Just Finished Reading: Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (FP: 1927)

Harry Haller has a problem. All around him he sees decay, mundane living, and the daily drudge. The world is flat, uninviting, monochrome. What few pleasures he takes from life are all too fleeting and he sneers at his own weakness in needing them. Harry’s problem is that he is split in two – with a human half seeking reason and order and an animal half seeking chaos and intense emotion. Harry is a wolf from the steppes – a Steppenwolf – in human clothing fitting into neither world and suffering in both. Or at least so he believes….

After verbally attacking his host at a late night get-together Harry finds himself in a nightclub in need of a drink. Before he can start drinking himself into oblivion he is approached by Hermine, a cute almost boyish young woman full of life and the knowledge of the night. Seeing him for exactly what he is Hermine takes charge ordering Harry food and drink and forcing him to rest whilst she dances. Entranced by his new found friend Harry promises to do whatever she says. What she wants is to teach him to dance and to laugh and to enjoy himself. Reluctantly Harry agrees and so begins his new life of dancing with strangers, finding a new young lover (procured by Hermine), enjoying Jazz music, taking various drugs (supplied by his new friend Pablo) and learning how to laugh. For all of this however Hermine demands a price – on their first evening out she extracts a promise from Harry, that when he falls in love with her he must do the one thing he can barely bring himself to think about. On the night he falls in love he must kill her to put her out of the misery she feels every day.

This has been sitting on my shelf for some years now untouched. It was one of those books that almost everyone had heard about but almost no one had read. Back when I first bought it I didn’t even try to read it – maybe I thought I could just absorb these classics by literary osmosis? Tried that – didn’t work. So read it I must! It was to be honest rather weird. The last 5th of the book was the weirdest of all (essentially an extended dreamscape) but the rest of it preceding this was, by and large, a standard narrative (with a few sprinkles of magical realism thrown in). What I did honestly find fascinating was his descriptions of Harry’s inability to fit into or accept standard bourgeois society. This was because, Hermine explained: “Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours…..” Well, it was like a German author from the late 1920’s was talking directly to me. That, to be honest, knocked me back on my heels for a while! And that wasn’t the only passage that resonated deeply with me. His understanding, not only of German culture between the wars, but of human nature itself was profound. He certainly gave me many moments for thought. This was, despite my rather rambling synopsis, a gem of a book. It probably won’t sit well with most people but the Steppenwolves out there will know exactly what he’s talking about. Care to find out if you’re one……?

Translated from the German by Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz