side of my nature that he thoroughly understood.