Name: Stefan R. Schmid's review of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Item: Steppenwolf
Rating: 5
Author: Stefan R. Schmid

Hermann Hesse

Steppenwolf

A new translation by David Horrocks. At first sight Harry Haller seems like a respectable, educated man. In reality he is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, alienated from society and repulsed by the modern age. But as he is drawn into a series of dreamlike and sometimes savage encounters - accompanied by, among others, Mozart, Goethe and the bewitching Hermione - the misanthropic Haller discovers a higher truth, and the possibility of happiness. This haunting portrayal of a man who feels he is half-human and half-wolf became a counterculture classic for a disaffected generation. Yet it is also a story of redemption, and an intricately-structured modernist masterpiece. This is the first new translation of Steppenwolf for over eighty years, returning to the fresh, authentic language of Hesse's original.

aybüke

There is no way back at all, either to the wolf or the child. Things do not begin in innocence and simplicity; all created beings, even the ostensibly simplest, are already guilty, already full of contradictions. Cast into the muddy stream of becoming they can never, never hope to swim back up against the current. The road to innocence, to the state before creation, to God, doesn’t run backwards, either to the wolf or the child, but forwards, further and further into guilt, deeper and deeper into the experience of becoming fully human.

 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, 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.

 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.

 For a short time I can stand to inhale the lukewarm, insipid air of the so-called good days, free of desire and pain. But, childish soul that I am, I then get so madly sore at heart and miserable that I fling my rusty thanksgiving lyre in the smug face of the drowsy god of contentment and opt for a true, devilish pain burning inside me rather than this room temperature so easy on the stomach. At such times a savage desire for strong emotions and sensations burns inside me: a rage against this soft-tinted, shallow, standardized and sterilized life, and a mad craving to smash something up, a department store, say, or a cathedral, or myself.

It’s a fine thing, this contentment, this painlessness, these tolerable days when you keep your head down, when neither pain nor desire dare to raise their voices, when you do everything at a whisper, stealing around on the tips of your toes. But my problem, sad to say, is that precisely this kind of contentment doesn’t agree with me.

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.

 “Most people have no desire to swim until they are able to.” Isn’t that a laugh? Of course they don’t want to swim! After all, they were born to live on dry land, not in water. Nor, of course, do they want to think. They weren’t made to think, but to live! It’s true, and anyone who makes thinking his priority may well go far as a thinker, but when all’s said and done he has just mistaken water for dry land, and one of these days he’ll drown.’

[...] 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.

 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.

 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.

clara

Vojtech

Stefan R. Schmid

** spoiler alert **
           Die Zähne fletschen und drauf loslachen.

“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.”
---------------------------------

This is perhaps a story that might seem familiar or relevant to most, battling with themes of war on all fronts: from the past nightmare of WW1 to the looming fear of a new war on the horizon, but also, and perhaps above all, the war of the inner selves. The wild vs. the civilized, the innate vs. the curated, being an outsider vs. being an insincere part of the herd… The search for the self within itself, within the society around, and within religion is above all a great question to tackle.

As far as philosophical fiction goes, it is an interesting piece of writing. It definitely has its ups (like the entire second half of the novel) and downs (like the first half of the novel, particularly the suffocating Treatise on the Steppenwolf), and was a thought-provoking read overall. If you are patient enough to push past the first half of the book, the narrative gets much more interesting and unique.

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3.5/5

Betul M.

Keyifli zaman geçirmek için okunacak bir kitap değil Bozkırkurdu, hatta Hesse'nin karakteriyle duygudaşlığınız yoksa bitirmenin mümkün olmadığını düşünüyorum. Harry’nin hikayesinde kendi jenerasyonum için de geçerli gördüğüm çok zekice tespitler var. "Öyle çağlar vardır ki, bütün bir kuşağın insanları iki çağ, iki ayrı yaşam üslubu arasında sıkışıp kalır." diyor kitapta Hesse bence bu benim gibi 80'lerin sonu 90'ların başında doğanları da tanımlıyor. Kitap boyunca bir huzursuzluk bir iç döküş bir kendinden kaçış okuyoruz. Olmayı istediği ve aslında olduğu arasında ezilenler, yücelttiklerinin değersizliğini fark edenler, kahramanlığa soyunup değirmenlerle savaşan Don Quijote ‘ler, belki de yalnızca kaçıklar için bu kitap.

Gavin

Aging Romantic pessimist Harry comes to a crisis, and learns that fun is fun (and meaningful). I’ve been avoiding this book because of its status in rockist, hedonist circles, but after the first 50 pages it begins to subvert this reputation, and itself, over and over again until charming. 

Hesse also inserts himself, as the domineering, sparkling ‘Hermine’ which is strange and excellent. 

Would’ve changed my life if I’d read it aged 16, or in 1930. As it is, Regina Spektor, the Supremes and DJ Hixxy had already forced me to admit the existence and glory of non-cognitive, non-consequential, non-political quality.

