March '10 Reading: Steppenwolf by Hesse

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I think it goes further than that. Although he chooses to live in the bosom of the bourgeoisie, he does not feel a part of it, and is perceived as different by our narrator.

Is his healing about accepting the fun side of life, whislt his killing of Hermine, which he anticipates her asking him, is a moving on from this?

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I think that the killing her Hermine was the needed catalyst to make him realize that his seeking death, and his struggles with suicide had been wrong all along. He was awakened to the fact that he never was intended to kill Hermine/that aspect of himself, which I think is why it was so important to Hermine that he love her first, because he was suppose to embrace her and accept that part of himself.

Yet, it was only through killing her that he was able to come into this realization. After the killing of Hermine, he then had his eyes opened to the lesson he was truly intended to learn, and that the way he had been living his life up until this point was wrong and his logic had been faulty. At the same time, it was also an acknowledgement that his struggle was not yet done, that the old Harry still lurked inside of him.

But I think that in the death of Hermine, in severing that part of him, it will allow him now, that he has seen the truth and the door has been opened, to strive to achieve those things within his life, that freedom, without having to do so through Hermine, it will no longer have to be a thing that is separate from himself.

The road to healing and the escape from misery can now be accomplished without his own mind having to deceive him into it, without the projection of these aspects of himself into other people, because now he knows they are all him, that it is all within him, and not separate from himself or outside of himself

Muse, that's an excellent summary. I agree with everything you said. Well put.

Agreed.

What do you think about the other doors where there is anarchy, kiling and the multiple personalty game?

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Agreed.

What do you think about the other doors where there is anarchy, kiling and the multiple personalty game?

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I have to admit I was really confused by the whole car thing, where they were in a car, and than shooting at cars, and it was just complete chaos. That particular door/reality/vision, whichever it may be did not make a whole lot of sense to me.

It was perhaps a complete freedom from the bourgeoisie which is rebelled against throughout the book and which Harry struggles with continually, the fact that he despises it and yet still wants to be a part of it.

It was a fantasy of complete freedom where no sense of order exists, and there are no restraints. A world constructed without rules or laws, and perhaps it was meant to offer the absolute extreme in the libertine ideal of free living. It seemed almost to reflect the id.

Since Harry was so pulled into himself and so reserved and bond so much to his intellectual ideas, and his Immortals, the introduction to the world of utter chaos which has no cares or worries, was meant to be a shock to Harry's system to help knock him out of the shell and once he had been exposed to the height of that lawlessness he would be more receptive to the other lessons which he was intended to learn.

It also worked as a physical manifestation, at least within his mind, of his negative feelings and of his conflicts and struggles, and perhaps it was meant to show him just how ridiculous his suffering and his struggles were, because the chaos was such utter nonsense.

Pablo tells Harry that he has no sense of humor, and that he takes himself and life too seriously, and in Pablo's opinion he also takes his art and music too seriously. The madness of the chaos was perhaps intended to try and show Harry just how ludicrous life would really be, and how meaningless it all was, and so he might as well just learn to laugh at it all.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

I have to admit I was really confused by the whole car thing, where they were in a car, and than shooting at cars, and it was just complete chaos. That particular door/reality/vision, whichever it may be did not make a whole lot of sense to me.

It was perhaps a complete freedom from the bourgeoisie which is rebelled against throughout the book and which Harry struggles with continually, the fact that he despises it and yet still wants to be a part of it.

It was a fantasy of complete freedom where no sense of order exists, and there are no restraints. A world constructed without rules or laws, and perhaps it was meant to offer the absolute extreme in the libertine ideal of free living. It seemed almost to reflect the id.

Since Harry was so pulled into himself and so reserved and bond so much to his intellectual ideas, and his Immortals, the introduction to the world of utter chaos which has no cares or worries, was meant to be a shock to Harry's system to help knock him out of the shell and once he had been exposed to the height of that lawlessness he would be more receptive to the other lessons which he was intended to learn.

It also worked as a physical manifestation, at least within his mind, of his negative feelings and of his conflicts and struggles, and perhaps it was meant to show him just how ridiculous his suffering and his struggles were, because the chaos was such utter nonsense.

