Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

  MAGIC THEATRE

  ADMISSION NOT FOR EVERYBODY

  - NOT FOR EVERYBODY

  I tried to open the door but the heavy old handle just would not budge. The display of letters was over. It had suddenly come to a halt, in a sad fashion, as if aware of its own pointlessness. I took a few steps backwards, landing deep in the mud. No more letters appeared. The display had vanished, but I remained standing there in the mud for a long time, waiting in vain.

  Then, just as I was giving up, having already returned to the pavement, I saw, reflected drop by drop on the asphalt, a few coloured neon letters flit by in front of me.

  I read:

  FOR - - MAD - - PEO - - PLE - - ONLY

  Although my feet had got wet and I was freezing, I stood there for quite a while, waiting. Nothing more appeared. But all at once, as I was still standing there, thinking how attractively the delicate coloured letters had flitted like will-o'-the-wisps across the damp wall and the gleaming black asphalt, something that I had been thinking of earlier came to mind again. It was the metaphor of the golden trace that shines forth only to vanish again so suddenly and irretrievably.

  Chilled to the bone, I continued on my way, dreaming of that trace and filled with yearning for the gateway to a magic theatre, for mad people only. By now I had reached the area round the market where there was no shortage of nightlife. Every few yards there was a poster or billboard advertising an all-girl band, a variety show, a cinema, or a dance night, but none of this was for me. It was all for 'everybody', for normal people. And they were indeed the ones I saw thronging through the entrances. Nevertheless, I was no longer so sad. My mood had brightened up. After all, the other world had extended a hand of welcome to me. A few coloured letters dancing in front of my eyes had touched hidden chords in my soul. A glimmer of that golden trace had come into view again.

  I called in at the little old-fashioned pub where nothing has changed since my first stay in this city some twenty-five years ago. It even had the same landlady then, and many of the present customers were already sitting there in the same places, with the same drinks in front of them. For me, this modest pub was a refuge. True, it was only a refuge like, say, the one on the stairs by the araucaria plant. I didn't find a home or a community there, just a quiet seat as a spectator in front of a stage on which unknown people were acting unknown plays. Yet even this quiet seat was of value. There were no crowds, no shouting, no music here, just a few peaceful citizens sitting at plain wooden tables (no marble, no enamel, no plush upholstery, no brass!), all of them enjoying their evening drink of good hearty wine. These few regulars, all of whom I knew by sight, may have been real philistines. At home perhaps, in their philistine dwellings, they had dreary shrines to the stupid false gods of contentment. But they may also have been solitary chaps like me who had gone off the rails, silent drinkers, pondering bankrupt ideals - lone wolves and poor devils, they too. I could not tell. They were all drawn here by some kind of homesickness, disappointment or need for surrogates. The married man was seeking the atmosphere of his bachelor days, the old civil servant echoes of his time at university. They were all fairly untalkative, all drinkers who, like me, preferred to sit in front of half a litre of wine from Alsace rather than an all-girl band. Here I cast anchor. It was bearable here for an hour, or even two.

  I had scarcely taken a sip of my Alsace wine when I realized that I hadn't eaten a thing all day apart from some bread at breakfast. Strange, all the things human beings are able to swallow. I must have spent ten minutes reading a newspaper, allowing the spirit of some irresponsible individual - one of those who chews up the words of others in his mouth and spits them out again undigested - to enter me through my eyes. I ingested a whole column of the stuff. And then I wolfed down a fair portion of the liver cut from the body of a slaughtered calf. Strange! The best thing was the Alsace wine. I am not partial to those heady, powerful vintages that flaunt their charms and are famous for their special flavours, at least not for everyday drinking. Most of all I like perfectly clean, light, modest local wines without particular names. You can drink a lot of them, and they have a good, friendly taste of the countryside, of earth and sky and woodland. A glass of Alsace and a piece of good bread, that's the best of all meals. But now I already had a portion of liver inside me - an outlandish indulgence since I seldom eat meat - and a second glass of wine in front of me. Strange, too, to think that decent, healthy people in some green valley or other should take the trouble to grow vines and press grapes. Why? So that in some other place far away a few disappointed citizens and helpless lone wolves might sit in silence, soaking up a little courage or good humour from their wine glasses.

