Steppenwolf: A Novel

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Summary: Philosophical Psycho-Drama. Read it and grow!
Review: Steppenwolf is the depiction of a man, in a time, where the pain and anguish of living his life provides the courage necessary to seek change. Harry Haller, a.k.a., Steppenwolf (the wolf of the Steppes) spends his time "with his thoughts and his books, and pursues no practical calling." He is intelligent, educated, cultured, and lonely. Harry is a regular guy, an average man, a man we know, a man we are.

Harry is in pain - spiritual pain, emotional pain, social pain, political pain; deep and suffocating pain. Drinking alcohol doesn't cure Harry's pain, and his health is poor too. Kind landlords provide no relief, and the kindness of old colleagues bestowing social niceties only serve to prove to Harry how wretched he is, because Harry is a "genius of suffering, with a frightful capacity for pain...rooted in self-contempt." Harry is also authentically himself and without pretenses, though he is rejecting of himself. He escapes the pretenses of the world, yet he lives according to the rules of the world. He is accepting and honest with everyone he meets, yet is filled with deep contempt, for himself, and the "bourgeois" world. Conformity to the norm of the day is not the way of the wolf, and Harry Haller is a wolf; a wolf, "living a journey through hell...a soul dwelling in darkness." What Harry wants and needs is relief. Yet he is afraid. Afraid of others, the past, the present, the future, and so with despair for the life he lives, Harry wants to die. Harry also wants to be connected, to be present, and to live. He yearns for it; he even, "regrets the present day and the countless lost hours and days in mere passivity." Yet in Harry's darkest moments, he still has an ability to transcend the darkness and connect to nature as he "contemplates the araucaria." There is also relief for Harry in music, because in music, Harry "drops all defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world." Harry is a regular guy, an average man, a man we know, a man we are. Harry is shadow. Harry is ego.

Hitting bottom, seeing relief only in death, Harry struggles with darkness (shadow), and encounters the Magic Theater. Prior to Harry's Magic Theater journey he is given a "Treatise of the Steppenwolf" (a diagnosis). The Magic Theater is "not for everybody." But, Harry is not everybody. Harry is courageous. He enters The Magic Theater (psycho-therapy) and encounters everyone and everything, dark and light and neutral; all of it. Upon entering The Magic Theater, Harry meets a woman who is pure light (ego) to his darkness (shadow). She is friendly, smiling, comforting, soothing, and nurturing. She is alive! And she is exactly the relief Harry needs. She is "his opposite, and all that Harry lacked." Because she is the part of Harry that he long ago cast off, thrown away and rejected. She is Harry's anima. She is Hermine. She is Harry.

In The Magic Theatre, Hermine (like a nurturing mother) introduces Harry to himself (her), and she shows Harry that he's been brooding like a child in a lifetime tantrum. And, like the child that he is, Harry submits to his Hermine (mother/anima/self) and learns the ways to laughter, humor, acceptance and love. Harry's journey is not without struggle, as he deals with his old self (shadow), learns from his new self (ego), and learns to live. Harry learns that darkness (shadow) is only part of life, and that acceptance, love and laughter are other parts of the game and dance of life, parts he had discarded long, long ago.

On Harry's journey in The Magic Theater, he meets many teachers and guides, including his beloved Goethe, Mozart, the neutral, non-judgmental and compassionate Herr Pablo, and the chess player: psycho-therapists all. With their encouragement and instruction, Harry engages with others, struggles with self and others, dances with others, and faces himself in others - and Harry integrates it all. Every experience in The Magic Theater is an awakening of love, acceptance, relief and life for Harry -past, present and future, and through the journey, Harry learns self-control and self-acceptance.

Before Harry paid the price of admission into The Magic Theater (his mind), Harry was a regular guy, an average man, a man we know, a man we are. The difference between Harry and the average though, is that Harry had the courage to pay the price to "live and not die"


Rating:
Summary: The best Hesse novel
Review: The story is that Hesse wrote this novel while in depression and undergoing Jung psychoanalysis. It sure does show! While all of his novels have a spiritual quest quality and have some interesting insights on human behavior, Steppenwolf is in this reviewers opinion the most interesting and thought provoking.

I don't want to spoil the plot too much, but suffice to say it is about a bourgeousie man who feels out of touch with society. He calls himself a steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes- trapped between his wild nature and the oppresed society. The story follows him as he tries to reconcile his two natures, and the story takes some interesting turns as it delves into his psyche.

Hesse writes clearly and poetically, and while the story is a bit surreal as it delves deeper into darkness, it is always easy to follow. Recommended for fellow pilgrims, Hesse fans, and also for readers of Dostoevsky.

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Summary: Harry Haller, Steppenwolf and the Illusion of The Self
Review: A 300 page book I read in two days. Interesting story with great self descriptions of a man torn away from society into himself and his two personas, Harry Haller and the Steppenwolf. Harry Haller is the bourgeois self, who is an intellectual, thinker and socially "normal" man and Steppenwolf is the rebel self who rebels from mediocre bourgeois living and is an angry skeptic. He then meets others, including intimacy with women, who also came to the same conclusions of life's emptiness through their personas, although they come from the superficial world of desires and pleasures, which is the majority of society.

