Demian by Hermann Hesse

PROLOUGE

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. If it were possible I would reach back fartherstill--into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond them into distant ancestral past. Novelists whenthey write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a totalcomprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothingstanding between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to dothis as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him--for this ismy story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, butof a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be lessunderstood today than at any time before, and men--each one of whom represents a unique and valuableexperiment on the part of nature--are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more thanunique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet,storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, thevery special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only oncein this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man,as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In eachindividual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed tothe cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easilybecause of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not considermyself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question starsand books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; itis neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness anddreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents a road towardhimself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completelyhimself. Yet each one strives to become that--one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each asbest he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth--the slime and eggshells of his primeval past--with himto the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above thewaist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share thesame origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us--experiments of thedepths--strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interprethimself to himself alone.