  What did I care whether it was strange! It did me good. It helped to improve my mood. Relieved, I was able to raise a belated laugh at the soggy mess of words in the newspaper article, and suddenly the forgotten melody of that quiet passage in the woodwind came back to me. Like a little radiant soap bubble it rose up inside me, reflecting the whole world in colourful miniature, before gently dispersing again. If it had been possible for this heavenly little melody secretly to put down roots in my soul and one day to blossom forth in me again in all its lovely colours, could I be totally lost? Even if I was a stray animal, unable to understand its environment, my foolish life did have some meaning. There was something in me that responded to things, was receptive to calls from distant worlds above. My brain was a storehouse of a thousand images.

  There were Giotto's hosts of angels from the small blue vault of a church in Padua. Next to them came Hamlet and Ophelia, she garlanded with flowers, beautiful allegories of all the world's grief and misunderstanding. Then there was Gianozzo the aeronaut,2 blowing his horn as he stood in the burning balloon. And Attila Schmelzle,3 his new hat in his hand. Or the Borobudur Temple4 with its sculptures soaring to the skies like a mountain range. And though all these beautiful creations might be alive in a thousand other hearts, there were ten thousand other unknown images seen by my eyes and sounds heard by my ears that had their dwelling solely in me. The old weathered infirmary wall, stained greyish-green with age, the cracked, worn surface of which conjured up a thousand frescoes - who responded to it, who let it enter his soul, who loved it, who felt the magic of its gently fading colours? The ancient books of the monks with their delicately illuminated miniatures, the books by German writers of one or two hundred years ago, all those dog-eared volumes full of stains, forgotten now by their nation, or the prints and manuscripts of the old composers, those tough, yellowish scores in which their musical dreams found fixed form - who heard their witty, mischievous, wistful voices, who carried their spirit and charm in his heart through a different era, one estranged from them? Who still remembered that small tough cypress tree high on the mountain above Gubbio, bent and split by falling rocks but clinging to life and managing to grow a new, sparse makeshift crown? Who was it gave the hardworking housewife with the gleaming araucaria on the first floor her full due? Who read the cloud messages in the mists swirling over the Rhine at night? It was Steppenwolf. And who, above the ruins of his life, was striving to locate some elusive meaning? Who was enduring a seemingly senseless, seemingly mad existence, yet still, at this last insanely chaotic stage, secretly hoping to find revealed truth and divine presence?

  Holding on tight to the glass the landlady was about to refill for me, I stood up. I didn't need any more wine. The golden trace had suddenly lit up, reminding me of things eternal, of Mozart, of the stars. For an hour I was able to breathe again, to live, allowed to exist without suffering agonies, being afraid or feeling ashamed.

  When I stepped out on to the now empty street the fine drizzle, agitated by the cold wind, was swishing around the street lamps, sparkling and flickering like crystal. Now where? If at that moment I'd had the magic power to wish for something, a small, attractive room in the style of Louis the Sixteenth would suddenly have appeared, and a few good musicians would have played two or three pieces by Handel and M
ozart for me. In just the right mood for that now, I would have slurped the cool, noble music as gods do nectar. Ah, if only I'd had a friend at that time, a friend brooding by candlelight in some garret, his violin at his side! How I would have stolen up on him as he passed the night in silence! Quietly climbing the twisty stairs, I would have taken him by surprise, and we would have enjoyed a feast of conversation and music for a few heavenly hours of night. I had often tasted such happiness, once upon a time, in years gone by, but it too had gradually receded, finally deserting me. Since then there had only been lean years.

