Summary
Harry’s immersion in the world of dancing, drink, nightclubs,
and restaurants is accompanied by what he calls a “disintegration
of the personality.” In keeping with the principles set out in the
Treatise, Harry starts to see himself as a composite of thousands
of other souls. This disintegration is very painful, especially
when these selves jar and come into conflict, which makes Harry
feel that he is defiling everything he has held sacred in his life.
At the same time, though, Harry is able to see for the first time
the blind hypocrisy of his former life. He has been in his own way
just as pompous and one-sided as the portrait of Goethe he earlier
condemned.
Harry spends a considerable amount of time in the company
of Pablo. He tells Pablo about his musical theories, but the response
he receives is always a quiet, smiling indifference, which frustrates
him. When Harry is particularly annoyed by one such exchange, Pablo offers
him a pinch from his gold snuffbox, and Harry sniffs a cocaine-laced
powder. One day, Harry finally manages to engage Pablo in a discussion,
but Pablo responds to all of Harry’s theoretical discourse by saying
that music has nothing to do with good taste, right, wrong, or education.
Instead, music is about creating as much, as well, and as intensely
as possible. Harry tries to defend higher, spiritual music, but
he cannot argue against Pablo’s firm belief that music is made first
and foremost to give pleasure.
One night, Harry is feeling particularly upset about
his newfound hedonism. He is practically on the verge of cursing
Hermine and going back to his original plan to commit suicide. However, when
he enters his room he finds that the beautiful Maria is lying in his
bed. Maria has arrived at Hermine’s request, and Hermine wants Harry
to make love to Maria. That night, Harry sleeps with Maria.
Rather than feeling that Maria defiles his spirituality,
Harry finds that she is its “worthy fulfillment.” The next day,
he rents a room in a nearby neighborhood for their amorous meetings.
Even though Harry is not Maria’s only lover, he is drunk with the
sensual delights she provides. Being with her is the first time
since his downfall that he has been excited about his life. Through
the feeling Maria kindles in him, and through all the sensual arts
she teaches him, Harry recalls all the romantic affairs of his life,
as well as all the friendships. He realizes that these experiences
constitute his life’s wealth.
Harry learns more about Maria and Hermine’s life of champagne,
drugs, and wealthy men. He also learns about the accoutrements of
love affairs and about the small gifts that lovers give each other.
Like Hermine, Maria is infatuated with the young Pablo, who is apparently
another of her lovers. In fact, at one point Pablo suggests that
the three of them have an ménage à trois, but Harry vigorously objects.
Another time, Pablo asks Harry for money, suggesting, to Harry’s
horror, that he take that night with Maria in exchange.
In the three weeks preceding the annual Fancy Dress Ball
organized by the Society of Artists, Harry continues to feel connected
to Hermine, who understands him well. On the day before the ball,
she comes to his apartment, and they have a long, intense talk.
Harry explains that although he has been happy with Maria, he does
not feel right about the happiness because it does not lead anywhere
and because he is not made for such contentment. What Harry really wants
is to suffer beautifully and long for death. Hermine understands
Harry and explains that for him, as for her, life has not asked the
great sacrifices and achievements they are both prepared to make.
Instead it has offered a gaudy whirl of stupid, ephemeral tricks.
Hermine says that the two of them are among those who suffer because
they have a “dimension too many,” and she speaks of a kingdom of
“eternity” that exists after death, a kingdom to which all of the
geniuses and saints and heroes of history belong.
Inspired by Hermine’s words, Harry writes a poem about
the perfect, unchanging “immortals.” He is amazed that Hermine has managed
to understand his deepest, half-conscious sentiments so well. He
feels that she understands him almost too well. Harry even begins
to suspect that she has somehow drawn the feelings out of him. He
spends the night before the ball with Maria, who has a premonition
that this is the last time they will be together. Harry suspects
that Hermine will claim him at the ball.
Analysis
As the Treatise has claimed, Harry gradually begins to
discover that he has many souls or identities. During the period
when Hermine teaches him to dance and Maria teaches him to love,
Harry develops the various personalities that lie latent within
each person. He himself begins to see his so-called soul as an ever-growing
collection of souls. Harry’s increasing intimacy with Pablo and
Maria in the external world is symbolic of the internal development
he is undergoing, creating multiple internal parts of himself. Yet
Harry senses that this proliferation is not an end in itself: the
generation of Harry’s many different parts has accomplished the
job of breaking the stereotype of the Steppenwolf. However, it remains
to be seen how the Steppenwolf is taught to accept all of these
parts, and how it is taught to laugh.
One way to interpret Steppenwolf is
to dismiss the magic qualities of its odd happenings and credit
them instead to the heated, insistent imagination of a desperate,
teetering, aging man. Harry’s response to Maria is sudden and total;
he had previously been so focused on books and music that sexual
experience is completely foreign and mysterious to him. The account
of Harry’s love affair with Maria can come across as sincere and
touching, but it can also seem terribly embarrassing. When they
dance and make love, Harry is very conscious and shy about the fact
that he is an old man, and he cannot imagine why a beautiful girl
like Maria would choose to have anything to do with him. Harry’s
concern suggests the possibility that all of his distaste for society
is a result of his insecurity about his age. After all, until Harry
meets Hermine, the story of the Steppenwolf is just a document of
social debacle after social debacle.
Hesse likely intends the reader to sympathize with Harry’s
infatuation, however. Deeply influenced by Asian philosophy, Hesse’s brand
of mystical symbolism embraced both spiritual and physical aspects
of human life. Maria is a total incarnation of the physical, sensual
sphere. Some critics have pointed out the reductive simplicity of
this opposition between physical and spiritual life, accusing Hesse
of chauvinism for using a woman as a representative of anti-intellectualism.
Despite Hesse’s best attempts to credit Maria with being wise in
her own ways—the ways of love—she often comes across as false and
forced. As a result, when Hermine discusses the suffering that belongs
to those with “a dimension too many,” we are left with the uncomfortable
suspicion that she lacks an adequate understanding of the true complexities
of other people. Whatever the case, we can see that by the Fancy
Dress Ball Harry has made up his mind: the only two options for
people like him are a life of beautiful suffering or a noble, paradoxically
immortal death.
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