Demian

Demian is the story of Emil Sinclair, a boy who doesn't fit in with the other boys, his family, or society in general, and how he comes to embrace his uniqueness as he grows into adulthood with the help of another oddball named Max Demian. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the latter part of the novel consists mainly in a lot of self-congratulatory mutual back-patting about how special they are, along with Max's mother Eva, and not part of the herd...but as far as I could tell, there was practically no substance behind their sense of their own specialness (or their utter contempt for the masses), which was rather based on nothing more than their choice to be their own little herd of three. This illustrates the problem with this sort of show more Nietzschean pseudo-egoism very well: the alternative to populism is not elitism, but individualism...and elitism is by definition not individualism. As one dictionary aptly puts it, elitism is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group"...it may be a smaller group, but it is still defining oneself primarily in terms of and in relation to the group.

Then there's all that stuff about Emil's crush on his best friend's mother, which came off not so much as liberating as just plain awkward. Throw in some all-too-obvious Jungian symbolism and bad Nietzschean philosophy (Nietzsche is explicitly mentioned more than once), and what started out as an interesting coming of age story degenerates into an overblown and in some respects absolutely ludicrous exercise in pomposity.

Still, I enjoyed this more than Siddhartha...but not as much as Narcissus and Goldmund, which felt both more honest and more relevant to me. But there are some nice passages here, and the beginning was pretty good, and it was certainly instructive to see what Beyond Good and Evil would look like put into practice (not very impressive)...so it might be worth reading once if you're interested in this sort of thing. show less

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 Thirty-Nine 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 show more 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. show less

Reseña de Fantasía Mágica

Este no es un libro fácil de reseñar porque es una obra muy compleja, a pesar de lo corta que pueda parecer por su cantidad de páginas. Sin embargo no es breve, cada frase está cargada de significado y te hace pensar. No es una lectura precisamente liviana, pero sí una que recomendaría mucho. Sólo hace falta una mente abierta.

Emil Sinclair nos narra desde su infancia la manera en que su mente ha ido cambiando, sus ideas mutando y el recorrido mental y espiritual que hace durante su adolescencia para encontrarse a si mismo y darle un significado a la vida.
De pequeño era un niño dulce y bueno que creció en una familia con una posición económica cómoda, pero que principalmente lo rodeó de amor, show more cariño, respeto y fe. A esta realidad él la llama su 'mundo bueno', donde todo es paz y buenos sentimientos. Un poco por soledad, comienza a rodearse de chicos que pertenecen a lo que él llama el 'mundo malo', aquellos con una posición económica más baja y moral baja que muchas veces cometen pequeños delitos, un poco como travesura y un poco como iniciación a un modo de vida que Emil no comparte.
Es para impresionarlos que inventa una historia de un robo cometido por él, y con el cual sólo consigue que el lider del grupo comience a chantajearlo. Temeroso de que su imagen caiga a ojos de su padre, pero considerando que es muy tarde para contar la verdad, Emil comienza a deprimirse a causa del miedo constante que siente por su chantajista, cuyas demandas se hacen cada vez más constantes y difíciles de realizar. En este punto considera que su 'mundo bueno' ha desaparecido para siempre.

Es en la escuela donde conoce a Max Demián, un personaje enigmático, seguro y demasiado maduro para su edad. Es gracias a él que se libra de sus problemas y vuelve a ver el mundo luminoso en el que siempre vivió. Todos parecen temerle a Demián, todos excepto Emil, quien siente una gran fascinación y a la vez un vivo rechazo hacia él.
Las conversaciones que tienen son esporádicas, pero cada vez que hablan Demian le abre los ojos a Emil y lo hace pensar y cuestionarse todo aquello que él siempre dio por cierto y seguro.

Emil tiene una personalidad volubre y es fácilmente impresionable. Es por esto que esas breves conversaciones con Demian lo marcarán y acompañarán durante años, aunque haya perdido contacto con el otro muchacho.
Al crecer e ir a un internado se aleja de Demian, pero a pesar de perder contacto, él sigue en su mente. No es obsesión, creo que es el aura de misterio que lo rodea, lo impenetrable, la forma en que le hablaba y lo hacía replantearse todo aún a tan corta edad. Demián aparece poco en el libro, pero las pocas veces que lo vemos causará una gran impresión en Emil y hará que su vida cambie o gire.

