Without having seen my friend again, I traveled at the end of the
holidays to St. ----. Both my parents came with me, and handed me over
with all possible care to the protection of a master of the school, in
whose house I was to board. They would have been numb with horror, had
they only known to what sort of fate they were leaving me.
It still hung in the balance whether I should become with time a good
son and a useful citizen, or whether my nature would break out in other
directions. My last attempt to be happy under the roof of my father’s
house and the spirit prevailing there had lasted for a considerable
period, and at times had almost succeeded, only in the end to fail
completely.
The curious emptiness and isolation which I had begun to feel for
the first time in the holidays after my confirmation (how I learned
to know it later, this emptiness, this thin atmosphere) did not pass
immediately. The parting from home was for me peculiarly easy. I was
really rather ashamed of not being sadder--my sisters wept without
reason, I could not. I was astonished at myself. I had always been
an emotional child, and at bottom, tolerably good. Now I was quite
changed. I was completely indifferent towards the outside world. For
days together my sole occupation was hearkening to my inner self,
listening to the flood of dark, forbidden instincts which roared
subterraneously within me. I had grown very quickly in that last
half-year, and appeared lanky, thin and immature. The amiability of
boyhood had completely disappeared from my character; I realized myself
that it was impossible to like me thus, and I by no means loved myself.
I had often a great longing for Max Demian; on the other hand, I hated
him not seldom, and looked upon him as responsible for the moral
impoverishment of my life, to which I resigned myself as to a sort of
nasty disease.
In the beginning I was neither liked nor respected in our school
boarding house. First they ragged me, then kept out of my way, looking
upon me as a rotter and an eccentric character; I was pleased with
myself and I even overplayed my part, withdrawing into my solitary
self, growling occasional cynicisms. Superficially I appeared to
despise the world in most manly fashion, whereas in reality I was
secretly consumed by melancholy and despair. In school I could fall
back on a knowledge amassed at home. The form I was in was not so
advanced as the same form in the school I had just left, and so I
acquired the habit of despising my school contemporaries, regarding
them as mere children.
This attitude lasted a year and longer. My first holiday visits at home
brought no change, I went gladly away again.
It was in the beginning of November. I had formed the habit of taking
short, meditative walks in all kinds of weather, during which I often
experienced a sort of joy, a joy full of melancholy, contempt of the
world and contempt of self. I was sauntering thus one evening through
the damp, foggy twilight in a suburb of the town. The broad drive of a
public park stood completely deserted, inviting me to enter. The road
lay thick with fallen leaves, into which I dug voluptuously with my
feet. It smelt damp and bitter; in the distance the trees stood up tall
and shadowy, ghostlike in the fog.
At the end of the drive I stood still and undecided, staring into the
black foliage, scenting eagerly the damp odor of decomposition and
death, which seemed to be in harmony with my own mood. Oh, how insipid
life tasted!
A man, with the collar of his raincoat blowing about him, came out of a
side path. I was just going on when he called to me.
“Hello, Sinclair!”
It happened to be Alphonse Beck, the senior boy of the house. I was
always glad to see him and had nothing against him, except that he
always treated me as he did all the younger boys, in an ironical and
grandfatherly manner. He passed for being as strong as a bear, was
said to have great influence on the house master, and was the hero of
many school stories.
“What are you doing here?” he asked affably, in the tone the seniors
always used when they condescended on occasion to talk to us.
“Composing verse, I bet?”
“Shouldn’t dream of it,” I disclaimed gruffly.
He laughed, came up to me, and we chatted together in a manner to which
I had not been accustomed for some time past.
“You needn’t be afraid, Sinclair, that I shouldn’t understand. I know
the feeling, when one goes for a walk on a foggy evening--the thoughts
autumn inspires in one. And one writes poetry about dying nature, of
course, and spent youth; which is very much like it. Read Heinrich
Heine?”
“I am not so sentimental,” I said in self-defense.
“Oh, all right. But in this weather, I think, it does a man good to
find a quiet place where one can take a glass of wine or something. Are
you coming with me for a bit? I happen to be quite alone. Or wouldn’t
you care to? I wouldn’t like to lead you astray, old man, if you are
one of those model boys.”
A little while after we sat clinking our thick glasses in a little
tavern in the suburbs, drinking wine of a doubtful quality. At first
I wasn’t much pleased, still it was rather a novelty for me. But
unaccustomed to wine, I soon became talkative. It was as if a window
had been flung open within me, and the world shining in--for how long,
how terribly long, had I not eased my heart by talking. I gave full
play to my imagination, and once started, I related the story of Cain
and Abel.
