Steppenwolf
HERMANN HESSE
Steppenwolf
Translated from the German and with an Afterword by David Horrocks
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
STEPPENWOLF
Translator’s Note
Author’s Postscript (1941)
Translator’s Afterword
PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
STEPPENWOLF
Hermann Hesse was born in southern Germany in 1877. Hesse concentrated on writing poetry as a young man, but his first successful book was a novel, Peter Camenzind (1904). During the war, Hesse was actively involved in relief efforts. Depression, criticism for his pacifist views, and a series of personal crises led Hesse to undergo psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang. Out of these years came Demian (1919), a novel whose main character is torn between the orderliness of bourgeois existence and the turbulent and enticing world of sensual experience. This dichotomy is prominent in Hesse’s subsequent novels, including Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927), and Narcissus and Goldmund (1930). Hesse worked on his magnum opus, The Glass Bead Game (1943), for twelve years. This novel was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hesse died at his home in Switzerland in 1962.
David Horrocks (1943–2011) was Lecturer in German at Keele University from 1967 until his early retirement in 2000. His research and teaching focused on literature of the First World War, German Modernism, West German post-1945 literature and recent writing by Turkish-German authors. Previous literary translation work includes a story by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard for Penguin Parallel Texts (German Short Stories, ed. D. Constantine, 1976), poetry by Olga Sedakova (with Valentina Polukhina, in Sedakova’s The Silk of Time, 1994) and work by Turkish-German author Emine Sevgi Özdamar (in Turkish Culture in German Society Today, ed. D. Horrocks and E. Kolinsky, 1996). He also contributed articles on Hermann Hesse and Günter Grass to the Encyclopaedia of Literary Translation into English (ed. O. Casse, 2000).
Editor’s Preface
This volume contains the surviving notebooks of the man we used to call ‘Steppenwolf’ – an expression he himself employed on several occasions. Whether his manuscript is in need of a preface to introduce it is a moot point, but I at any rate feel the need to add to Steppenwolf’s pages a few of my own in which I shall try to record my memories of him. Since I am wholly ignorant of his background and past life my actual knowledge of the man is scanty. I have, however, retained a strong and I must say, despite everything, congenial impression of his personality.
Steppenwolf was a man nearing fifty who one day some years ago called at my aunt’s block of flats in search of a furnished room. Having rented the attic room up under the roof and the small bedroom next to it, he came back a few days later with two suitcases and a large book chest, and lodged with us for nine or ten months. He led a quiet life, keeping himself to himself, and had it not been for the odd chance meeting on the stairs or in the corridor, occasioned by the proximity of our bedrooms, we would probably not have become acquainted at all. For the man was not sociable; indeed he was unsociable to a degree that I had never observed in anyone before. He really was, to use the term he himself did on occasion, a Steppenwolf, or wolf of the steppes: an alien, wild but also timid – even very timid – creature from a world different to mine. Mind you, it was only after reading the notebooks he left here that I discovered how profoundly isolated a life he had, by virtue of his temperament and destiny, gradually made his own, and how consciously he recognized this isolation as his lot. Still, even before reading them, through meeting and talking with him briefly on a number of occasions, I did get to know him to some extent. And I found that the image I gained of him from the notebooks basically matched the admittedly paler and sketchier one derived from our personal acquaintance.
I happened to be there at the moment when Steppenwolf first set foot in our home and rented his rooms from my aunt. It was lunchtime when he arrived – the dishes were still on the table – and I still had half an hour to spare before getting back to the office. I well remember the odd and highly contradictory impression he made on me during this first encounter. He had rung the bell and entered by the glass door. In the dimly lit hall my aunt was asking him what he wanted, but he, Steppenwolf, had lifted his angular, close-cropped head upwards and was sniffing the surrounding air, his nose nervously twitching. And before he made to reply, or even to introduce himself, he said: ‘My, it does smell good here.’ He was smiling as he spoke, and my dear aunt smiled back, but I thought this was a peculiar way of greeting us if anything, and rather took against him.
