This blog post examines how Hermann Hesse, through ‘Demian’, presented the possibility of a new humanity and divinity after the collapse of existing values using mythical symbols.

A Classic and a Book of the Times

In Korea, it is generally known that ‘Demian’ is typically first read around the second year of middle school. It is a book often revisited during high school or university years, widely read and influential among young people globally, earning it the title ‘Bible of Youth’. The protagonist Sinclair’s growing pains possess a timeless archetypal quality, ensuring the work’s message remains powerful even a century after its publication. It speaks to teenagers yearning to break free from the psychological turmoil of shedding childhood innocence and confronting reality, the turbulence of adolescence, school issues, and all the social and cultural pressures—customs and institutions—that weigh them down. It also speaks to modern adults, even those already living as members of society, who long for a life of autonomy, fully united with their inner selves.
Though a coming-of-age novel beginning around the protagonist’s age of ten and ending in his early twenties, the themes and critical perspectives it raises make it a work of historical significance that directly confronts the intellectual and cultural climate of Europe up to World War I. It is by no means an easy read. When analyzing this work with university students, their reactions were almost invariably like this: “I had no idea this book was so complex. I first read it in middle school, and it felt like it was about me.”
Beginning its composition in 1916 and published in 1919 as World War I ended, ‘Demian’ marked a complete shift in Hermann Hesse’s creative style. It signaled the start of his middle period, characterized by ‘The Path to the Inner Self (Der Weg nach Innen).’ Hermann Hesse, already famous for his late Romantic works, published this novel—radically different in both content and form—under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair, the protagonist’s name. While he likely considered that readers familiar with his earlier works might find the new style unfamiliar, his primary reason was to prevent this work—presenting a futuristic vision and value for the new generation after the war—from being overshadowed by the impression of his previous works. The reaction was nothing short of sensational. In the foreword to the 1948 German reprint of ‘Demian’, Thomas Mann recalled the situation at the time:
I cannot forget the shuddering shock caused by the book ‘Demian’, written by an unknown figure named Sinclair, immediately after the First World War. It was a work that pierced the heart of the age with terrifying precision. Young people, without exception, mistakenly believed that the person speaking to their deepest selves had emerged from their own ranks (though in truth, the man who gave them what they most needed was forty-two years old), and they were filled with gratitude and awe.
European youth, especially German youth, who had endured the horrors of a world war of unprecedented scale and developed deep skepticism and distrust toward the existing world and its values, were enthralled by modern works that spoke of their confusion, suffering, anguish, and yearnings, and presented the possibility of new values, new humanity, a new world, and a new life. Although the Fontane Prize was awarded to the author Sinclair, who had appeared like a comet, Hermann Hesse returned it to the foundation, arguing that the prize was meant for newcomers. Meanwhile, the literary world scrambled to uncover Sinclair’s true identity. Finally, the critic Eduard Korody announced to the world through stylistic analysis that Sinclair was undoubtedly Hermann Hesse. Thus, starting with the 17th edition in 1920, the author of ‘Demian’ was printed as Hermann Hesse.
The protagonist Sinclair’s journey of self-discovery is deeply imbued with the experiences of Hermann Hesse, who lived through that era. These elements include autobiographical aspects from Hermann Hesse’s own life between 1887 and 1897, when he was aged 10 to 20; intellectual reflections on the political, social, and cultural situation in Europe from 1914 to 1917; and the prevailing currents of the era that profoundly influenced the author as he fiercely pursued the ‘path inward’ to find his true self. Particularly, Nietzsche’s philosophy and the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung left distinct traces on this work steeped in its era.
With the outbreak of World War I, multiple crises struck Hermann Hesse’s life. Though he was living in Bern, Switzerland, since 1912 and riding the wave of success as a writer, he volunteered for military service when war began. However, after being deemed unfit for active duty, he worked for the ‘Charity Organization for German Prisoners of War’ in Bern. He devoted himself passionately to collecting and sending books for the prisoners, publishing and sending magazines, and later even establishing his own publishing house to produce and send small booklets. Thus, between 1918 and 1919, 22 booklets were published and sent to the prisoners. Hermann Hesse regarded this work as the best personal service he could perform against the horrors of war. While engaged in this work, Hermann Hesse continued to publish articles opposing the war and blind nationalism in domestic and foreign newspapers and magazines. This led German literary circles and nationalists to brand him a ‘traitor,’ inflicting a severe psychological blow. Personal difficulties and crises compounded this. His youngest son fell gravely ill, his father passed away, his marriage reached a crisis point, and his wife’s nervous exhaustion and depression worsened to the point she had to be admitted to a sanatorium. Extremely exhausted and weakened in both body and mind, Hermann Hesse found himself in need of treatment. He ceased his work with the ‘Welfare Association for German Prisoners of War’ and underwent psychoanalytic counseling 60 times at a hospital in Lucerne from June to November 1916. His attending physician at this time was Dr. Josef Bernhard Lang, a disciple of Jung and the model for Pistorius in his work. Through conversations and consultations with this psychoanalyst, Hermann Hesse stepped deeply into this new field. Dr. Lang subsequently became a lifelong friend to Hermann Hesse. Hermann Hesse subsequently immersed himself in the writings of Freud and Jung, connecting this new field to his creative work. It provided him considerable help in viewing and overcoming the essential conflicts and problems that had long troubled him from a different perspective. ‘Demian’ emerged from this process of Hermann Hesse’s ‘introspection’ or unsparing ‘confrontation with himself’.

