Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Hermann Hesse (Eng. version)

4-Beatrice

  At the end of the holidays, and without having seen my friend again, I went to St. ------. My parentsaccompanied me and entrusted me to the care of a boy's boarding-house run by one of the teachers at thepreparatory school. They would have been struck dumb with horror had they known into what world theywere letting me wander. The question remained: was I eventually to become a good son and useful citizen ordid my nature point in an altogether different direction? My last attempt to achieve happiness in the shadow ofthe paternal home had lasted a long time, had on occasion almost succeeded, but had completely failed in theend. The peculiar emptiness and isolation that I came to feel for the first time after Confirmation (oh, howfamiliar it was to become afterwards, this desolate, thin air!) passed only very slowly.

My leave-taking fromhome was surprisingly easy, I was almost ashamed that I did not feel more nostalgic. My sisters wept for noreason; my eyes remained dry. I was astonished at myself. I had always been an emotional and essentiallygood child. Now I had completely changed. I behaved with utter indifference to the world outside and for dayson end voices within preoccupied me, inner streams, the forbidden dark streams that roared below the surface.I had grown several inches in the last half year and I walked lanky and half-finished through the world. I hadlost any charm I might ever have had and felt that no one could possibly love me the way I was. I certainly hadno love for myself.

Often I felt a great longing for Max Demian, but no less often I hated him, accusing him ofhaving caused the impoverishment of my life that held me in its sway like a foul disease. I was neither likednor respected in my boys' boarding-house. I was teased to begin with, then avoided and looked upon as asneak and an unwelcome oddity. I fell in with this role, even exaggerated it, and grumbled myself into aself-isolation that must have appeared to outsiders like permanent and masculine contempt of the world,whereas, in truth, I often secretly succumbed to consuming fits of melancholy and despair. In school Imanaged to get by on the knowledge accumulated in my previous class--the present one lagged somewhatbehind the one I had left--and I began to regard the students in my age group contemptuously as merechildren. It went on like this for a year or more.

The first few visits back home left me cold. I was glad when Icould leave again. It was the beginning of November. I had become used to taking snort meditative walksduring all kinds of weather, walks on which I often enjoyed a kind of rapture tinged with melancholy, scorn ofthe world and self-hatred. Thus I roamed in the foggy dusk one evening through the town. The broad avenueof a public park stood deserted, beckoning me to enter; the path lay thickly carpeted with fallen leaves which Istirred angrily with my feet. There was a damp, bitter smell, and distant trees, shadowy as ghosts, loomedhuge out of the mist. I stopped irresolute at the far end of the avenue: staring into the dark foliage I greedilybreathed the humid fragrance of decay and dying to which something within me responded with greeting. Someone stepped out of one of the side paths, his coat billowing as he walked--I was about to continue whena voice called out. "Hello, Sinclair." He came up to me.

It was Alfons Beck, the oldest boy in ourboardinghouse. I was always glad to see him, had nothing against him except that he treated me, and all otherswho were younger, with an element of ironic and avuncular condescension. He was reputed to be strong as abear and to have the teacher in our house completely under his thumb. He was the hero of many a studentrumor. "Well, what are you doing here?" he called out affably in that tone the bigger boys affected when theyoccasionally condescended to talk to one of us. "I'll bet anything you're making a poem. " "Wouldn't think ofit, " I replied brusquely. He laughed out loud, walked beside me, and made small talk in a way I hadn't beenused to for a long time. "You don't need to be afraid that I wouldn't understand, Sinclair. There's something towalking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that, Iknow. About moribund nature, of course, and one's lost youth, which resembles it. Heinrich Heine, forexample. " "I'm not as sentimental as all that, " I defended myself. "All right, let's drop the subject.

But itseems to me that in weather like this a man does the right thing when he looks for a quiet place where he candrink a good glass of wine or something. Will you join me? I happen to be all by myself at the moment. Orwould you rather not? I don't want to be the one who leads you astray, mon vieux, that is, in case you happento be the kind that keeps to the straight and narrow. " Soon afterwards we were sitting in a small dive at theedge of town, drinking a wine of doubtful quality and clinking the thick glasses.