The book continues through the struggles of Harry's troubled self personas and encounters he occurs. Ultimately, it is the recognition of the self, the persona(s) that are not anymore as serious and rather humorous. This is because the acknowledgment comes from a new awareness that the self is a construction of many different personas which are all part of a game, and the idea of a game suggests the illusion we carry in the seriousness of the role we play, the persona we emulate. It's an amazing self insight that allows him to perceive his life apart from his self-made, man-made personas that are only creations of the self and societal structures, cultural conditioning and linguistic formations. This of course, includes all philosophies, all political and religious ideologies and recognizes their transient nature adapting to the current societal structure of the time. It is a revelation from the self, an escape from the ego, a release from the illusionary selves that the majority of the world are unaware and who take their personas as "real" and fail to see the multiplicity of the self and that our personas are in reality illusions we create. And this is all realized under the Magic Theater - Entrance Not For Everybody - For Madmen Only! - The Cost, Your Mind. The entry and experience into this theater happens at the end of the novel by drinking a potion and smoking some secret herb rolled up in yellow rolling paper, which can no doubt be psychedelic drugs or similar drugs that enabled Harry to obtain the ability to let go of his illusionary self and open the doors of perception to see the multiplicities of reality and their relative positions.

This insight is also that of the 1960's Harvard University professor, guru, psychologist and author, Timothy Leary, who found the use of LSD and psychedelics enabled him and many others, including intellectuals, professors, theologians, divinity students, historians and eventually much of the public, to also enter higher portions of reality, recognizing their limited egos, beyond their illusionary personas to perceive that the Magic Theater is the theater that reveals the many games we and our society play, the many chess pieces we both consciously and unconsciously create in the chessboards of life and that the majority, the power and control people, reject this adamantly, entirely living for the seriousness of their illusionary personas in rationalism and language as the only true reality, resulting in the dominating others, including that of the governments who start bloody wars and pass laws that curb and even destroy creativity.

Harry Haller - Steppenwolf - experienced a new found wisdom, pages 129 and 131: "I lived through much in Pablo's little (Magic) theater and not a thousandth part can be told in words. . . When I rose once more to the surface of the unending stream of allurement and vice and entanglement, I was calm and silent, I was equipped, far gone in knowledge, wide, expert - ripe for Hermaine (his last love) . . I belong to her not just as this one piece in my game of chess - I belonged to her wholly. I would now lay out the pieces in my game that all was centered in here and led to fulfillment."

What must be recognized is that while life takes on personas and still, unmoving snapshots of reality and interprets them as absolutes, it still can not hide what is behind such still frames of perception; the moving flow of multifaceted reality, the relative nature of perception. But this can only be so if people stop becoming so serious in their chess games, cease being critics, experts and trash their beliefs in absolutes - "Better learn to listen first! Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest." p. 143 The music we hear may be distorted and may not conform to our perceptions, but it can never hide the eternal music of life that exists within it. While many of us have the courage to die for our errors and crimes, we don't have the courage to fully live, anotherwards, we don't know how to to laugh and apprehend the humor of life, to see the relative nature and meanings of the distorted music, and recognize that all of life's perceptions have serious limitations and must not be taken as absolute truths.

Oh, and one more thought. A thought that keeps haunting me is the laughing Haller envisions Mozart as doing, a mad, insane laughter and I sense inside this myself. Life, while beautiful, is truly a painful tragedy, a fightening, suffering existence that deteroriates into death. Without having absolutes to lean on, the human's ability of humor and comedy counter act and balance the psyche. That's the insane, mad, overwhelming laughter. That's the antedote of our awareness to the transient nature of all our relative truths. We see the contradictions, lighten up and laugh, although this laugh comes from the depths of our soul.

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Summary: I can't think of a good title or a suitable rating of stars.
Review: I just wanted to wite down a few thoughts on Hesse's book.
I feel like I have taken a few trips through "hell" in my life and this book was good for me to read because it made me realize that travelling down that road is pretty silly. That said, those of you who aren't interested in reading about one man's hellish journey might want to steer clear of this book. For those of you in hell or purgatory or some sort of place like that, I suggest doing your own psychological healing instead of reading about Hesse's. Heck, you can write a story about it and maybe it will get 93 reviews on Amazon. This book does contain some amazing vocabulary, and descriptive passages, but I must admit that my favorite part of the book was coming to the end of it and putting it aside. Thanks for reading. Buen Viajes.

Rating:
Summary: For Madmen Only - price of admission, your mind.
Review: This is an important psycho-literary work - it must have taken a lot to write it, and it will take a lot to read it. If you find this sort of thing entertaining, it makes for a cracking good read.

Steppenwolf borrows from sources like ancient hindu vendantic wisdom (suggested by these Sanskrit words spoken in a dream - Tat Twam Asi , or Thou Art That), middle germanic thought (Goethe and Mozart) and modern "blasphemous" movements like jazz. It has in turn engendered a lot of modern literature. The inspirations are only a byline, though. Steppenwolf stands as a book of great originality - in thought and literary device.