The Image of the Phoenix

Out of personal interest, I often asked students, the general public, and Hermann Hesse experts whenever I had the chance: What comes to mind first when you think of ‘Demian’? Almost without exception, they cited the image of a bird breaking free from its egg, and even if they forgot everything else, most remembered that famous passage:

“The bird breaks out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The name of that God is Abraxas.”

Why, among the many words and scenes in this novel of about 200 pages, is it always this image, this phrase? The egg, the bird, the flight, the god. The image of a bird struggling painfully to break free from its egg, then flapping its wings powerfully to fly toward the god, moves us because it touches something essential in our lives as a metaphor. In the book, Pistorius explains to Sinclair: “What is not within ourselves cannot excite us.” For humans bound to the earth, birds soaring freely through the sky have always been objects of longing. The psychological desire to break free from old constraints and attain liberty has been repeatedly expressed through the metaphor of ‘birds’ and ‘flight’ in countless myths, fairy tales, and works of art. Some critics point out that ‘Demian’ loses its realism through excessive borrowing of symbols and myths, but this is merely a misunderstanding arising from an inability to participate in the intuitive and rich play of images the author presents. Rather, the fact that general readers unfilteredly accept and naturally embrace the core imagery of this work is revealed in the example mentioned above.
Of course, the general reader is not fully conscious that the image of this bird captivating them is highly archetypal, ultimately the mythical image of the ‘phoenix’. A bird with a ‘golden’ head flies toward ‘God,’ toward Abraxas. This image actually permeates the entire work, varies in diverse ways, and serves as a ‘Leitmotiv’ borrowed from music and used effectively in modern literature. When Sinclair first meets Demian, Demian reminds him to notice the bird in the coat of arms, weathered by time, above Sinclair’s house gate. As Sinclair gradually approaches his inner self, he draws a bird with a yellow head emerging from the earth and sends it to Demian. The above passage is Demian’s reply to that drawing. Frau Eva tells Sinclair a magical tale of a young man whose soul and world were consumed by the pain of an impossible love. With the immense power condensed within his scorched soul, he draws back both the beloved woman and the entire lost world, reclaiming them anew. The bird soaring toward God, the soul rising from the ashes to wield immense power—this is unmistakably the image of the phoenix. If the flying bird symbolizes the free soul, then the bird soaring toward God into the cosmos can reasonably be seen as a metaphor for the soul that has overcome time and death.
If the bird breaking free from its egg and soaring represents the individual self as a free agent, then the cosmic force embodied by the god Abraxas is the universal self. The bird flying toward the god and becoming one with it symbolizes the oneness of the universal and individual self, the completion of the Tao, and the attainment of the state of liberation.
Hermann Hesse applies this archetypal dream, this unconscious image, to the experience of a boy growing from infancy through difficult adolescence into a self-possessed individual. This makes readers feel as if they are reading their own story, sending shivers down their spines. It carries the assertion that to face life’s reality without fear, live according to life’s inherent purpose, and realize oneself, each soul must break free from what Freud called the ‘anxiety of civilization’ and be reborn.

