Demian (1919)

Llegit en català. ( )

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.

It's unfortunate that time travel doesn't exist because it would be lovely to go back and hand this novel to my 16 year old self and watch her scribble quotes in her diary. As a (somewhat cynical adult), the Freud dripping from every page was a little too on point, but I still felt a melancholy quaver at the inevitable end. ( )

Fiction

Demian was the Holden Caulfield of my undergraduate years. What a devestatingly beautiful piece of literature. ( )

This year I have read several works of fiction set in the years approaching the Great War more than a century ago. There were Pynchon's Against the Day and Buchan's The 49 Steps. More than either of those, Hesse's Demian is known as a defining work of that time--and yet my appreciation for it is set well outside of its historical framing.

There's no question that Demian has esoteric dimensions. The mental powers and Cainite heresy of Max and the deviant Gnostic hieraticism of Pistorius--even the pathetic asceticism of Knauer--are redolent of occult initiation. But more particularly Max Demian and Eva Demian are the embodiments of the protagonist Emil's two critical tasks in coming to himself: embracing his genius and overcoming his personality.

I first read the opening chapter of Demian in German when I was doing language study in high school. I have an initiate's guidance to thank for my return to it some forty-four years later, after I have subsequently read Hesse's later major novels. It is as compelling and significant as they are, and on many counts, more accessible.