(need new copy)

Demian
Hesse has yet to live up to his reputation as far as I am concerned. Of what little I have read nothing has stood out to me as having been fantastic. Demian did not do much to rectify this. It is another book about hollow nameless spirituality. The book has been described as elusive by the friend who handed it to me. I found it to be vague, though I can understand why some would mistake the one for the other. It has a lot to do with Hesse’s technical skill as a writer. He is, in that respect, good. But it is the substance of the piece that fails. The character Demian is seen throughout the book in an almost magical light, and it is the quest for the root of this magic that drove me as a reader to the end.
And then it stopped short. At the end of the tunnel there appeared to be simply more tunnel.
Part of it might be my own fault. I am truly one of the people that will one day confront God with a simple ‘Would you have bought it?’ Keeping something vague does not spell a complicated argument for me – it spells poor articulation.
At the end of the book knowing that there indeed was this enclave of chosen people – who had somehow mysteriously been uplifted to a higher spiritual existence to which I simply was not and will not be invited – did not make me feel better.
It made me feel damned. ( )

Hesse is a great writer and thinker; I have always liked his work but I think he misses the mark a bit with Demian.

What I liked:
- The expression of the importance and difficulty of the path to discovering oneself ("if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich.")
- As in some of his other books, Hesse's ability to capture the angst of growing up
- Demian's inverted view of the story of Cain and Abel as well as his critical commentary about the story of Christ's death and religion in general
- The book is concise

What I didn't like:
- The story itself is weak; after a couple of very interesting initial chapters it devolves into philosophy
- The characters and their actions are often unrealistic (characters feeling their way to find others, or feeling it when another is thinking of them); the book seems overly influenced by Hesse's study of Jung.
- Symbolism seems a bit forced; the painting, Eva/Eve, Demian/Daemon, etc

Favorite quotes:
"Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfullly to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams."

"But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshipping this God Jehovah, far from it. 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."

"But we consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from the face of the earth save for one halfway talented child that had received no education, this child would rediscover the entire course of evolution, it would be capable of producing everything once more, gods and demons, paradises, commandments, the Old and New Testament."

"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." ( )

A new way of thinking of the Cain & Abel story; an evil guy with an extraordinary power of making everything sound real...
Nowadays, he'd probably be a SALES person.

One of my favorite Hesse's tales. ( )

1173. Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, by Herman Hesse (read 26 Jul 1972) This is the first book of Hesse's I read and I was much moved, being reminded of Kafka and The Wanderer by Alain Fournier, I having read The Wanderer in June of 1961, but felt Demian was much more connected and less obviously dreamlike. I was carried away by the word painting of mood: "But I felt dispirited, and when I took my leave and walked alone thru the hallway, the stale scent of the hyacinth seemed cadaverous. A shadow had fallen over us." I went on to read seven other Hesse books, with appreciation of nearly all of them. ( )