Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

  'Wait,' Gustav said politely. 'It is true the concept of duty means nothing to me, not now at any rate, but it once concerned me a great deal in my official capacity as a professor of theology. What's more, I was a soldier, serving in the war. Yet what I considered my duty, and all the things I was ordered to do, whether by figures in authority or my superior officers, was anything but good. In every case I would have preferred to do the opposite. However, even if duty has no meaning for me now, I do recognize the concept of guilt. Perhaps they amount to the same thing. By being born of a mother I am guilty, condemned to live, obliged to belong to a state, to serve it as a soldier, to kill, to pay taxes in support of armaments. And now, at this moment in time, the guilt that attaches to living has again led me, as it once did in the war, to the point where I have to kill. But this time I don't find killing repugnant. I have totally accepted the burden of guilt because I have no objection to this stupid, congested world being blown to smithereens. I'm happy to lend a hand, and to perish myself in the process.'

  In spite of the blood sticking to his lips, the public prosecutor made a great effort to produce a bit of a smile. The result was not marvellous, but his good intentions were clear for all to see.

  'Fair enough,' he said. 'In that case we are colleagues. Now please do your duty, Colleague.'

  In the meantime the pretty girl, having sat down at the edge of the road, had fainted.

  At that moment yet another car could be heard tooting its horn as it approached at full speed. Pulling the girl to one side a little, we pressed ourselves up against the rocks and allowed the oncoming car to crash into the wreckage of the other one. It braked sharply and reared upwards, but managed to come to rest undamaged. Quickly picking up our guns, we trained them on the newcomers.

  'Out you get!' Gustav ordered. 'Hands up!'

  Three men emerged from the car, their hands in the air.

  'Is any one of you a doctor?' Gustav asked.

  The answer was no.

  'Then please be so good as to release this gentleman carefully from his car seat. He is badly injured. Then you can take him with you in your vehicle to the next town. Come on! Get a hold of him!'

  The old gentleman was soon bedded down in the other car and they all drove off at Gustav's command.

  Meanwhile our typist, having come to again, had been watching the proceedings. I was glad to see that our actions had brought us such handsome spoils.

  'You have lost your employer, Fraulein,' Gustav said. I hope the old gentleman's relationship with you went no further than that. Now I'm taking you on. Make sure you do a good job for us. There, and now we need to get a bit of a move on. Things will soon get uncomfortable here. Can you climb, Fraulein? Yes? Then let's be off. Best go up between us, that way we can give you a hand.'

  We all three of us now clambered up into our tree house as fast as we possibly could. Once we were up there the young lady started to feel unwell, but we gave her some brandy and she had soon recovered sufficiently to be able to appreciate the splendid view we had over the lake and the mountains, and to tell us her name was Dora.

  Immediately afterwards, yet another car had arrived below us. Without stopping, it cautiously rounded the wrecked vehicle, then accelerated at once.

  'Cowardly shirker!' Gustav exclaimed with a laugh as he shot down the driver. The car hopped and skipped a little before lunging at the wall and smashing it in. It ended up hanging diagonally over the abyss.

  'Are you used to handling guns, Dora?' I asked.

  She wasn't, but we taught her how to load a rifle. She did it clumsily at first, howling with pain when one of her fingers got caught, and demanding a plaster to stop the bleeding. However, when Gustav pointed out that this was war and asked her to please show us what a good, brave lass she was, she managed well.

  'But what's to become of us?' she then asked.

  'I don't know,' Gustav said. 'My pal Harry likes good-looking women, he'll be a friend to you.'

  'But they'll come after us with policemen and troops and kill us.'

  'There is no police force any more, or anything of that kind. The choice is ours, Dora. Either we don't worry and simply stay up here, shooting to bits every car that goes by, or we ourselves take a car, drive off in it and get fired on by others. It's all the same whichever side we take. I'm for staying here.'

  Down below there was another car. We could hear the clear sound of its horn. In no time we had put paid to it, and it lay there on the road, its wheels uppermost.