The painful process of becoming one’s true self

This work depicts the price one must pay to come to accept and love one’s original self as it is—a confession of a young soul. This is already revealed in the motto at the very beginning of the preface: “What naturally welled up within me—I merely tried to live it. Why was that so difficult?”
What makes it so hard for people to live as themselves? With this question, Hermann Hesse traces back to the origins of Western culture, touching upon the roots of Christianity. Original sin. He questions the primal guilt rooted in the very source of life. Once reason awakens and begins to move, everything that exists reveals its duality, and the soul must endure division between these two poles. Between God and the devil, good and evil, light and darkness, male and female, beauty and ugliness, the permitted and the forbidden, life and death. It depicts how no one can escape this neurotic division until they experience and understand that these poles—these seemingly irreconcilable opposites—are in fact inextricably intertwined, and until they simultaneously accept and embrace both.
Hermann Hesse, who grew up in a devout Christian missionary family and suffered intensely from this problem, later realized it was not his alone but pertained to the soul in general. Beginning with ‘Demian,’ the consistent core of Hermann Hesse’s later works is the exploration of the possibility of confirming the unity beyond these polarities and realizing that unity as perfectly and harmoniously as possible in life, transcending dichotomous division and conflict. Experts call this Hermann Hesse’s ‘Gedanke der bipolaren Einheit’ (Thought of Bipolar Unity). During the period when he placed this problem at the center of his life and creative work and delved into it intensely, Hermann Hesse encountered European intellectuals grappling with similar issues in Nietzsche’s writings. He encountered them again in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jung, which he encountered due to his own mental and psychological crisis. It is certain that Hermann Hesse was influenced by them, and traces of this influence are evident in ‘Demian’. However, it must not be overlooked that Hermann Hesse’s approach to this problem was not that of a philosopher or psychoanalyst, but rather that of an artist who embraced it independently and creatively.
In ‘A Short Piece of Theology (Ein Stückchen Theologie)’, written in 1932, Hermann Hesse summarized the universal path humans take to reach their true selves as follows:

The path to becoming human begins with innocence (heaven, infancy, the pre-responsible stage). From there, the path leads to sin, the distinction between good and evil, culture, morality, religion, and the demands of human ideals. Anyone who has lived this stage seriously as an independent individual cannot help but encounter despair. They come to realize that so-called virtue, perfect obedience, and flawless service do not exist; that righteousness is unattainable, and goodness an impossible achievement. This despair leads only to ruin, or else to the third realm of the spirit—an experience beyond morality and law, to grace and salvation, to a new and higher state of freedom from responsibility, that is, to faith.