I didn't much like it to beginwith, but at least it was something new. Soon, however, unused to the wine, I became very loquacious. It wasas though an interior window had opened through which the world sparkled. For how long, for how terriblylong hadn't I really talked to anyone? My imagination began to run away with me and eventually I evenpopped out with the story of Cain and Abel. Beck listened with evident pleasure--finally here was someone towhom I was able to give something! He patted me on the shoulder, called me one hell of a fellow, and myheart swelled ecstatically at this opportunity to luxuriate in the release of a long pent-up need for talk andcommunication, for acknowledgment from an older boy.

When he called me a damned clever little bastard, thewords ran like sweet wine into my soul. The world glowed in new colors, thoughts gushed out of a hundredaudacious springs. The fire of enthusiasm flared up within me. We discussed our teachers and fellow studentsand it seemed to me that we understood each other perfectly. We talked about the Greeks and the pagans ingeneral and Beck very much wanted me to confess to having slept with girls. This was out of my league.

Ihadn't experienced anything, certainly nothing worth telling. And what I had felt, what I had constructed inimagination, ached within me but had not been loosened or made communicable by the wine. Beck knewmuch more about girls, so I listened to his exploits without being able to say a word. I heard incredible things.Things I had never thought possible became everyday reality, seemed normal. Alfons Beck, who was eighteen,seemed to be able to draw on a vast body of experience. For instance, he had learned that it was a funny thingabout girls, they just wanted to flirt, which was all very well, but not the real thing. For the real thing onecould hope for greater success with women.

Women were much more reasonable. Mrs. Jaggelt, for example,who owned the stationery store, well, with her one could talk business, and all the things that had happenedbehind her counter wouldn't fit into a book. I sat there enchanted and also dumbfounded. Certainly, I couldnever have loved Mrs. Jaggelt --yet the news was incredible. There seemed to be hidden sources of pleasure, atleast for the older boys, of which I had not even dreamed. Something about it didn't sound right, and it tastedless appealing and more ordinary than love, I felt, was supposed to taste--but at least: this was reality, this waslife and adventure, and next to me sat someone who had experienced it, to whom it seemed normal.

Once ithad reached this height, our conversation began to taper off. I was no longer the damned clever little bastard;I'd shrunk to a mere boy listening to a man. Yet all the same--compared with what my life had been formonths--this was delicious, this was paradise. Besides, it was, as I began to realize only gradually, very muchprohibited--from our presence in the bar to the subject of our talk. At least for me it smacked of rebellion. Ican remember that night with remarkable clarity. We started on our way home through the damp, past gaslamps dimly lighting the late night: for the first time in my life I was drunk.

It was not pleasant. In fact it wasmost painful, yet it had something, a thrill, a sweetness of rebellious orgy, that was life and spirit. Beck did agood job taking charge of me, even though he cursed me bitterly as a "bloody beginner, " and half led, halfcarried me home. There he succeeded in smuggling me through an open window in the hallway. The soberreality to which I awoke after a brief deathlike sleep coincided with a painful and senseless depression. I sat upin bed, still wearing my shirt.

The rest of my clothes, strewn about on the floor, reeked of tobacco and vomit.Between fits of headache, nausea, and a raging thirst an image came to mind which I had not viewed for a longtime: I visualized my parents' house, my home, my father and mother, my sisters, the garden. I could see thefamiliar bedroom, the school, the market place, could see Demian and the Confirmation classes--everythingwas wonderful, godly pure, and everything, all of this--as I realized now--had still been mine yesterday, a fewhours ago, had waited for me; yet now, at this very hour, everything looked ravaged and damned, was mine nolonger, rejected me, regarded me with disgust. Everything dear and intimate, everything my parents had givenme as far back as the distant gardens of my childhood, every kiss from my mother, every Christmas, eachdevout, light-filled Sunday morning at home, each and every flower in the garden--everything had been laidwaste, everything had been trampled onby me!

If the arm of the law had reached out for me now, had boundand gagged me and led me to the gallows as the scum of the earth and a desecrator of the temple, I would nothave objected, would have gladly gone, would have considered it just and fair. So that's what I looked likeinside! I who was going about contemptuous of the world! I who was proud in spirit and shared Demian'sthoughts! That's what I looked like, a piece of excrement, a filthy swine, drunk and filthy, loathsome andcallow, a vile beast brought low by hideous appetites.

That's what I looked like, I, who came out of such puregardens where everything was cleanliness, radiance, and tenderness, I, who had loved the music of Bach andbeautiful poetry. With nausea and outrage I could still hear my life, drunk and unruly, sputtering out of me inidiotic laughter, in jerks and fits. There I was. In spite of everything, I almost reveled in my agonies. I hadbeen blind and insensible and my heart had been silent for so long, had cowered impoverished in a corner, thateven this self-accusation, this dread, all these horrible feelings were welcome. At least it was feeling of somekind, at least there were some flames, the heart at least flickered.

