Demian

6) Jacob Wrestling

It is impossible to recount briefly all that Pistorius the eccentric musician told me about Abraxas. Most
important was that what I learned from him represented a further step on the road toward myself. At that time,
I was an unusual young man of eighteen, precocious in a hundred ways, in a hundred others immature and
helpless. When I compared myself with other boys my age I often felt proud and conceited but just as often
humiliated and depressed. Frequently I considered myself a genius, and just as frequently, crazy. I did not
succeed in participating in the life of boys my age, was often consumed by self-reproach and worries: I was
helplessly separated from them, I was debarred from life. Pistorius, who was himself a full-grown eccentric,
taught me to maintain my courage and self-respect. By always finding something of value in what I said, in
my dreams, my fantasies and thoughts, by never making light of them, always giving them serious
consideration, he became my model. "You told me, " he said, "that you love music because it isamoral. That's
all right with me. But in that case you can't allow yourself to be a moralist either. You can't compare yourself
with others: if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at
times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the
fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don't ask first whether
it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That
way you will become earthbound, a vegetable. Sinclair, our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan
and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your
thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and
normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to brew his thoughts. " Among all my
dreams the dark dream of love was the most faithful. How often I dreamed that I stepped beneath the heraldic
bird into our house, wanted to draw my mother to me and instead held the great, half-male, half-maternal
woman in my arms, of whom I was afraid but who also attracted me violently. And I could never confess this
dream to my friend. I kept it to myself even after I had told him everything else. It was my corner, my secret,
my refuge. When I felt bad I asked Pistorius to play Buxtehude's passacaglia. Then I would sit in the
dusk-filled church completely involved in this unusually intimate, self-absorbed music, music that seemed to
listen to itself, that comforted me each time, prepared me more and more to heed my own inner voices. At
times we stayed even after the music had ceased: we watched the weak light filter through the high, sharply
arched windows and lose itself in the church. "It sounds odd, " said Pistorius, "that I was a theology student
once and almost became a pastor. But I only committed a mistake of form. My task and goal still is to be a
priest. Yet I was satisfied too soon and offered myself to Jehovah before I knew about Abraxas. Oh, yes, each
and every religion is beautiful; religion is soul, no matter whether you take part in Christian communion or
make a pilgrimage to Mecca. " "But in that case, " I intervened, "you actually could have become a pastor. "
"No, Sinclair. I would have had to lie. Our religion is practiced as though it were something else, something
totally ineffectual. If worst came to worst I might become a Catholic, but a Protestant pastor--no! The few
genuine believers--I do know a few--prefer the literal interpretation. I would not be able to tell them, for
example, that Christ is not a person for me but a hero, a myth, an extraordinary shadow image in which
humanity has painted itself on the wall of eternity. And the others, that come to church to hear a few clever
phrases, to fulfill an obligation, not to miss anything, and so forth, what should I have said to them? Convert
them? Is that what you mean? But I have no desire to. A priest does not want to convert, he merely wants to
live among believers, among his own kind. He wants to be the instrument and expression for the feeling from
which we create our gods. " He interrupted himself. Then continued: "My friend, our new religion, for which
we have chosen the name Abraxas, is beautiful. It is the best we have. But it is still a fledgling. Its wings
haven't grown yet. A lonely religion isn't right either. There has to be a community, there must be a cult and
intoxicants, feasts and mysteries... " He sank into a reverie and became lost within himself. "Can't one
perform mysteries all by oneself or among a very small group?" I asked hesitantly. "Yes, one can. " He
nodded. "I've been performing them for a long time by myself. I have cults of my own for which I would be
sentenced to years in prison if anyone should ever find out about them. Still, I know that it's not the right thing
either. " Suddenly he slapped me on the shoulder so that I started up. "Boy, " he said intensely, "you, too,
have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don't tell me. I don't want to know
them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them. It is not yet the ideal but it
points in the right direction. Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be
seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that! You are eighteen years old, Sinclair, you don't go running to prostitutes. You must have dreams of love, you must
have desires. Perhaps you're made in such a way that you are afraid of them. Don't be. They are the best things
you have. You can believe me. I lost a great deal when I was your age by violating those dreams of love. One
shouldn't do that. When you know something about Abraxas, you cannot do this any longer. You aren't
allowed to be afraid of anything, you can't consider prohibited anything that the soul desires. " Startled, I
countered: "But you can't do everything that comes to your mind! You can't kill someone because you detest
him. " He moved closer to me. "Under certain circumstances, even that. Yet it is a mistake most of the time. I
don't mean that you should simply do everything that pops into your head. No. But you shouldn't harm and
drive away those ideas that make good sense by exorcising them or moralizing about them. Instead of
crucifying yourself or someone else you can drink wine from a chalice and contemplate the mystery of the
sacrifice. Even without such procedures you can treat your drives and so-called temptations with respect and
love. Then they will reveal their meaning--and they all do have meaning. If you happen to think of something
truly mad or sinful again, if you want to kill someone or want to commit some enormity, Sinclair, think at that
moment that it is Abraxas fantasizing within you! The person whom you would like to do away with is of
course never Mr. X but merely a disguise. If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of
yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. " Never before had Pistorius said anything to me that
had touched me as deeply as this. I could not reply. But what had affected me most and in the strangest way
was the similarity of this exhortation to Demian's words, which I had been carrying around with me for years.