‘Well now,’ he said, ‘I’ve come about the room you have to let.’
Only when all three of us were climbing the stairs to the attic was I able to get a closer look at the man. Though not very big, he walked and held his head as men of some stature do. He was wearing a comfortable modern winter coat and was otherwise respectably if untidily dressed. He was clean-shaven and had extremely short hair with a slight glint of grey in it here and there. Initially I didn’t like his walk one bit. There was something laborious and hesitant about it that clashed with the sharpness and severity of his profile as well as with the tone and vivacity of his speech. Only later did it come to my attention that he was ill, and that he had difficulty walking. He cast his eyes over the stairs, the walls, the windows and the old tall cupboards in the staircase with a peculiar smile on his face that I found equally unpleasant at the time. He appeared to like everything, yet at the same time find it somehow laughable. In general everything about the man suggested that he was a visitor from an alien world, from some lands overseas, say; and though he found everything here attractive, it all struck him as a bit comical too. He was, I have to say, polite, indeed friendly. He was also immediately happy with everything, hadn’t a single objection to the building, the room, the rent, the price of breakfast or anything. And yet the whole man had an air about him that was alien and, so it seemed to me, hostile or ill disposed. He rented the room, taking the little bedroom in addition. He asked about heating, water, cleaning and the house regulations; he listened to everything in a friendly and attentive manner; he agreed to everything, immediately offering to pay an advance on the rent too. And yet he appeared to be remote from these proceedings; he himself seemed to find what he was doing comical and not to take it seriously. It was as if renting a room and speaking German to people were strange and novel activities for him, while in actual fact, deep inside, he was occupied with totally different matters. This, roughly, was my impression, and it would have been an unfavourable one, if a whole variety of little things hadn’t contrived to make me modify it. It was above all the man’s face that I found likeable from the start. I liked it in spite of its alien expression. It may have been a rather peculiar face, and a sad one too, but it was alert, very thoughtful and marked by experience, both intellectual and spiritual. And what, in addition, reconciled me to him even more was the fact that his politeness and friendliness, though they seemed not to come easily to him, were devoid of arrogance. On the contrary: there was an almost touching, imploring quality about them, for which I discovered the explanation only later, but which immediately went some way towards winning me over.
Before the two rooms had been viewed and the other arrangements completed my lunch break had come to an end and I had to go back to work. Taking my leave, I left the stranger in the hands of my aunt. When I came back in the evening she told me he had rented the rooms and would be moving in any day now. He had merely asked her not to register his arrival with the police because, as someone not in the best of health, he couldn
’t bear such formalities or the thought of being kept standing around in the duty officer’s waiting room and the like. I can still distinctly remember suspecting something untoward about this proviso of his and warning my aunt against agreeing to it. It seemed to me that his reluctance to contact the police was all of a piece with the alien, unconventional nature of the man, and it was thus bound to make one suspect the worst. I explained to my aunt that she must under no circumstances consent to this request from a complete stranger, for it was not only rather bizarre in itself, but could possibly have quite dire consequences for her. However, as it turned out, my aunt had already agreed to grant the strange man’s wish and, what’s more, had allowed herself to be captivated and enchanted by him. You see, she never took in lodgers without being able to enter into some kind of humane, amicable and aunt-like, or rather motherly, relationship with them, which of course had led to many a previous lodger exploiting her to the hilt. It was thus no surprise that during the first few weeks I found much to criticize in our new lodger, while my aunt always spoke up warmly in his defence.
Since this business of omitting to register him with the police was not to my liking, I meant at least to find out what my aunt knew about the stranger, his background and his plans. And she did know a thing or two already, even though he had only stayed a short while after I left them at the end of my lunch hour. He had told her he was contemplating staying a few months in our city, using its libraries and viewing its historic remains. Such a short rental didn’t actually suit my aunt, but he had evidently already won her over despite his rather odd manner. In short, the rooms were let, and any objections I had came too late.