This ‘process of becoming human (Menschwerdungsprozeß)’ is fully embodied in Sinclair’s growth. Here, it is worth briefly examining how Hermann Hesse, through the name of his protagonist Sinclair, engages in the playful exercise of thought via ‘association’. Sinclair is the name of Hölderlin’s closest friend, a poet Hermann Hesse greatly admired, evoking the image of that loyal and truthful man. Yet, it also reveals a layered meaning connected to the work’s theme through the unique combination of words. In English, sin means ‘guilt’. In French, clair, like the English clear, means ‘clear’, ‘transparent’, ‘free of…’. Thus, connecting the two words creates ‘free of guilt’. This implies that the protagonist, caught between ‘two worlds’ or polar opposites and tormented by guilt, is an ‘innocent’ human being crushed by the dualistic worldview of Western culture, yet destined to escape this unjust suffering through his own strength.
From the outset of the story titled ‘Two Worlds’, readers confront the division and confusion within the ten-year-old boy’s consciousness—a rupture from innocence and the emergence of guilt—rooted in this dualistic value system. The trigger for Sinclair, who belonged to the ‘bright world,’ being dragged into the ‘dark world’ and ensnared begins with a lie about stealing an apple. The delinquent boy Cromer, representing the ‘dark world,’ is openly called ‘the devil,’ ‘Satan,‘ and the story overflows with biblical motifs like ‘the prodigal son,’ ‘Cain and Abel,‘ and ‘the two thieves crucified beside Jesus.’ ‘Paradise Lost’, ‘Cain and Abel’, ‘the two thieves crucified beside Jesus’. The entire work overflows with biblical motifs, deliberately filled with ‘reinterpretations (Umdeutung)’. This vividly demonstrates Hermann Hesse’s influence under the iconoclast Nietzsche during this period. What could Hermann Hesse’s intention have been in attempting such a bold biblical parody while telling the story of a ten-year-old boy? Did he even think of creating a new myth with this story? It wouldn’t be wrong to see it that way. It was not only his own soul’s experience, but also because he sought to offer a new value system, a new divinity, capable of fundamentally healing the contradictions, psychological pressures, and collective neuroses faced by the young generation who had endured the horrors of World War I. Their souls, devastated beyond repair by the old value system, were now open to new possibilities. The symbol of Abraxas, which hangs over this work like a spell, directing everything towards it, is that very thing. Demian points out the blind spots in the Christian worldview and emphasizes the need for a new god.
But I wanted to tell you this. Here lies one of the key points where the flaws of this religion become very clear. In short, while this monotheistic God of the Old and New Testaments is an exceptional figure, he is not the kind of figure he ought to represent. He is goodness, nobility, fatherhood, beauty and loftiness, sentimentality. Quite right! But the world is also made of other things. But that other part is now entirely assigned to the devil, and this entire half of the world, this whole half, is hidden and silenced. While praising God as the Father of all life, they completely ignore the sexual life that is the source of all life, labeling it devilish acts or sin! I don’t oppose people venerating this Jehovah God, not in the slightest. But I believe we must revere and hold sacred everything. Not just the artificially separated, official half, but the entire world! Therefore, alongside worshiping God, we must also worship the devil. That seems right. Or else we must create a God who embraces the devil within, a God before whom we need not close our eyes when utterly natural worldly events occur.
The core of the criticism is the dichotomous worldview. Hermann Hesse sensed the severity of the side effects that arise when either a person or life is not accepted as a whole, but rather when one part is suppressed, within the Christian tradition of European culture in general. The embodiment of the ‘dualistic wholeness philosophy’ he presents as an alternative to this flaw is Abraxas. In 1962, 43 years after ‘Demian’ was published, the 85-year-old Hermann Hesse recalled that period thus:
For me, that searing time still lies beneath the name ‘Sinclair’. Beneath that name lies the extinction of a beautiful, irretrievable world; the poignant awakening to a new understanding of the world and reality—painful at first, yet later deeply affirmed; the extinction of the duality, the flash of insight into wholeness contained within the sign of the Great Polarity, akin to what Chinese Zen monks sought to express through magical phrases millennia ago.
The real issue lies not in the ‘bright world’ that is self-evidently revealed, but in the ‘dark world’ that is concealed and silenced, yet undeniably real. It is into this realm—where people, unable to face it and seeking to avoid it, feel fear and anxiety without even knowing its true nature—that Sinclair, ten years old and a reflection of Hermann Hesse’s own childhood self, enters. This marks the beginning of what is called a ‘journey through hell’—a process of tempering consciousness that no one can avoid to become a whole human being. Thus, it depicts that while darkness itself is unavoidable, once the soul gains the strength to know what it is, face it, and cope with it, one can cast off fear and even embrace it.

