Steppenwolf quotes

I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain.

I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt; for however mercilessly he might annihilate institutions and persons in his talk he never spared himself.

It was always at himself first and foremost that he aimed the shaft, himself first and foremost whom he hated and despised.

But that is not the sentence I meant. Wait a moment, here I have it. This: ‘Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Is not that witty? Naturally, they won’t swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water.

And naturally they won’t think. They are made for life, not for thought.

Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.”

What an expression! However, custom did not only reconcile me to it, but soon I never thought of him by any other name; nor could I today hit on a better description of him.

A wolf of the Steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd, a more striking image could not be found for his shy loneliness, his savagery, his restlessness, his homesickness, his homelessness.

I was able once to observe him for a whole evening. It was at a Symphony concert, where to my surprise I found him seated near me. He did not see me. First some Handel was played, noble and lovely music.

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils.

Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilisation.

and in the thick warm air of a contented boredom and very welcome painlessness the nodding mandarin of a half-and-half god and the nodding middle-aged gentleman who sings his muffled psalm look as like each other as two peas.

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tiptoe.

But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea.

… perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads.

For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

It was in such a mood then that I finished this not intolerable and very ordinary day as dusk set in. I did not end it in a manner becoming a rather ailing man and go to bed tempted by a hot water bottle.

Reflecting thus, I walked on and on. Yes, even without the chamber-music and the friend. How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth!

Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it.

It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.

all our striving, all our culture, all our beliefs, all our joy and pleasure in life—already sick and soon to be buried there too.

Our whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but the indecipherable names on mouldering stones

; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretence of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heartfelt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more.

“Nothing in that.

Obeying is like eating and drinking. There’s nothing like it if you’ve been without it too long.

Isn’t it so, you’re glad to do as I tell you?”

“You make it easy to. Perhaps, my friend, I could tell you, too, what it is that’s waiting for you at home and what you dread so much. But you know that for yourself. We needn’t talk about it, eh? Silly business!

Either a man goes and hangs himself, and then he hangs sure enough, and he’ll have his reasons for it, or else he goes on living and then he has only living to bother himself with.

Simple enough.”

“Oh,” I cried, “if only it were so simple. I’ve bothered myself enough with life, God knows, and little use it has been to me.

To hang oneself is hard, perhaps. I don’t know. But to live is far, far harder. God, how hard it is!

”

“Fine views of life, you have.

You have always done the difficult and complicated things and the simple ones you haven’t even learnt.

No time, of course. More amusing things to do. Well, thank God, I’m not your mother. But to do as you do and then say you’ve tested life to the bottom and found nothing in it is going a bit too far.”

“

Oh, don’t make a song of your sufferings. You are no madman, Professor.

You’re not half mad enough to please me. It seems to me you’re much too clever in a silly way, just like a professor. Have another roll. You can tell me some more later.”

“You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend. You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice.

We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking.

Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don’t mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time.

It consists, I don’t mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old.

In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

”

So open your mouth. Oh, what a fright you are! There he goes, squinting round the room in case anyone sees him taking a bite from my fork. Don’t be afraid, you prodigal son, I won’t make a scandal.

But it’s a poor fellow who can’t take his pleasure without asking other people’s permission.

”

It might be the highest wisdom or the merest artlessness.

It is certain in any case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside and the light that plays on every passing moment.

Was I to believe that this happy child with her hearty appetite and the air of a gourmet was at the same time a victim of hysterical visions who wished to die?

You can’t help seeing that all of them are right. They’re never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves.

They don’t flatter and they don’t intrude. They don’t pretend.

They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don’t you agree?”

And of course one can be sad about it, but it isn’t any use. It is just the same as when a man is sad to think that one day, in spite of his utmost efforts to prevent it, he will inevitably die.

The war against death, dear Harry, is always a beautiful, noble and wonderful and glorious thing, and so, it follows, is the war against war. But it is always hopeless and quixotic too.

”

“Oh! how stiff you are! Just go straight ahead as if you were walking. There’s not the least need to exert yourself. Why, I should think you have made yourself positively hot, haven’t you? No, let’s rest five minutes!

Dancing, don’t you see, is every bit as easy as thinking, when you can do it, and much easier to learn.

Now you can understand why people won’t get the habit of thinking and prefer calling Herr Haller a traitor to his country and waiting quietly for the next war to come along.”