They did not know each other, yet both of them had told me the same tiling. "The things we see, " Pistorius
said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That
is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow
the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you
no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority's path is an easy one, ours is difficult.
" 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. 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 them
again 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, a
small 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?" "Forgive you what?" "Oh, I was so
awful. " Only now I remembered our conversation. Had that been only four, five days ago? A whole lifetime
seemed to have passed since then. But suddenly I knew everything. Not only what had transpired between us
but also why I had come here and what Knauer had wanted to do out here. "You wanted to commit suicide,
Knauer?" He trembled with cold and fear. "Yes, I wanted to. I don't know whether I would have been able to.
I wanted to wait until morning. " I drew him into the open. The first horizontal rays of daylight glimmered
cold and listless in the gray dawn. For a while I led the boy by the arm. I heard myself say: "Now go home
and don't say a word to anyone! You were on the wrong path. We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human
beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us. " We walked on and parted company
without saying another word. When I reached the house, it was already daylight. The best things I gained
from my remaining weeks in St. ------were the hours spent with Pistorius at the organ or in front of his fire.
We were studying a Greek text about Abraxas and he read me extracts from a translation of the Vedas and
taught me how to speak the sacred "om. " Yet these occult matters were not what nourished me inwardly.
What invigorated me was the progress I had made in discovering my self, the increasing confidence in my
own dreams, thoughts, and intimations, and the growing knowledge of the power I possessed within me.
Pistorius and I understood each other in every possible way. All I had to do was think of him and I could be
certain that he--or a message from him--would come. I could ask him anything, as I had asked Demian,
without his having to be present in the flesh: all I had to do was visualize him and direct my questions at him
in the form of intensive thought. Then all psychic effort expended on the question would return to me in kind,
as an answer. Only it was not the person of Pistorius nor that of Max Demian that I conjured up and addressed,
but the picture I had dreamed and painted, the half-male, half-female dream image of my daemon. This being
was now no longer confined to my dreams, no longer merely depicted on paper, but lived within me as an
ideal and intensification of my self. The relationship which the would-be suicide Knauer formed with me was
peculiar, occasionally even funny. Ever since the night in which I had been sent to him, he clung to me like a
faithful servant or a dog, made every effort to forge his life with mine, and obeyed me blindly. He came to me
with the most astonishing questions and requests, wanted to see spirits, learn the cabala, and would not believe
me when I assured him that I was totally ignorant in all these matters. He thought nothing was beyond my
powers. Yet it was strange that he would often come to me with his puzzling and stupid questions when I was
faced with a puzzle of my own to which his fanciful notions and requests frequently provided a catchword and
the impetus for a solution. Often he was a bother and I would dismiss him peremptorily; yet I sensed that he, too, had been sent to me, that from him, too, came back whatever I gave him, in double measure; he, too, was
a leader for me--or at least a guidepost. The occult books and writings he brought me and in which he sought
his salvation taught me more than I realized at the time. Later Knauer slipped unnoticed out of my life. We
never came into conflict with each other; there was no reason to. Unlike Pistorius, with whom I was still to
share a strange experience toward the end of my days in St. On one or on several occasions in the course of
their lives, even the most harmless people do not altogether escape coming into conflict with the fine virtues
of piety and gratitude. Sooner or later each of us must take the step that separates him from his father, from his
mentors; each of us must have some cruelly lonely experience--even if most people cannot take much of this
and soon crawl back. I myself had not parted from my parents and their world, the "luminous" world in a
violent struggle, but had gradually and almost imperceptibly become estranged. I was sad that it had to be this
way and it made for many unpleasant hours during my visits back home; but it did not affect me deeply, it was
bearable. But where we have given of our love and respect not from habit but of our own free will, where we
have been disciples and friends out of our inmost hearts, it is a bitter and horrible moment when we suddenly
recognize that the current within us wants to pull us away from what is dearest to us. Then every thought that
rejects the friend and mentor turns in our own hearts like a poisoned barb, then each blow struck in defense
flies back into one's own face, the words "disloyalty" and "ingratitude" strike the person who feels he was
morally sound like catcalls and stigma, and the frightened heart flees timidly back to the charmed valleys of
childhood virtues, unable to believe that this break, too, must be made, this bond also broken. With time my
inner feelings had slowly turned against acknowledging Pistorius so unreservedly as a master. My friendship
with him, his counsel, the comfort he had brought me, his proximity had been a vital experience during the
most important months of my adolescence. God had spoken to me through him. From his lips my dreams had
returned clarified and interpreted. He had given me faith in myself. And now I became conscious of gradually
beginning to resist him. There was too much didacticism in what he said, and I felt that he understood only a
part of me completely. No quarrel or scene occurred between us, no break and not even a settling of accounts.