Habla de la vida, de Dios, del diablo, de religión, del pensamiento humano y el comportamiento, de la forma en que la mayoría de las personas se dejan influenciar por las masas, del amor, del odio, del miedo.
Seguiremos viendo la vida de Emil y su búsqueda de algo que ni él conoce, el despertar de su mente y su cuerpo en la adolescencia, y finalmente al llegar a la edad adulta, la gran conclusión que no es otra cosa sino un nuevo comienzo.

No quiero dejar de hacer un pequeño comentario: me impresionó mucho que Demián pronostique una gran oscuridad llena de muerte acercándose, algo como lo que nunca se ha visto.
Si consideramos que el libro fue publicado en 1919 en Alemania (año del fin de la Primera Guerra Mundial) y pensamos en la proximidad de la Segunda Guerra y todo lo que trajo, esa profecía resulta escalofriante.

Este es un libro lleno de filosofía existencialista, con ciertas disquisiciones que supongo que habrán sido (o podrían ser) consideradas herejes, y una visión del mundo diferente y muy particular.
El final es extraño y abierto, pero muy adecuado a la historia. Es un libro excelente que me hizo pensar, me tocó el alma y conmovió en muchos momentos. ¿Qué más se puede pedir? show less

"If it cannot break its egg's shell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. The world is our egg. If we don't crack the world's shell, we will die without being born. Smash the world's shell! For the revolution of the world!"

This is not a quote from the book, but from Revolutionary Girl Utena, a show that changed my life and referenced Demian extensively. Now I can see why.

I would call it one of my favourite reads of the year - so why the five star? Because I believe as bildungsroman it fails in some respects. Those who grow up alienated from their peers all face the same seduction - the idea that you are better than Them, the ones who turn their nose at you and can't seem to understand the largeness of life like you show more can. It's one I struggle with, one I've seen my loved ones struggle with. But the more we lean into it, the more we alienate ourselves.

This book was a wonderful sort of catharsis for that idea. I enjoy Gnosticism and Jungian psychology, so I had fun with all how the book engaged with those ideas. The way Hesse describes that inner world and outer world speaks to an unspoken perception of the world I sometimes forget others share. Emil and Demian's relationship is a touch homoerotic and fascinating to follow over the years. In many, many, many respects, it's a very satisfying book.

However it fails for me in propagating that seduction; There are more mature ways to go about it. In my head I couldn't help but compare Emil to Raskolnikov.

If you've watched RGU: I find it very fitting that the Student Council should quote extensively from Demian, in ways I will go into another time. show less

First published in 1919, I think Demian would have hit me differently had I been reading it in the postwar ethos. Unlike Narcissus and Goldmund, this felt rather dated, but intriguing enough as a love child of Catcher in the Rye and the Sorrows of Young Werther with a dash of Nietzche and Freud thrown in.

The book was originally published under the alias "Emil Sinclair" who is, in fact, the novel's protagonist. The book isn't really so much about Max Demian, the weirdly prophetic and enigmatic figure who pops up in Sinclair's life, but more about Sinclair's psychological and spiritual growth---or journey (that might be more apt). Hesse isn't subtle about light vs. dark, but what is refreshing about the story is that the two aren't show more diametrically opposed, or at least that seems to be the insinuation. Women are used as functional figures rather than significant characters, and I can't help but think that the beautiful Beatrice was a nod to Dante and Frau Eva seemed connected to Eden's Eve. Given that one of Demian's first expositions is a reinterpretation of Cain and Abel's story, this sort of intertextuality wouldn't surprise me. Sinclair's dreams are fairly central features to the story, and Hesse's exposure to Freud and Jung is laid bare: "...dreams that had emanated from the unconscious, of dreams in which humanity groped after its intimations of future potentialities" (123).