Confusedly I felt something like liberationamid my misery. Meanwhile, viewed from the outside, I was going rapidly downhill. My first drunken frenzywas soon followed by others. There was much going to bars and carousing in our school. I was one of theyoungest to take part, yet soon enough I was not merely a fledgling whom one grudgingly took along, I hadbecome the ringleader and star, a notorious and daring bar crawler. Once again I belonged entirely to theworld of darkness and to the devil, and in this world I had the reputation of being one hell of a fellow. Nonetheless, I felt wretched. I lived in an orgy of self-destruction and, while my friends regarded me as aleader and as a damned sharp and funny fellow, deep down inside me my soul grieved.

I can still remembertears springing to my eyes when I saw children playing in the street on Sunday morning as I emerged from abar, children with freshly combed hair and dressed in their Sunday best. Those friends who sat with me in thelowest dives among beer puddles and dirty tables I amused with remarks of unprecedented cynicism, ofteneven shocked them; yet in my inmost heart I was in awe of everything I belittled and lay weeping before mysoul, my past, my mother, before God. There was good reason why I never became one with my companions,why I felt alone among them and was therefore able to suffer so much. I was a barroom hero and cynic tosatisfy the taste of the most brutal.

I displayed wit and courage in my ideas and remarks about teachers,school, parents, and church. I could also bear to hear the filthiest stories and even ventured an occasional onemyself, but I never accompanied my friends when they visited women. I was alone and was filled with intenselonging for love, a hopeless longing, while, to judge by my talk, I should have been a hard-boiled sensualist.No one was more easily hurt, no one more bashful than I. And when I happened to see the youngwell-brought-up girls of the town walking in front of me, pretty and clean, innocent and graceful, they seemedlike wonderful pure dreams, a thousand times too good for me. For a time I could not even bring myself toenter Mrs. Jaggelt's stationery store because I blushed looking at her remembering what Alfons Beck had toldme. The more I realized that I was to remain perpetually lonely and different within my new group of friendsthe less I was able to break away.

I really don't know any longer whether boozing and swaggering actuallyever gave me any pleasure. Moreover, I never became so used to drinking that I did not always feelembarrassing after-effects. It was all as if I were somehow under a compulsion to do these things. I simply didwhat I had to do, because I had no idea what to do with myself otherwise. I was afraid of being alone for long,was afraid of the many tender and chaste moods that would overcome me, was afraid of the thoughts of lovesurging up in me. What I missed above all else was a friend. There were two or three fellow students whom Icould have cared for, but they were in good standing and my vices had long been an open secret. They avoidedme. I was regarded by and large as a hopeless rebel whose ground was slipping from under his feet.Theteachers were well-informed about me, I had been severely punished several times, my final expulsion seemedmerely a matter of time.

I realized myself that I had become a poor student, but I wriggled strenuously throughone exam after the other, always feeling that it couldn't go on like this much longer. There are numerous waysin which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This was the way He dealt with me at thattime. It was like a bad dream. I can see myself: crawling along in my odious and unclean way, across filth andslime, across broken beer glasses and through cynically wasted nights, a spellbound dreamer, restless andracked. There are dreams in which on your way to the princess you become stuck in quagmires, in back alleysfull of foul odors and refuse. That was how it was with me. In this unpleasant fashion I was condemned tobecome lonely, and I raised between myself and my childhood a locked gateway to Eden with its pitilesslyresplendent host of guardians. It was a beginning, an awakening of nostalgia for my former self. Yet I had notbecome so callous as not to be startled into twinges of fear when my father, alarmed by my tutor's letters,appeared for the first time in St. ------and confronted me unexpectedly.

Later on that winter, when he came asecond time, nothing could move me any more, I let him scold and entreat me, let him remind me of mymother. Finally toward the end of the meeting he became quite angry and said if I didn't change he would haveme expelled from the school in disgrace and placed in a reformatory. Well, let him! When he went away thattime I felt sorry for him; he had accomplished nothing, he had not found a way to me--and at moments I feltthat it served him right. I could not have cared less what became of me. In my odd and unattractive fashion,going to bars and bragging was my way of quarreling with the world--this was my way of protesting. I wasruining myself in the process but at times I understood the situation as follows: if the world had no use forpeople like me, if it did not have a better place and higher tasks for them, well, in that case, people like mewould go to pot, and the loss would be the world's. Christmas vacation was a joyless affair that year. Mymother was deeply startled when she saw me. I had shot up even more and my lean face looked gray andwasted, with slack features and inflamed eyes. The first touch of a mustache and the eyeglasses I had justbegun wearing made me look odder still. My sisters shied away and giggled. Everything was most unedifying.