I uttered only a single--actually harmless--phrase, yet it was in that moment that an illusion was shattered. A
vague presentiment of such an occurrence had oppressed me for some time; it became a distinct feeling one
Sunday morning in his study. We were lying before the fire while he was holding forth about mysteries and
forms of religion, which he was studying, and whose potentialities for the future preoccupied him. All this
seemed to me odd and eclectic and not of vital importance; there was something vaguely pedagogical about it;
it sounded like tedious research among the ruins of former worlds. And all at once I felt a repugnance for his
whole manner, for this cult of mythologies, this game of mosaics he was playing with secondhand modes of
belief. "Pistorius, " I said suddenly in a fit of malice that both surprised and frightened me. "You ought to tell
me one of your dreams again sometime, a real dream, one that you've had at night. What you're telling me
there is all so--so damnedantiquarian. " He had never heard me speak like that before and at the same moment
I realized with a flash of shame and horror that the arrow I had shot at him, that had pierced his heart, had
come from his own armory: I was now flinging back at him reproaches that on occasion he had directed
against himself half in irony. He fell silent at once. I looked at him with dread in my heart and saw him
turning terribly pale. After a long pregnant pause he placed fresh wood on the fire and said in a quiet voice:
"You're right, Sinclair, you're a clever boy. I'll spare you the antiquarian stuff from now on. " He spoke very
calmly but it was obvious he was hurt. What had I done? I wanted to say something encouraging to him,
implore his forgiveness, assure him of my love and my deep gratitude. Touching words came to mind--but I
could not utter them. I just lay there gazing into the fire and kept silent. He, too, kept silent and so we lay
while the fire dwindled, and with each dying flame I felt something beautiful, intimate irrevocably burn low
and become evanescent. "I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, " I said finally with a very forced and clipped
voice. The stupid, meaningless words fell mechanically from my lips as if I were reading from a magazine
serial. "I quite understand, " Pistorius said softly. "You're right. " I waited. Then he went on slowly:
"Inasmuch as one person can be rightagainst another. " No, no! I'm wrong, a voice screamed inside me--but I
could not say anything. I knew that with my few words I had put my finger on his essential weakness, his
affliction and wound. I had touched the spot where he most mistrusted himself. His ideal way "antiquarian, "
he was seeking in the past, he was a romantic. And suddenly I realized deeply within me: what Pistorius had
been and given to me was precisely what he could not be and give to himself. He had led me along a path that
would transcend and leave even him, the leader, behind. God knows how one happens to say something like
that. I had not meant it all that maliciously, had had no idea of the havoc I would create. I had uttered something the implications of which I had been unaware of at the moment of speaking. I had succumbed to a
weak, rather witty but malicious impulse and it had become fate. I had committed a trivial and careless act of
brutality which he regarded as a judgment. How much I wished then that he become enraged, defend himself,
and berate me! He did nothing of the kind--I had to do all of that myself. He would have smiled if he could
have, and the fact that he found it impossible was the surest proof of how deeply I had wounded him. By
accepting this blow so quietly, from me, his impudent and ungrateful pupil, by keeping silent and admitting
that I had been right, by acknowledging my words as his fate, he made me detest myself and increased my
indiscretion even more. When I had hit out I had thought I would strike a tough, well-armed man--he turned
out to be a quiet, passive, defenseless creature who surrendered without protest. For a long time we stayed in
front of the dying fire, in which each glowing shape, each writhing twig reminded me of our rich hours and
increased the guilty awareness of my indebtedness to Pistorius. Finally I could bear it no longer. I got up and
left. I stood a long time in front of the door to his room, a long time on the dark stairway, and even longer
outside his house waiting to hear if he would follow me. Then I turned to go and walked for hours through the
town, its suburbs, parks and woods, until evening. During that walk I felt for the first time the mark of Cain on
my forehead. Only gradually was I able to think clearly about what had occurred. At first my thoughts were
full of self-reproach, intent on defending Pistorius. But all of them turned into the opposite of my intention. A
thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement--yet it had been the truth. Only now I
managed to understand Pistorius completely and succeeded in constructing his whole dream before me. This
dream had been to be a priest, to proclaim the new religion, to introduce new forms of exaltation, of love, of
worship, to erect new symbols. But this was not his strength and it was not his function. He lingered too
fondly in the past, his knowledge of this past was too precise, he knew too much about Egypt and India,