Fantasy and Reality Coexist

Demian serves as Sinclair’s ‘guide’ on this soul’s pilgrimage through the darkness. A boy one or two years older than Sinclair, he is intelligent, bright, and displays an adult-like seriousness and steadfastness. As the story progresses, he feels mysterious yet somehow unreal. Seeing clearly into others’ hearts, standing calmly at a distance, yet at every crucial stage urging him forward with words that stimulate and awaken, Sinclair questions: “Wasn’t that a voice that could only come from myself? Wasn’t it a voice that knew everything? Wasn’t it the voice that knew everything better and more certainly than I myself?“ At another moment, Demian appeared to him as both male and female, then ”neither adult nor child, neither old nor young, as if thousands of years old, as if beyond time,” evoking the feeling of some ‘animal’ or ‘tree’ or ‘stars’.
It seems extremely strange, yet this is precisely the work’s defining characteristic. The narrative does not follow an external flow; instead, it focuses on the phenomena of consciousness and unconsciousness, dreams and fantasies, occurring within the protagonist’s inner world. Consequently, the stories described often sink into an ambiguity where it’s hard to distinguish reality from dreams, and the reader simply follows the novel’s flow, like the soliloquy of a lonely soul. The characters, too, are both real-world individuals and archetypal allegories embodying universal archetypes, causing reality and the supernatural to overlap. Consequently, the narrative is simultaneously reality and fantasy, unfolding in a peculiar manner where unconscious fantasies unfold before one’s eyes as actual reality. This unique form emerged as Hermann Hesse artistically embodied the psychoanalytic methodology he personally encountered and deeply resonated with in this work. While external plot development and characters are drastically simplified, the protagonist’s soul internally traverses the infinite spacetime of human culture and the unconscious, expanding the horizons of consciousness.
For instance, Demian is Sinclair’s school friend in reality, but psychoanalytically, he is Sinclair’s ‘alter ego’ and the Jungian ‘Imago’ emerging from his unconscious world. Hermann Hesse reportedly conceived the name Demian one day in a dream.
Demian, Daimonion, Dämon. Saying these words aloud reveals their resonant similarity. The name Demian also overlaps these meanings. The Daimonion is the mysterious ‘inner voice’ Socrates is said to have heard, while the German Dämon signifies a spiritual being beyond good and evil, also carrying the meaning of a ‘guardian spirit’. Demian’s mother, Frau Eva, is a ‘great mother’ (magna mater) whose name already carries the image of Eve, the mother of humanity. From a psychoanalytic perspective, she is Sinclair’s complete ‘Self’ and the ‘anima’, the feminine aspect of the male soul. She is a figure who can be seen as the manifestation of the divine Abraxas, symbolizing ‘polar unity’. Furthermore, the bully Kromer, who threatens and torments Sinclair in reality, also represents, in psychoanalytic terms, the ‘inner repressed potential impulses’ and the ‘base ego’. Only by overlaying and reading these two dimensions does Hermann Hesse’s original intended meaning become apparent.
Just as a patient’s dreams or drawings serve as crucial tools for interpreting their inner world in psychoanalysis, Sinclair’s dreams and drawings in this work—which depicts his evolving inner landscape—become not only core symbols of the story but also keys to unlocking its secret realms.

