Demian quotes

My story is not pleasant, it is not sweet and harmonious like the fictitious stories. It smacks of nonsense and perplexity, of madness and dreams, like the lives of all men who do not wish to delude themselves any longer.

The life of everyone is a way to himself, the search for a road, the indication of a path.

No man has ever yet attained to self-realization; yet he strives thereafter, one ploddingly, another with less effort, each as best he can. Each one carries the remains of his birth, slime and eggshells of a primeval world, with him to the end.

But everyone is a projection of nature into manhood. To us all the same origin is common, our mothers—we all come out of the womb. But each of us—an experiment, one of nature’s litter, strives after his own ends.

We can understand one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.

I sense again the atmosphere of cosy warmth, of rabbits and servant-girls, of household remedies and dried fruit.

Two worlds passed there one through the other. From two poles came forth day and night.

The one world was my home, but it was even narrower than that, for it really comprised only my parents. This world was for the most part very well known to me; it meant mother and father, love and severity, good example and school.

People were afraid of Cain’s children, they had a ‘sign.’ And so they explained the sign not as it really was, a distinction, but as the contrary. The fellows with this sign were said to be peculiar, and they were courageous as well.

People with courage and character are always called peculiar by other people.

That a race of fearless and peculiar men should rove about was very embarrassing.

This thought led me to no definite conclusion.

A stone had fallen into the well, and the well was my young soul.

And this business with Cain, the murder and the sign, was for a long, a very long, time the point from which my seekings after knowledge, my doubts and my criticisms took their departure.

in reality it was due to nothing else than fear. For Demian would have required more of me than did my parents, much more. By stimulation and exhortation, by scorn and irony he would have tried to make me more independent.

Alas, I know that today: nothing in the world is so distasteful to man as to go the way which leads him to himself!

And yet, about half a year later, I could not resist the temptation to ask my father while we were out for a walk, what was to be made of the fact that many people declared Cain to be better than Abel.

And for very many this pitfall is fatal.

They cling their whole life long painfully to the irrevocable past, to the dream of a lost paradise, the worst and most deadly of all dreams.

But to return to the story. The sensation and dream pictures in which the close of childhood presented itself to me are not important enough to be described.

“I see that you think more than you can express. But if that is so, then you also know that you have never lived in experience all that you have thought, and that is not good.

Only the thought that we live through in experience has any value.

You knew that your ‘world of sanction’ was simply one-half of the world, and yet you tried to suppress the other half in you, as do the parsons and teachers. You will not succeed. No one succeeds who has once began to think.”

He has an easy time of it. Others realize they carry laws in themselves. For them things are forbidden which every man of honor does daily. On the other hand things are permitted them which are otherwise taboo.

Everyone must stand up for himself.

”

“We talk too much,” he said with unwonted gravity. “Wise speeches have no value at all, absolutely none. You only escape from yourself. To escape from yourself is a sin.

You should be able to creep right into yourself, like a tortoise.

”

The leaves fall thus from a tree in autumn, the tree feels it not, rain drips on it, sun comes and frost, and the life in it recedes slowly into the narrowest and most inward recess.

The tree is not dying. It is waiting.

It was decided that after the holidays I should go to another school, leaving home for the first time.

I had lived for so long a blind, dull existence, for so long had my heart been silent, impoverished and shut up, that even this self-accusation, this self-aversion, this entirely dreadful feeling was welcome.

At least it was feeling; flowers were flaring up, emotion was quivering therein.

I experienced in the midst of my misery a confused sensation of liberation, of the approach of spring.

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world.

Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

The bird flies to God. The name of the god is Abraxas.”

Perhaps I should have to seek and seek for years, and would make nothing of myself, would attain no end. Perhaps I should attain an end, but it might be wicked, dangerous, terrible.

I wanted only to try to live in obedience to the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

I often made the attempt to paint the powerful love-figure of my dream. But I never succeeded. If I had been successful I would have sent the picture to Demian. Where was he? I knew not.

At that time I found a peculiar refuge—by “chance,” as one says. But really such happenings cannot be attributed to chance.

When a person is in need of something, and the necessary happens, this is not due to chance but to himself; his own desire leads him compellingly to the object of which he stands in need.

