"DEMIAN" by HERMANN HESSE

Chapter 7.1 EVA

The new day dawned for me like a solemn feast, the kind I had not experienced since childhood. I was full of a great restlessness, yet without fear of any kind. I felt that an important day had begun for me and I saw and experienced the changed world around me, expectant, meaningful, and solemn; even the gentle autumn rain had its beauty and a calm and festive air full of happy, sacred music. For the first time the outer world was perfectly attuned to the world within; it was a joy to be alive. No house, no shop window, no face disturbed me, everything was as it should be, without any of the flat, humdrum look of the everyday;everything was a part of Nature, expectant and ready to face its destiny with reverence. That was how the world had appeared to me in the mornings when I was a small boy, on the great feast days, at Christmas or Easter. 

I had forgotten that the world could still be so lovely. I had grown accustomed to living within myself.I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was still possible--even if you had become liberated and had renounced your childhood happiness--to see the world shine and to savor the delicious thrill of the child's vision. 

 The moment came when I found my way back to the garden at the edge of town where I had taken leave of Demian the night before. Hidden behind tall, wet trees stood a little house, bright and livable.Tall plants flowered behind plate glass; behind glistening windows dark walls shone with pictures and rows of books. The front door led straight into a small, warm hallway. A silent old maid, dressed in black with a white apron, showed me in and took my coat. She left me alone in the hallway. I looked around and at once was swept into the middle of my dream. High up on the dark wood-paneled wall, above a door, hung a familiar painting, my bird with the golden-yellow sparrow hawk's head, clambering out of the terrestrial shell. 

Deeply moved, I stood there motionless--I felt joy and pain as though at this moment everything I had ever done and experienced returned to me in the form of a reply and fulfillment. In a flash I saw hosts of images throng past my mind's eye: my parents' house with the old coat of arms above the doorway, the boy Demian sketching the emblem, myself as a boy under the fearful spell of my enemy Kromer, myself as an adolescent in my room at school painting my dream bird at a quiet table, the soul caught in the intricacies of its own threads--and everything, everything to this present moment resounded once more within me, was affirmed by me,answered, sanctioned. 

 With tears in my eyes I stared at my picture and read within myself. Then I lowered my eyes: beneath the painting of the bird in the open door stood a tall woman in a dark dress. It was she. I was unable to utter a word. With a face that resembled her son's, timeless, ageless, and full of inner strength, the beautiful woman smiled with dignity. Her gaze was fulfillment, her greeting a homecoming. Silently I stretched my hands out to her. She took both of them in her firm, warm hands. "You are Sinclair. I recognized you at once. Welcome!" Her voice was deep and warm. I drank it up like sweet wine. 

And now I looked up and into her quiet face, the black unfathomable eyes, at her fresh, ripe lips, the clear, regal brow that bore the sign. "How glad I am, " I said and kissed her hands. "I believe I have been on my way my whole life --and now I have come home. " She smiled like a mother. "One never reaches home, " she said. "But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect the whole world looks like home, for a time. " She was expressing what I had felt on my way to her. 

Her voice and her words resembled her son's and yet were quite different.Everything was riper, warmer, more self-evident. But just as Max had never given anyone the impression of being a boy, so his mother did not appear at all like a woman who had a full-grown son, so young and sweet were her face and hair, so taut and smooth her golden skin, so fresh her mouth. More regal even than in my dreams she stood before me. This, then, was the new guise in which my fate revealed itself to me, no longer stern, no longer setting me apart, but fresh and joyful! I made no resolutions, took no vows--I had attained a goal, a high point on the road: from there the next stage of the journey appeared unhampered and marvelous,leading toward promised lands. Whatever might happen to me now, I was filled with ecstasy: that this woman existed in the world, that I could drink in her voice and breathe her presence.