Disagreeable and bitter was the talk I had with my father in his study, disagreeable exchanging greetings witha handful of relatives, and particularly unpleasant was Christmas Eve itself. Ever since I had been a little childthis had been the great day in our house. The evening was a festivity of love and gratitude, when the bondbetween child and parents was renewed. This time everything was merely oppressive and embarrassing.Asusual my father read aloud the passage about the shepherds in the fields "watching their flocks, " as usual mysisters stood radiantly before a table decked with gifts, but father's voice sounded disgruntled, his face lookedold and strained, and mother was sad. Everything seemed out of place: the presents and Christmas greetings,Gospel reading and the lit-up tree.

The gingerbread smelled sweet; it exuded a host of memories which wereeven sweeter. The fragrance of the Christmas tree told of a world that no longer existed. I longed for eveningand for the holidays to be over. It went on like this the entire winter. Only a short while back I had been givena stern warning by the teachers' council and been threatened with expulsion. It couldn't go on much longer.Well, I didn't care. I held a very special grudge against Max Demian, whom I hadn't seen again even once. Ihad written him twice during my first months in St. ------but had received no reply; so I had not called on himduring the holidays.

In the same park in which I had met Alfons Beck in the fall, a girl came to my attentionin early spring as the thorn hedges began to bud. I had taken a walk by myself, my head filled with vilethoughts and worries--for my health had deteriorated--and to make matters worse I was perpetually infinancial difficulties, owed friends considerable sums and had thus continually to invent expenditures so as toreceive money from home. In a number of stores I had allowed bills to mount for cigars and similar things.

Not that this worried me much. If my existence was about to come to a sudden end anyway--if I drownedmyself or was sent to the reformatory--a few small extras didn't make much difference. Yet I was forced tolive face to face with these unpleasant details: they made me wretched. On that spring day in the park I saw ayoung woman who attracted me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had an intelligent and boyishface. I liked her at once. She was my type and began to fill my imagination. She probably was not much olderthan I but seemed far more mature, well-defined, a full-grown woman, but with a touch of exuberance andboyishness in her face, and this was what I liked above all. I had never managed to approach a girl with whomI had fallen in love, nor did I manage in this case. But the impression she made on me was deeper than anyprevious one had been and the infatuation had a profound influence on my life. Suddenly a new image hadrisen up before me, a lofty and cherished image.

And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me asthe craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice, for, even though I had not read Dante, I knewabout Beatrice from an English painting of which I owned a reproduction. It showed a young pre-Raphaelitewoman, long-limbed and slender, with long head and etherealized hands and features. My beautiful youngwoman did not quite resemble her, even though she, too, revealed that slender and boyish figure which Iloved, and something of the ethereal, soulful quality of her face. Although I never addressed a single word toBeatrice, she exerted a profound influence on me at that time. She raised her image before me, she gave meaccess to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple. From one day to the next I stayedclear of all bars and nocturnal exploits. I could be alone with myself again and enjoyed reading and going forlong walks. My sudden conversion drew a good deal of mockery in its wake.

But now I had something Iloved and venerated, I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn thatmade me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of acherished image. I find it difficult to think back to that time without a certain fondness. Once more I wastrying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period ofdevastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil frommyself. And, furthermore, this present "world of light" was to some extent my own creation; it was no longeran escape, no crawling back to mother and the safety of irresponsibility; it was a new duty, one I had inventedand desired on my own, with responsibility and self-control. My sexuality, a torment from which I was inconstant flight, was to be transfigured into spirituality and devotion by this holy fire.

Everything dark andhateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious pictures,no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, andby consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of lifewhich I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happinessbut beauty, and spirituality. This cult of Beatrice completely changed my life. Yesterday a precocious cynic,today I was an acolyte whose aim was to become a saint. I not only avoided the bad life to which I hadbecome accustomed, I sought to transform myself by introducing purity and nobility into every aspect of mylife. In this connection I thought of my eating and drinking habits, my language and dress. I began mymornings with cold baths which cost me a great effort at first.

