A few days later, after I had twice waited in vain, I met him late at night as he came seemingly blown around a corner by the cold night wind, stumbling all over himself, dead drunk. I felt no wish to call him. He went past me without seeing me, staring in front of himself with bewildered eyes shining, as though he followed something darkly calling out of the unknown. I followed him the length of one street; he drifted along as though pulled by an invisible string, with a fanatic gait, yet loose, like a ghost.
Sadly I returned home to my unfulfilled dreams. So that is how he renews the world within himself! it occurred to me. At the same moment I felt that was a low, moralizing thought. What did I know of his dreams? Perhaps he walked a more certain path in his intoxication than I within my dream. I had noticed a few times during the breaks between classes that a fellow student I had never paid any previous attention to seemed to seek me out. He was a delicate, weak-looking boy with thin red-blond hair, and the look in his eyes and his behavior seemed unusual.
One evening when I was coming home he was lying in wait for me in the alley. He let me walk past, then followed me and stopped when I did before the front door. "Is there something you want from me?" I asked him. "I would only like to talk with you once, " he said shyly. "Be so kind as to walk with me for a moment. "I followed him, sensing that he was excited and full of expectation. His hands trembled. "Are you a spiritualist?" he asked suddenly. "No, Knauer, " I said laughing. "Not in the least What makes you think I am?" "But then you must be a theosophist?"
"Neither. "
"Oh, don't be so reticent! I can feel there's something special about you. There's a look in your eyes... I'm positive you communicate with spirits. I'm not asking out of idle curiosity, Sinclair. No, I am a seeker myself, you know, and I'm so very alone. "
"Go ahead,tell me about it, " I encouraged him. "I don't know much about spirits. I live in my dreams--that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference. "
"Yes, maybe that's the way it is, " he whispered. "It doesn't matter what kinds of dreams they are in which you live. --Have you heard about white magic?" I had to say no. "That is when you learn self-control. You can become immortal and bewitch people. Have you ever practiced any exercises?" After I had inquired what these "exercises" were he became very secretive; that is, until I turned to go back. Then he told me everything. "For instance, when I want to fall asleep or want to concentrate on something I do one of these exercises. I think of something, a word for example, or a name or a geometrical form. Then I think this form into myself as hard as I can. I try to imagine it until I can actually feel it inside my head. Then I think it in the throat, and so forth, until I am completely filled by it. Then I'm as firm as though I had turned to stone and nothing can distract me any more. " I had a vague idea of what he meant.
Yet I felt certain that there was something else troubling him, he was so strangely excited and restless. I tried to make it easy for him to speak, and it was not long before he expressed his real concern. "You're continent, too, aren't you?" he asked reluctantly. "What do you mean, sexually?"
"Yes. I've been continent for two years--ever since I found out about the exercises. I had been depraved until then, you know what I mean. --So you've never been with a woman?"
"No, " I said. "I never found the right one. "
"But if you did find a woman that you felt was the right one, would you sleep with Her?"
"Yes,naturally--if she had no objections, " I said a little derisively. "Oh, you're on the wrong path altogether! You can train your inner powers only if you're completely continent. I've been--for two whole years. Two years and a little more than a month! It's so difficult! Sometimes I think I can't stand it much longer. "
"Listen, Knauer, I don't believe that continence is all that important. "
"I know, " he objected. "That's what they all say. But I didn't expect you to say the same thing. If you want to take the higher, the spiritual road you have to remain absolutely pure. "
"Well, be pure then! But I don't understand why someone is supposed to be more pure than another person if he suppresses his sexual urges. Or are you capable of eliminating sex from all your thoughts and dreams?" He looked at me despairingly. "No, that's just the point. My God, but I have to. I have dreams at night that I couldn't even tell myself. Horrible dreams. " I remembered what Pistorius had told me. But much as I agreed with his ideas I could not pass them on. I was incapable of giving advice that did not derive from my own experience and which I myself did not have the strength to follow. I fell silent and felt humiliated at being unable to give advice to someone who was seeking it from me.
"I've tried everything!" moaned Knauer beside me. "I've done everything there is to do. Cold water, snow, physical exercise and running, but nothing helps. Each night I awake from dreams that I'm not even allowed to think about--and the horrible part is that in the process I'm gradually forgetting everything spiritual I ever learned. I hardly ever succeed any more in concentrating or in making myself fall asleep. Often I lie awake the whole night. It can't go on much longer like this. If I can't win the struggle, if in the end I give in and become impure again, I'll be more wicked than all the others who never put up a fight. You understand that, don't you?" I nodded but was unable to make any comment.
He began to bore me and I was startled that his evident need and despair made no deeper impression on me. My only feeling was: I can't help you. "So you don't know anything?" he finally asked sadly and exhausted. "Nothing at all? But there must be a way. How do you do it?"
"I can't tell you anything, Knauer. We can't help anybody else. No one helped me either. You have to come to terms with yourself and then you must do what your inmost heart desires. There is no other way. If you can't find it yourself you'll find no spirits either. " The little fellow looked at me, disappointed and suddenly bereft of speech. Then his eyes flashed with hatred, he grimaced and shrieked: "Ah, you're a fine saint! You're depraved yourself, I know. You pretend to be wise but secretly you cling to the same filth the rest of us do! You're a pig,a pig, like me. All of us are pigs!" I went off and left him standing there.
He followed me two or three steps,then turned around and ran away. I felt nauseated with pity and disgust and the feeling did not leave me until I had surrounded myself with several paintings back in my room and surrendered to my own dreams. Instantly the dream returned, of the house entrance and the coat of arms, of the mother and the strange woman, and I could see her features so distinctly that I began painting her picture that same evening. When the painting was completed after several days' work, sketched out in dreamlike fifteen-minute spurts, I pinned it on the wall, moved the study lamp in front of it, and stood before it as though before a ghost with which I had had to struggle to the end.
YOU ARE READING
"DEMIAN" by HERMANN HESSE
General Fiction"DEMIAN" written by HERMANN HESSE The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Hermann Hesse I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? NOTICE: THIS IS FOR THE A.R.M.Ys WHO WANTS...