Beck listened to me with pleasure--someone at last, to whom I was
giving something! He clapped me on the shoulder, told me I was
the devil of a good fellow and a clever rascal. How I reveled in
communicating my opinions, as I relieved myself of all the pent-up
thought of the past months! My heart swelled with pride at finding my
talents recognized by someone older than I was. When he called me a
clever rascal the effect was like a sweet, strong wine running through
me. The world lit up in new colors, thoughts came to me as from a
hundred sources, wit and fire blazed up in me. We spoke of masters and
schoolfellows, and I thought we understood one another wonderfully
well. We talked of Greeks and of pagans, and Beck wished absolutely
to draw me out on the subject of women. But on this point I could not
converse. I had no experience, nothing to relate. True, all that I
had felt and imagined was burning within me, but I could not impart
my thoughts, not even under the influence of wine. Beck knew much
more about girls, and I listened to his tales with glowing eyes. The
things I heard were unbelievable. What I should never have conceived
to be possible entered the sphere of commonplace reality and seemed
self-evident. Alphonse Beck, who was perhaps eighteen years old, was
already a man of experiences. Among other things, he told me that
girls liked boys to play the gallant with them, but in general were
too frightened to go any further. You could hope for more success with
women. Women were much cleverer. For instance, there was Mrs. Jaggelt,
who sold pencils and copybooks, who was much easier to deal with. All
that had happened behind the counter in her shop was unprintable in any
book.
I sat on captivated; my head was swimming. To be sure, I could not
exactly have loved Mrs. Jaggelt, but still, it was unheard of. It
seemed as if things happened, at least to older people, of which I had
never dreamed. There was a false ring about it, to be sure, everything
seemed more trivial and commonplace, and did not coincide with my own
ideas about love, but still, it was reality, it was love and adventure,
someone sat next to me who had lived it in experience, to whom it
seemed a matter of course.
Our conversation had reached a lower level, had deteriorated. I was
no longer a clever little fellow, I was just a mere boy listening
to a man. But even then--in comparison with what my life had been
for months and months, this was delicious, this was heaven. Besides,
as I gradually began to realize, all this was forbidden, absolutely
forbidden, everything from sitting in a public house, down to the
subject of our conversation. In any case, I thought I was showing
spirit; I was in revolt.
I can recollect that night with the greatest clearness. We both of us
wended our way home at a late hour under the dimly burning gas lamps
through the cool, damp night, and for the first time in my life I was
drunk. It was not agreeable, it was in the highest degree unpleasant,
but there was a sort of charm about it, a sweetness--it smacked of
orgy and revolt, of spirit and life. Beck bravely took me in hand, and
although he grumbled at me as being a bloody novice, he half carried,
half dragged me home, where, by good fortune, he was able to smuggle us
both through a window which stood open on the ground floor.
But a maddening pang accompanied the sobering up as I painfully awoke
after a short heavy sleep. I sat up in bed and saw that I was still
wearing my shirt. My clothes and shoes lay round about on the floor,
smelling of tobacco and vomit. And between headache, nausea and a
maddening thirst, a picture came before my mind on which I had not
set eyes for many a long day. I saw my home, the house where dwelt my
parents. I saw father and mother, my sisters and the garden. I saw
my peaceful, homely bedroom, the school and the marketplace. Demian
and the confirmation class--and all this was bright, lustrous, all
was wonderful, godly and pure, all that, I realized now, had until
yesterday belonged to me, had waited for me. But now, in this hour, it
was mine no longer, it spurned me and looked upon me with disgust. All
that was loving and intimate, all that I had received from my parents
since the first golden days of my childhood, each kiss mother had given
me, each Christmas, each godly bright Sunday morning there at home,
each flower in the garden, all that was laid waste, I had trampled on
it all with my foot! If the police had come for me then and had bound
me and led me away to the gallows as a desecrator and as the scum of
humanity, I should have acquiesced; should have gone gladly. I would
have found it right and fitting.
That was the state of my feelings. I, who had gone about despising the
world! I, who had been so proud in spirit and who had shared Demian’s
thoughts! So I appeared a filthy pig, to be classed with the scum of
the earth, drunk and befouled, disgusting and common, a dissolute
beast, carried away by abominable instincts. So I appeared, I who came
from those gardens whose bright flowers had been purity and sweet
gentleness, I who had loved Bach’s music and beautiful poetry! I could
still hear, with aversion and disgust, my own laugh, the drunken,
uncontrolled, convulsive and silly laugh which escaped me. That was I!
