Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

  Steppenwolf's nature was thus twofold, partly human, partly wolfish. This was his fate, and it may well be that such a fate was nothing special or unusual. There have been quite a number of reported sightings of human beings with a great deal of the dog or fox, the fish or snake in their make-up, yet they had no special difficulties on that account. In their cases, the human being and the fox, or the human being and the fish simply coexisted without either of them harming the other. The one was even of help to the other, as can be seen from many an instance of men who are envied because of their great success in life. They owe their good fortune more to the fox or the monkey in them than to the human being. This is of course common knowledge. Harry's case, on the other hand, was different. In him the human being and the wolf went their own separate ways. Far from helping one another, they were like mortal enemies in constant conflict, each causing the other nothing but grief. When two mortal enemies are locked in one mind and body, life is a miserable business. Well, to each his lot. None of us has it easy.

  In Steppenwolf's case, the fact is that, like all hybrid creatures, he lived with the feeling of being sometimes a wolf, sometimes a human being. However, as a wolf he was forever conscious of his human side lying in wait, observing, judging and condemning him; just as the wolf did when he was a human being. For example, whenever Harry in his capacity as human being had some lovely idea, experienced some fine and noble sentiment, or did a so-called good deed, the wolf in him would bare its teeth and laugh him utterly to scorn, indicating how ludicrously out of character all this fine play-acting was in a wild animal of the steppes, a wolf who at heart knew perfectly well that his real pleasure lay in stalking alone across the plains, occasionally quaffing blood or pursuing a she-wolf. Seen thus from the wolf's point of view, every human action became frighteningly comic and self-conscious, vain and inane. But it was exactly the same when Harry felt and behaved like a wolf, when he showed other people his teeth or became murderously hostile to humankind as a whole, hating all its hypocritical and degenerate manners and customs. For then it was the human side of him that lay in wait, observing the wolf, calling him a brute and a beast, spoiling and souring all the pleasure he was taking in the straightforward life of a healthy untamed wolf.

  This was the way of things for Steppenwolf, and one can imagine that Harry's life was not exactly a pleasant and happy one. However, this doesn't mean to say that he was unhappy to some quite unusual degree (even though this did seem to him to be the case, all human beings tending to consider their share of suffering to be the greatest). That ought never to be said of anyone. Even those without a trace of wolf in them are not necessarily happy. And even the unhappiest of lives has its hours of sunshine, small flowers of contentment that dot its sandy, stony ground. And so it was for Steppenwolf too. He was usually very unhappy, there is no denying that, and he was capable of making others unhappy too; the ones he loved, that is, and those who loved him, for all those who grew fond of him only ever saw the one side of the man. Some took a liking to him as a refined, intelligent and exceptional person, only to react with horror and disappointment on suddenly discovering the wolf in him. And this was inevitable because Harry, wishing his whole self to be loved, as everybody does, was for that very reason incapable of denying the wolf or concealing its existence from those whose affection meant a lot to him. There were, however, others who of all things loved the wolf in him, precisely the side of him that was free, wild, untameable, dangerous and strong. And they in turn were of course extraordinarily disappointed, indeed miserable, when the wild, wicked wolf suddenly turned out to be human too, still felt a strong desire to be kind and gentle, still wanted to listen to Mozart, read poetry and keep faith with the ideals of humanity. More than any others, these people were especially prone to react with anger and disappointment, and thus Steppenwolf transmitted to all the strangers whose lot it was to come into contact with him something of his own dual, divided nature.

  Any readers now thinking they know Steppenwolf and can imagine what his wretched life, lived at odds with himself, was like, are mistaken, however, because they don't know the half of the story. Just as there are exceptions to every rule, and one lone sinner may under certain circumstances be more pleasing to God than ninety-nine righteous people, there were, though we haven't mentioned them yet, exceptions and strokes of luck in Harry's case too. At times he had no difficulty breathing, thinking and feeling purely as a wolf, at other times purely as a human being. On very rare occasions, the two even made peace with one another, lived for each other's sake, so that it was no longer the case that one of them slept while the other was on watch. Rather, they reinforced one another, each acting as the other's double. Moreover, as happens all over the world, there were also times in this man's life when all things habitual, everyday, familiar and routine seemed only to exist in order to be put on hold for a matter of seconds, momentarily disrupted so as to make way for something extraordinary and miraculous, for grace. It is of course debatable whether these rare and brief periods of happiness made up for and alleviated Steppenwolf's otherwise wretched lot so that his happiness and suffering eventually balanced one another out. Perhaps the fleeting but potent happiness of these rare moments even absorbed all his suffering, leaving a positive residue. This is one more question that those with time to spare might care to brood upon. The wolf frequently did brood upon it, and the days he spent doing so were wasted, pointless days.