This is a parable about Harry Haller alias 'The Steppenwolf', a man who was raised middle-class, middle-of-the-road, predictable, and ultimately - boring. The elements of his upbringing are the very elements that make for a "society" - a collection of individuals that can obey rules, play roles, and discharge duties towards the Greater Good.

Harry rebels against such straitening influences , strikes out on his own, and develops a more primal or "wolf-like" dimension to his being. The middle-class persona is in a state of uneasy truce with his vulpine alter-ego. The desperation of existing as this self-contradiction is the primeover of The Steppenwolf. The inadequacy of viewing the human experience in terms of two dimensional (man-wolf) dichotomies is The Steppenwolf's central thesis.

The second protagonist - a woman called Hermine, inducts Harry into all things "animal" - jazz (as opposed to the sublime Mozart), casual repartee (as opposed to the literary genius of Goethe), and the fulfilments of promiscuous sex (as opposed to the bourgeois ideal of faithfulness to a single mate).

Both Hermine and Harry Haller are thinly disguised literary devices essaying a single conflicted soul - Herman Hesse himself ! 'Hermine' is the female form of the name 'Herman' and Harry Haller has Herman Hesse's initials - HH.

Harry is a fifty-something college educated professor(?) and Hermine is a professional escort. The Hermine persona does not charge money of Harry. Instead, she puts a far greater price than money on her services - she asks that at the end of their journey together, Harry should murder her. The symbolism is clear. It is not the 20-to-life or manslaughter variety of murder being spoken of here -:)

The final, and most brilliant device of the book - the Magic Theater - "For Madmen Only. Price of admission - your mind." A brilliant parable of God's Creation, or the world as we "know" it. Where a person's distinct personalities/experiences co-exist as realities in distinct rooms of the theater, where Pablo the sensual saxophonist can deal a hand using personae instead of cards, to create a "Harry" as we know him. Read , and be engulfed.

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Summary: You must to face your inner demons !
Review: Because if you do not the neurosis will be waiting for you just around the corner.
This book is one of the most pwoerful works written for Hesse . The otherness of the human being has been told with strong mood like in this case .
His reading is fundamental because it explores many hidden and dark regions of your soul that for any kind of reasoms many people do not dare to go .


Rating:
Summary: The book that's most changed my life
Review: This may be a challenging novel for some people because of the narration shifts, no chapters, the boring beginning, and most of all the driving theme, but it's smooth sailing after you've gotten past about the first third of the book. The narration starts out from the pov of an unnamed young man from whose aunt Harry is renting out a room, and one day he begins looking over Harry's books and eventually finds a mystifying "Treatise on the Steppenwolf." This sets the background for who exactly Harry is and what kinds of ideas are going through his head.

The early part of the book is boring because Harry himself is a bore. Harry needs to learn to lighten up, stop taking everything so seriously, enjoy life, not pick fights so easily, and most of all just learn how to smile, laugh, dance. He keeps to himself and drives away the few friends he finds in the town he is staying in the very night he's invited over to their house for dinner. An old friend of Harry's, who is a professor, begins ranting about a recent anti-war article in the newspaper. The man who wrote this article also has the surname Haller, and as Harry is getting angrier and angrier with the professor's tirade (since Harry was also anti-war), he finally lies that he wrote the article, just as an excuse to get out of their house. He was also set off earlier in the evening by a picture of Goethe in their house, since Harry's hero is depicted in a lightweight and romantic way, not as some stiff and humourless intellectual. That bridge burned, he heads off to a local tavern called the Black Eagle, where he meets a mysterious woman named Hermine, who takes him under her wing, along the way introducing him to her equally mysterious friends Pablo and Maria. Thus begins Harry's journey towards getting a life and learning how to have fun, with the culmination being his amazing experience in the Magic Theatre.

This book was deeply influenced by Hesse's psychotherapy sessions with Carl Jung, and came out in 1927, when Freudianism was all the rage. The very theme of the book, of a man trying to harness his humanlike and wolflike attributes into one coherent and sane whole, is very similar to Freud's theories about the conflict raging between the id, ego, and superego, as well as the theory about the reptilian part of the human brain. A lot of the scenes, esp. in the Magic Theatre, read like something that came out of a drug experience or LSD hallucination, but in this case it seems to have come from the strange but true world of the little-explored reaches of the human brain and the human mind. There's a Steppenwolf in all of us.

Rating:
Summary: Better As A Satire
Review: Harry Haller is the spokesman for angsty teenagers and poseur Goths. Haller feels he is caught in a continuous battle between his baser and nobler desires, the wolf and the man within him, and the paths of happy mediocrity and agonizing transcendence. He searches for spiritual beauty; it's no wonder he can't find it, as he refuses to acknowledge in himself and others. He believes his self-imposed suffering makes him better than the "bourgeois" a.k.a. everyone else. He cuts himself off and wonders why he feels lonely. He whines continuously about how misunderstood he is.

To me, this book is an excellent satire of the angsty artiste who revels in misery. I am not at all sure that Hesse meant it in this way, but literature is open to interpretation. The prose is beautiful and there are some fantastical and creative passages. I recommend it--but keep a critical eye open, and don't forget the grain of salt.