Steppenwolf
By Hermann Hesse
I credit Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf with my lifelong pursuit of self-examination. To ‘know’ oneself, one’s motivations, failings, and strengths is to be compassionate with yourself. His three books, Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game, and Steppenwolf have all held great appeal to me and stood the test of time. Hesse’s literature is poetic prose meeting philosophy rendering a dream-like story that engages the imagination. He unflinchingly looks at sometimes unlikable characters and teases out the underlying human that is common to us all. The dark in us is just as valuable as the light. By inculcating this into his characters they engage us.
Harry Haller is a gifted, social misfit with gout who contemplates suicide on the eve of his 50th birthday. As morbid as this sounds, he manages to clarify thoughts of suicide with reason and some tiny fraction of hope. His ideation is not necessarily from despair but more of a general malaise from living a bourgeois life that I think everyone has felt at some point or another. We have all seen and encountered the walking dead. They appear as empty vampires seeking some kind of fix for the void that can only be healed by internal examination. Steppenwolf exemplifies the duality of our basest instincts and our better angels, forever locked in a battle for the soul of the individual.
Harry is a middle-aged curmudgeon in poor health who falls down the rabbit hole of reality one evening at the Magic Theater where he is presented with ‘The Treatise of the Steppenwolf’. A term he uses for his alter, dark ego.
‘If Harry, as man, had a beautiful thought, felt a fine and noble emotion, or performed a so-called good act, then the wolf bared his teeth at him and laughed and showed him with bitter scorn how laughable this whole pantomime was in the eyes of a beast, of a wolf who knew well enough in his heart what suited him namely, to trot alone over the Steppes and now then to gorge himself with blood or to purse a female wolf.’ — Hermann Hesse
It’s an excellent analogy for mankind's current predicament. Corruption, genocide, ecocide, inertia, you name it, this novel provides some insight. While we hope our better angels will prevail, the dark beast of entropy is ever-present. While vilification of people is easy, the Steppenwolf is a better analogy for the human condition. True evil is more a social construct and a coping mechanism because people fear what’s under the thin veneer of civilization. The path of least resistance is appealing us to all, particularly in the face of difficult circumstances. As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as civilized, we are animals. (I admit that at times this is a disservice to animals). Duality is our nature and even though co-operation might be advantageous, the wolf in us rails against it. Whether it is greed, envy, jealousy, lust, or some other mortal sin, we often let our basest instincts lead us.
The book meanders through of string of encounters with little asides that are examinations of culture in the context of Hesse’s life. For example, after a falling out over an artist rendering of Goethe with an old acquaintance, Harry ends up at the Bald Eagle, attracted to the gaiety at the bar. Here Harry meets Hermine, a charming young woman that eases the tribulations of his life. She mothers him and lulls him into deep sleep creating a window into Harry’s psyche. Just as Hesse took a moment to create a story within a story with his Steppenwolf treatise, he creates a dream sequence to explore topics like art, music, and literature. In the dream sequence, Harry chats with Goethe about the merits of Mozart. The whole novel has a surreal, dark yet hopeful quality to it.
Hermine’s vivacious personality, honesty, and lust for life bring Harry to life again. They engage in a strange friendship born almost out of mutual survival. She commands his obedience as a mother would. Where Hermine finds pleasure in small things, men like Harry need permission both to enjoy and seek pleasure at all. Harry meeting Hermine sets his life on a different path. They have debates about the nature of war, love, and life. In exchange for Hermine’s vitality, she requests that he kill her when she deems the time right. Given that Hesse wrote this in 1927 I’m sure the Great War was embedded in his psyche. Perhaps that’s why death, the nature of life, survival, and suicide are prominent themes and approached with a sense of humility and courage.
Through Hermine, Harry meets her friend and dance instructor Pablo and the lovely courtesan Maria who takes on Harry as a lover. The comfort he derives from these relationships has him pondering lost loves, tragic relationships, and childhood memories. It’s almost a series of moments melding the tenderness of a life filled with joy and pain. His newfound friends come from a world of hedonistic experiences, art, drugs, and the fulfillment of pleasure tempered with humanity. It is not the pleasure taken, stolen, or reaped at the expense of others. It is the kind that mutually heals.
Harry’s tryst with Maria offers all the purity of a clear-eyed love affair full of mutual appreciation from two people who see and accept each other for who they are. One aging, lost, lonely, the other a courtesan in the prime of her youth who gives/takes pleasure where she can and accepts the bounds of her life. Somehow they find profound beauty in accepting this relationship which is both mutually beneficial and yet transactional.
‘I had learned from her, once more before the end, to confide myself like a child to life’s surface play, to pursue a fleeting joy and to be both child and beast in the innocence of sex.’ — Hermann Hesse
I have seldom met people that view sexual pleasure like this but the world would be a better place if we all did. It is closer to the truth than we could ever imagine. The story culminates when Harry attends a masquerade ball. Harry roams the halls of a labyrinth searching for his newly found friends and finds a note darkly stating:
Tonight at the Magic Theater, For Madmen only, Price of Admittance is your Mind, Not for Everybody, Hermine is in Hell.
The masquerade ball is a labyrinth of skin, sex, and drugs. An orgy for the senses and a beautiful consensual one. The exploitation of others isn’t a theme in this book. Here Harry finds Hermine dressed as a young man. Hesse openly blurs the lines of sexuality that we still ridiculously grapple with a century later. The two explore the rooms as voyeurs watching couples engaged in sex, trying to seduce the same women and becoming intoxicated with all the sensations the evening has to offer. They find the mystic heroine that can be the energy of a synergistic crowd. On this evening the unique friendship Hermine and Harry share turns to something infinitely deeper.
As the sun rises and festivities wane Harry exorcises the Steppenwolf much to the celebration of all his companions. The wolf is tamed. He leaves the magic theater to find himself in the midst of a revolution. Machines and the means of production are being destroyed and people are being shot. Navigating the chaos of this new world Harry comes to terms with the multitude of people he has been and will be. The sequence is an indictment of the rigidity of society, war, and the eternal cycle of the human condition. The analogy Hesse makes to life is a chessboard with the players representing important figures in a person’s life as well as different incarnations of the self.
‘It is wrong insofar as it holds that one only and binding of lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity of subordinated selves’ — Hermann Hesse
The whole sequence after the lust and lingering pleasure of the masquerade ball reads like a descent into madness. Harry sees his own doppelganger with an emaciated tamed wolf, he seeks all past lovers, and relives the magic of stolen moments and finds himself in the last act of an opera. One last act is a perfect euphemism for the last pages of the book, the last act of his life, the last act of his sanity, or perhaps the last act of his self-delusion. The chess game is played over again with different pieces revealing different lessons and culminating in Hermine.
All the pieces of the game are within Harry’s grasp. This analogy is true for all of us. I’ve heard people say that comparing life to a game trivializes the pain and suffering of others. I feel that the contrary is true, finding humor in the darkest moments is to laugh at the absurdity of our own perceptions of control and individuality. Some aspects of life are within your control, many are not. This is true acceptance. We all just need to learn how to play the game of life, know the stakes and be willing to accept the consequences. Through each iteration of this game, each rebirth, or incarnation Harry gains a little bit more knowledge. Ultimately the whole novel is about personal salvation, with strong undercurrents of Buddhist philosophy and a heavy dose of surrealism.
‘I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.’ — Hermann Hesse
The world is getting stranger and more incomprehensible by the day. Steppenwolf is still one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature after the third reading. I hope you give Hesse a chance. Happy reading!
