Written 6-1-2022
After hearing the name Herman Hesse frequently tossed around by friends, I picked up Steppenwolf pretty much on a whim. I knew the name Steppenwolf from the 60s rock group and was already acquainted with some German literature via Goethe and Kafka but wanted something that felt a little more against the grain, less institutionalized. This perhaps parallels my reading of Bulgakov after reading Gogol/Tolstoy/Dostoevsky given the American counterculture resonance found in both Hesse’s work and The Master and Margarita. Little did I know that books like Siddhartha are being read in high schools all around the US. Regardless, this novel is still against a grain, even if its content isn’t as radical as it once was (possibly owing to the book’s, and others like its, success).
Steppenwolf follows a Harry Haller who assumes the role of the Steppenwolf, a creature which is at once smart but also alone and out of touch. Harry is renting a room in a modest sized town away from his wife and family, spending most of his days wandering and studying classic literature. He doesn’t have many friends aside from a younger professor who he has a fit in front of concerning a statue of Goethe which Harry finds misrepresents Goethe’s character. Harry is at this point verging on suicidal and his estrangment seems final. The story, told from the view of Harry’s landlord’s nephew, once set becomes a kind of bildungsroman where in desperation Harry finds himself accidentally at a dance where he meets Hermine, a young lady who encourages Harry to lose himself, free himself of himself, and enjoy life for all that it offers. Upon meeting again Harry finds that these aspects of life he’s been missing out on include sex, drugs, and dancing, telling him that these are life’s joys.
A saxophonist named Pablo is introduced to Harry. Pablo embodies this philosophy as Hermine’s lover, a frequent drug user, and a purveyor of jazz music which blows Harry’s mind, causing him to dance to his heart’s content. Near the end of the novel, Pablo invites Harry into his Magic Theatre where Harry experiences hallucinations which include his regrets, laughing Germanic figures (Mozart and Goethe), and Pablo and Hermine making love (maybe not a hallucination?). The novel climaxes with Harry killing Hermine with a knife he’s just found, fulfilling a promise Hermine made to him that he would make him fall in love with her and then kill her.
In the end Harry is neither content nor dissatisfied. The life he’s allowed himself to step into is both fulfilling but lacking in the high minded elements that before absorbed his life. The Steppenwolf ends the book only with his perception of what it means to be the Steppenwolf transformed. Where before Harry was suicidal he now feels alive, but his problems remain the same. The existential plain hasn’t changed so much as morphed. It’s left unclear whether Pablo is a martyr or a deceiver, though he’s taught Harry a lesson either way.
One of the dreams Harry has in the Magic Theatre is one in which he relives his life over again and is given the chance to love those in his life with the fierceness he had always kept restrained. In this dream, Harry truly lives. Harry lives selflessly, without thought for what might lie after love, after death, and without thought for what’s come before. But then Harry wakes up, and the taste of the theatre only has the chance to leave Harry with a lingering taste that things can be good. In a life so fraught with unanswered questions and strife, Harry’s been given a candle he can take with him.
For me the story of the Steppenwolf is a spiritual one. One in which the spiritual local is reconsidered and rooted further in the here and now. The story in some ways is obscene and deals with extremes, but the Steppenwolf (who can be seen as Hesse) acknowledges that these are extremes and ends his journey in reflection, not hedonism. Hesse strokes the intellectual fur backwards in an attempt to reconsider where the true center might lie. Maybe Pablo is right, but it feels like Hesse is inviting us to live freely, in tune with those frequently neglected senses which make up some of the most primary parts of our being.