Mithras and Abraxas. His love was shackled to images the earth had seen before, and yet, in his inmost heart,
he realized that the New had to be truly new and different, that it had to spring from fresh soil and could not be
drawn from museums and libraries. His function was perhaps to lead men to themselves as he had led me. To
provide them with the unprecedented, the new gods, was not in him. At this point a sharp realization burned
within me: each man has his "function" but none which he can choose himself, define, or perform as he
pleases. It was wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An
enlightened man had but one duty--to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way
forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had
often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or
prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to
paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find
the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal--that was not his affair,
ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny--not an arbitrary one--and live it out
wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a
flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness. The new vision rose up
before me, glimpsed a hundred times, possibly even expressed before but now experienced for the first time by
me. I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose,
perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course,
to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing! I had already felt much loneliness, now
there was a deeper loneliness still which was inescapable. I made no attempt at reconciliation with Pistorius.
We remained friends but the relationship changed. Yet this was something we touched on only once; actually
it was Pistorius alone who did. He said: "You know that I have the desire to become a priest. Most of all I
wanted to become the priest of the new religion of which you and I have had so many intimations. That role
will never be mine--I realize that and even without wholly admitting it to myself have known it for some time.
So I will perform other priestly duties instead, perhaps at the organ, perhaps some other way. But I must
always have things around me that I feel are beautiful and sacred, organ music and mysteries, symbols and
myths. I need and cannot forgo them. That is my weakness. Sometimes, Sinclair, I know that I should not have
such wishes, that they are a weakness and luxury. It would be more magnanimous and just if I put myself
unreservedly at the disposal of fate. But I can't do that, I am incapable of it. Perhaps you will be able to do it
one day. It is difficult, it is the only truly difficult thing there is. I have often dreamed of doing so, but I can't;
the idea fills me with dread: I am not capable of standing so naked and alone. I, too, am a poor weak creature
who needs warmth and food and occasionally the comfort of human companionship. Someone who seeks nothing but his own fate no longer has any companions, he stands quite alone and has only cold universal
space around him. That is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know. There have been martyrs who gladly
let themselves be nailed to the cross, but even these were no heroes, were not liberated, for even they wanted
something that they had become fond of and accustomed to--they had models, they had ideals. But the man
who only seeks his destiny has neither models nor ideals, has nothing dear and consoling! And actually this is
the path one should follow. People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we
have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual. But you must shed that,
too, if you want to go all the way to the end. You cannot allow yourself to become a revolutionary, an
example, a martyr. It is beyond imagining --" Yes, it was beyond imagining. But it could be dreamed,
anticipated, sensed. A few times I had a foretaste of it--in an hour of absolute stillness. Then I would gaze into
myself and confront the image of my fate. Its eyes would be full of wisdom, full of madness, they would
radiate love or deep malice, it was all the same. You were not allowed to choose or desire any one of them.
You were only allowed to desireyourself, only your fate. Up to this point, Pistorius had been my guide. In
those days I walked about as though I were blind. I felt frenzies--each step was a new danger. I saw nothing in
front of me except the unfathomable darkness into which all paths I had taken until now had led and vanished.
And within me I saw the image of the master, who resembled Demian, and in whose eyes my fate stood
written. I wrote on a piece of paper: "A leader has left me. I am enveloped in darkness. I cannot take another
step alone. Help me. " I wanted to mail it to Demian, but didn't. Each time I wanted to, it looked foolish and
senseless. But I knew my little prayer by heart and often recited it to myself. It was with me every hour of the
day. I had begun to understand it. My schooldays were over. I was to take a trip during my vacation--my
father's idea--and then enter a university. But I did not know what I would major in. I had been granted my
wish: one semester of philosophy. Any other subject would have done as well.