Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

Let’s get something straight from the off, it’s pronounced Hess-uh, not Hess. Rudolph Hess was a Nazi gimboid. Hermann Hesse was a genius of the written word in a psychological development of the individual protagonist across the course of a novel sort of way. Rollicking good novels, too. You should try Siddhartha. But also read Steppenwolf as it has a band named after it and everything.

Published in 1927, Steppenwolf is as close to autobiography as Hesse ever got. If you discount the collected essays and personal works gathered together after his death as ‘Autobiographical Writings’ of course.

The novel tells the story of Harry Haller (both names begin with H, isn’t that coincidental?) who is a grumpy middle aged type living somewhere in the decadent ruination of Weimar Republic era Germany. Haller fears himself schizophrenic because he must somehow exist within a society whose values he does not truly share and whose customs he finds perplexing at best, ugly and debasing at worst.

Only it’s kind of three books. Hesse deploys the Gothic artifice of concealing several narrative voices within a single tract. Bram Stoker over-complicates Dracula with various letters inside the text; Hesse expands Steppenwolf by preceding Haller’s main text with a preface by Haller’s landlady’s nephew who claims to have discovered the manuscript after Haller’s disappearance. And to keep the reader on their toes there is also another manuscript contained within Haller’s account of his life, a treatise of The Steppenwolf. The treatise seems to confirm Haller’s concerns about his schizophrenia while also allowing Hesse to have a good old rant about the failings and fallacies of bourgeois culture.

But it’s not all portmanteau texts and up yours capitalism. Oh no, there is Hermine, an alluring woman Haller falls for, a mysterious magic theatre marked ‘For Madmen Only’ and a shamanic weirdo called Pablo who with Hermine prepares Haller to enter the magic theatre.

Critics can often focus on the personal crisis of Haller, arguing that it reflects both the decay of the German economy during the Weimar years and the cultural devastation of the National Socialist regime which followed. Which overlooks several key factors, most pertinent of which is the fact that at the time of Steppenwolf’s publication a certain Adolf Hitler was barred from public speaking and the Nazis would not gain a real foothold within the German political psyche until after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

What those same critics have also failed to recognise is that Steppenwolf is not a tale of tragedy but of triumph. Haller’s entry into the magic theatre at the end sees him apparently descend into the sort of fragmentary madness he has feared throughout his account of events. Yet, as Hesse himself was to adamantly argue time and again, the letting go of all cultural and personal expectations that takes place during Haller’s experiences in the magic theatre symbolises transcendence and liberation, not madness and catastrophe.

Or, it’s a freaky, psychedelic nonsense of a book, beloved by hippies and unwashed counterculture personages who simply refuse to get a haircut and a proper job. My hair is really rather short and this is one of my forever all-time must read again and again books. Hmm, shot that 60s stereotype down in flames eh. What? My job? Er, I’m a reality tester for the Foundation of Futurekind. Yes I am. Don’t bother with the white coat brigade, they’ll only liberate me from the shackles of your still bourgeois, still frightened, still life, stilton in a panini, Waitrose-scented social manacles.

I’m Spartacus. I mean Steppenwolf. And so’s my non-existent wife.