But in spite of everything there was a certain enjoyment in suffering
these torments. I had lived for so long a blind, dull existence, for
so long had my heart been silent, impoverished and shut up, that
even this self-accusation, this self-aversion, this entirely dreadful
feeling was welcome. At least it was feeling; flowers were flaring up,
emotion was quivering therein. I experienced in the midst of my misery
a confused sensation of liberation, of the approach of spring.
However, as far as outward appearances went, I was going fast down
the hill. The first debauch was soon followed by others. There was
much drinking at school, and other things not in accord with study.
I was among the youngest who carried on in this way, but from being
just tolerated and looked upon as a mere youngster, I soon rose to be
considered as a leader and a star. I was renowned as a daredevil and
could drink with the best. Once again I belonged entirely to the dark
world, to the devil, and I passed in this world for being a splendid
fellow.
But at the same time I was in a pitiful state of mind. I lived in a
whirl of self-destroying debauchery, and while I was looked up to by
my friends as a leader and the devil of a good fellow, as a cursed
witty and spirited drinking companion, my anxious soul was full of
apprehension. I remember on one occasion tears started to my eyes when,
on coming out of a tavern one Sunday morning, I saw children playing
in the street, bright and contented, with freshly combed hair, and
in their Sunday clothes. And while I amused and often terrified my
friends with monstrous cynicisms, as we sat at dirty tables stained
with puddles of beer, in low public houses, I had in my heart a secret,
deep reverence for everything at which I scoffed--inwardly I was
weeping bitterly at the thought of my past life, of my mother, of God.
There is a good reason for the fact that I was never one with my
companions, that I remained lonely even in their midst, that I suffered
in the manner above described. I was a hero of drinking bouts, with
the roughest of them, I was a scoffer after their own heart. I showed
courage and wit in my ideas and in my talks about masters, school,
parents, the church--I listened to their smutty stories unflinchingly
and even ventured one or two myself--but I was never about when my
boon companions went off with girls. I remained behind alone, filled
with an ardent desire for love, a hopeless longing, whereas to judge
from my conversation I must have been a hardened rake. No one was more
vulnerable, no one more chaste than I. And when from time to time I saw
young girls pass by in the town, pretty and clean, bright and charming,
they seemed to me like wonderful, pure dream women, a thousand times
too good and too pure for me. For a long time I could not bring myself
to enter Mrs. Jaggelt’s stationery shop, because I blushed when I saw
her and thought of what Alphonse Beck had told me about her.
The more I realized how different I was from the members of my new
set, how isolated I was in their midst, the less easy was it for that
very reason to break with them. I do not really know whether the
toping and bragging ever caused me much pleasure, and I could never
so accustom myself to hard drinking that I did not feel the painful
consequences after each bout. I was as if coerced into doing this. I
did it because I had to, because I was otherwise absolutely ignorant of
a course to follow, I knew not where to begin. I was afraid of being
long alone. I was frightened of the many tender, chaste, intimate moods
to which I constantly felt myself inclined, I was afraid of the tender
notions of love which so often came to me.
One thing I lacked most of all--a friend. There were two or three
schoolfellows whom I liked very much. But they belonged to the good set
and my vices had for a long time been a secret to no one. They avoided
me. With all I passed for a hopeless gamester under whose feet the very
earth quaked. The masters knew much about me, severe punishments were
several times inflicted on me, my final expulsion from the school was
waited for with more or less certainty. I knew that myself; for a long
time I had ceased to be a good pupil; I got through my work by hook or
by crook, with the feeling that the state of affairs could not last
much longer.
There are many ways by which God can make us feel lonely and lead us
to a consciousness of ourselves. With me it was in this way: it was
like a bad dream, in which I saw myself ostracized, foul and clammy,
creeping restlessly and painfully over broken beer glasses, down an
abominably unclean road. There are such dreams, when you imagine you
have set out to find a beautiful princess, but you stick in stinking
back streets full of rubbish and dirty puddles. So it was with me. In
this scarcely refined way I was destined to become lonely and to put
between myself and my childhood a locked door of Eden over against
which stood merciless sentinels on guard in beaming rays of light. It
was a beginning, an awakening of that homesickness, that longing to
return to my true self.
