BOOK REVIEW OF THE BOOK “DEMIAN” BY HERMAN HESSE:

In this novel by Herman Hesse (1877-1962), written in 1919, after the tragic experiences of the Great War, he narrates in the first person, as its subtitle expresses, “the story of Emil Sinclair's youth.” It narrates the internal and external experiences, but above all internal, in which a boy, initially a child, goes through adolescence and then becomes a young adult. It is the search for your essence and the mission to fulfill in this life.
From the beginning, and this vision continues throughout the entire book, Hesse masterfully narrates the polarities of “the two worlds,” One clear, luminous, familiar, therefore known to him, where he takes refuge; and the other world, its opposite: "the dark world", of the bad, the forbidden, uncertain and threatening that now opens up to him, Sinclair feeling an attraction and rejection for it at the same time.
The role of the dark world at the beginning is represented by “Kromer”, who plays an important role in Sinclair's attraction to the forbidden. A world so necessary to go through because there is the key to maturity. From experiences in this world will come growth and a greater understanding of things.
The world is not only clear and diaphanous, but there is its opposite that They fight, they tension, they oppose each other, until one of the two triumphs. Or you reach the union of polarities and already live in tenuous passages of light and darkness from one extreme to the other. It is the symbol of the Tao, what is light has some dark and vice versa. Let us remember that Herman Hesse was a self-taught being and greatly interested in the mystical and spiritual, especially of the East, a clear example of this being his other works: “Steppenwolf” and “Siddharta”.
Sinclair's adolescence is undoubtedly the richest part, as it is his path to maturity. It is in this part of the novel, in which the search for Sinclair's true “I” and his psychological journeys, his conflicts and questions on the way to feeling his destiny occur. Despite these opposites, what is clear is where Sinclair's parents and sisters, manners and the bourgeoisie belong, that is, the world of his childhood and the odark that is getting closer and closer. Between these two worlds, Sinclair finds a meeting point between both, unity, and it is here that the term “Abraxas” appears for the first time, as a God who not only contains the good but also accepts the bad and even the diabolical integrated into it. . Sinclair's meeting with Demian is fundamental for him since he opens his mind and spirit to other possibilities, they become friends and that friendship intensifies, even though Demian is initially intriguing and even suspicious to Sinclair. Demian is the motivator of those changes that were already brewing in Sinclair, but he suffers them for a long time, living them in the form of nightmares and pressures. It is then that Demian speaks to Sinclair about the stigma of Cain, thouse questioning whether the biblical story could not have a reverse, if Cain did not have noble things and strengths that Abel did not. This stigma becomes a symbol throughout the novel, of having it only for a select few, who question everything, open themselves spiritually and intellectually to the world, breaking with it first. Stigma is an example where the archetype of the “I” is found, also called the totality that seeks the integration of personality in Jung's theory. Also from the influence of Jung we see the polarities, expressed here. Jung shared the principle of polarity from “The Kybalion” which says: “everything is double, everything has two poles; everything, its pair of opposites: similar and antagonistic are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; the extremes touch; all the truthhalf-truths, all paradoxes can be reconciled.” It is a reaction against gregariousness, against the mass that blindly goes to everyone, and that accepts almost nothing without questioning. "The bird breaks the shell. The shell is the world. Whoever wants to be born has to destroy a world. The bird flies towards God. The god is called Abraxas.” Abraxas is an ancient representation of Gnostic Christianity from the 4th to 6th centuries that brought together Persian magical teachings with Greek philosophy and theories of nascent Christianity; It represented the synthesis against the separating duality of dogmatic monotheisms, especially the young Christianity. Figure with two intertwined snakes instead of human legs, torso and arms and armed with a sword and shield, and the head of a rooster; Abraxas symbolized the free and combative spirit in search of its own identity, through the union of opposites (the two snakes) and its rooster's head to sing at sunrise, that is, of knowledge. In the words of H. Hesse, “We can think that it is the name of a god who has the symbolic function of uniting the divine and the demonic.” In this novel we can see the repulsion of the masses and bourgeois society, also of morality. It is a reaction against gregariousness, against the mass that blindly goes to everyone, and that abides without questioning, almost nothing.
And it is here that we see the influence of Nietzsche; He understood himself as a “free spirit” linking himself to the history of the modern Enlightenment's struggle against religion; However, Nietzsche's philosophy of “free spirit” broke the conceptual world of the 19th century. The Nietzschean philosophy of this phase attempted to overcome the metaphysics and morals of old Europe, in addition to being an attempt to leave behind the modern philosophy of the subject as founded by Descartes. Nietzsche was approaching the hitherto unknown lands of skepticism and doubt; As an ethnologist of his own culture, he investigated the price that Europe had to pay for moving towards a universal morality. This theme is clearly raised in “Demian.” On the other hand, when Sinclair is several years older than at the beginning, eighteen years old, he meets Pistorius, a rich character who is the representation of knowledge and with whom Sinclair shares many moments, based on the search for the reason for the

of things and thoroughly philosophizing. Through him, Sinclair finds certainty in his preferences and in his destiny that is already being directed. Then Beatrice appears, the symbol of exterior and interior beauty, of an idealized beauty; the beginning of full, spiritual, intellectual love not consummated in the flesh but in spirit, represented in Demian's mother, who is an older woman with great intelligence, sensitivity and perception. Finally, “Demian” is a novel about self-knowledge; about the eager search at times for the true self, for the essence. To incorporate both poles into our lives, since we cannot live in just one, to accept our miseries and weaknesses as well as our strengths and will to live free, with a maturation that could be painful but that is also absolutely necessary to feel fulfilled, to constantly continue doubting things already pre-established, because that is the key to knowledge. That is, growing up and going in search of our destiny, leaving the fears of childhood and making our way to adulthood. It is because of this great humanism that the novel possesses that many of us will feel attracted and identified because who was not like Sinclair once?