‘Why do you suppose he said that it smelled so good here?’ I asked.
My aunt, whose instinct for such things is sometimes remarkably sound, replied: ‘I know exactly why. Where we live there is a smell of cleanliness and order, of kindness and decency, and it appealed to him. By the look of him he’s not used to that sort of thing any more, and he’s missing it.’
Fair enough, I thought, if you say so. ‘But,’ I said, ‘if he’s not used to an orderly and respectable way of life, how is he to adapt to one? What will you do if he’s unhygienic and makes a mess everywhere, or if he comes home drunk at all hours of the night?’
‘We shall see, won’t we,’ she said, laughing, and I let the matter be.
And indeed, my fears proved groundless. Though by no means leading an orderly and sensible life, our lodger caused us no bother and did us no harm. We have fond memories of him even to this day. Yet inwardly, psychologically, the man did disturb and bother my aunt and me a great deal, and – to be frank – I’ve still not fully come to terms with him. Sometimes I dream of him at night, feeling fundamentally unsettled and perturbed by him, by the very existence of such a being, even though I grew positively fond of him.
Two days later, a haulier delivered the belongings of the stranger, whose name was Harry Haller. A very fine leather case made a good impression on me, while a large flat cabin trunk seemed to indicate long voyages made in the past. At any rate it was covered with the faded stickers of hotels and travel firms from various countries, including some overseas. Then he appeared in person, and the period in which I gradually got to know this unusual man began. Initially I did nothing on my side to further our acquaintance. Although I was interested in Haller from the moment I first set eyes on him, in those first few weeks I still made no move to encounter him or engage him in conversation. On the other hand, I must confess that I was observing him a bit right from the start, at times even entering his room during his absence, and generally snooping on him out of curiosity.
I have already given some indication of Steppenwolf’s outward appearance. Even at first sight he gave every impression of being an important, a rare and unusually gifted individual. His whole face had the look of an intellectual about it, and the extraordinarily gentle and nimble play of his features was visual evidence of an interesting, highly agile, uncommonly delicate and sensitive life of the mind. If, in conversation, he went beyond the conventional niceties – which wasn’t always the case – and uttered something personal and peculiar to him, arising from his alien nature, then the likes of you and me simply couldn’t help but defer to him. He had thought more than other people and when it came to intellectual matters he had that almost cool objectivity, that secure knowledge based on careful reflection, which only truly intelligent people possess, being quite without ambition and never seeking to shine, to talk others round to their point of view, or always to be proved right.
I recall one such utterance from the last days of his stay with us, even though it wasn’t even an utterance as such, but merely a look. A famous philosopher of history and cultural critic, a man with a big name throughout Europe, had announced a lecture in the great hall of the university, and I had managed to persuade Steppenwolf to go to it, though at first he had no desire to do so. We attended it together, sitting next to each other in the lecture theatre. When the speaker mounted the podium and began his address, many in the audience, supposing him to be some sort of prophet, were disappointed by the rather polished and vain appearance he presented. And when, by way of introduction, he then made flattering remarks about the audience, thanking them for coming in such numbers, Steppenwolf cast a fleeting glance at me, a look critical of these remarks and of the speaker’s whole person. And what a look it was! So unforgettable and terrible, you could write a whole book about its significance. His look wasn’t just criticizing that particular speaker, reducing the famous man to ruins with its compelling though gentle irony. That was the least of it. It was a look of sadness much more than irony. What is more, it was immeasurably and desperately sad, its content a quiet despair which, to a certain extent, it had become habitual for him to express in this form. Such was the clarity of this despairing look that it was able at one and the same time to show up the speaker in all his vanity, to cast the present situation in an ironic light, to dash the expectations and mood of the audience and pour scorn on the rather pretentious title of the advertised lecture. But that was by no means all it did. No, Steppenwolf’s look penetrated our whole age. It saw through all its hustle and bustle, all its pushy ambition, all its conceitedness, the whole superficial comedy of its shallow, self-important intellectualism. And sad to say, his look penetrated deeper still, well beyond the mere deficiencies and hopeless inadequacies of our age, our intellectualism and our culture. It went right to the heart of all things human. In a single second it eloquently expressed all the scepticism of a thinker – and perhaps of one in the know – as to the dignity and meaning of human life as such. His look seemed to say: ‘Don’t you see what apes we are? That’s what human beings are like, just take a look!’ and all celebrity, all cleverness, all intellectual achievements, all humanity’s attempts to create something sublime, great and enduring were reduced to a fairground farce.