(Read aloud)

suspiria

"bense ne modern, ne de modası geçmiş biriydim; zamanın dışına düşmüş, sürüklenip gidiyordum, ölüme yakın, ölüme istekli."

Omar AlHashmi

Pretty weird book to be honest. I loved the philosophical aspects of the book and how it talked about the nature of the Steppenwolf. The middle section was pretty dull for me, I lost interest in the book pretty quickly at that point. However the final third of the book just cranked the weirdness up to eleven. I can't even begin to fathom what Hesse was thinking when he wrote that. All in all, its the type of weird book that I tend to enjoy, its different.

With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse's best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literature's most poetic evocations of the soul's journey to liberation. Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater-For Madmen Only! Originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf's wisdom continues to speak to our souls and marks it as a classic of modern literature. For more than twenty years, Picador has been producing beautifully packaged literary fiction and nonfiction books from Manhattan's Flatiron Building. Our Twentieth Anniversary Modern Classics line pairs iconic books with a design that's both small enough to fit in your pocket and unique enough to stand out on your bookshelf.

A Novel

Fraser Simons

I suspect this would be completely insufferable to some people but it so happens the self indulgent miasma is so granular in the thought process of our protagonist here, I couldn’t help but admire an original No plot, heavy symbolism, no character driving, sad boy moving through the world. DMM rather than DWM (damaged/depressed woman moving), perhaps? 

But what I really liked about this, which put it above the three stars, is how it deftly illustrates the most elided human experience, or certainly obfuscated: the precision and craft the mind puts into building its prison of thought. We swing wildly, code switching between groups, adjusting our patterns and ideologies to better fit the social situation. That’s what kind of animal we are. A byproduct of our socialization always seems to be the construction of unhappiness and self-flagellation. The most intuitive thing any human ever builds is brick-by-brick motivated thinking straight into unhappiness of some kind. Some Psychologists say getting what you want even fucks you up. 

Still, the more complex ending and the ability for the reader to subjectivity throw themselves onto the pages and take away probably very different experiences is admirable craft. Even if it will absolutely bother some readers. I for one love me a good interior novel.

baelgia

2021/04/11
Figure out the few things you need to take seriously. Treat everything else with good humor. Listen more. Don't be so pretentious. Any division is a social construct. We are all the same, all immortals and bourgeois.

2016/07/13
Subtitled: Treatise of the Steppenwolf (in which I, as the reader, am the Steppenwolf in question).

If I had read this book years ago - or even a year ago - I don't think I would have enjoyed it. At times it seemed to completely abandon its narration in favor of a philosophical discussion, and those parts can be quite jarring, if not a pain to read. Of course that just goes to show how much people change (and how change is possible) as now, today, in this very year, I'm left awestruck in the wake of Steppenwolf. Hesse's mind is so enchanting and his way of stringing words together to form a coherent idea feels like 248 pages of charming, drugged cigarettes. Apart from the protagonist, his characters are always very surreal, and perhaps even unreal, but they never fail to captivate. I don't know what to say. This is one hell of a beautiful piece of writing.

Asif Akbar

** spoiler alert **
           I stumbled upon this book searching books on duality of life. How we have multiple selves in ourselves. Which it answers pretty well in the first 100 pages or so, but it soon takes frightful turns to show the despair in life, the pointlessness of everyday.
But it gives hope towards the end. It helps visualise change. Change which is possible in every one of us. We all have, however lost, a capacity to love and a capacity to rediscover ourselves.

sara gerner

** spoiler alert **
           Ich habe den Steppenwolf beim zweiten Mal lesen viel besser verstanden und auch viel intensiver erlebt. Es gibt durchaus Passagen, die mich nach wie vor stören oder die mir persönlich einfach zu lange sind, weil sie mit der Prämisse, die ich persönlich im Steppenwolf erkenne, eher weniger zu tun haben. Die ersten hundert Seiten zu lesen war erneut eine große Überwindung, das Traktat ist anstrengend, wenn auch tröstlich. Die Erzählung Hesses wird durch das Herausgeberwort, die ersten Gedanken von Harry Haller selbst und das Traktat quasi dreimal eingeleitet, was in meinen Augen nicht unbedingt notwendig war, aber was ich auch nachvollziehen kann. Das Herausgeberwort bereitet einen auf den gesellschaftlichen Außenseiter Harry Haller vor, seine ersten eigenen Gedanken zeigen den Zwiespalt und die Schwere, in welcher der Protagonist lebt. Und das Traktat ist eine erste Erklärung dafür.
Ich habe das Ende immer noch nicht verstanden, auch die Bedeutung der Ewigkeit ist mir immer noch ein Geheimnis. Aber wer weiß, vielleicht kommt das noch.

Drew Sawicki

lena

François Declercq

Der Steppenwolf

Varun Jayaraman

Teodora Živulović

Jaycee

behringlukas

'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.'Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth.Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolfcaptured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything.

maddox Ireland

Peter

Der Gang eines hochbegabten, übersensiblen Menschen durch die Hölle des Alltags, hinter der er nur allmählich einen tieferen Sinn ahnt.

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Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

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