2012.06.22
THE STEPPENWOLF NOTESI first read Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf (originally published in Berlin, Germany as Der Steppenwolf (The Steppenwolf) in 1927) when I was a young man – back in the late 80′s. This is kind of an autobiographical novel Hesse wrote when he was 50.
Now I am 45, so I want to experience the novel again, to better understand the workings of my own psyche (and to explore my own character development as a "personality" - whatever the hell that is). I want to understand my outsider status better. I want to explore how I have come to live in this self-imposed exile from the status quo, how I have become such a Natural Rebel and Original Thinker, how I have come to hate mass-minded team-player drone culture so vehemently. And so I am taking some notes this time through, a project I can continue even were I set-up and railroaded into a cage by The Establishment or its Slave Patrol.
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1. It seems to me that Hesse writes the Preface from the perspective of a law-abiding obedient middle-class drone. He is suspicious of Harry Haller’s (The Steppenwolf’s) fear of the police, suspicious/judgmental of the empty wine bottles around the rooms HH rents from his mother, the cigar ashes everywhere, the books scattered about – even on the floor, his coming home in the middle of the night drunk.
2. And yet, he also has a genuine respect for HH:
"He gave at the very first glance the impression of a significant, an uncommon, and unusually gifted man. His face was intellectual, and the abnormally delicate and mobile play of his features reflected a soul of extremely emotional and unusually delicate sensibility."
3. Where the two attended a lecture together, and the Steppenwolf (Harry Haller) threw him a quick look – an unforgettable and frightful look which spoke volumes! a
hopelessly sad look; "… the Steppenwolf’s look pierced our whole epoch, its whole overwrought activity, the whole surge and strife, the whole vanity, the whole superficial play of a shallow, opinionated intellectuality."
The look said: "See what monkeys we are! Look, such is man!"
All progress —> a monkey’s trick!4. This note reminds me of how, as a teenager, no, even as a child, I had committed myself to experiencing reality to the dregs, not to be distracted, not to be servile to idiotic norms, even when this meant facing down the herd, the family, the entire society, the masses: drones, robots, slaves, dupes, suckers, ass-kissers, all gorts who did not question the status quo and those who said, "This is just the way it is."
"I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself a boundless and frightful capacity for pain."
By the age of 45, I have now at least come to understand what it is about my personality that disturbs some people: it is the sheer force of my intellect, the fact that I have done more serious thinking than most.
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2019.12.23
Most likely due to living difficulties, I was not able to type up the remaining notes.
They can be found in
H-155 (2012) : Brainstorms 2 { p29-31: The Steppenwolf Notes (1-4);
p33-37: The Steppenwolf Notes (5-9);
p47: The Steppenwolf Notes (10);
p49-51: The Steppenwolf Notes (11-13);
p54: The Steppenwolf Notes (14-15);
}_______________________________________
FOR MADMEN ONLY:
see
Cliffs notes if you want "in your face" statements about Harry Hallar being a "suicidal man."