Pablo tells Harry that he has no sense of humor, and that he takes himself and life too seriously, and in Pablo's opinion he also takes his art and music too seriously. The madness of the chaos was perhaps intended to try and show Harry just how ludicrous life would really be, and how meaningless it all was, and so he might as well just learn to laugh at it all.

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I agree. It's perhaps telling that Haller is a pacifist and argues with his former friend and academic. Maybe Pablo's message is that he could have ignored the insult to his article, ignored the painting of Goethe, and had a thoroughly pleasant evening. Haller did after all publish under a pseudonym, but then he takes very personally his friend's views.

There is no vioent ending to that fantsy either; it seems as though order is restored as they go off with the woman from the car.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I agree. It's perhaps telling that Haller is a pacifist and argues with his former friend and academic. Maybe Pablo's message is that he could have ignored the insult to his article, ignored the painting of Goethe, and had a thoroughly pleasant evening. Haller did after all publish under a pseudonym, but then he takes very personally his friend's views.

There is no vioent ending to that fantsy either; it seems as though order is restored as they go off with the woman from the car.

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Yes, it is almost like a cartoon, where no one seems to really get hurt in the end, so I do think it was meant to be a message about not taking life so seriously, becasue in the fantasy nothing they do there really matters, and if they do just go with the flow, then they all end up having a good time.

I have not had a chance to give my thoughts on Steppenwolf and assess the novel, so let me finally do so now. I’m not exactly sure what to say. It’s certainly different, I take it considered experimental, and except for the Steppenwolf Treatise section, which consumed 15% of the novel, it was engaging until the end. To be honest, I’m not a fan of novels that blur a dream state with reality. I don’t mind novels that use dreams, but if one doesn’t pin down a line between what is dream and what is reality, then what’s the story? What’s so important about someone’s dream? Sure one can make the point that one can’t tell the difference between reality and dream, but that’s been done. Besides, I don’t find that profound. And if the ending is such that it’s all been a dream, my God, that’s cheap and frankly amateurish.

And so in reading Steppenwolf, I’m baffled by several things. I can’t tell if the story is a dream or its reality. Obviously Harry exists. The point of the preface where the man at the apartment who finds Harry’s notebooks accounts for Harry’s reality through Harry’s stay at the apartment. So we know Harry is real, we know the apartment is real. Is everything else part of Harry’s dream or imagination? Does Harry really start shooting people as if it were a shooting gallery or does he then for a reason I can’t fathom kill the woman he loves? If it’s real, it’s perverse. If it’s a dream, then so what?

I don’t think after this one reading I can precisely articulate the novel’s central theme, but I would assume it’s coherent. I see the allusions to Jungian psychology and the mystical religious element that runs through the novel; I can see how Hesse is in dissension to the current state of his society. He certainly has issues with his contemporary world and I’m not sure if it’s because the world has gone astray from some better state (religious and psychological) or its inherent in man to be astray. I can see both possibilities. I didn’t after reading the novel feel the need to give it a lot of thought.

I didn’t feel the need because I didn’t feel the novel was all that well crafted.

Except for Harry, all the characters were flat, pure flat. Hermione, Pablo, Maria, his professor colleague, the professor’s wife, not one. I guess the flatness of these characters supports a dream perspective from Harry’s mind to the novel. Nonetheless where’s the writer’s craft? In the end these characters seemed to stand for allegorical concepts rather than people.

Second, Harry is supposed to be a tortured soul. What exactly is torturing him? I’m not sure I get it. And if he’s a person who is rude and uncouth, as he says he is, where’s the dramatization of it? If anything he’s quite cultured in his wine and music. The only rudeness is that incident with the Professor’s wife where he accidently demeans her painting. And he didn’t know it was hers. The description of Harry doesn’t seem to match the narrative.

