"DEMIAN" by HERMANN HESSE

Chapter 6.2 JACOB WRESTLING

It was a face similar to the earlier one--a few features even resembled me. One eye was noticeably higher than the other and the gaze went over and beyond me, self-absorbed and rigid, full of fate. I stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. I questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it; I called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it my beloved, called it Abraxas. Words said by Pistorius--or Demian?--occurred to me between my imprecations. I could not remember who had said them but I felt I could hear them again. They were words about Jacob's wrestling with the angel of God and his "I will not let thee go except thou bless me. " The painted face in the lamplight changed with each exhortation--became light and luminous, dark and brooding, closed pale eyelids over dead eyes, opened the magain and flashed lightning glances.

It was woman, man, girl, a little child, an animal, it dissolved into a tiny patch of color, grew large and distinct again. Finally, following a strong impulse, I closed my eyes and now saw the picture within me, stronger and mightier than before. I wanted to kneel down before it but it was so much a part of me that I could not separate it from myself, as though it had been transformed into my own ego. Then I heard a dark, heavy roaring as if just before a spring storm and I trembled with an indescribable new feeling of fearful experience. Stars flashed up before me and died away: memories as far back as my earliest forgotten childhood, yes, even as far back as my pre-existence at earlier stages of evolution, thronged past me.

But these memories that seemed to repeat every secret of my life to me did not stop with the past and the present. They went beyond it, mirroring the future, tore me away from the present into new forms of life whose images shone blindingly clear--not one could I clearly remember later on. During the night I awoke from deep sleep: still dressed I lay diagonally across the bed. I lit the lamp, felt that I had to recollect something important but could not remember anything about the previous hour. Gradually I began to have an inkling. I looked for the painting--it was no longer on the wall, nor on the table either.

Then I thought I could dimly remember that I had burned it. Or had this been in my dream that I burned it in the palm of my hand and swallowed the ashes? A great restlessness overcame me. I put on a hat and walked out of the house through the alley as though compelled, ran through innumerable streets and squares as though driven by a frenzy,listened briefly in front of my friend's dark church, searched, searched with extreme urgency--without knowing what. I walked through a quarter with brothels where I could still see here and there a lighted window. Farther on I reached an area of newly built houses, with piles of bricks everywhere partially covered with gray snow. I remembered--as I drifted under the sway of some strange compulsion like a sleepwalker through the streets--the new building back in my home town to which my tormentor Kromer had taken me for my first payment.

A similar building stood before me now in the gray night, its dark entrance yawning at me.It drew me inside: wanting to escape I stumbled over sand and rubbish. The power that drove me was stronger:I was forced to enter. Across boards and bricks I stumbled into a dreary room that smelled moist and cold from fresh cement. There was a pile of sand, a light-gray patch, otherwise it was dark. Then a horrified voice called out: "My God, Sinclair, where did you come from?" Beside me a figure rose up out of the darkness, as mall lean fellow, like a ghost, and even in my terror I recognized my fellow student Knauer. "How did you happen to come here?" he asked, mad with excitement. "How were you able to find me?" I didn't understand."I wasn't looking for you, " I said, benumbed.

Each word meant a great effort and came only haltingly,through dead lips. He stared at me."Weren't looking for me?"

"No. Something drew me. Did you call me?You must have called me. What are you doing here anyway? It's night. " He clasped me convulsively with his thin arms. "Yes, night. Morning will soon be here. Can you forgive me?"