Two or three times during my wanderings through the streets I had heard the strains of an organ coming from a little church in the suburbs, without, however, stopping to listen.

The man you would like to kill is never really Mr. So-and-So, that is really only a disguise.

When we hate a man, we hate in him something which resides in us ourselves. What is not in us does not move us.

”

“The things we see,” said Pistorius softly, “are the same things which are in us.

There is no reality except that which we have in ourselves.

For that reason most people live so unreally, because they hold the impressions of the outside world for real, and their own world in themselves never enters into their consideration. You can be happy like that.

“Tell me, then!” I encouraged him. “I know absolutely nothing of ghosts. I live in my dreams: that is what you have felt about me.

Other people live in dreams as well, but not in their own, that is the difference.

”

I led the boy on my arm a little way. I heard my own voice saying: “Now go home, and don’t say anything to anybody. You were on a false track, a false track! And we are not swine, as you think. We are men.

We make gods, and we wrestle with them, and they bless us.

”

But to no one is it permitted to choose his office for himself, and to discharge it as he likes. It was wrong to want new gods, it was entirely wrong to wish to give the world anything.

A man has absolutely no other duty than this: to seek himself, to grope his own way forward, no matter whither it leads.

That thought impressed itself deeply on me; that was the fruit of this new event for me. Often had I pictured the future.

with which they had felt at home. They had examples or ideals.

He who will fulfill his destiny has neither examples nor ideals, he has nothing dear to him, nothing to comfort him.

And one really ought to go this way. People like you and I are certainly very lonely, but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of revolting, of wanting the unusual.

No, one could not think beyond that. But one could dream of it, could sense it, could anticipate it. A few times I realized something of this, in a very quiet hour.

Then I looked straight into the open, staring eyes of my fate.

They could have been full of wisdom, or full of madness, they could be full of love or full of wickedness, it was all one. One was to choose nothing of all that;

Then I looked straight into the open, staring eyes of my fate. They could have been full of wisdom, or full of madness, they could be full of love or full of wickedness, it was all one.

One was to choose nothing of all that; one was to want nothing, one was only to want oneself, one’s destiny.

In that way had Pistorius served me, for a time, as guide.

I stood at a street corner and listened. From two cafés the flood of song rolled forth into the night.

Everywhere community, everywhere this huddling together, everywhere this unloading of the burden of destiny, this flight into the warm proximity of the herd!

Two men passed me by slowly. I caught a phrase of their conversation.

“Well, I don’t suppose it’s any better with you in Japan.

People who do not follow the herd are everywhere rare.

There are a few here, too.”

But what we see blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time the world will be remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds.

Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another⁠—the masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the intellectuals for theirs!

And why are they afraid? One is only afraid when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who are afraid of the unknown in themselves!

What is now called community is merely a formation of herds. Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another—the masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the intellectuals for theirs! And why are they afraid?

One is only afraid when one is not at one with oneself.

They are afraid because they have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who are afraid of the unknown in themselves!

They all feel that the laws of their life no longer hold good, that they are living according to outworn commandments. Neither their religion nor their morals conform to our needs. For a hundred years and more Europe has simply studied and built factories.

They know exactly how many grams of powder it takes to kill a man, but they do not know how to pray to God.

They have no idea how to amuse themselves, even for an hour. Look at these students drinking in their tavern! Or take any place of amusement where rich people go! Hopeless! My dear Sinclair, no cheerfulness, no serenity can come of all that.

Everywhere the same!

Everywhere they sought “liberty” and “happiness” behind them, in the past, for fear of being reminded of their own responsibility, of being warned they were not striking out for themselves, but merely going the way of all the world.

Two or three years passed in drinking and jollification, and then they crept under the common shelter and became serious gentlemen in the service of the state.

I saw and felt the world around me changed: it was full of secret portent, expectant and solemn. Even the gently falling autumn rain was beautiful, full of the quiet, glad, serious music of a festal day.

For the first time the outer world was in tune with my inner world⁠—then it is a feast-day for the soul, then living is worth while!

No house, no shop window, no face in the street disturbed me. Everything was as it had to be, but did not wear the empty features of every day and of the habitual.

