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Summary: Hesse is a Bodhisattva
Review: The idea of the divided man is Steppenwolf. If one is to understand what Hesse tries to potray through this character, some basic tenets of Buddhism help..a) The fundamental problem with man is avidya-ignorance. Because of this he identifies with everything. That which is relative he takes for the absolute. Through grasping and ignorance he identifies with the 'I' and 'Mine'. Thus he creates the ego. He assumes that he is an unity but actually its the ego or 'not self' that gives him this false sense of integrity. This is the state of Harry Haller before he became Steppenwolf. His being cultured, well-read, scholarly gave him this false sense of the ego. In Mahayanist principles, he is looking at the world with his 'eye of flesh' only. b) The first step towards enlightenment is to realise the duality of the ego, the I, the mine. Harry Haller as Steppenwolf - Here Harry realises that infact he is not one. That which is not him he calls as Wolf. He sees in him both man and wolf, kindness and cruelty, love and hate, passion and compassion. But his classifying and categorising mind again divides all these emotions into 'man like' characteristics and 'wolf-like' characteristics. Though steppenwolf's state of existence cannot be envied, it must be realised that its still better than his false sense of oneness. Here, Hesse is using the concept of the 'Deva eye' - the vision that helps one discern the dualistic aspect of the world because of identification with the ego. c) Then Harry meets Hermine and Maria, that seedy musician and a gallery of characters. He is thrown into a vortex of sex, debauchery, mundanities. These experiences of Harry are completely different from what he thought of himself as - Man and Wolf. He sees in himself everything and in everything himself. This is the stage where Hesse has used the concept of Indra's net from the Vajracheddika - one of the most fundamental sutras of Mahayana Buddhism. Each precious stone in the net reflects every other stone as it is without any distortion. One can see every stone in the net reflected within one stone. Harry sees the ultimate oneness in every principle and way of life. He sees Samsara in Nirvana and Nirvana in Samsara. He has gone beyond the eye of the flesh and the deva eye. I am not sure if he has the buddha eye but definitely he sees the world with the eye of wisdom. Herein lies Harry's ultimate salvation. Hesse has used the basic tenets of Mahayana philosophy in addition to other streams of Eastern thought and exposited them beautifully through Steppenwolf. This is also the reason why he says in the preface that those who just identified themselves with Steppenwolf(because they see themselves as him) have understood the book wrongly. These people are seeing the book with the eyes of the flesh and deva eye only. They are seeing what they like to see - themselves!They are not understanding the supra-steppenwolf stage of Harry's spiritual liberation. And Hesse cannot tell them to see with the Buddha eye - it can only be realised by oneself. Hesse was definitely a Bodhisattva born to illuminate people's minds..no doubt about it.
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Summary: all scholars who like acid raise your hands!
Review: "steppenwolf" is one of the most disturbing, yet fascinating, books i've ever read. anyone with above average intelligence combined with a uniquely independent mind and intellectual curiosity (BAH, that fatal combination) will understand the character of Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf, all too well.
I'll never forget the scene where Harry is talking to Goethe (talking to a dead guy? LSD? WHAT?) and rages at the naive picture of the human condition that men of his ilk had so deceptively painted for Harry's generation. Picture it:a nut on a street corner, drunk, screaming at a hallucination about the meaninglessness of existence. Just from this, you've got to read the book.
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Summary: insane in the membrabe
Review: Hesse was a prophet for the seekers and wanderers and mad men of this world. I am baffled that everytime I consume a Hesse novel, how much I identify with each written line, it scares me. Yet I haven't the connection to speak what he writes down, so I read in magnificent awe. Read this book if your life seems dismal, read this book if your life seems up, read this book with aggression and most of all read this book with intention, whenever you decide to take something from a Herman Hesse novel be prepared to have a piece of your psyche changed.......for the better.
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Summary: Insanity to the extreme.......
Review: I don't even know where to begin. "Steppenwolf" is so gut-wrenching and so powerful that no review could possibly do it justice. About twenty times in the book, I stopped to ask myself what drug Hesse had consumed (and in what tremendous quantities) when he wrote this book. Apparently, no drug; Hesse was savagely intoxicated on life. He was a steppenwolf, much like his doppelganger Harry Haller, the novel's narrator. Steppenwolf - a man who believes himself to be half human, half wolf. Harry Haller is a loner, drawn away from the banality of bourgeois life and wallowing in the desperation of existence. His only companions are the books that have taken him to the extremes of intellectual snobbery. At the outset of the novel, Harry is on the verge of suicide (the "Treatise" which chronicles his desire for death is one of the most depressing albeit formidable pieces of literature that I have ever read). But all is changed when Harry meets Hermine - she represents that part of himself that Harry has hidden somewhere in the recesseses of his yearning mind, she is a metaphor of the "lighter" side of life, that part of us all that craves pleasure and triviality and precisely the part that Harry needed to unravel. The novel goes on to explore Harry's journey towards self-discovery and his changing realisations about life and its meanings. It is a beautiful story, I was very moved by it's power and particulary by the events that take place in the novel's so-called "Magic Theatre".... whoa, talk about madness, this part of the story is incredible, Hesse's imagination really has no limits. Actually, when I think of Harry Haller, I am reminded of a certain expression from "Macbeth" - the "heat-oppressed mind." Read Steppenwolf, you'll know exactly what I mean.
