Demian (Herman Hesse)

            Years ago, when I was little, I remember being frightened by the dread of death. Even though I was just a kid who craved for chocolate and ice cream, there were times when the thought that me, my loved ones, and everyone around me will one day die and be buried cold. What happens next? Where do we go? How scary is it, that one who firmly existed simply perishes away in such short notice? The sudden influx of these philosophical speculations always drove me insane and I would run around the hallway, yelling some stupid song to flush my nightmares out. Fortunately, I am no longer seized by those terrors but instead developed an attitude, an inward question that approaches me time to time: Death is inevitable. Then how must one live to die in true contentment?

            Demian is one of the books that gave a glimpse to my question. To clarify, it poses a question similar to mine and puts a story to show how the author, Herman Hesse, achieved the answer. But the reason I was shocked after finishing the book was not by some noble answer, but by the appalling journey that almost seemed atrocious. Nevertheless, it is compelling yet inescapable as it is the only way in which one can crawl into oneself.

             Sinclair grows in pain and solitude for years to solve only one question. ‘Who am I?’ Educated by the entire religious edifice, he soon realizes that another world exists right beside him – the only difference is that it is forbidden. And the whole story is composed of various events in which how those two worlds clash inside him and try to harmonize. Demian facilitates the process by leading him to believe that virtue is not absolute, evil not irreverent, and that one must erect laws of their own. He refers contemporary Europe as a “herd” which had failed to achieve the awakening of selfhood and that this moribund world will soon come into a renewal, in which only the marked who underwent a struggling approach to oneself can be prepared. Sinclair, through his painful and isolated youth, somehow gropes into finding his identity and gradually prepares to witness the new era, as though the little sparrow hawk struggles to break out from its shell.

            One of the main themes throughout the story is the reconsideration of morality. We tend to regard someone moral as elevated, pure, noble, and far, far away from vice. However what Sinclair mentions after the confrontation with Franz Kromer refutes that notion, arguing “because of my evil and misfortune I stood higher than my father, and the pious.” This is an important intimation that one cannot be moral without experiencing the immoral; rather, he must actively strive to understand it. Occasionally I had a similar doubt on religion as to why God would not just cast away the devil if he is to be so mighty. But now did I realize that it is the gruesome evil that ironically highlights God, that strengthens the holy spirit and morality. One who did not experience one side would never be able to understand the other as well, which is what young Sinclair senses abstractly at that time.

            Through the emergence of Abraxas Sinclair steps closer in harmonizing the two realms together. As Abraxas is the god for “uniting godly and devilish elements,” repetitive dreams of being embraced by the transcendental figure signifies how one is commingling good and evil in their own way. That is why Abraxas, which is expressed as a God, I believe should be interpreted as one’s true self. Although the figure resembled features of Beatrice, Demian, and Eva, Sinclair constantly senses that the figure and the paintings he drew instead showed himself, despite no external similarities. This is because in the letter Damian sent, the bird is Sinclair himself and will fly, which is, embarking on a journey, to Abraxas: the final destination of self-realization. When he hearkens to his dreams for many years to come, he will eventually be united with Abraxas and grasp his true self.

            “You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.” Though the book didn’t provide the complete answer to my inward question, the fact that one must wrestle for self-awareness and introspection I will never forget. It thrills and dreads me at the same time, what the result of this particular gamble of nature will be when I finished my journey: a human, a half-human half-fish, or something else still trapped in an eggshell?

[ Quotes ]

“For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.”

“This sign was not a mark of shame and that because of my evil and misfortune I stood higher than my father and the pious, the righteous.”

“This sign was not a mark of shame and that because of my evil and misfortune I stood higher than my father and the pious, the righteous.”

“I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.”

“But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil.”

“What is forbidden, in other words, is not something eternal; it can change…That is why each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden – forbidden for him.”

“One has to able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise.”

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”

“But is appears that Abraxas has a much deeper significance. We may conceive of the name as that of a godhead whose symbolic task is the uniting of the godly and devilish elements.”

“If you need something desperately and find it, this is not an accident; your own craving and compulsion leads you to it.”

“Fire worship was by no means the most foolish thing ever invented.”

“Well, each one of them contains the possibility of becoming human, but only by having an intimation of these possibilities, partially even by learning to make himself conscious of them; only in this respect are these possibilities his.”

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.”