It was like expectant nature, standing full of awe to meet its fate. Thus, as a little boy, I used to see the world on the morning of a great feast-day, at Christmas or at Easter.

I had not known that this world could still be so beautiful.

I had been accustomed to living shut up in myself, and to content myself with the idea that my understanding for the outside world had been lost, that the loss of glistening colors was inevitably connected with the loss of childish vision.

She smiled in a motherly way.

“One never comes home,” she said gently. “But where friendly roads converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home.”

She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her. Her voice and her words were like those of her son, and yet quite different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured.

I had attained an end, I had reached a point of vantage on the way, from which the further road displayed itself, broad and lovely, leading on to lands of promise, shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of delight.

Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman’s existence in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence.

Whether she would be to me mother, mistress, goddess—what mattered it as long as she was present! As long as my way lay near to hers!

“

It is always hard, to be born.

You know, it is not without effort that the bird comes out of the egg. Look back and ask yourself: was the way then so hard?—only hard? Was it not beautiful as well? Could you have had one more beautiful, more easy?”

“

Yes, one must find one’s dream, then the way is easy. But there is no dream which endures for always.

Each sets a new one free, to none should one wish to cleave.”

Our task was to be, as it were, an island in the world, perhaps an example, in any case to proclaim that it was possible to live a different sort of life.

I, who had been isolated for so long, learned to what extent community of feeling is possible between people who have experienced complete loneliness.

I no longer desired to be back at the tables of the happy, at the feasts of the merry. I no longer felt envious or homesick when I saw others living in community.

Then our day will come, then we shall be needed, not as guides or new lawgivers—we shall not live to see the new laws—but rather as volunteers, as those who are ready to follow and to stand wherever fate shall call us.

Look, all men are ready to perform the incredible, when their ideals are threatened. But no one comes forward when a new ideal, a new, perhaps dangerous and uncanny impulse of spiritual growth declares itself.

We shall be of those few who are there, ready to go forward.

She noticed that immediately. Once, when I had stayed away for several days and had returned distraught, she took me aside and said: “You should not give yourself up to wishes in which you do not believe, I know what you wish.

You must give up these desires, or else surrender yourself to them completely.

If one day you are able to ask, convinced that your wishes will be fulfilled, then you will find satisfaction. But you wish, and repent again, and are afraid. You must overcome all that. I will tell you a fairytale.”

“Love must not beg,” she said, “nor demand either.

Love must have the force to be absolutely certain of itself.

Then it is attracted no longer, but attracts. Sinclair, I am attracting your love. As soon as you attract my love, I shall come. I do not want to make a present of myself. I want to be won.”

And instead of merely winning a woman, he had taken the whole world to his heart, and each star in the heaven glowed in him, and twinkling, communicated desire to his soul.

He had loved, and thereby had found himself. But most people love only to lose themselves thereby.

My whole life seemed to be contained in my love for Mother Eve. But every day she looked different.

Even now I know nothing more than that something big and terrible is approaching, which will concern me. Sinclair, we shall go through the experiences of which we have so often talked. The world is about to renew itself. It smacks of death.

Nothing new comes without death.

It is more terrible than I had thought.”

“Me? Naturally.

No one dreams of what does not concern him.

But it does not concern me alone, you are right. I distinguish tolerably well between the dreams which indicate agitation of my own soul, and the others, the rare ones, which bear on the fate of all humanity.

And now and then I was seized by a deep feeling of sadness, for I knew that this happiness could not last. I was not destined to breathe in the fullness of peace and comfort, I needed torment to spur me on.

I felt that one day I should wake up from these dreams of beautiful love-pictures to find myself standing once more alone, in the cold world of others, where for me there would be only loneliness and fighting, no peace, no community of spirit.

Then I yielded myself to the charms of Mother Eve’s presence. My feeling for her was now doubly tender. I was glad that my fate bore still these beautiful, tranquil features.

I stood tense, until fingers and feet became stiff with cold. I felt force was going out of me.

For a few seconds something seemed to take shape with me, something bright and cool; I had for a moment the sensation as if I carried a crystal in my heart, and I knew that was myself.

A cold chill pierced to my heart.