  'Strange,' I said, 'that there is so much fun to be had from shooting. To think I used to be an opponent of war!'

  Gustav smiled. 'Indeed. The thing is, there are far too many people in the world. It wasn't so noticeable before. However, now that everyone not only wants their share of fresh air but also a car of their own, you simply can't help noticing the problem. Of course what we are doing isn't rational. It's puerile, just as the war too was puerile, enormously so. At some stage in the future humankind is going to have to learn to keep its growth in check by rational means. For the time being we are reacting to an intolerable state of affairs in a pretty irrational manner, but by reducing our numbers we are basically doing the right thing.'

  'Yes,' I said, 'what we are doing is probably mad, but it is probably good and necessary nonetheless. When human beings push common sense too far, attempting with the aid of reason to order things that are not accessible to reason, it is not good. It gives rise to ideals like those of the Americans or those of the Bolsheviks, both of which are extraordinarily rational but nevertheless violate and impoverish life terribly because they simplify it in a way that is so utterly naive. The image of humankind, once a lofty ideal, is currently turning into a cliche. Perhaps mad people like us will be the ones to restore its nobility.'

  Laughing, Gustav responded: 'What a splendidly clever way with words you have, old boy. You're such a fount of wisdom it's a joy to listen to you, and instructive too. Besides, there may even be a grain of truth in what you say. But now reload your gun, there's a good chap, you're a bit too dreamy for my liking. A few plump little roebuck may come running by again any moment now, and we can't shoot them with philosophy. Our gun-barrels are no good without bullets in them, after all.'

  A car arrived and immediately fell victim to our fire, blocking the road. The one survivor, a fat, red-haired man, stood by the wreckage, gesticulating wildly and looking up and down, his eyes gaping. When he discovered our hideaway he ran over with a roar and fired several shots up at us with his revolver.

  'Be off with you now, or I'll shoot,' Gustav shouted down to him. The man took aim at him and fired again. We then mowed him down, with two salvos.

  Two more cars came, both of which we finished off. Afterwards the road remained empty and quiet. Word had apparently spread that it was a dangerous route to take. We had time to contemplate the beautiful view. Beyond the lake was a small town in the plain. Smoke was rising from it, and soon we saw roof after roof catching fire. We could hear shooting too. Dora wept a little and I stroked her damp cheeks.

  'Must we all die?' she asked. Neither of us answered. In the meantime a pedestrian came along beneath us. On seeing the wrecked cars lying there, he started nosing around them. Leaning over into one, he fished out a brightly coloured parasol, a ladies' leather bag and a wine bottle. He then sat down peacefully on the wall, took a drink from the bottle and ate something wrapped in silver paper from the bag, before polishing off the rest of the wine and contentedly resuming his walk, clutching the parasol under his arm. He went on his way so peacefully that I said to Gustav: 'Could you possibly bring yourself to fire on that nice chap and shoot a hole in his head? The Lord knows I couldn't.'

  'Nobody is asking you to,' my friend muttered. But deep down he too had begun to feel uncomfortable with what we were doing. Scarcely had we set eyes on a human being who was still behaving in a harmless, peaceful, childlike manner, still living in a state of innocence, when all our praiseworthy, necessary activity
suddenly struck us as stupid and disgusting. Ugh, all that blood! We were ashamed of ourselves. But then even generals, so they say, occasionally felt ashamed during the war.

  'Let's not stay up here any longer,' said Dora plaintively. 'Let's go down. We're sure to find something to eat in the cars, or aren't you Bolsheviks the least bit hungry?'

  Down there in the town where fire was raging the bells started furiously and fearsomely ringing. We set about climbing down. As I was helping Dora clamber over the wooden surround of the hut, I kissed her on the knee. She gave a bright laugh, but at that moment the supporting struts gave way, and we both plunged into the void ...