I was terribly frightened when my father, alarmed by a letter from my
house master, appeared for the first time in St. ---- and faced me
unexpectedly. When he came for the second time, towards the end of that
winter, I was hard and indifferent, I let him heap blame on me, I let
him beg me to think of my mother, I was unmoved. Finally he grew very
angry and said that if I did not turn over a new leaf he would have me
disgraced and chased out of the school, and would have me placed in a
reformatory. Little I cared! When he went away I felt sorry for him,
but he had accomplished nothing; he had found no approach to me, and
for a few moments I felt that it served him right.
I was indifferent as to what might become of me. In my peculiar and
unlovely manner, with my carrying on and my frequenting of public
houses, I was at odds with the world--this was my way of protesting.
I was ruining myself thereby, but what of it? Sometimes the case
presented itself to me in this wise: If the world had no use for such
as me, if there was no better place for us, if there were no higher
duties, then people like myself simply went to the devil. So much the
worse for the world.
The Christmas holidays of that year were exceedingly unpleasant. My
mother was terrified when she saw me again. I had grown taller, and
my thin face looked gray and ravaged by dissipation, with flabby
features and inflamed rings round the eyes. The first indications
of a moustache, and the spectacles which I had but lately taken to
wearing, made me look stranger still. My sisters started back and
giggled when they saw me. It was all very pleasant. Unpleasant was
the conversation with my father in his study, unpleasant the greeting
of a couple of relations, unpleasant above all things was Christmas
night. That has been since my birth the great day of our house, the
evening of festivity and love, of gratitude, of the renewal of the bond
between my parents and myself. This time everything was depressing
and embarrassing. As usual my father read the portion of the gospel
about the shepherds in the field “keeping watch over their flock by
night”; as usual my sisters stood radiantly before the table on which
the presents were laid out. But my father’s voice was sad, and he
looked old and constrained. Mother was unhappy; for me everything was
equally painful and unwished for, presents and good wishes, Gospel and
Christmas tree. The ginger-bread smelt delicious and exhaled thick
clouds as of sweet remembrances. The Christmas tree was fragrant and
told of things which existed no longer. I longed for the end of the
evening and of the holidays.
So passed the whole winter. It was not long before I was severely
reprimanded by the faculty and threatened with expulsion. It could not
last much longer. Well it made no difference to me.
I had a special grudge against Max Demian, whom I had not seen for the
whole of this period. In my first term at St. ---- I had written to him
twice, but had received no reply; for that reason I had not paid him a
visit in the holidays.
* * * * *
In the same park, where I had met Alphonse Beck in the autumn, it
chanced that in the first days of spring, just as the thorn hedges were
beginning to turn green, a girl attracted my attention. I was out for a
walk by myself, full of gnawing cares and thoughts, for my health was
bad. Besides that I was in continual financial embarrassment. I owed
various sums to my friends and had to invent excuses to procure some
money from home. In several shops I had run up accounts for cigars and
such things. Not that these cares were very pressing--if the end of my
school career was approaching, and if I drowned myself or was sent to
a reform school, these trifles would not make much difference either.
But I was nevertheless constantly facing these unpleasant things and I
suffered from it.
On that spring day in the park I met a girl who had a strong attraction
for me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had a wise,
boyish face. She pleased me at once, she belonged to the type that I
loved, and she began to work upon my imagination. She was scarcely
older than I, but she was more mature; she was elegant and possessed
a good figure, already almost a woman, but with a touch of youthful
exuberance in her features, which pleased me exceedingly.
It was never my good fortune to approach a girl with whom I could
have fallen in love, neither was it my luck in this case. But the
impression was deeper than all the former ones, and the influence of
this infatuation on my life was powerful.
Suddenly I had again a picture standing before me, a revered
picture--ah, and no need, no impulse was so deep or so strong in me
as the desire to revere, to adore. I gave her the name of Beatrice,
of whom, without having read Dante, I knew something from an English
painting, a reproduction of which I had in my possession. The picture
was of an English pre-Raphaelite girlish figure, very long-limbed and
slender, with a small, long head and spiritualized hands and features.
My beautiful young girl did not completely resemble this, although
she had the same slenderness and boyish suppleness of figure, which I
loved, and something of the spiritualization of the face, as if her
soul lay therein.
I never spoke a single word to Beatrice. Yet at that time she exercised
the deepest influence over me. Her picture fastened itself on my mind;
in my imagination she opened a sanctuary for me, she caused me to
pray in a temple. From one day to another I remained absent from the
drinking bouts and the nightly excursions. Once more I could bear being
alone, I read gladly, I liked to go for walks again.