  There is one more thing to be said about this. There are quite a lot of human beings of a similar kind to Harry; many artists, in particular, are members of the species. All such people have two souls within them, two natures. Divine and devilish elements; maternal as well as paternal blood; a capacity for happiness and suffering can be found side by side and intermingled in them in just as hostile and confused a manner as were the wolf and human being in Harry. And in their rare moments of happiness these people, whose lives are very unsettled, now and then experience something powerful and ineffably beautiful, lifting them like dazzling spray so high above the sea of suffering that the fleeting glow of their happiness can radiate outwards, touch others and enchant them. It is in such moments of elation, fleeting and precious like spray over a sea of suffering, that all those works of art have their origins in which suffering individuals have managed to rise above their personal fates to such a degree that their happiness radiates like a star. To all those viewing it, it seems like something eternal, like the happiness they themselves have been dreaming of. All people of this kind, however their actions or works are defined, actually have no lives at all; that is to say their lives have no being, no shape. They are not heroes or artists or thinkers the way other people are judges, doctors, shoemakers or teachers. Instead, their lives are an eternal ebb and flow full of suffering; unhappy, ghastly, riven lives that are without meaning unless one is prepared to see their meaning in precisely those rare experiences, actions, thoughts and works that, rising above the chaos of such lives, suddenly shine forth. It is among people of this kind that the dangerous and frightening idea originated that human life as a whole may be merely a dreadful mistake, the botched outcome of a serious miscarriage suffered by some primeval mother, an experiment of nature gone wildly and horrifyingly wrong. However, it is also from among their ranks that a very different idea arose: the idea that human beings may not merely be moderately rational creatures, but rather children of the gods, destined for immortality.

  Every human type has its hallmarks, its personal signatures. Each has its virtues and vices, its own deadly sin. Steppenwolf was a nocturnal creature; that was one of the things that marked him out. Morning was a bad time of day for him, a time to dread because no good ever came of it. In his whole life there wasn't a single morning when he felt really cheerful. In the hours before noon he never achieved anything of value, never had good ideas, never managed to bring joy to himself or others. Only in the course of the afternoon did he slowly warm up and come to life. And only toward
s evening, on his good days, did he spring into action and become productive, at times passionate and excited. His need for solitude and independence was also linked to this. No one has ever had a more profound and passionate need for independence than he did. In his youth, when he was still poor and having difficulty earning his daily bread, he would rather wear tattered clothes and go hungry if only to salvage some small fragment of his independence. He never sold himself in exchange for money or a good life, never became a slave to women or people in power. To preserve his freedom he was prepared on countless occasions to throw away or reject things the world at large saw as advantages or blessings. He could not imagine anything more detestable and horrifying than having to follow some profession, keep strictly to a daily and yearly timetable, and obey others. He utterly loathed the idea of an office, secretariat or legal chambers, and his worst nightmare was to be confined in army barracks. He was able to avoid all such predicaments, though it often meant sacrificing a great deal. This was the man's great virtue and strength. In this respect he was incorruptible, unwilling to compromise, steadfast and unwavering in character. On the other hand, this virtue was inextricably linked to his suffering and eventual fate. The same thing happened to him as to everyone. The thing he most compulsively desired, most stubbornly searched and strove for, was granted to him, but more abundantly than is good for a human being. Initially all he dreamed of and wished for, it later became his bitter lot. Those who live for power are destroyed by power, those who live for money by money; service is the ruin of the servile, pleasure the ruin of the pleasure-seeker. Thus it was Steppenwolf's independence that proved his downfall. He achieved his goal; he became more and more independent. He took orders from no one; he was required to comply with no one's rules. He alone could freely determine what he did or did not do, for all people of strength unfailingly achieve whatever they are compulsively driven to search for. But, having achieved his freedom, Harry suddenly realized when experiencing it to the full that it was a living death. His position was a lonely one; it was uncanny the way the world left him to his own devices. Other people were no longer of concern to him; he wasn't even concerned about himself. The air around him was getting thinner and thinner the more solitary he became, severing all contact with others, and he was slowly suffocating as a result. For the situation now was different. No longer his desire and goal, solitude and independence were a fate he was condemned to. He had made his magic wish and there was no going back on it. However strongly he yearned to re-establish contact with others, however willing he was to hold out his arms to embrace them, it was of no avail: they now left him alone. Yet there was no indication that people hated him or found him repugnant. On the contrary; he had lots of friends. Lots of people liked him. But friendliness and sympathy were the only reactions he ever encountered. People would invite him to their homes, give him presents, write him nice letters, but nobody got close to him, no attachments were ever formed, nobody was able or willing to share his life. He was now breathing the air that the lonely breathe, living in an atmosphere that was still, adrift from the world around him. No amount of yearning or goodwill had any effect on his inability to form relationships. This was one of the significant hallmarks of his life.

