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Two worlds coincided there, day and night issued from two poles.
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Every person’s life is a journey toward himself,
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We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.
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I often ardently perceived a longing for relief, the desire for a proper confession, but I also felt in advance that I would be unable to tell and explain things correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that they would receive my words amicably, they would carefully spare my feelings, in fact, pity me, but they wouldn’t fully understand me, and the whole thing would be looked on as a sort of minor infraction, whereas it was actually my fate.
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I know that many people won’t believe that a child not yet eleven is capable of such feelings. It is not to those people that I am telling my story. I’m telling it to those who have greater knowledge of humanity. An adult who has learned how to transform part of his emotions into thought processes notices that such thoughts aren’t present in a child, and then concludes that the experiences aren’t present, either. But only seldom in my life have I had such deep and painful experiences as I had then.
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Oh, I know it today: nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!
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We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.
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Everyone lives through this difficult period. For the average person it’s the point in his life when the demands of his own life clash most violently with the world around him, when his forward path must be fought for most bitterly.
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Only the thoughts that we live out have any value.
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I suddenly found myself disentangled from the demonic snares, I saw the world before me bright and joyous once more, I was no longer subject to anxiety attacks and heart palpitations that choked me. The spell was broken, I was no longer a lost soul in torment, I was once again a schoolboy as always.
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I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.
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The sweetness of many things from that time still stirs and touches me with melancholy: dark and well-lighted alleys, houses and towers, chimes and faces, rooms rich and comfortable, warm and relaxed, rooms pregnant with secrets. Everything bears the scent of warm intimacy, servant girls, household remedies, and dried fruits.
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It was strange how both realms bordered on each other, how close together they were! For example, when Lina, our servant girl, sat with us by the living-room door at evening prayers and added her clear voice to the hymn, her washed hands folded on her smoothed-down apron, she belonged with father and mother, to us, to those that dwelled in light and righteousness. But
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Love ought not to make requests,” she said, “but shouldn’t make demands, either. Love must have the strength to reach certainty for itself. Then it no longer undergoes the power of attraction, but exerts it.
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I hadn’t known this world could still be so beautiful. I had grown accustomed to live inwardly, and I was resigned to the belief that I had simply lost all feeling for the world outside;
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I, too, am a poor, weak dog that needs a little warmth and food, and would occasionally like to feel the nearness of his own kind
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When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn’t inside us can’t excite us.”
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But each person is not only himself, he is also the unique, very special point, important and noteworthy in every instance, where the phenomena of the world meet, once only and never again in the same way.
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In fact, at times I preferred to live in the forbidden world, and frequently my return home to the bright realm, no matter how necessary and good that might be, was almost like a return to someplace less beautiful, more boring and dreary. At times I knew my goal in life was to become like my father and mother, just as bright and pure, superior and well-ordered as they. But that was a long road to travel
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I often ardently perceived a longing for relief, the desire for a proper confession, but I also felt in advance that I would be unable to tell and explain things correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that they would receive my words amicably, they would carefully spare my feelings, in fact, pity me, but they wouldn’t fully understand me, and the whole thing would be looked on as a sort of minor infraction, whereas it was actually my fate.
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an being above and a fish below. But each one is a gamble of Nature, a
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My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.
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All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?
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To tell my story I have to start far in the past. If I could, I’d have to go back much farther yet, to the very earliest years of my childhood and even beyond them to my distant origins.
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When authors write novels, they usually act as if they were God and could completely survey and comprehend
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Because Demian would have demanded more of me than my parents demanded, much more; by means of inducements and admonitions, sarcasm and irony, he would have tried to make me more self-reliant.
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It was the first rift in my father’s sanctity, it was the first nick in the pillars on which my childish life had rested, and which every human being must destroy before he can become himself. It is of these experiences, invisible to everyone, that the inner, essential line of our destiny consists. That kind of rift and nick closes over again, it is healed and forgotten, but in the most secret chamber of the mind it continues to live and bleed.
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In each of us spirit has become form, in each of us the created being suffers, in each of us a redeemer is crucified.
