This blog post examines Hermann Hesse’s meaning of maturity and youth through the reason Abraxas, appearing in ‘Demian’, is presented as an entity simultaneously embodying good and evil, light and darkness.
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) is a German-Swiss author whose name is more familiar in Korea than any other foreign writer. His works were introduced to Korea early on and remain among the most widely read and translated to this day. Take his novel ‘Demian’, for instance—just this one work has spawned dozens of Korean translations. It’s rare to find a Korean writer who didn’t find solace in Hermann Hesse’s works during their youth to ease life’s pains. Many, reading his works in their younger days, must have bitterly echoed the cry, ‘Youth is beautiful!’ Readers will find in Hermann Hesse’s works romantic yearning and melancholy, depictions of youthful rebellion and wandering, and poetic prose that stimulates both intellect and emotion. And they will taste the fruits of his profound contemplation, gained through his thorough exploration of dualities: day and night, humanity and nature, the divine and the demonic, male and female, bondage and freedom, the life of the citizen and the life of the artist, East and West.
Hermann Hesse is the writer of ‘youth’. Many of Hermann Hesse’s works have been read by Koreans as depictions of youth. Novels centered on themes like the anguish and wandering of youth, fantasy and disillusionment, immaturity and enlightenment, love and friendship, reconciliation and maturity, are often called Bildungsromane (novels of education). Youth is merely one phase of life, yet it is treated more specially than other periods. Why is that? Perhaps because youth most intensely condenses life’s myriad possibilities into forms of both hope and despair. From Hermann Hesse’s breakthrough work ‘Peter Camenzind’ to his later masterpiece ‘The Glass Bead Game’, the protagonists of nearly all his novels are artists or young men with strong artistic sensibilities. Yet Hermann Hesse was not merely a writer who romantically idealized life. His lifetime overlapped with Germany’s darkest historical periods: World War I, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and World War II. Hermann Hesse was criticized during World War I for opposing patriotism, his books were confiscated after the Nazis came to power, and he lived in exile. He remained an anti-war activist and pacifist throughout his life. The youth depicted as protagonists in Hermann Hesse’s novels represented not only the despair of reality but also hope rising above it. There was ample reason why the Swedish Academy awarded Hermann Hesse the Nobel Prize in Literature immediately after World War II ended. He died in Switzerland in 1962.
Many of Hermann Hesse’s novels are said to be close to autobiographical accounts. ‘Demian’ (1919) is known to have been born amidst the triple hardship of discord with his wife, the illness of his youngest son, and the author’s own nervous breakdown. Yet this novel reflects the social realities before and after the First World War. A powerful yearning for the old world to collapse and a new one to be born is embedded within the work, and this yearning is reflected in the title. Typically, when a novel’s title is a character’s name, that character is usually the protagonist. Yet the protagonist of ‘Demian’, subtitled ‘A Youth’s Story’, is not Demian. Demian is the novel’s first-person narrator and a friend of the protagonist Emil Sinclair. He represents the Übermensch, or superman, from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a concept Hermann Hesse was deeply fascinated by – a new model for life. ‘Demian’ was published as a novel written by Emil Sinclair. The Fontane Prize was immediately awarded to this new author, but Hermann Hesse, who revealed himself as the work’s original author, declined the prize awarded to him.
‘Demian’ is written in the form of memoirs, recounting the ten years of Emil Sinclair’s life leading up to his participation in World War I. To Sinclair, a sensitive boy around ten years old, the world is divided into two realms: one of love, exemplary conduct, and decorum, represented by his father’s house; and another of scandal, crime, and rudeness, embodied by the servants and laborers of the household.
To borrow Nietzsche’s terms, Sinclair’s world was split into an ‘Apollonian world’ of light, harmony, and civilization, and a ‘Dionysian world’ of darkness, chaos, and barbarism. Outwardly, he was showered with the love and attention of his parents and sister, yet inwardly, he was tormented by dark impulses and desires. Then one day, he became entangled in the vile threats and schemes of the delinquent Kromer, lying to his parents for the first time and deceiving himself. Sinclair was always startled by Kromer’s unpleasant whistling, calling out to him from somewhere. However, Sinclair narrowly escaped Kromer thanks to the appearance and help of Max Demian, a transfer student one year his senior. Tall and blond with striking good looks, Demian possessed not only formidable physical strength but also sharp intellect and deep emotional sensitivity, embodying the ideal self Sinclair should aspire to. After befriending Demian, Sinclair discovers one day after school that he bears Cain’s cursed ‘mark’ and is a ‘descendant of Cain’. According to Demian, while the Bible portrays Cain merely as a murderer who killed his brother, Cain was actually a being possessing independence, courage, and individuality, feared by many. Through his friendship with Demian, Sinclair begins to walk the path of the ‘descendant of Cain’ in earnest. It is a path leading into an even darker world.
The immature ‘descendant of Cain,’ sixteen-year-old Sinclair, and Demian are forced to part ways, and Sinclair enrolls in a boarding school in another city. However, he fails to adapt to school life and spends his days wandering and rebelling. The Bildungsroman chronicles the friendships and loves formed, the encounters with mentors and partings experienced, while leaving behind the familiar world and entering the unfamiliar. Sinclair happens to hear the organ playing of Pistorius, converses with him, and subsequently takes him as his mentor. Following Pistorius, a fire-worshipping pyromaniac, Sinclair learns to immerse himself in his own being through meditation. Through his encounter with Pistorius, who declares that discovering one’s potential and walking a lonely, arduous path is humanity’s calling, Sinclair reaffirms his identity as a descendant of Cain. Yet Sinclair’s school life reaches the brink of expulsion. Then one day, Sinclair falls in love with a girl named Beatrice in the park. He regards her as the figure of salvation and ideal who will rescue him from the world of evil and paints her portrait. But he realizes the figure in the painting resembles both Demian and himself. After sending the bird painting to Demian, he receives a reply. Demian’s response is precisely those now widely known lines from ‘Demian’. “The bird struggles out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever is born must destroy the world. The bird flies to God. God’s name is Abraxas.” Abraxas is the name of the god in whom all opposites are united within a single being.
Fire consumes everything, yet it is precisely through this that it becomes a living, moving entity. For the followers of the Fire Cult, who worship fire embodying the paradox of destruction and creation, the fitting god is Abraxas—the one in whom light and darkness, good and evil, Apollo and Dionysus, and all opposites are united as one. Now Sinclair realizes the two worlds that once surrounded him are not separate, and he matures into a more complete individual—no longer merely a recipient of teachings, but one capable of imparting what he has learned to others. And at the pinnacle of this maturity lies his love for Eva, Demian’s mother.
Sinclair’s love for Mrs. Eva, his friend’s mother and an older woman, is both spiritual and sensual. Attending the secret gatherings hosted by Demian and Mrs. Eva, Sinclair soon senses the impending collapse of one world and, within his love for Mrs. Eva, foresees the birth of a new one. Through two stories about love told by Mrs. Eva, Sinclair learns that love requires conviction and that by burning oneself, one can gain the entire world. This love is later realized when Demian, who participated in World War I as a soldier, conveys to Sinclair—who also became a soldier—both Mrs. Eva’s and his own kiss. Thus, the battlefield depicted in ‘Demian’ is not merely a place of destruction and slaughter. Nor is it merely a place to chase the new god Abraxas. When the old crumbles, people seek the new and become enthusiastic. But Sinclair no longer needs to do so. The new god Abraxas already resides within Sinclair’s matured inner self.