My behavior became serious and dignified; Icarried myself stiffly and assumed a slow and dignified gait. It may have looked comic to outsiders but to meit was a genuine act of worship. Of all the new practices in which I sought to express my new conviction, onebecame truly important to me. I began to paint. The starting point for this was that the reproduction of theEnglish picture I owned did not resemble my Beatrice closely enough.

I wanted to try to paint her portrait formyself. With new joy and hopefulness I bought beautiful paper, paints, and brushes and carried them to myroom--I had just been given one of my own--and prepared my palette, glass, porcelain dishes and pencils. Thedelicate tempera colors in the little tubes I had bought delighted me. Among them was a fiery chrome greenthat, I think, I can still see today as it flashed up for the first time in the small white dish. I began with greatcare. Painting the likeness of a face was difficult. I wanted to try myself out first on something else. I paintedornaments, flowers, small imagined landscapes: a tree by a chapel, a Roman bridge with cypress trees.

Sometimes I became so completely immersed in this game that I was as happy as a little child with hispaintbox. Finally I set out on my portrait of Beatrice. A few attempts failed completely and I discarded them.The more I sought to imagine the face of the girl I had encountered here and there on the street the lesssuccessful I was. Finally I gave up the attempt and contented myself with giving in to my imagination andintuition that arose spontaneously from the first strokes, as though out of the paint and brush themselves. Itwas a dream face that emerged and I was not dissatisfied with it. Yet I persisted and every new sketch wasmore distinct, approximated more nearly the type I desired, even if it in no way reproduced reality.

I grewmore and more accustomed to idly drawing lines with a dreaming paintbrush and to coloring areas for which Ihad no model in mind, that were the result of playful fumblings of my subconscious. Finally, one day Iproduced, almost without knowing it, a face to which I responded more strongly than I had to any of theothers. It was not the face of that girl--it wasn't supposed to be that any longer. It was something else,something unreal, yet it was no less valuable to me. It looked more like a boy's face than a girl's, the hair wasnot flaxen like that of my pretty girl, but dark brown with a reddish hue. The chin was strong and determined,the mouth like a red flower.

As a whole it was somewhat stiff and masklike but it was impressive and full of asecret life of its own. As I sat down in front of the completed painting, it had an odd effect on me. Itresembled a kind of image of God or a holy mask, half male, half female, ageless, as purposeful as it wasdreamy, as rigid as it was secretly alive. This face seemed to have a message for me, it belonged to me, it wasasking something of me. It bore a resemblance to someone, yet I did not know whom. For a time this portraithaunted my thoughts and shared my life. I kept it locked in a drawer so that no one would take it and taunt mewith it. But as soon as I was alone in my small room I took it out and communed with it. In the evening Ipinned it on the wall facing my bed and gazed on it until I fell asleep and in the morning it was the first thingmy eyes opened on. It was precisely at this time that I again began having many dreams, as I had always hadas a child. It felt as though I had not dreamed for years.

Now the dreams returned with entirely new images,and time after time the portrait appeared among them, alive and eloquent, friendly or hostile to me, sometimesdistorted into a grimace, sometimes infinitely beautiful, harmonious, and noble. Then one morning, as Iawoke from one of these dreams, I suddenly recognized it. It looked at me as though it were fabulouslyfamiliar and seemed to call out my name. It seemed to know who I was, like a mother, as if its eyes had beenfixed on me since the beginning of time. With a quivering heart I stared at the sheet, the close brown hair, thehalf-feminine mouth, the pronounced forehead with the strange brightness (it had dried this way of its ownaccord) and I felt myself coming nearer and nearer to the recognition, the rediscovery, the knowledge.

I leaptout of bed, stepped up to the face, and from inches away looked into its wide-open, greenish, rigid eyes, theright one slightly higher than the left. All at once the right eye twitched, ever so faintly and delicately butunmistakably, and I was able to recognize the picture... Why had it taken me so long? It was Demian's face. Later I often compared the portrait with Demian's true features as I remembered them.