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I looked at that hand and felt how rough and deeply hostile it was to me, how it was reaching out for my life and my peace of mind
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Often while playing, playing good, inoffensive, permissible games, I became too excited and violent for my sisters to put up with; this led to arguments and unhappiness, and when anger overcame me at such times, I was a terror, doing and saying things whose vileness I felt deeply and painfully at the very moment I did and said them. Then came vexing, dark hours of regret and contrition, and then the awful moment when I asked to be forgiven
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Their return home to their father and a good life was always so satisfying and splendid; I realized keenly that that was the only proper, good, and desirable outcome, but the part of the story that took place among the wicked and the lost was by far the more appealing, and, if one were free to state and admit it, it was sometimes actually a downright shame that the prodigal repented and was found again
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this second, violent world gushed out fragrantly everywhere, except in our rooms, where Mother and Father were. And that was very good. It was wonderful that here among us there was peace, order, and repose, duty and a clear conscience, forgiveness and love—and wonderful that all the rest existed, all those noisy, glaring, somber, and violent things, which nevertheless could be escaped with a single bound toward one’s mother.
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. But each one is a gamble of Nature, a hopeful attempt at forming a human being. We all have a common origin, the Mothers, we all come out of the same abyss; but each of us, a trial throw of the dice from the depths, strives toward his own goal.
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All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?
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“It’s always difficult to be born. As you know, the bird must make an effort to break out of the egg. Think back and ask: Was the path really that difficult? Merely difficult? Wasn’t it also beautiful? Could you have thought of a more beautiful or easier one?”
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“No one ever arrives home,” she said amiably. “But when the paths of friends meet, the whole world looks like home for a while.”
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Rather, Nature’s intentions for man are inscribed in individuals, in you and me.
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They’re afraid because they have never accepted themselves. A community consisting exclusively of people afraid of the unknown in themselves! They all feel that the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they’re following outdated commandments; neither their religions nor their morality, nothing is suited to what we need. For a century and more, Europe has done nothing but study and build factories! They know exactly how many grams of powder it takes to kill someone, but they don’t know how to pray to God, they don’t even know how to be contented for an hour at a time.
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I had already experienced plenty of loneliness. Now I sensed that even deeper loneliness existed, and that it was inescapable.
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Everyone had only one true vocation: to find himself. Let him wind up as a poet or a madman, as a prophet or a criminal—that wasn’t his business; in the long run, it was irrelevant. His business was to discover his own destiny, not just any destiny, and to live it totally and undividedly. Anything else was just a half-measure, an attempt to run away, an escape back to the ideal of the masses, an adaptation, fear of one’s own nature. Fearsome and sacred, the new image rose up before me; I had sensed it a hundred times, perhaps I had already enunciated it, but now I was experiencing it for the first time. I was a gamble of Nature, a throw of the dice into an uncertain realm, leading perhaps to something new, perhaps to nothing; and to let this throw from the primordial depths take effect, to feel its will inside myself and adopt it completely as my own will: that alone was my vocation. That alone!
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When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn’t inside us can’t excite us.”
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Therefore each of us must discover for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden—forbidden to him.
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“I see that you think more than you can express. But, if that’s the case, you must also know that you have never fully lived out your thoughts, and that isn’t good. Only the thoughts that we live out have any value. You knew that your ‘permissible world’ was only half the world, and you tried to hide away the second half from yourself, the way clergymen and teachers do. You won’t succeed! No one can do that when he has once begun to think.”
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Oh, I know it today: nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!
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But you do know—right?—that your fear of him is something totally improper? A fear like that ruins us, we’ve got to get rid of it. You’ve got to get rid of it if you’re to become a regular person. Do you understand?
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We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.
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All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?
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To tell my story I have to start far in the past. If I could, I’d have to go back much farther yet, to the very earliest years of my childhood and even beyond them to my distant origins.
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arguments and unhappiness, and when anger overcame me at such times, I was a terror, doing and saying things whose vileness I felt deeply and painfully at the very moment I did