  Another was his suicidal nature. At this point it has to be said that it is wrong to use the term 'suicide case' solely to designate those people who actually take their own lives. Even many of the latter to some extent become suicide cases only by chance. They are not necessarily suicidal by nature. Among the ranks of people devoid of personality or individual stamp, sheep-like people leading run-of-the-mill lives, destined for nothing of strong significance, there are many who end up committing suicide. Yet nothing in their whole character and make-up qualifies them as typical suicide cases, whereas conversely many of those who are by nature suicidal, perhaps the majority of them, never in fact lay a finger on themselves. The typical 'suicide case' - and Harry was one - need not necessarily live in a particularly close relationship to death. It is possible to do that without being a suicide case. What is, however, peculiar to all suicide cases is the sense that their own selves, rightly or wrongly, are particularly dangerous, questionable and endangered natural growths. It seems to them that they are in an extraordinarily exposed and vulnerable position, as if they are standing on the narrowest of all cliff ledges where a slight push from someone else or some minute weakness on their part will be enough to plunge them into the void. People of this kind typically have written in their line of life the message that they are most likely to meet their death by suicide, or at any rate they imagine this to be the case. Their cast of mind almost always becomes apparent when they are still quite young, remaining with them for the rest of their lives, but it is not, as one might think, conditioned by any unusual lack of vital energy on their part. Quite the opposite: extraordinarily tenacious, voracious and also audacious characters can be found among these 'suicide cases'. However, just as there are people prone to develop a temperature whenever they have the slightest ailment, those we call 'suicide cases', by nature always sensitive and highly strung, tend to react to the mildest distress by giving serious consideration to suicide. If we had a branch of science courageous and conscientious enough to occupy itself with human beings rather than simply the mechanisms of life's phenomena; if we had an anthropology or a psychology worthy of the name, these matters of fact would be common knowledge.

  It goes without saying that all these pronouncements of ours on the subject of suicide cases only scratch the surface of the matter. They are psychology, and therefore belong to physical science. From a metaphysical point of view, the issue looks different, much clearer. Viewed from such an angle, 'suicide cases' appear to us to be suffering from guilt feelings with regard to their very individuality. They are those individuals who no longer see self-development and fulfilment as their life's aim, but rather the dissolution of self, a return to the womb, to God, to the cosmos. Very many people of this kind are utterly incapable of really committing suicide because they have a profound insight into the sinful nature of the act. In our eyes they are nevertheless suicide cases because they see death as their saviour, not life, and they are prepared to jettison, abandon and extinguish themselves in order to return to their origins.

  Just as every strength can turn into a weakness (indeed must do so under certain circumstances), the converse is true. Typical suicide cases can often make their apparent weaknesses into strengths and means of support; what is more, they manage to do so with remarkable frequency. Harry, our Steppenwolf, is just such a case. For him, as for thousands of his kind, the notion that death was an option available to him at any time had become more than just the melancholy play of an adolescent imagination. It was from this very idea that he derived his consolation, his main support in life. As is the case with all people of his kind, every shock to his system, every pain, every bad situation he experienced in life did indeed arouse in him the desire to choose death as an escape. Yet gradually he was able to turn this of all tendencies to his advantage by deriving from it a useful philosophy of life. As he grew accustomed to the idea that an emergency exit from life was always to hand, it gave him strength, made him curious to experience painful and wretched conditions to the full. And occasionally, when his life was a real misery, he might take a kind of perverse and grim delight in gleefully feeling: 'Why not go on? I'm curious to see just how much a human being can bear! Once I reach the limit of what is bearable, all I need to do is open the door and I'll have escaped it all.' Very many suicide cases derive extraordinary strength from this idea.

  On the other hand, all suicide cases also know what a struggle it can be resisting the temptation to take their own lives. In some small corner of their minds they all know that suicide, though it offers a way out, is nevertheless merely a shabby and illegitimate emergency exit. At bottom, the nobler and finer course is to let oneself be defeated and laid low by life itself rather than by one's own hand. This knowl
edge, this bad conscience - which can be traced to the same source as the bad conscience, say, of so-called self-abusers - forces most 'suicide cases' to engage in a constant fight against temptation. They fight against it just as kleptomaniacs fight against their vice. This battle was something Steppenwolf also knew well; he had fought it with a whole range of different weapons. Eventually, at the age of roughly forty-seven, he hit on a good idea that was not without its humorous side and often filled him with delight. He decided on a firm date when he would allow himself to commit suicide: his fiftieth birthday. He agreed with himself that he should be free to use the emergency exit, or not, depending on the mood he was in that day. Whatever might happen to him in the meantime, whether he fell ill, experienced poverty, grief or suffering, it was all only for a limited period. At the most it could only last these few years, months and days, and their number was getting smaller with each day that passed! And in fact he did now find it easier to put up with many trials and tribulations that would previously have caused him deeper and longer agonies, perhaps even shaken him to the core. If for some reason or other he was going through an especially bad patch; if in addition to his usual bleak, solitary and turbulent life he was suffering some particular pain or loss, he was now able to respond to the pain by saying: 'Just you wait, two more years to go, then I'll get the better of you!' Then he would take deep delight in imagining all the cards and congratulatory letters arriving on his fiftieth birthday just when, sure in the knowledge that his razor wouldn't let him down, he was bidding farewell to all pain and closing the door behind him. Then the gout in his joints, all the bouts of depression, the headaches and the pangs in his stomach could find some other poor devil to torment.