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Summary: Graceful and Clear
Review: There are amazing things about this novel that sings out even in the English version (most of the time the original versions are best even though I am not lucky enough to be fluent or near fluent in German). The layers of narration, from sober to fantastically drugged are nevertheless always in control because the author's style is clear and locked on the subject even though the descriptions go round and round echoing the psychological chaos that the main character goes through. Steppenwolfe can be thought of as a lesson in philosophy, as Hess mirrors ideas from Plato to Nietzsche, and as an attack on the averageness of the middle classes (not much of what he's pointing out has changed in seventy odd years) and there are probably many other individual ways of looking at it. Of course, this kind of novel appeals to lost youngsters but why not and why so? A complicated matter of latching on to comfort.
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Summary: A metaphor for life
Review: I guess I could spout analytical praise or offer in depth literary criticism. I could, as other reviewers have done, tear it apart or write lofty words in its defense. I could critique the translation as though it were projecting a noble truth through a cheap radio... But instead, I will just say that through the entire book I laughed and cried, I danced through the pages, I thought of how the pieces of my own life have been arranged in relation to Haller's, I found a friend whom I danced with for a while, I felt the joys and sorrows of life, and I learned to enjoy my own existence more fully. Recommended to all children of the universe, reflective thinkers and anyone whose lot in life has left them in need of self healing.
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Summary: Steppen What?
Review: What an insult to real wolves. I think he should have called it steppenbear, steppeneagle, steppen anything except wolf. That said, it's a very plain box with brass fittings on it, but, like anything worth seeing, it conceals its light under a bushel.
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Summary: Price of Admission: Your Mind
Review: I love this book, and I'm forever grateful to its author. Hesse has said about Nietzsche that he was a man caught between two ages, suffering in deep aloneness a hundred years ago what thousands go through today. Hesse was such a man, of course. As the book's fictional bourgeois narrator says about Harry Haller: ...He called himself the Steppenwolf, and this too estranged and disturbed me a little. What an expression! However, custom did not only reconcile me to it, but soon I never thought of him by any other name; nor could I today hit on a better description of him. A wolf of the steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd, a more striking image could not be found for his shy loneliness, his savagery, his restlessness, his homesickness, his homelessness.... He also has this to say, and for me this beautifully sums up the novel's impact: And now we come to these records of Haller's, these partly diseased, partly beautiful, and thoughtful fantasies...I see them as a document of the times, for Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts. These records...are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full. --And yet, and yet...Hesse later wrote a beautiful Author's Note in which he emphasized that to descend is not enough; to live in shadows and be eccentric and feel despair...no, that's not the novel's destiny and shouldn't be the reader's either. Here is the last piece of that Note which expresses Hesse's view of regarding the work as only doomful: These readers, it seems to me, have recognized themselves in the Steppenwolf, identified themselves with him, suffered his griefs, and dreamed his dreams; but they have overlooked the fact that this book knows of and speaks about other things besides Harry Haller and his difficulties, about a second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. The "Treatise" and all those spots in the book dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts and the "immortal" men oppose the Steppenwolf's world of suffering with a positive, serene, superpersonal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still, it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing. Of course, I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale. May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him! But I would be happy if many of them were to realize that the story of the Steppenwolf pictures a disease and crisis--but not one leading to death and destruction, on the contrary: to healing.
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Summary: Half Wolf, Half Human
Review: Simply the best book I have ever read. Herman Hesse has described a very complicated life story, in a very poetic, and realistic way. It is a book that talks about the struggle we have with all the different souls that we have inside us. A book that talks about Harry who lost the desire to live, and who believed that he was half wolf, half human. How his wolf nature was taking over, and he already knew how his end would be. It talks about the depression he was going through, and how hard it was for him to look in the mirror and face himself with what was going on, and what he really wanted to do. How the right person changed all that, she gave him a reason to be young in soul again, she understood him as a wolf and as a human, and explained the concept of the eternal life. What makes the book much more valuable is how easy it is to relate it to our daily lives, and the challenges we face, and the motivations we have to create and look for. A must book to read by everyone...
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Summary: Simply Enchanting
Review: Living on the outskirts of life, Steppenwolf roams the streets of the city and his soul searching for a piece to make him whole. He finds that that piece is already within him... a journey worth taking. Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf offers a revealing look into the life of a man struggling to find his place in a world where most everyone is a stereotype. I read this book at the lowest point in my life. For some strange reason, it was very comforting. I have read Hermann Hesse's Demian and The Glass Bead Game, yet neither has had such an effect on me. Although many view Steppenwolf as a paradoxical picture of the bourgeoisie, I see it as something more personal. It's a view on life. The ending really was amazing and I had to reread and rethink about it for a week to fully grasp the meaning. I have recommended this book to every single one of my friends and teachers. It is truly a great work of art. Hesse's writing style and vivid descriptions are truly enchanting and will draw you into the book the second you start reading it. Those in depression will realize the value of life, and those who are not depressed will hopefully have a more open mind toward others.
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