I was much scoffed at for my sudden conversion. But I had now something
to love and to worship, I had again an ideal, life was once more full
of suggestion, of gaily colored secret nuances, that made me insensible
to the jeers of my companions. I again felt at home with myself,
although I was now the servant and slave of a picture which I revered.
I cannot think of that time without a certain emotion. With earnest
striving, I again endeavored to build a “bright world” out of the ruins
of that period of my life which had broken up around me, I again lived
entirely and single-mindedly in the desire to put away the dark and
the bad, and to dwell completely in the light, on my knees before my
gods. Still, this “bright world” I built up was to a certain extent my
own creation. It was not the action of flying back or of crawling back
to mother, to a security without responsibilities. It was a new service
upon which I entered, invented by myself for my own requirements, with
responsibilities and discipline of self. The sex consciousness from
which I suffered and before which I was in constant flight was now
transmuted in this sacred fire to spirit and devotion. The grim and
horrible would disappear, I should groan through no more agonizing
nights, there would be no more heart-beatings in front of lewd
pictures, no more listening at forbidden doors, no more lasciviousness.
Instead of all this, I set up my altar, with the picture of Beatrice,
and in dedicating myself to her I dedicated myself to the spirit and
to the gods. That part of myself which I withdrew from the powers of
darkness I brought as a sacrifice to the powers of light. Not lust was
my aim, but purity; not happiness, but beauty and spirituality.
This cult for Beatrice completely changed my life. A precocious cynic
but a short while before, I had now become a servant in the temple,
whose aim it was to be a saint. I not only renounced the evil life to
which I had accustomed myself, but I endeavored to change everything,
to set myself a standard of purity, nobility and dignity, which I even
applied to eating and drinking, to my manner of speech and dress. I
began each morning to wash with cold water, to the use of which I had,
in the beginning, to force myself. I behaved with gravity and dignity,
carried myself erect and acquired a slower and more dignified gait. To
an observer it might have seemed rather ludicrous, but to me it was the
performance of a divine worship.
Of all the ways in which I sought to find expression for my new faith,
one bore fruit. I began to paint. To start with, the English picture of
Beatrice I had in my possession did not bear a sufficient resemblance
of Beatrice. I wanted to try to paint her for myself. Full of new
pleasure and hope I carried into my room--I had recently been given
a room to myself--beautiful paper, colors, and a paint-brush. I made
ready my palette, porcelain bowls, glass and pencils. The fine water
colors in little tubes which I had bought captivated me. There was a
bright chromic green which I think I can see yet as it flashed out for
the first time from the little white tube.
I began with caution. To paint a face was difficult; I wished first
of all to try something else. I painted ornaments, flowers, and small
landscapes from imagination, a tree near a chapel, a Roman bridge with
cypresses. I often lost myself completely in this pastime, I was
as happy as a child with a box of paints. At last I began to paint
Beatrice.
The first few attempts were abortive, and I threw them away. The more
I tried to conjure up in my mind the face of the girl, whom I met from
time to time in the street, the less I seemed able to transfer my
impressions to paper. Finally I gave up the idea, and began simply to
paint a face according to the guidance of my imagination, a face which
gradually grew out of the one already begun, as if by itself, at the
mercy of color and brush. The result was a face I had dreamed of, and I
was not ill pleased with it. Yet I made another essay immediately, and
each new picture was clearer, and approached more nearly to the type,
but was by no means like the reality.
More and more I accustomed myself, in a dreamy sort of way, to draw
lines with my brush, to fill in surfaces. My sketches grew out of a
few strokes of the brush, out of the unconscious. At last one day I
finished a face, almost unconsciously, which made a stronger appeal to
me than the former ones. It was not the face of the girl, for I had
long since given up the idea of trying to paint my Beatrice to the
life. It was something else, something unreal, and yet not of less
value for me on that account. It looked more like the head of a youth
than of a girl. The hair was not blond like that of my pretty girl,
but brown with a tinge of red; the chin was strong and firm, but the
mouth was red as a blossom. The features were rigid, like a mask, but
impressive and full of secret life.
As I sat before the finished sketch, it made a peculiar impression on
me. It seemed to me a sort of picture of a god or of a sacred mask,
half man, half woman, ageless, the expression being at once dreamy
and strong-willed, stiff and yet secretly alive. This face seemed to
have something to say to me, it belonged to me; its look was rather
imperative, as if requiring something of me. And there was a certain
resemblance to someone or other, to whom I knew not.