They were by nomeans the same even though there was a resemblance. Nonetheless, it was Demian. Once the early-summersun slanted oblique and red into a window that faced westward. Dusk was growing in my room. It occurred tome to pin the portrait of Beatrice, or Demian, at the window crossbar and to observe the evening sun shinethrough it. The outlines of the face became blurred but the red-rimmed eyes, the brightness on the forehead,and the bright red mouth glowed deep and wild from the surface. I sat facing it for a long time, even after thesun had faded, and gradually I began to sense that this was neither Beatrice nor Demian but myself. Not thatthe picture resembled me--I did not feel that it should--but it was what determined my life, it was my innerself, my fate or my daemon. That's what my friend would look like if I were to find one ever again.

That'swhat the woman I would love would look like if ever I were to love one. That's what my life and death wouldbe like, this was the tone and rhythm of my fate. During those weeks I had begun to read a book that made amore lasting impression on me than anything I had read before. Even later in life I have rarely experienced abook more intensely, except perhaps Nietzsche. It was a volume of Novalis, containing letters and aphorismsof which I understood only a few but which nevertheless held an inexpressible attraction for me. One of theaphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for oneand the same concept. " That was clear to me now. I often caught sight of the girl I called Beatrice but I feltno emotion during these encounters, only a gentle harmony, a presentiment: you and I are linked, but not you,only your picture; you are a part of my fate. My longing for Max Demian overwhelmed me again. I had hadno news of him for years. Once I had met him during a vacation.

I realized now that I suppressed this briefencounter in my notes and I realize that it was done out of vanity and shame. I have to make up for it. Thus,during one of my holidays as I strolled through my home town, wearing the blasé, always slightly wearyexpression of my bar-crawling days, peering into the same old, despised faces of the philistines, I saw myformer friend walking toward me. I had hardly seen him when I flinched. At the same moment I could not helpthinking of Franz Kromer. If only Demian had really forgotten that episode! It was so unpleasant to beobligated to him. It was actually a silly children's story but an obligation nonetheless... He appeared to wait:would I greet him? When I did so as casually as possible he stretched out his hand. Yes, that was his grip! Asfirm, warm yet cool, and virile as ever! He scrutinized my face and said: "You've grown, Sinclair. " Hehimself seemed quite the same, as old or as young as ever. He joined me and we took a walk, but talked ofonly inconsequential matters.

It occurred to me that I had written him several times without getting a reply. Ihoped that he'd forgotten that too, those stupid letters! He did not mention them. At that time I had not yet metBeatrice and there was no portrait. I was still in the midst of my drunken period. At the outskirts of town Iasked him to join me for a glass of wine and he did so. At once I made a big show of ordering a whole bottle,filled his glass, clinked mine with his, and displayed my great familiarity with student drinking customs bydowning the first glass in one swallow. "You spend a lot of time in bars, do you?" he asked. "Well, yes, " Ireplied. "What else is there to do? In the end it's more fun than anything else. " "You think? Maybe so. Onepart of it is of course very fine--the intoxication, the bacchanalian element. But I think most people thatfrequent bars have lost that entirely. It seems to me that going to bars is something genuinely philistine. Yes,for one night, with burning torches, a real wild drunk! But again and again, one little glass after the other, Iwonder whether that's the real thing or not? Can you see Faust sitting night after night stooped over the bar?" I took a swallow and looked at him with hostility. "Well, not everybody's Faust, " I said curtly.

He looked atme somewhat taken aback. Then he laughed at me in his old lively and superior fashion. "Well, let's not fightover it! In any case, the life of a drunk is presumably livelier than that of the ordinary well-behaved citizen.And then--I read that once somewhere--the life of a hedonist is the best preparation for becoming a mystic.People like St. Augustine are always the ones that become visionaries. He, too, was first a sensualist and manof the world. " I distrusted him and didn't want him to gain the upper hand under any circumstance. So I saidsuperciliously: "Well, everybody to his own taste. As for me, I've no ambition to become a visionary oranything of the sort. " Demian gave me a brief shrewd look out of half-closed eyes. "My dear Sinclair, " hesaid slowly, "I didn't intend to tell you anything disagreeable. Besides --neither of us knows why you happento be drinking wine at this moment.

That which is within you and directs your life knows already. It's good torealize that within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better thanwe ourselves. But excuse me, I must go home. " We exchanged brief good-bys. I stayed on moodily andfinished the bottle. When I wanted to leave I discovered that Demian had paid the bill--which put me in aneven worse humor. My thoughts returned to this small incident with Demian. I could not forget him. And thewords he said to me in that bar at the edge of town would come to mind, strangely fresh and intact: "It's goodto realize that within us there is someone who knows everything. " How I longed for Demian. I had no ideawhere he was nor how I could reach him. All I knew was that he was presumably studying at some universityand that his mother had left town after he completed preparatory school. I tried to remember whatever I couldof Max Demian, reaching back as far as the Kromer episode.