Third, the Steppenwolf Treatise was incredibly not artful. This was a delineation of the novel’s themes in an explicative mode. A writer of skill would have integrated these themes into the narrative by dramatizing them. Or of a lesser craft would be where a writer has the characters speak the themes in the dialogue. Hesse takes even a lesser craft route. The Treatise was pure argumentative discourse disguised in a pamphlet that Harry finds. How unimaginative. And not only is it argumentative discourse, it’s a particular type. The argument is a critique on society and essentially politics, i.e. “bourgeois society.” Well, that kind of argument is called a polemic, and polemic is the antithesis of creative writing. I don’t read novels to read polemics, whether I agree with the polemic or not.

Fourth, the quality of the writing was mixed. I am not referring to the prose, since of course this was written in German and I read it in translation, and I have no way to assess the quality of the German. Hesse in his author’s note calls the novel poetic. I’m going to assume his prose is excellent. I’m referring to how a writer engages the reader in the development of scenes. A good writer draws the reader in so that through the details and pacing it creates the atmosphere of truth, that this scene really happened, and the reader is engaged by it. Hesse’s scene writing is spotting throughout the novel. I fully believed and was engaged with the scene where Hermione draws him in to dance; I was engaged and delighted with the love scenes with Maria. I found the Pablo scenes completely uninteresting and the shooting gallery was totally non believable. Here’s the shooting gallery scene. Now keep in mind, this is the first time Gustav enters the novel at page 181 of a 214 page novel.

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The best of all, however, was that my childhood friend, Gustav, turned up close beside me. I had lost sight of him for dozens of years, the wildest, strongest, most eager and venturesome of the friends of my childhood. I laughed in my heart as I saw him blink at me with his bright blue eyes. He beckoned and at once I followed him joyfully.

“Good Lord, Gustav,” I cried happily, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Whatever has become of you?”

He gave a derisive snort, just as he used to do as a boy. “There you are again, you idiot, jabbering and asking questions. I’m a professor of theology if you want to know. But, Lord be praised, there’s no occaision for theology now, my boy. It’s war. Come on!”
He shot the driver of a small car that came snorting towards us and leaping into it as nimbly as monkey, brought it to a standstill for me to get in. Then we drove like the devil between bullets and crashed cars out of town and suburbs.

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Then they have a brief conversation and they situate themselves on top of a rock wall overlooking the road.

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We had scarcely cooled down when we heard the hoarse imperious horn of a big luxuery car from the next bend in the road. It came purring at top speed up the smooth road. Our rifles were ready in our hands. The excitement was intense.

“Aim at the chauffer,” commanded Gustav quickly just as the heavy car went by beneath us. I aimed, and fired at the chauffer in his blue cap. The man fell in a heap. The car careened on, charged the cliff face, rebounded, attacked the lower wall furiously with all its unwieldy weight like a great bumble bee and, tumbling over, crashed with a brief and distant report into the depths below.

“Got him!” Gustav laughed. “My turn next.”

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And they go on to keep shooting others. I have no idea whether this is a dream or fact. I’m not sure I really care. The whole scene is rather cartoonish. The novel is 90% over and Hesse introduces a new character where they do some incredible and diabolic things and no such violence or action scenes have occurred before this point in the book. It comes out of the blue, both the violence and the swift action. A writer cannot just do that and be credible. Such scenes need to be “earned,” as we called in creative writing classes. An action novel does not just have action at the end; the author has to create the world of action, and so when the climatic action at the end occurs, it’s “earned.” This was completely unearned and so is the climax. I won’t spoil it, but I found it possibly as cartoonish as this scene.

I struggled to try to give this novel an average rating. The novel was boring at the beginning, interesting in the middle section with the engaging scenes with Hermione and Maria, and bizarre and crude in its apparent dream section (if it was a dream) at the end. In his author’s note Hesse from the perspective of over thirty years from when the book was published writes that this was his most misunderstood novel – “violently misunderstood” is the exact phrasing. He calls this novel “poetic writing.” Perhaps this could have worked as a long extended poem, but as a novel it lacks the flesh and blood feel of the real. No wonder it’s been misunderstood. It’s not well crafted as a novel. Sure it’s experimental, but most experiments in art go awry. I think there is the raw material for a good novella here, probably ninety pages long, but as a novel it fails. Sorry I had to go below average on this.