After finishing Steppenwolf, I have to say that it might be the densest 218-page book ever written. Not dense as in unenjoyable, but dense as in containing an incredible amount of useful information and quotable statements. However, thanks to Colin Wilson’s book The Outsider, I had distorted expectations going into Steppenwolf. For some reason I thought it was going to be a story about a man with a hidden dark side who can only vent his frustrations with society by murdering people. I must have mixed up Wilson’s references. But you can see how I was setting myself up for disappointment, hoping for a story that was closer to American Psycho or even A Clockwork Orange. And yet at the end of the book, I was anything but disappointed. Enlightened, envigorated, and inspired — yes, all of those, but not let down.
The story is not easily summarized, since it’s much less plot-based than it is a subjective philosophical exploration. The concise version: Harry Haller is a man of about 50 years who was ejected from both his career and his marriage, and who, after traveling the world and tiring of its banal ways, contemplates killing himself on a daily basis. He recognizes two identities within himself: one, a broken, wretched man with a secret fondness for middle-class regularities; the other, a wolf who would like to tear the whole meaningless mess to shreds. With the help of a book Harry finds called the Treatise on the Steppenwolf and, later on, an intriguing woman named Hermine, he soon learns that there is much more to life — and to himself — than he previously thought.
I underlined and tabbed so many pages that I literally have to limit the amount of quotes I list here. But the section that lit me up the most came approximately 150 pages into the novel.
While Hermine is giving a “lesson” to Harry, she says,
“Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life must not be like you and me. 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” (p. 151).
On the next page, Hermine says,
“Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.”
“Nothing else?” [asks Harry.]
“Yes, eternity.”
“You mean a name, and fame with posterity?”
“No, Steppenwolf, not fame. Has that any value? And do you think that all true and real men have been famous and known to posterity? [...] The image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity” (pp. 152-153).
And a bit later, Hermine continues with:
“We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness” (p. 153).
Later in the story, Harry is still struggling to wrap his head around his new experiences. One of Hermine’s friends says,
“It is the world of your own soul that you seek. Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul. All I can give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key. I can help you to make your own world visible. That is all” (p. 175).
And finally, a fun quote about art:
“Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy” (p. 193).
As you can see, I got carried away with the quotations. If any of this grabs you, then you should grab a copy of Steppenwolf immediately. But be forwarned, you will not come out of it with a fuzzy feeling in your rumbly tumbly. You are left with the realization that you alone are responsible to navigate the mess of existence. Like they tell Harry about the Magic Theater: “For Madmen Only!”
Similar Posts:
- The Only Truly Serious Philosophical Problem (August 26, 2009)
- Henry Miller: Prototype For a New Kind of Protest (March 11, 2009)
- We Must Give the Void Its Colors (September 3, 2009)
- An Orange in the Rookers of Bog (December 23, 2008)
- Existential Dilemmas (July 21, 2008)