Sinclair is young and impressionable, at least at first, and Demian rocks his world with his individualistic interpretation of Biblical stories and way of living. The organist Pistorius is a transitional figure, as Sinclair is still looking for a mentor, but also feeling the tug of a need to make his own path. When Sinclair stays with Demian's mother (Frau Eva), things get a bit Oedipal, and fairly cultish. It is hard to connect to Sinclair, who seems to become increasingly Übermenschisch (in some ways), but he's interesting enough (as we are privy to his every rumination and dream). I'd reckon that this would not be the best introduction to Hesse for the uninitiated, but a worthwhile read for those who loved his other works. show less

"So this was how I looked inside!" (pg. 70)

An eloquent bildungsroman and philosophical fever dream rolled into one, laced with Jungian archetypes. That might sound like the most uncompelling summary ever recorded, but Hermann Hesse's Demian is surprisingly bracing and easy to read. The titular Max Demian serves as a sort of teacher for our protagonist, Emil Sinclair, and it is likely no coincidence that his name is so close to 'daemon', that word for a guiding spirit or quasi-divine tutor. Emil is a turbulent youth and, through Demian, Hesse calmly and compassionately introduces us to great concepts in easily digestible form.

It is not perfect; it is improbable as a story and it is often difficult to work out what is real and what is show more being viewed through a proto-psychedelic haze. The characters don't talk like real people (particularly the teenagers talking like sophisticated philosophers) and the book has a flaw in that it is mystic rather than realistic; in my opinion, it would be more powerful in its message if it was Emil Sinclair's experiences we were parsing rather than his dreams/visions.

That said, it is a heady brew that nevertheless should prove tolerable even to those who can't usually hold their philosophical drink. Its Jungian worldview was prescient in 1919 and is one that can increasingly be seen to apply in 2019. When Hesse writes of how "the whole possession of humanity so far consisted of ideals that emanated from the unconscious soul, dreams in which humanity groped after the vague notions they had of their future potentialities" (pg. 138) and how one must "reconcile the godly and the satanic" (pg. 88), we see the sort of Logocentric philosophy that has its contemporary advocacy in the popular person of Jordan B. Peterson. Like Peterson, Hesse gives the ideas practical application – that is, in how his characters use them to influence their approaches to life. With its approachable and lyrical advocacy of individuality and moving forward into the world, accepting both the light and the dark, Demian should hold the place that the likes of The Catcher in the Rye currently occupies as a teenage rite of passage. show less

"But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again."

As a non-religious person, I've always been fascinated by religion. Sometimes this fascination contains admiration, although frequently it's accompanied by incredulity. I just read Herman Hesse's Demian, though, which is concerned with a young man's formation of his own religious self, and despite this lack in my own life I found his search very interesting. First, I was intrigued by the cover, which in this garage-sale copy I picked up depicts several forms--boys, a woman, and a hawk--melded and melting into each other. Then show more I opened the cover, and on the inside was quoted:

"...it was not a boy's face but a man's; I also felt or saw that it was not entirely the face of a man either, but had something feminine about it, too. Yet the face struck me at that moments as neither masculine nor childlike, neither old nor young, but somehow a thousand years old, somehow timeless, bearing the scars of an entirely different history than we knew; animals could look like that, or trees, or planets..."

"Hot," I said.

So. I bought it. It took awhile to get around to reading it, because I have so many books around me all the time. But it's thin, and I finally picked it up last week. I'd read Siddhartha before, and liked it very much. This book is darker and more uncertain.

I like the conclusions reached about self-determination in one's spiritual journey, and the melding of different traditions to discover what is True, although the communal flavor of the last part of the book made me a little incredulous. I am wondering, however, about the way the "dark" side is portrayed in the novel. If we are to accept, by the end, that the god Abraxas, who combines the forces of light and dark, is worthy of veneration; if we are to accept Emil's fascination with this darker side which seems at the beginning to involve sin but later, at Demian's insistence, loses that sense of hedonism; how do we reconcile the "evil" we encounter at the beginning? This "evil" is clearly detrimental to Emil's well-being and his family, and does not seem to be the same thing he finds later with Demian and his mother. Is Hesse pointing out the necessity of disciplined religious study in order to join the forces of life and death and everything in between without falling into a self-destructive trap?

Could someone (hint hint) with a more theological (and Hessian) background help me out?

By the way, I loved this bit from the prologue:

"Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men--each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature--are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross."

That's a religious sentiment I can embrace. show less