She told me that Pablo, after a conversation about me, had said that she must treat me very nicely, for I was so very unhappy. And when she asked what brought him to that conclusion, he said: “

Poor, poor fellow. Look at his eyes. Doesn’t know how to laugh.

”)

That is why we were drawn to one another and why we are brother and sister.

I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy.

Do you know that we are both children of the devil?”

“I like that very much,” cried Hermine. “In your case, for example, the spiritual part is very highly developed, and so you are very backward in all the little arts of living.

Harry, the thinker, is a hundred years old, but Harry, the dancer, is scarcely half a day old.

It’s he we want to bring on, and all his little brothers who are just as little and stupid and stunted as he is.”

I never talk about music. What reply, then, was I to make to your very able and just remarks? You were perfectly right in all you said. But, you see,

I am a musician, not a professor, and I don’t believe that, as regards music, there is the least point in being right.

Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that.”

My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness; it was bitter with the salt of all human things; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be proud of.

It had been for all its wretchedness a princely life.

Let the little way to death be as it might, the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It had purpose and character and turned not on trifles, but on the stars.

“I do want more.

I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it.

It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.”

“I have nothing against it. Oh, no, I love it. I’m grateful for it. It is as lovely as a sunny day in a wet summer. But I suspect that it can’t last. This happiness leads to nothing either.

It gives content, but content is no food for me.

It lulls the Steppenwolf to sleep and satiates him. But it is not a happiness to die for.”

Oh, no, I love it. I’m grateful for it. It is as lovely as a sunny day in a wet summer. But I suspect that it can’t last. This happiness leads to nothing either. It gives content, but content is no food for me.

It lulls the Steppenwolf to sleep and satiates him. But it is not a happiness to die for.

”

And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces.

Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death.

Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?”

And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been.

It was life and reality that were wrong.

It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a moneymaker, or to marry such a man for his money’s sake, …

You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today.

You have a dimension too many.

Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me.

You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours

—”

It has always been so and always will be.

Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.

”

“Then it isn’t fame.

Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters.

No, it isn’t fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself:

But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity.

In eternity there is no posterity.

”

There are many saints who at first were sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin and vice. You will laugh at me, but I often think that even my friend Pablo might be a saint in hiding.

Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.

”

For the first time I understood Goethe’s laughter, the laughter of the immortals.

It was a laughter without an object. It was simply light and lucidity.

It was that which is left over when a true man has passed through all the sufferings, vices, mistakes, passions and misunderstandings of men and got through to eternity and the world of space.

It was simply light and lucidity. It was that which is left over when a true man has passed through all the sufferings, vices, mistakes, passions and misunderstandings of men and got through to eternity and the world of space.

And eternity was nothing else than the redemption of time, its return to innocence, so to say, and its transformation again into space.

I went to meet Maria at the place where we usually dined. However, she had not arrived, and while I sat waiting at the table in the quiet and secluded restaurant, my thoughts still ran on the conversation I had had with Hermine.

Yes, it was there.

In this music there was a feeling as of time frozen into space, and above it there quivered a never-ending and superhuman serenity, an eternal, divine laughter.

Yes, and how well the aged Goethe of my dreams fitted in too! And suddenly I heard this fathomless laughter around me. I heard the immortals laughing. I sat entranced.

This modern man has energy and ability. He is healthy, cool and strenuous—a splendid type, and in the next war he will be a miracle of efficiency. But all that was no concern of mine.

I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned one either. I had escaped time altogether, and went my way, with death at my elbow and death as my resolve.

I had no objection to sentimentalities. I was glad and thankful to find a trace of anything like a feeling still remaining in my burnt-out heart.

So I let my memories of the old tavern and my attachment to the solid wooden chairs and the smell of smoke and wine and the air of use and wont and warmth and homeliness that the place had carry me away.

There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness in their very tone.

The hard seat was dear to me, and so was the peasant glass and the cool racy taste of the Elsasser and my intimacy with all and everything in this room, and the faces of the bent and dreaming drinkers, those disillusioned ones, whose brother …

… and coma and once more plays its lively part, so did I at this jerk of the magic thread throw myself with the elasticity and eagerness of youth into the tumult from which I had just retreated in the listlessness and weariness of elderly years.

Never did sinner show more haste to get to hell.

A moment before my patent-leather shoes had galled me, the heavily scented air disgusted me, and the heat undone me. Now on my winged feet I nimbly one-stepped through every room on the way to hell. The very air had a charm.

A Spanish dancing girl flung herself into my arms: “Dance with me!” “Can’t,” said I.