The Union of Opposites

From embracing the ‘dualistic wholeness’ of Abraxas to reaching his true ‘self’ represented by Frau Eva, Sinclair’s story shows how difficult it is for a human being to break free from the existing cultural framework and stand alone as a subject. Freed from Chromer’s grasp with Demian’s help, Sinclair flees without looking back, hiding beneath his mother’s skirts. Though different from Chromer, Demian too was seen as a dangerous ‘temptress’ luring him from safety. Sinclair judged it easier to hide than to heed Demian’s demand that he open his eyes and awaken. Yet once the soul has awakened, the path back is revealed to be blocked. His parents’ home, now clearly only half a world, no longer serves as either refuge or homeland. Unaware of what fate awaits, he must now grope his way forward alone.
Sinclair’s journey shows a process of oscillation from one extreme to the opposite, gradually converging into one. While attending boarding school, he frequents taverns as if they were his home, sinking into debauchery as a delinquent student on the verge of expulsion, steeped in cynicism and vitriol. Yet, he suddenly turns toward the opposite pole, ‘Beatrice,’ building an altar to the ‘Ideal’ within his heart and pursuing a life of purity. Yet crucially, both processes serve as preparatory stages for Sinclair to realize that his ideal self is Demian, and that the soul’s true homeland he must reach is Mrs. Eva. Paradoxically, during his debauchery, he realized what he tearfully longed for was precisely purity and uprightness. When he understood that the portrait he painted of Beatrice, the woman of salvation, was the face within himself—Demian—his fascination with the external Beatrice faded away. He comes to realize that both the ‘dark’ world, once represented by Kromer and later voluntarily experienced at boarding school, and the ‘bright’ world of idealized concepts represented by Beatrice, are fundamentally incomplete and lacking something when examined closely.
As he painted Beatrice’s likeness, the finished portrait bore the face of Demian and himself, and Sinclair, unknowingly, gradually approached the realm of Abraxas. After painting the face within himself, Sinclair, recalling the bird in the coat of arms on his old family home’s gate that Demian had pointed out long ago, paints a yellow bird breaking free from an egg shaped like the Earth against a blue sky. This painting also represents the state of his own soul. The egg breaks, and the soul’s bird emerges into the world, but the form of Abraxas toward which the bird must fly is astonishing and shocking. This symbol repeatedly haunts adolescent Sinclair as a sexual image, an inescapable, terrifying dream.
One particular dream, or one recurring fantasy, became profoundly significant to me. This dream, the most crucial and fatal of my life, went something like this. I returned to my parents’ house, and above the gate, the heraldic bird shone yellow against a blue background. Inside, my mother came out toward me. But as I entered and tried to embrace her, it was not my mother but someone I had never seen before. A tall, powerful figure, resembling the painting Max and Demian had made, yet still different. And despite its might, it was profoundly feminine. This person drew me close and embraced me with a deep love that made my whole body tremble. Blending ecstasy and terror, this embrace was both worship of a god and a crime. This person holding me was imbued with so many memories of my mother, so many memories of my friend Demian. This embrace defied all reverence, yet it was blissful ecstasy. Often I awoke from this dream steeped in deep happiness, and often I awoke feeling a fear as if I were about to die and an intense pang of conscience, as if I had committed some terrible sin.
Yet gradually, unconsciously, a connection formed between these wholly inner images and the signals reaching me from outside concerning the god I now sought. This connection grew denser and more intimate, and I began to sense that it was precisely within this dream of foreboding that I had summoned Abraxas. Bliss and dread, man and woman mingled; profound sin pierced innocence; the most sacred and the most hideous were intertwined—that was the image of the dream of love I had dreamt, and Abrasax was likewise. Love was no longer the animalistic, dark impulse I had initially feared so intensely. Nor was it the reverently spiritualized worship I had once offered to Beatrice’s image. Love was both. It was both, and yet far more. Love was angelic and demonic, man and woman united, human and animal, the highest good and the most extreme evil. Living this out seemed my destiny, paying its price my fate. I yearned for that destiny yet feared it. But destiny was always there, always hanging over me.
To acknowledge and accept that this wholeness is not merely a matter of sexuality, but the true nature of life, nature, and the entire universe, must be a harsh trial of the soul for anyone—a journey that truly deserves the name ‘descent into hell’.