  I found myself back in the theatre's round corridor, feeling animated by the hunting venture. And all around me I could see the alluring inscriptions on the innumerable doors:

  MUTABOR

  CHANGE INTO ANY ANIMAL OR PLANT YOU LIKE

  KAMASUTRA

  INSTRUCTION IN THE INDIAN ARTS OF LOVE

  BEGINNERS COURSE: 42 DIFFERENT WAYS

  TO PRACTISE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE

  HIGHLY ENJOYABLE SUICIDE

  YOU'LL DIE LAUGHING

  IS THE SPIRITUAL LIFE THE THING FOR YOU?

  ORIENTAL WISDOM

  O FOR A THOUSAND

  TONGUES!

  FOR GENTLEMEN ONLY

  DECLINE OF THE WEST

  PRICES REDUCED. STILL UNSURPASSED

  THE ESSENCE OF ART

  TIME TRANSFORMED INTO

  SPACE

  BY MEANS OF MUSIC

  LAUGHING TILL YOU WEEP

  CABINET OF HUMOUR

  PLAYING THE HERMIT

  THE PERFECT SUBSTITUTE FOR ALL SOCIABILITY

  The series of inscriptions was endless. One of them read:

  GUIDE TO RECONSTRUCTING ONE'S PERSONALITY

  SUCCESS GUARANTEED

  I went in through this door, thinking it worth a try.

  The room I found myself in was dimly lit and quiet. There was a man sitting on the floor, oriental fashion, with what looked like a large chessboard in front of him. For a moment I thought it was our friend Pablo. At any rate he was wearing a similar brightly coloured silk jacket and had the same darkly gleaming eyes.

  'It's not Pablo, is it?' I asked.

  'I'm nobody,' he explained in a friendly manner. 'We don't have names here; none of us here is a real person. I'm a chess player. Do you want me to teach you how to reconstruct your personality?'

  'Yes please.'

  'Then be so kind as to hand over a few dozen of your pieces.'

  'My pieces ...?'

  'The pieces you saw your so-called personality disintegrate into. I can't play without pieces, you know.'

  He held a mirror up in front of me and in it I again saw my unified self disintegrate into many separate figures. There seemed to be an even larger number of them now, but they were very small, roughly as big as handy-sized chessmen. Picking up a few dozen of them with his calm, steady fingers, the chess player placed them on the floor next to his board. As he did so, he said in a monotonous voice, like someone repeating a speech or a lesson he has frequently given before:

  'You are familiar with the mistaken and harmful notion that human beings constitute lasting, unified wholes. You are also aware that they are made up of a multiplicity of souls, of very many selves. To split up the ostensible unity of the person into all these different pieces is considered mad. Science has coined the term schizophrenia for it. Of course, in as much as it is impossible to bring any large number of things under control without leadership or a degree of combination and categorization, science is right to do so. On the other hand, scientists are wrong in believing that the only possible combination of our many sub-selves is a once-and-for-all thing, a binding arrangement valid for the whole of our lives. This error on the part of scientists has many unpleasant consequences. All that can be said in its favour is that it simplifies the task of those appointed by the state to teach and educate, sparing them the trouble of thinking and experimenting. As a result of this error, many human beings are considered "normal", indeed of great value to society, who are incurably mad. Conversely, there are quite a lot of people regarded as mad who are geniuses. What we here term the art of reconstruction is a way of filling in the gaps in science's inadequate view of human psychology. To those people who have experienced the disintegration of their selves, we demonstrate that they can reassemble the pieces in a new order of their own choosing whenever they like. They are thus in a position to master the infinite variety of moves in life's game. Just as writers create a drama from a handful of characters, we are forever able to regroup the separate pieces of our dismantled selves and thus offer them new roles to play, new excitements, situations that are constantly fresh. Look what I mean!'

  With his calm, steady fingers he took hold of my figures, all the old men, youths, children and women, all the cheerful and sad, strong and gentle, agile and clumsy figures, and swiftly arranged them on his board in preparation for a game. Immediately the game started, they reconstituted themselves as a world in miniature, forming groups and families, playing and fighting with each other, making friends and enemies. To my delight, he set this lively but orderly small-scale world in motion for a while before my very eyes. I watched the figures play and fight, form alliances and engage in battles, saw them court one another, marry and multiply. It was indeed a drama, a lively and exciting one with a large cast.

