Steppenwolf

Before starting to read Steppenwolf I did wonder if I had left this novel too late in my life to fully appreciate it - as I felt I had with Demian. So many other Steppenwolf reviews seem to be by readers who identified with Harry in their late teens or early twenties, a time when we strive to discover our true personalities and often feel alienated from society at large. I soon discovered, however, that I am actually within a very few months of Harry's age as Steppenwolf begins and, through reading Hesse's own brief introduction, that he was exploring ideas of change experienced in middle age - Steppenwolf is a midlife crisis novel!

I soon realised too that I could all too well empathise with Harry's misanthropy and his desire to avoid the outside world by submerging himself in books. I loved the descriptions of his rented room with its chaotic piles of books everywhere, and especially how this is contrasted with his idea of a peaceful temple being a neighbour's clean landing simply adorned with two neat potted plants. In Steppenwolf, Hesse frequently uses such diametrically opposed contrasts to make his points. I imagine the yin and yang concept to have been his inspiration. One particular sentence that leapt out to me was, "Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours." There is a lot of such philosophising throughout Steppenwolf and I frequently found myself pausing simply to appreciate a beautifully structured sentence which concisely expressed ideas I had struggled to clearly express myself.

It felt strange that a ninety-five year old novel could still be so completely relevant both on a personal level for myself and also on a national one. Discussions of emergent 'nationalist jingoism' eerily reflected conversations I have had in Brexit Britain. 2020s England appears uncomfortably similar to Hesse's 1920s Germany. Another sentence I loved, in relation to a newspaper article Harry had written, illustrates this, "no good could come to the country so long as such persons and such ideas were tolerated and the minds of the young turned to sentimental ideas of humanity instead of to revenge by arms on the hereditary foe".

I'm going to keep my copy of Steppenwolf and plan to read it again, and probably again after that too. While the basic narrative of a man getting himself out of a midlife rut by going out with a young, vivacious woman isn't particularly unique, Hesse' treatment of the subject felt particularly profound. I enjoyed spending time with Hermine and appreciated her ability to voice her own ideas and opinions. In many ways she is the equal (and opposite) of Harry and Hesse recognises this. I feel that Steppenwolf is a book that will reveal more and different facets and ideas with each reading and it is just too deeply philosophical a novel to fully engage with on the first time around.

What a brilliant book! This is essentially a psychological novel that centres around the character of Harry Haller, a.k.a Steppenwolf. Harry is 50 years old and takes life way too seriously. He is a snob, constantly considering himself superior to everyone else and stuck up in his ideal world of fine arts and philosophy; at the same time, a part of his personality is wild, untamed, instinctual: a steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes. Harry is constantly caught in this dichotomy between the snob and the wolf, and he is unable to feel at home anywhere. He feels like he is not (and cannot) be part of the rest of society. He constantly despises the "bourgeois" world around him, while at the same time being essentially part of it. He suffers deeply from this situation, and considers killing himself. As a 50 year old man, he is very much stuck in his ways and it's difficult for him to change.

Yet change is what he does, eventually - or tries to. In a chance encounter, he befriends Hermione, a girl who teaches him how to dance and love. Reluctantly, he accepts. Another girl, Maria, teaches him how to love. Pablo, a saxophone player (and a man whom Harry looks down on for pretty much the entire book, but he is the one who ultimately teaches Harry the most important lesson), leads him to the "Magic theatre", and there follows a crescendo of situations that become more and more absurd and allegoric. The book ends with Harry on the path to salvation.

Among my favourite passages are the chess player, who teaches Harry the "game of life", that is, the continuous re-arrangement of the myriad pieces of one's personality. The chess player teaches him that there is no such thing as a fixed self, and that playing the "game of life" means to constantly find a balance between many personality traits, in a process that is in constant motion. The final scene with Mozart is quite memorable too: in this, Harry learns that he needs to laugh and listen to the "radio music of life", that is, accept life at it is, imperfect and distorted, rather than trying to live in the perfect (but unreal) world of ideas and ideals.