“I’m bound for hell. But I’ll gladly take a kiss with me.”

The red mouth beneath the mask met mine and with the kiss I recognised Maria. I caught her tight in my arms and like a June rose bloomed her full lips. By this time we were dancing, our lips still joined.

I was myself no longer.

My personality was dissolved in the intoxication of the festivity like salt in water.

I danced with this woman or that, but it was not only the one I had in my arms and whose hair brushed my face that belonged to me.

You know, of course, where this other world lies hidden. It is the world of your own soul that you seek. Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.

I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture-gallery but your own soul.

All I can give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key. I help you to make your own world visible. That is all.”

“You will now extinguish this superfluous reflection, my dear friend. That is all that is necessary. To do so, it will suffice that you greet it, if your mood permits, with a hearty laugh.

You are here in a school of humour. You are to learn to laugh.

Now, true humour begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously.”

That is all that is necessary. To do so, it will suffice that you greet it, if your mood permits, with a hearty laugh. You are here in a school of humour. You are to learn to laugh.

Now, true humour begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously.

”

“

What was normal yesterday is no longer normal today, Mr. Attorney-General.

We are of the opinion that whatever speed a motorcar travels is too great. We are destroying all motorcars and all other machines also.”

“Quite true.

Only we do not kill from duty, but pleasure, or much more, rather, from displeasure and despair of the world.

For this reason we find a certain amusement in killing people. Has it never amused you?”

I would rather have done the opposite. But granting that the conception of duty is no longer known to me, I still know the conception of guilt—perhaps they are the same thing.

In so far as a mother bore me, I am guilty. I am condemned to live.

I am obliged to belong to a State, to serve as a soldier, to kill and to pay taxes for armaments.

“

The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you.

It is also known to you that man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science has invented the name Schizomania for it.

“This is the art of life,” he said dreamily. “You may yourself as an artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may complicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands.

Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy.

Even learned men have come to a partial recognition of this, as may be gathered, for example, from Prince Wunderhorn, that enchanting book, in which the industry and pains of a man of learning, with the assistance of the genius of a number of madmen …

Here, take your little pieces away with you. The game will often give you pleasure. The piece that today grew to the proportions of an intolerable bugbear, you will degrade tomorrow to a mere lay figure.

The luckless Cinderella will in the next game be the princess.

I wish you much pleasure, my dear sir.”

How silly and childish of me, a humanely minded opponent of war though I was, to have been horrified by those pictures.

Today I knew that no tamer of beasts, no General, no insane person could hatch a thought or a picture in his brain that I could not match myself with one every bit as frightful, every bit as savage and wicked, as crude and stupid.

With an immense relief I remembered the notice I had seen on first entering the theatre, the one that the nice boy had stormed so furiously—

And now I knew that she had reached her home and was going from room to room, and I lay up there far away from her; but there was a bond between her and me.

The same current ran in both of us and a secret passed to and fro.

We saw each other again here and there all through this spring, sometimes on the cliffs, sometimes over the garden hedge; and when the elder began to bloom we gave each other the first shy kiss.

Each gave me what she alone had to give and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take. Much love, much happiness, much indulgence, and much bewilderment, too, and suffering fell to my share.

All the love that I had missed in my life bloomed magically in my garden during this hour of dreams.

There were chaste and tender blooms, garish ones that blazed, dark ones swiftly fading. There were flaring lust, inward reverie, glowing melancholy, anguished dying, radiant birth.

“Yes, that is always the way.

Such contrasts, seen from a little distance, always tend to show their increasing similarity.

Thick orchestration was in any case neither Wagner’s nor Brahms’ personal failing. It was a fault of their time.”

“Of course not.

They cannot help it either that Adam ate the apple. But they have to pay for it all the same.

”

“Certainly.

Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One’s born and at once one is guilty.

You must have had a remarkable sort of religious education if you did not know that.”

And suppose he had lost his pretty chessmen again, still he had a fine blade in his pocket.

On then, old Harry, old weary loon.

Bah, the devil—how bitter the taste of life! I spat at Harry in the looking-glass. I gave him a kick and kicked him to splinters. I walked slowly along the echoing corridor, carefully scanning the doors that had held out so many glowing promises.

But that was far behind, years, centuries behind. He had grown older. He had learnt to dance. He had visited the magic theatre. He had heard Mozart laugh. Dancing and women and knives had no more terrors for him.

Even those who have average gifts, given a few hundred years, come to maturity.

I looked for a long time at Harry in the looking-glass.