human being is his dead part; it is the other part, the unconditioned Will that constitutes his being. Will precedes essence. Our bourgeois civilization is based on personality. It is our chief value. A film star has ‘ personality ’ ; the salesman hoping to sell his first insurance policy tries to ooze ‘ personality ’ :
The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has laboured just as hard to maintain and strengthen. 10
The treatise comes to an end with a sort of credo:
Man is not ... of fixed and enduring form. He is ... an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature ... man ... is a bourgeois compromise. 11
That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow. 12
Steppenwolf knows well enough why he is unhappy and drifting, bored and tired; it is because he will not recognize his purpose and follow it with his whole being.
‘ He is resolved to forget that the desperate clinging to the self, and the desperate clinging to life are the surest way to eternal death. ’ 13 Haller knows that even when the Outsider is a universally acknowledged man of genius, it is due to ‘ his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois, and of his patience under that last extremity of loneliness which rarifies the atmosphere of the bourgeois world to an ice-cold ether around those who suffer to become men, that loneliness of the garden of Gethsemane ’ . 14
This Steppenwolf ... has discovered that... at best he is only at the beginning of a long pilgrimage towards this ideal harmony. ... No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. ... Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple.... The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God, leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or the child, but ever further into guilt, ever deeper into human life.... Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have at the last to take the whole world into your soul, cost what it may. 1 5
The last image of the treatise recalls an idea of Rilke ’ s: the Angel of the Duinese Elegies who, from his immense height, can see and summarize human life as a whole.
Were he already among the immortals—were he already there at the goal to which the difficult path seems to be taking him—with what amazement he would look back over all this coming and going, all the indecision and wild zigzagging of his tracks. With what a mixture of encouragement and blame, pity and joy, he would smile at this Steppenwolf. 16
The Outsider ’ s ‘ way of salvation ’ , then, is plainly implied. His moments of insight into his direction and purpose must be grasped tightly; in these moments he must formulate laws that will enable him to move towards his goal in spite of losing sight of it. It is unnecessary to add that these laws will apply not only to him, but to all men, their goal being the same as his.
The treatise throws some light on Hesse ’ s intention in Siddhartha. We can see now that Siddhartha revolted against the religious discipline that ‘ narrowed the world and simplified his soul ’ , but in renouncing his monk ’ s robes, he failed to ‘ take the whole world into his soul ’ ; on the contrary, he merely narrowed his soul to include a mistress and a house. The effort of ‘ widening the sou l’ must be controlled by a religious discipline; nothing can be achieved by
The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has laboured just as hard to maintain and strengthen. 10
The treatise comes to an end with a sort of credo:
Man is not ... of fixed and enduring form. He is ... an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature ... man ... is a bourgeois compromise. 11
That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow. 12
Steppenwolf knows well enough why he is unhappy and drifting, bored and tired; it is because he will not recognize his purpose and follow it with his whole being.
‘ He is resolved to forget that the desperate clinging to the self, and the desperate clinging to life are the surest way to eternal death. ’ 13 Haller knows that even when the Outsider is a universally acknowledged man of genius, it is due to ‘ his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois, and of his patience under that last extremity of loneliness which rarifies the atmosphere of the bourgeois world to an ice-cold ether around those who suffer to become men, that loneliness of the garden of Gethsemane ’ . 14
This Steppenwolf ... has discovered that... at best he is only at the beginning of a long pilgrimage towards this ideal harmony. ... No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. ... Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple.... The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God, leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or the child, but ever further into guilt, ever deeper into human life.... Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have at the last to take the whole world into your soul, cost what it may. 1 5
The last image of the treatise recalls an idea of Rilke ’ s: the Angel of the Duinese Elegies who, from his immense height, can see and summarize human life as a whole.
Were he already among the immortals—were he already there at the goal to which the difficult path seems to be taking him—with what amazement he would look back over all this coming and going, all the indecision and wild zigzagging of his tracks. With what a mixture of encouragement and blame, pity and joy, he would smile at this Steppenwolf. 16
The Outsider ’ s ‘ way of salvation ’ , then, is plainly implied. His moments of insight into his direction and purpose must be grasped tightly; in these moments he must formulate laws that will enable him to move towards his goal in spite of losing sight of it. It is unnecessary to add that these laws will apply not only to him, but to all men, their goal being the same as his.
The treatise throws some light on Hesse ’ s intention in Siddhartha. We can see now that Siddhartha revolted against the religious discipline that ‘ narrowed the world and simplified his soul ’ , but in renouncing his monk ’ s robes, he failed to ‘ take the whole world into his soul ’ ; on the contrary, he merely narrowed his soul to include a mistress and a house. The effort of ‘ widening the sou l’ must be controlled by a religious discipline; nothing can be achieved by
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