Classics with a Message

Hesse, Hermann.  Steppenwolf. London: Penguin. 2011

Steppenwolf is one of Hermann Hesse’s most famous novels. It is close to his real life apart from the surrealism. The hallucinations are probably a good way of describing his thoughts, since he had been visiting psychiatrists for years. One might even say his own life was even more  extreme than the story in the novel, and the story is toned down for public acceptance. Even then, the novel caused an uproar in his country for asking questions about normal bourgeois existence. However in 1946 Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

When Harry Haller disappears from his  apartment, the landlord’s nephew finds a manuscript telling about a Steppenwolf. This is Hallers story. After being chased out of his house by his mad wife, and not able to do his profession, Haller sees himself as a steppenwolf, half a man living up to bourgeois expectations and half a wolf from the steps, following his basic instincts and desires. When rambling around the city at night Haller buys a “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” from a hawker. Haller realises he is made up of many selves.

After visiting a Professor and his wife, representing the bourgeois, Haller is feeling depressed and visits the Black Eagle Tavern, as his wolf self. He meets a young woman named Hermine, who makes gentle fun of his preoccupation with Motzart and Indian myths,and the fact he cannot even dance. He meets her again for dinner, and she tells him she will make him love her enough to kill her, since she is not happy with her life. Since Haller had contemplated suicide he did not find this strange. Hermine teaches him to dance then introduces    Haller to the most beautiful girl in the club. The story continues becoming more hallucinatory towards the end.