This is most definitely a book for our time! Written in 1917, it could just as easily be something one might read on a New Age web site. It is about one young man's struggle to live an authentic life, and on his way he meets other young men, who become his guides and teachers. It is very metaphysical, though I don't recall that word actually appearing anywhere in the text, and it is about duality; learning to embrace all aspects of life without judgment. Much of the story could have been written about me and those of us on the road less traveled. This is familiar material, and reading went by quickly with absolutely no misunderstanding about the message. The story ends as World War I breaks out. Upon its publications in 1919, the author was named as Emil Sinclair, the main character who is telling his life story from the point where he is a young child to where he is shot in the war. According to the Dover introductory note, it was not until 1920, when the book had gone through seventeen printings and won a prize as the best first novel of 1919, did Hesse reveal that he was the author.
    Sinclair begins the introduction of his story as the war still rages. He says:

"My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."

    Even when Sinclair was ten years old, he recognized the vast difference between life in his well-off parent's house and that outside. Outside also included servants who worked for them. With his parents, it was the "world of warm glow, clarity, and cleanliness; gentle friendly speech, washed hands, clean clothes, and proper behavior." Outside was a world of “ghost stories and scandalous rumors; there was a motley flow of uncanny, tempting, frightening, puzzling things, things like slaughterhouse and jail, drunks and bickering women, cows giving birth, horses collapsing, stories of burglaries, killings suicides." Sinclair was perfectly content in the light of his family's love until one day a life-changing event happened.
    Though he really didn't like the boys, one day he goes off with a group of them joined by a bully named Franz Kromer, who scares him. As they sit telling stories, Sinclair is afraid of not being part of the group, so he makes up a lie about stealing a neighbor's apples from the orchard. Kromer makes him swear by God and his salvation that he really committed the theft, which he does. He is now terrified when Kromer follows him home and pushes his way into the house. Then he tells him he knows the person who owns the orchard, and will go to the police unless Sinclair pays him off. Though his parents have money, he does not, and he could not tell his parents because, he felt that by swearing a false oath to God he had sold himself to the Devil. From that point on, the warmth, comfort and security of his parents and home is shattered.
    Meanwhile, Kromer keeps extorting money from Sinclair, and forcing him to do things against his will. But it happens that a new boy enters the school. There is something different about him; he is too superior, and self-confident, and the boys don't like him, yet they respect him. His name is Max Demian. It happens one day after Bible class, the story of Cain and Abel, that Demian asks to walk home with Sinclair. Demian shares his interpretation of Cain—that he bore a "mark" but it was a mark of distinction:

"Surely it was something strange that was barely noticeable, a little more intelligence and daring in his eyes than people were used to. This man had power, people shied away from this man. He had a "mark". . .They said that fellows with that mark were weird, and so they were. People with courage and character always seem weird to other people"

    It happened that soon afterward, Kromer summons Sinclair with his whistle, as always. But this time he has a new request—he wants Sinclair to bring him one of his sisters. Though Sinclair is young, he understands what Kromer has in mind. —"all of a sudden it became clear to me how monstrous it was."
    This scenario, however, was observed by Demian, who questions Sinclair. Gently probing him, he asked if they could do a fun little experiment on mind reading. Sinclair agrees, and finds that Demian has a good idea of what Kromer has been doing to him. But soon after, Sinclair notices that Kromer is no where to be found, nor is his summoning whistle heard. At last they did nearly meet, but Kromer quickly turns away. What did Demian do to him? We never find out.
    Gradually, Sinclair is able to once again accept the warmth and love of his family, and basks in it, but not for much longer. He has begun a new path that will never lead back to the life of his childhood. Demian has opened his mind to something much greater. And though they stray apart, one more event, their Confirmation, brings them back together. This time Demian teaches him how to get what he wants by focusing his will, and to avoid being noticed in the same way.
    Sinclair is eventually sent off to school away from home. Here, once again, he gets involved with the wrong people and takes to drinking. Once again he is overcome with guilt and feeling like filth, disgusting. He dreads even going home for holidays, because the order and discipline of his parents is now something that's not part of his life. He nearly gets expelled from school.. And though he has a group to hang around with, he is dreadfully alone, without a friend, and heading quickly down the path of self-destruction.
    But once again, help steps in, this time when he sees a lovely lady, whom he didn't dare approach, but who became a model for goodness. He named her Beatrice, and begins to paint to express his feelings. The painting that satisfies him looks like a combination of Beatrice, Demian and himself, and he hangs it where he can meditate on it at bedtime, and is also now aware of important dreams. He stops drinking and turns his life around. And he learns about the god, Abraxus.
    The next person he meets that becomes his mentor is the organist, Pistorius. One day he hears music coming from a dark church that moves his soul, and he stops to listen. Thereafter he makes a point to go there just to listen. Usually he is unable to get into the building, but once he finds the door unlocked. Eventually, he and Pistorius become close, and it is this part of the book that I found so timely, and so very familiar, coinciding with the beliefs that are prevalent with many of us today.
    This short book, while easy to read, is complex in that there are no wasted words. Everything is important. I have left a lot out of this review, but am compelled to include a number of quotes that could have easily come from my own pen.

Sinclair says: "In no other way than through this practice do we discover so simply and easily how very creative we are, how much our soul always participates in the perpetual creation of the world. Rather, it's the same indivisible godhead that is active in us and in nature, and if the outside world were to perish, any one of us would be capable of reconstructing it, because mountain and river, tree and leaf, root and blossom, every form in nature, has a pre-image inside us; it originates from the soul, whose nature is eternal, whose nature we don't know but is generally revealed to us as the power of love and creativity."

Pistorius says: "You certainly don't consider all the bipeds running around the street to be human beings merely because they walk upright and carry their young for nine months?"

Pistorius says: "It remains to be seen whether we, you and I and a few others, will renew the world. But within ourselves we must renew it daily, otherwise we're meaningless"

Pistorius says: "The only reality is the one we have in us. That's why most people's lives are so unreal, because they consider the external images to be real and don't allow their own world within themselves to tell them anything. They can be happy that way. But when a person once knows the other way, he is no longer free to choose the paths that most people follow. Sinclair, the path of the majority is easy, ours is hard."

Sinclair says of Demian: "Everywhere, he said, togetherness and the herd instinct were prevalent, but freedom and love were nowhere to be found. All that sense of community, from student societies and glee clubs all the way up to national states, was a compulsive form, it was a community based on anxiety, on fear, on confusion, and was inwardly rotten, old, and close to collapse."

Demian says: "It will show clearly just how worthless today;s ideals are; there will be a clearing out of the Stone Age gods. This world, as it is now, wants to die, it wants to perish and it will."

Sinclair says: "We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever more perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with the herd."

    I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Though written nearly one hundred years ago, its time has come. And while much of what Hesse spoke of referred to the war and changes it would bring, after a century of worthless wars, we have evolved enough to know that these changes are much more vast than anything that could be accomplished by fighting. The collapse he speaks of is imminent, it is global, it is universal, and it will bring forth a new way of life beyond most people's comprehension.

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