  Then, with one serene sweep of his hand across the board, he gently knocked over all the pieces and pushed them together in a heap. With all the thoughtful care and fastidiousness of an artist, he now proceeded to construct a new game from the same pieces, grouping them differently, altering their relationships and interconnections. This second game was not unrelated to the first. It was the same world he was constructing and its materials were the same, but it was a composition in a different key. The tempo had changed, the motifs were given fresh emphasis and the situations were set up differently.

  And thus this artist adept at reconstruction assembled one game after another from the figures that were all part of my self. They all bore a distant resemblance to one another, all recognizably belonged to the same world and shared the same origin, yet each game was totally new.

  'This is the art of living,' he said, as if lecturing me. 'In future, you yourself may play out your life's game in this way, reshaping and enlivening it, making it richer and more complex as you wish. It's up to you. Just as madness in a higher sense is the beginning of wisdom, schizophrenia is the beginning of all art, all fantasy. Even scholars have already half acknowledged this, as you can tell by reading that delightful book The Prince's Magic Horn,13 in which the painstaking, assiduous research of a scholar is lent nobility by the brilliant works of a large number of deranged artists who collaborated with him while confined in institutions. - Here, why not take your little chessmen with you? You'll often have the opportunity to enjoy a game in future. Then the figure that spoiled things for you today by his monstrously intolerable behaviour can be demoted to a minor role. And you can turn the poor, dear little figure that for a while seemed ill starred, dogged by sheer bad luck, into a princess in the next game. Sir, I wish you the greatest of pleasure.'

  Expressing my gratitude to this talented chess player with a deep bow, I pocketed the little figures and made my exit through the narrow doorway.

  I had actually intended to sit down at once on the floor of the corridor and play with my chess pieces for hours, for an eternity even, but no sooner was I standing there again in that brightly illuminated passage round the theatre than I was carried away by fresh currents that were stronger than me. My eyes suddenly lit on a garish poster with the wording:

  THE TAMING OF STEPPENWOLF

  AMAZING SCENES!

  This inscription aroused a lot of different emotions in me. My heart ached as all kinds of anxieties and pressures from my past life, from the reality I had left behind, closed in on me again. With a trembling hand, I opened the door to
find myself in a fairground booth. Once inside, I noticed that an iron grating had been installed between me and the makeshift stage. However, I could see an animal-tamer standing up there, a rather vociferous, self-important gentleman who, despite a large moustache, bulging muscles on his upper arms and a clown-like circus costume, resembled me in a manner that I found malicious and truly repulsive. This strongman was strutting around - what a sight for sore eyes! - with a wolf on a lead as if it were a dog: a huge, handsome, but terribly emaciated wolf with a timid, slavish look in its eyes. And to now watch the brutal tamer forcing this noble but so ignominiously compliant beast to perform a series of tricks and act out sensational scenes was an experience I found as disgusting as it was thrilling, as horrific as it was nonetheless secretly enjoyable.

  I have to say that he had done a tremendous job, this damned distorted mirror image of me. The wolf alertly obeyed his every command, reacting slavishly to his every call or crack of the whip. It sank to its knees, played dead, sat up and begged. It obediently fetched a loaf of bread, an egg, a piece of meat, a basket, carrying them all in its mouth like a well-trained dog. It even had to pick up the whip dropped by the tamer and, holding it in its mouth, follow him while wagging its tail in so abject a fashion that it was unbearable to watch. A rabbit was presented to the wolf, then a white lamb, but although it bared its teeth and salivated over them, trembling with desire, it didn't touch either of them. Instead, when ordered to, it leaped with one elegant bound over the two animals that cowered there shuddering with fright. Indeed, it lay down between the rabbit and the lamb, embracing each of them with its front paws and forming a moving family group. What is more, it ate a bar of chocolate from the man's hand. The degree to which this wolf had learned to deny its natural instincts was just fantastic, and it was agonizing to witness. As I did so, my hair was standing on end.