Herman Hesse's STEPPENWOLF

The wolf-man is a simplistic reduction of our myriad selves. "Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two. His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands." Reading this passage helped me discover the meaning of the oscillating gun in my fiction manuscript SNOW AT 5 PM. The truth of multiplicity comes home to Harry Haller at the climax of the Magic Theater, with all its doors leading to different versions of himself. The chess player in one room is surely a predecessor of the Magister Ludi of the glass bead game. All past, present, and future selves available to one. Not for nothing is Hesse a disciple of Nietzsche, and his eternal recurrence.

For me, Hesse will always be the most miraculous and unexpected connector.  After reading Safranski's biography of Goethe, I find Goethe appearing to Harry Haller in a dream. The accusation of conservatism and pomposity, more, mummification of life, directed at Goethe by Harry could equally be directed at Hesse, who reminds the reader in his author's preface that Steppenwolf is a book written by a man who was fifty years old, and not in his teens. Goethe's reply is to remind Harry of his supreme love of Mozart, and the immortal laughter of The Magic Flute. Mozart appears at the very end to direct Harry to his execution, a feint, of course, because that way of dying would indeed be pompous. Instead of which, Harry is ushered out of the Magic Theater to try to play the Game better, to learn to laugh.

The hermaphrodite Herman/Hermine is a most interesting creation. The apogee of their appearance, at the Masked Ball, is wondrously described, a sensuous, sinuous movement that made me recall all the nights when I lost myself dancing in a New York club.\

Homesickness is the soul's longing for the eternal realm.

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