By During one solitary vacation, I happened to complete Hermann Hesse’s novel Demian. It is a short read of around 150 pages; it is not the words that are difficult to understand but the thoughts. The reason I emphasize on the word solitary is because, the work of Hesse should be read in solitude as this itself has a defining effect on the read itself.
Most of us might have come across autobiographical works- either through books or movies. Demian too is in some sense an autobiographical work, but not in the regular sense of the word. Most autobiographical works, span the life of a person marking his professional achievements and failures with a backdrop of his/her personal life. Demian, on the other hand, is a spiritual autobiography of a person named Sinclair. Belonging to a well-to-do family in a protective environment, Sinclair does not need to delve into the spiritual side of himself. However, Hesse, displays that his inspiration is Gautama, the Buddha and pushes his protagonist Sinclair into situations which leaves him no viable option other than the spiritual one.
Demian is the inner awakening of Sinclair. Of course, initially, it seems as if it is just another character. It is this spiritual awakening of Sinclair that serves him throughout his inner struggle during his childhood and youth.
It saves him from bullying during his childhood and following the crowd blindly during his youth. There are times when he ignores this voice. However, as he grows older, he becomes increasingly aware of the magnitude of prominence of this voice inside him.
Sinclair’s search for God can be summarized beautifully in the following excerpt from the book:
“We not only need church service but a devil’s service. That’s what I think. Or else we need to create a God who includes the devil too, and whose eyes we don’t need to cover when the most natural things in the world take place in front of him (refers to sexual feelings).”
Years later, Sinclair comes across such a God known as Abraxas – the God and the Satan. He knows that the path is not an easy one and he spends years in the search for himself. Hesse beautifully puts it through the following words:
“Nothing in the world is so distasteful to man as to go to the way which leads to himself.”
Unfortunately, the end of the book seems rather abrupt and out of place. However, perhaps at the time it was published, ending the book with a World War II theme might have seemed the most obvious thing to Hesse.
Demian is a great short read just like Camus’s Stranger. Hesse excels the train of thought that he began in Demian through his ultimate classic called Siddhartha.