  After some hesitation I set off home, turning up the collar of my overcoat and prodding the wet pavement with my walking stick. However slowly I covered the ground, all too soon I would be back there sitting in my garret, in the pseudo-home I did not like but could not do without, for the time was long past when I was able to spend a rainy winter's night out walking in the open air. Yet I swear to God I had no intention of letting anything spoil my good mood that night: neither the rain, my gout, nor the araucaria. And though no chamber orchestra was to be had, and no solitary friend with a violin either, still I could hear that sweet melody inside my head and I was able, quietly humming it to the rhythm of every breath I took, to play it to myself after a fashion. Deep in thought, I strode on. No, I could manage without the chamber music and without the friend. To allow myself to be consumed by an impotent desire for warmth was ridiculous. Solitude is independence. For years I had wished for it, and now it was mine. My solitude was cold, there was no denying that, but it was also serene, wonderfully serene and vast like the cold serene space in which the stars revolve.

  As I walked by a dance hall a loud blast of jazz music hit me, hot and raw like the vapour raw meat exudes. For a moment I stopped. Much as I abhorred it, this kind of music had always held a secret attraction for me. I found jazz repellent, but it was ten times better than contemporary academic music. Naively and genuinely sensual, its breezy, raw savagery could even affect the likes of me at a deep instinctual level. I stood there a while sniffing, getting a whiff of the brash, raw music, wickedly and lecherously savouring the atmosphere of the dance floor. One half of the music, the lyrical one, was schmaltzy, sickly sweet and cloyingly sentimental; the other half was wild, quirky and energetic, and yet both combined artlessly and peaceably to form a whole. It was the music of an age in decline; similar music must have been played in Rome under the last emperors. Compared with Bach and Mozart and real music, it was of course an outrage. But then so was all our art, all our thinking, all our pseudo-culture once it was measured against real culture. And the advantage of this music was its great honesty, endearing Negro sincerity and cheerful, childlike mood. There was something of the Negro in it, something of the American who with all his strength seems boyishly fresh and childlike to us Europeans. Would Europe become like that too? Was it already halfway there? Were we ageing connoisseurs and admirers of the Europe of old, of the genuine music and literature of yore, merely a small stupid minority of complicated neurotics who tomorrow would be forgotten and laughed to scorn? Was what we called 'culture', spirit, soul, or dubbed beautiful and sacred, merely a ghost, long since dead and thought to be real and alive only by us few fools? Had it perhaps never been real and alive at all? Had what we fools were striving for perhaps merely been a phantom from the start?

  By now I was back in the fold of the city's old quarter. Its lights extinguished, the little church stood there in the greyness, looking unreal. Suddenly I recalled what I had experienced earlier that evening: the mysterious Gothic doorway and the mysterious sign above it, mocking me with its flickering neon letters. What message had they spelled out? 'Admission not for everybody.' And: 'For mad people only.' I stared intently across at the old wall, secretly wishing that the magic might start afresh, the written invitation might be meant for the madman that was me, and I might be allowed through the little portal. Perhaps I would find what I was yearning for there; there, perhaps, they were playing my music.

  In the profound gloom the dark stone wall looked at me calmly, seemingly locked up in its own deep dream. And nowhere was there a gateway, nowhere a Gothic arch, just dark, motionless wall with not a hole in it. I walked on with a smile and a friendly nod to the old stonework: 'Sleep well, Wall, I won't wake you. There will come a time when they will tear you down or stick the greedy publicity for their firms all over you, but for now you are still there, still beautiful and peaceful, and I am very fond of you.'

  Suddenly I was startled by a figure emerging without warning from the black depths of a street right in front of me. It was a man wearily going home late on his own. He was dressed in a blue smock, had a cap on his head, and was carrying a pole with a placard on it over his shoulder. Strapped in front of his belly was an open tray of the kind people use to sell things at fairs. He walked on wearily ahead of me without looking round, otherwise I would have greeted him and given him a cigar. In the light of the next street lamp I tried to read the device on his banner, the red placard, but it was swaying from side to side on the pole and I could not decipher anything. I called out to him, asking to be shown the placard. When he stopped, holding his pole fairly straight, I was able to pick out some flickering, swaying letters:

  ANARCHIST EVENING SHOW!