‘Fatalism’ and the Magic of Life

Knowing the truth and living it out are different matters. Destiny demands realization, and that realization requires the courage and will to live out what one knows. In Chapter 6, titled ‘Jacob’s Struggle,’ Sinclair’s attitude—fearful yet determined to accept and fulfill his destiny—contrasts sharply with the weak stance of Pistorius, another devotee of Abraxas. The biblical story of Jacob—who, though not the traditionally recognized firstborn, wrestled all night with an angel, clinging to him until he received the blessing to become a patriarch and bless his descendants for generations—serves as a metaphor for the strong-willed human who establishes the legitimacy of his own destiny with his own hands.
Pistorius, possessing profound knowledge of ancient religions and the unconscious world, draws Sinclair closer to the world of Abraxas, teaching him to respect and follow dreams and inner voices. Yet, at the decisive moment, Pistorius himself fails to take the final step to realize his own destiny. He lacks the courage to unconditionally ‘leap’ toward the uncertain, unknown destiny, letting go of all the threads of tradition that have supported him until now. To Sinclair, who seeks to realize his own destiny, Pistorius—though erudite—appears tedious and ‘stale,’ clinging to the images and traces of Abraxas from the past. Ultimately, Sinclair moves forward, bypassing the guide who had led him. Convinced that humans are “nature thrown into the unknown” and that the true task for everyone is “to become oneself,” he finally feels the “mark of Cain” on his own forehead. He has been reborn as an autonomous human being.
Having matured internally and become somewhat prepared, Sinclair, now a university student, meets Demian and his mother. His encounter with Frau Eva feels like the ‘fulfillment’ and ‘homecoming’ of the arduous journey he had endured. She is his anima, his cosmic soul, and the ‘self-realization’ he will reach by fully living himself. To Sinclair, who feels an intense love upon encountering this true image of his soul projected outward yet hesitates to approach her, she tells the story of two young lovers whose attitudes toward fate form a contrast.
The first tale is about a young man who fell in love with a star. His thoughts and dreams were entirely filled with the star he loved, yet he knew full well that a human cannot embrace a star. So he loved the star without hope of fulfillment, silently suffering, and accepted that elevating himself through that pain was his destiny. One day, standing on a seaside cliff gazing at the star, he was suddenly overcome by an uncontrollable longing. He leaped into the void toward his beloved star. Yet, in the moment of his leap, the thought flashed through his mind that it was impossible. His body fell downward and shattered into pieces. Mrs. Eva explains that this young man did not know how to love. Had he possessed the strength of soul to believe, as he leapt toward the star, that it would be accomplished, he could have flown and become one with it.
The second story is also about a young man tormented by hopeless love. Because of this hopeless love, he had completely retreated into his own soul, believing that this love would consume him entirely. Everything in the world vanished; his eyes saw neither blue sky nor green forests, his ears heard neither the murmur of streams nor the sound of harps.
All crumbled, and his life became pitiful and wretched. Yet his love grew ever stronger, to the point where he wished to die and cease to exist rather than abandon the woman he loved. He felt that love burn away everything else within him. Yet the power of his love grew stronger, now beginning to draw its object toward him. The beautiful woman could not help but follow. She came, and he stood with arms outstretched to pull her closer. When she stood before him, she was utterly transformed. And he knew he had drawn back the world he had lost. Every star in the heavens shone within him, radiating joyful light through his soul. He had embraced not just one woman, but the entire world within his heart. At the end of this story, Mrs. Eva adds: This young man loved, and thereby found himself.
If these tales are parables about ‘fated love,’ what message does Mrs. Eva, or Hermann Hesse, wish to convey? Does it not mean that half-hearted wishes never come true? That if you have a desire and wish to achieve it, you must cultivate the strength of soul to draw that fulfillment toward you? The story of the second young man, mentioned earlier, evokes the image of the phoenix. The dream of that golden bird, which burns its own body to ashes, then rises suddenly from the embers, radiant and soaring.
Humans do not know what form the completion of their own lives should take. Yet, as Hermann Hesse said, if each individual life—nature’s single ‘attempt’ toward that completion—is not to become an empty shell, this book tells us what humans must know and what attitude they must adopt toward their destiny. It speaks of knowing the true form of one’s soul—accepting it as it is, embracing it fully, and living it out with all one’s strength, even if it differs so greatly from what is traditionally known that it is hard to accept.
To be free from ‘darkness,’ one need only know what that ‘darkness’ is. For humans have the power to control what they know. The ‘darkness’ into which Sinclair was cast was a world full of riddles, the very realm of his own ‘unconscious’. The astonishing image he encountered after navigating that labyrinth—Mrs. Eva, symbolized by Abraxas—was his own soul, universal in scope. Wouldn’t a human being, completely united with their soul that encompasses the universe, be free? At the end, Sinclair gazes into his inner mirror and sees himself transformed into the likeness of Demian, his friend, his ‘guardian spirit’, his ‘ideal self’.