How much of what he had said to me over theyears returned to mind, was still meaningful today, was appropriate and concerned me! And what he had saidon our last and quite disagreeable meeting about a wasted life leading to sainthood suddenly also stood clearlybefore me. Wasn't that exactly what had happened to me? Hadn't I lived in drunkenness and squalor, dazedand lost, until just the opposite had come alive in me with a new zest for life, the longing for purity, theyearning for the sacred? So I continued to pursue these memories. Night had long since come and now rainwas falling. In my memories, too, I heard the rain: it was the hour under the chestnut trees when he had probedme about Franz Kromer and guessed my first secrets. One incident after another came back to me,conversations on the way to school, the Confirmation classes, and last of all my first meeting with him. Whathad we talked about? I couldn't find it at once, but I gave myself time, concentrating intensely.

And now eventhat returned. We had stood before my parents' house after he had told me his version of the story of Cain.Then he had mentioned the old, half-hidden coat of arms situated in the keystone above our entrance. He hadsaid that such things interested him and that one ought to attend to them. That night I dreamed of Demian andthe coat of arms. It kept changing continuously. Demian held it in his hand, often it was diminutive and gray,often powerful and varicolored, but he explained to me that it was always one and the same thing. In the endhe obliged me to eat the coat of arms! When I had swallowed it, I felt to my horror that the heraldic bird wascoming to life inside me, had begun to swell up and devour me from within.

Deathly afraid I started up in bed,awoke. I was wide awake; it was the middle of the night and I could hear rain pouring into the room. As I gotup to close the window I stepped on something that shone bright on the floor. In the morning I discovered thatit had been my painting. It lay in a puddle and the paper had warped. I placed it between two sheets of blottingpaper inside a heavy book. When I looked at it again the next day it wasdry, but had changed. The red mouthhad faded and con-tracted a little. It now looked exactly like Demian's mouth. I set about painting a freshpicture of the heraldic bird.

I could not remember distinctly what it looked like and certain details, as I knew,could not be made out even from close up, because the thing was old and had often been painted over. Thebird stood or perched on something, perhaps on a flower or on a basket or a nest, or on a treetop. I couldn'ttrouble myself over this detail and began with what I could visualize clearly. Out of an indistinct need I atonce began to employ loud colors, painting the bird's head a golden yellow. Whenever the mood took me, Iworked on the picture, bringing it to completion in several days.

Now it represented a bird of prey with aproud aquiline sparrow hawk's head, half its body stuck in some dark globe out of which it was struggling tofree itself as though from a giant egg--all of this against a sky-blue background. As I continued to scrutinizethe sheet it looked to me more and more like the many-colored coat of arms that had occurred to me in mydream. I could not have written Demian even if I had known his address. I decided, however--in the samestate of dreamlike presentiment in which I did everything--to send him the painting of the sparrow hawk, evenif it would never reach him. I added no message, not even my name, carefully trimmed the edges and wrotemy friend's former address on it. Then I mailed it. I had an exam coming up and had to do more work thanusual.

The teachers had reinstated me in their favor since I had abruptly changed my previously despicablemode of life. Not that I had become an outstanding student, but now neither I nor anyone else gave it anyfurther thought that half a year earlier my expulsion had seemed almost certain. My father's letters regainedsome of their old tone, with-out reproaches or threats. Yet I felt no inclination to explain to him or anyone elsehow the change within me had come about. It was an accident that this transformation coincided with myparents' and teachers' wishes. This change did not bring me into the community of the others, did not make mecloser to anyone, but actually made me even lonelier. My reformation seemed to point in the direction ofDemian, but even this was a distant fate. I did not know myself, for I was too deeply involved. It had begunwith Beatrice, but for some time I had been living in such an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughtsof Demian that I'd forgotten all about her, too.

I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams andexpectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to? 5)"The Bird Fights Its Way Out of the Egg"My painted dream bird was on its way searching for my friend. In what seemed the strangest possible mannera reply reached me. In my classroom, on my desk, after a break between two lessons I found a note tucked inmy book. It was folded exactly the same as notes classmates of mine secretly slipped each other during class. Iwas only surprised to receive such a note at all, for I had never had that sort of relationship with any student.