Novel Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse (de) / by Wenzel / Translation
Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, May 2022
What is "Steppenwolf"?
Terensu's slogan: Not all milk is called Terensu. On the back cover of the book is an introduction: the inner monologue of "social fear". To paraphrase this slogan, not all "social fears" are called Steppenwolf.
The reason is that this "social fear" is not another social fear. The description of Steppenwolf in the first reading seems to see another self: extremely unsociable, feeling out of place with everything around him, living a life that can be lived and tepid but intolerable and unsatisfied, despising the living environment and accepting many deep-rooted ideas and behavior patterns, the soul is empty and desperate, on the verge of death, and the desire for destruction springs up in the chest...
Steppenwolf Harry is my confidant, someone who can look in the mirror at each other, despite being far away in time and space. This feeling is like a star suddenly flickering in the dark night sky, but it can still give comfort to the unaccompanied traveler: I am not alone.
However, the more I read, the sadder I realized that I was not the same as Steppenwolf. Depending on the degree of physical and mental liberation, Steppenwolf is divided into three types:
- Break through the shackles of small citizens and completely liberate your body and mind
- Imprisoned among the small citizens, completely trapped physically and mentally
- The body is limited to the small citizens, but the heart is free
What kind of group are the small citizens?
The little citizens will never turn their backs on themselves, they will not give themselves, they will neither indulge nor lust, they will never become martyrs, they will never allow themselves to degenerate— contrary to the saints and the indulgents, their ideal is not to devote themselves to themselves, but to maintain their existence. Their efforts are neither for any holy purpose nor for the fulfillment of its opposite. It is intolerable for them to give unconditionally, they do want to serve God, but at the same time they want to indulge; They really want to be virtuous people, but at the same time they want to have a little bit of beauty and comfort in the world. In short, they tried to settle in the middle ground between the two extremes, staying in a mild and satisfactory area without storms.
The small citizens are a group that puts the safety and security of survival first, and for this reason, they do not hesitate to sacrifice the purity and ups and downs of emotions, know the middle way, and do not go to extremes in everything. Steppenwolf is a group that splits off from the small citizens, and strong emotional impulses drive them to try to break through the shackles of the small citizens. Privately, I think that the happiness of the small citizens is much stronger than that of Steppenwolf, because they are logically self-consistent.
I was a wall-rider who mistook me for Steppenwolf, probing the edge of steppenwolf circles, and retracting my feet after witnessing their immense loneliness and pain. Unlike steppenwolf, the second type of steppenwolf, which is "imprisoned among small citizens and completely trapped physically and mentally", they subjectively want to break through the shackles, and objectively fail to break through "due to some weakness or inertia at the same time". And my heart is still hovering between wanting and not wanting to decide.
Cracking the Steppenwolf dilemma: Embracing the Diversity of the Self
The entire book can be broken down into three parts:
- The Publisher's Preface describes steppenwolf's external morphological manifestations from the perspective of a bystander;
- The booklet "Steppenwolf Research – Madmen Only" theoretically dissects the specific conditions of Steppenwolf, especially the spiritual world;
- The remaining Harry's story serves as a case study, vividly explaining the theories in the pamphlet.
It is worth noting that Hesse did not stop at the image description of Steppenwolf, and after a comprehensive analysis of this image full of contradictions, tears and pulls, he devoted himself to solving the plight of this group, and finally gave what he thought was feasible to crack: the pluralism of the self.
People always seek the identity of personality, so when Harry discovers the duality of humanity and wolf nature in him, he falls into the pain of cognitive dissonance. Hesse opposed both identity and duality:
Harry as a person is not a combination of two elements, but is composed of hundreds or thousands of elements working together. His life (like everyone's life) oscillates not only back and forth between the poles, as between desire and spirit, or between saints and wandering skeletons, but between thousands and countless poles.
Hesse criticized Harry's dichotomy of self-knowledge as being simple and crude, "human life is not as simple as we think, nor as crude as our poor idiotic language suggests." Steppenwolf is trapped in the dual existence of human nature and wolf nature, which is inevitable for mediocre people to disturb themselves, and the richness and pluralism of "self" are far more than three or two elements and nature.
Realizing that the "self" is a complex existence, accepting it without clinging to it, reconciling it with humor, and finally killing the Steppenwolf is the solution Harry learned after moving through various doors and experiencing various experiences in the magic theater, and it is also the result of Hesse's exploration of himself.