  MAGIC THEATRE!

  ADMISSION NOT FOR EVERY ...

  'You are just the person I've been looking for,' I shouted, delighted. 'What is this evening show of yours? Where is it? When?'

  He had already started walking on again.

  'Not for everybody,' he said in a sleepy voice, as if he didn't care, and went on walking. He had had enough, he couldn't wait to get home.

  'Stop,' I cried, running after him. 'What have you got in that tray of yours? I want to buy something from you.'

  Without stopping, the man reached mechanically into his tray and took out a little booklet, which he held out to me. I took it quickly and put it in my pocket. As I was fumbling with my coat buttons, wanting to fish out some money, he turned aside into a gateway, pulled the gate to behind him and was gone. I could hear the sound of his heavy footsteps in the courtyard, first on flagstones, then on wooden stairs. After that I heard nothing more. And all at once I too was very tired. I felt as if it were very late, high time to go home. Walking faster, I had soon made my way through the sleeping suburban street to my area between the old ramparts of the city where, behind bits of lawn, the civil servants and people with small private incomes live in neat little ivy-covered blocks of rented accommodation. Walking by the ivy, the lawn and the little fir tree I came to the front door, found the keyhole, found the light switch, and crept up past the glass doors, the polished cupboards and the pot plants before unlocking the door to the attic, my little pseudo-home. The armchair and the stove, the inkwell and the box of paints, Novalis and Dostoevsky were waiting for me, just as other, normal people expect their mother or wife, the children, the maids, the dogs and cats to be waiting for them when they get back home.

  When taking off my wet overcoat, I happened on the little book again. Removing it from my pocket, I saw it was one of those thin pamphlets, poorly printed on poor paper, which you see on sale at fairs. 'Tips for those born in January' or 'How to make yourself twenty years younger in a week', that kind of thing.

  But when I had settled down in the armchair and put on my reading glasses, I was amazed and suddenly filled with foreboding to see on the cover of this cheap pamphlet the title: 'On Steppenwolf: A Tract. Not for everybody.'

  The contents of this document, which I read with constantly increasing suspense at one sitting, were as follows:

  On Steppenwolf

  A Tract

  For mad people only

  Once upon a time there was a man called Harry, otherwise known as Steppenwolf. He walked on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but in actual fact he was still a wolf of the steppes. He had learned a lot of the things sensible human beings are capable of learning, and he was a fair
ly clever man. One thing he had not learned, however, was to be satisfied with himself and his life. He was incapable of this; he was a dissatisfied human being. This was probably because in the depths of his heart he always knew (or thought he knew) that he wasn't actually a human being at all, but a wolf of the steppes. Wise minds might argue the point as to whether he really was a wolf; whether he had once, even before his birth, been transformed by magic from a wolf into a human being; whether he had been born a human being but endowed with and possessed by the spirit of a lone wolf; or, alternatively, whether his belief that he was in fact a wolf was merely a delusion or a form of sickness on his part. One possibility, for instance, would be that he was wild, boisterous and disorderly in his youth. Those responsible for his upbringing had then tried to stifle the beast in him, but precisely by doing so had led him to imagine and believe that he really was in fact a beast, clothed in only a thin veneer of education and humanity. It would be possible to go on discussing this at length, entertainingly so; or even to write whole books on the subject. However, that would be of no help to Steppenwolf because to him it was a matter of complete indifference whether the wolf had been instilled in him by magic spells, by beatings, or whether it was merely a product of his imagination. Whatever other people might think about it, and even what he himself might think, was of no use to him at all. He certainly wasn't going to get the wolf out of his system by speculation of that kind.