In telling you this I’ve got well ahead of myself. I have already – contrary to what I actually planned and intended – basically said all there is in essence to say about Haller, whereas my original intention was to unveil his portrait only gradually by recounting my acquaintance with him step by step.
Since I’ve anticipated so much, there is now no need to go on talking about Haller’s enigmatic ‘strangeness’ or to report on the way I gradually sensed and recognized the reasons behind this strangeness, this extraordinary and terrible isolation, and what it variously signified. All the better, since as far as possible, I’d like to keep myself in the background. I’ve no desire to parade my own confessions, to play the literary storyteller, or indulge in psychology. I merely want to contribute something as an eyewitness to the portrait of the peculiar man who left behind these Steppenwolf manuscripts.
Even on that very first occasion, when I saw him enter my aunt’s flat by the glass door and cock his head in bird-like fashion, praising the place because it smelled so good, I’d been struck by the peculiarit
y of the man, and my initial naive reaction had been to dislike him. I sensed (and my aunt, who in contrast to me isn’t remotely intellectual, sensed almost exactly the same thing) that the man was ill, in some way or other mentally or temperamentally ill, and like all sane people my instinct was to defend myself against him. In the course of time, my defensiveness gave way to a sympathy based on great compassion for someone constantly and acutely suffering, a man whose progressive isolation and emotional decay I was witnessing with my own eyes. During that period I became increasingly aware that the illness he was suffering from didn’t stem from any deficiencies in his nature. On the contrary, he had strengths and talents in abundance, but had never managed to combine them harmoniously, and that was his only problem. I came to realize that Haller had a peculiar genius for suffering, that he had, in the sense that Nietzsche intends in many of his aphorisms, trained himself to the point where his capacity for suffering was masterly, limitless, awesome. At the same time I realized that his pessimism wasn’t based on contempt for the world but on self-contempt, for however ruthlessly critical he could be when condemning institutions or individuals, he never spared himself. He himself was always the first target of his barbed remarks, the prime object of his hatred and rejection.
At this point I can’t help including a psychological comment. Although I know very little about Steppenwolf’s life, I do have every reason to suppose that he was brought up by loving yet strict and very religious parents and teachers in that spirit which makes ‘breaking of the will’ the foundation of child-rearing and education. In the case of this pupil, however, their attempt to destroy his personality and break his will had not succeeded. He was far too strong and tough, far too proud and mentally alert for that to happen. Instead of destroying his personality they had only succeeded in teaching him to hate himself. Now, for the rest of his life, it was against himself, against this innocent and admirable target, that all his imaginative genius and brainpower was directed. For in one respect he was, despite everything, a Christian through and through, a martyr through and through. That is to say, he aimed every cutting remark, every criticism, all the malice and hatred he was capable of, first and foremost at himself. As far as others around him were concerned, he made the most heroic and earnest efforts to love them, to be fair to them, not to hurt them; for ‘Love thy neighbour’ had been drummed into him just as deeply as hatred of self. Thus his whole life was an example of how impossible it is to love one’s neighbour without loving oneself, proof that self-hatred is exactly the same thing as crass egotism, and in the end leads to exactly the same terrible isolation and despair.