The picture played an important rôle for a while, sharing my thoughts
and my life. I kept it concealed in a drawer, in order that one should
not get possession of it and so be able to sneer at me. But as soon
as I found myself alone in my little room I took out the picture and
communed with it. Each evening I pinned it on to the wall over against
my bed, and gazed at it until I dropped off to sleep. In the morning it
was the first object which met my gaze.
Just at that time I began again to dream a great deal, as I had
constantly done when a child. It seemed to me that for years I had had
no more dreams. Now they came again, quite a new kind of pictures,
and often and often the painted image appeared therein, living and
speaking, friendly or inimical, with the features sometimes twisted
into a grimace, sometimes infinitely beautiful, harmonious and noble.
And one morning, as I awoke out of such a dream, I suddenly realized
who was the original of the picture, I recognized it. It gazed at me
in such a fabulously well-known way, and seemed to be calling my name.
It seemed to know me, like a mother, seemed to love me as if since the
beginning of time. With beating heart I stared at the paper, at the
thick brown hair, at the half-womanly mouth, the strong forehead with
the wonderful brightness (it had dried that way of itself) and more and
more I felt in me the knowledge, the certainty of having somewhere met
the original of the picture.
I sprang out of bed, placed myself in front of the face, and gazed at
it from the closest proximity, straight into the wide open, greenish,
staring eyes, the right eye somewhat higher than the other. And all at
once this right eye twitched perceptibly, but still decidedly, and from
this twitching I recognized the picture....
How was it that I had found it out so late? It was Demian’s face. Later
I often and often compared the picture with Demian’s real features, as
they had remained in my memory. They were not quite the same, although
there was a resemblance. But it was Demian, nevertheless.
Once, on an evening in early summer the red sun shone obliquely through
my window, which looked towards the west. In the room the dusk was
gathering. I suddenly had the idea of pinning the picture of Beatrice,
or of Demian, to the cross-bar of the window and of gazing at it,
while the evening sun was shining through. The whole outline of the
face disappeared, but the reddish ringed eyes, the brightness of the
forehead and the strong red mouth glowed deeply and wildly from the
surface of the paper. I sat opposite it for a long time, even after the
light had died away. And by degrees the feeling came to me that this
was not Beatrice or Demian but--myself. The picture did not resemble
me--it was not meant to, I felt--but there was that in it which seemed
to be made up of my life, something of my inner self, of my fate or of
my dæmon. My friend would look like that, if I ever found another. My
mistress would look like that, if ever I had one. My life and death
would be like that. It had the ring and rhythm of my fate.
In those weeks I had begun to read a book which made a deeper
impression on me than anything I had read before. Even in later years
I have seldom chanced upon books which have made such a strong appeal
to me, except perhaps those of Nietzsche. It was a volume of Novalis,
containing letters and apothegms. There was much that I did not
understand. But the book captivated me and occupied my thoughts to an
extraordinary degree. One of the aphorisms now occurred to me. I wrote
it with a pen under the picture: “Fate and soul are the terms of one
conception.” That I now understood.
I frequently used to meet the girl I called Beatrice. I felt no emotion
on seeing her, but I was often sensible of a harmony of sentiment,
which seemed to say: we are connected, or rather, not you and I, but
your picture and I; you are a part of my destiny.
* * * * *
My longing for Max Demian was again eager. I had had no news of him
for several years. On one occasion only I had met him in the holidays.
I see now that I have failed to mention this short meeting in my
narrative, and I see that this was owing to shame and self-conceit on
my part. I must make up for it now.
So then, once in the holidays, I was parading my somewhat tired, blasé
self through the town. As I was sauntering along, swinging my stick and
examining the old, unchanged features of the bourgeois Philistines whom
I despised, I met my one-time friend. Scarcely had I caught sight of
him when I started involuntarily. With lightning rapidity my thoughts
were carried back to Frank Kromer. I hoped and prayed Demian had really
forgotten the story! It was so disagreeable to be under this obligation
to him--simply owing to a silly, childish affair--still, I was under an
obligation....
He seemed to be waiting to see whether I would greet him. I did, as
calmly as possible under the circumstances, and he gave me his hand.
That was indeed his old handshake! So strong, warm and yet cool, so
manly!
He looked me attentively in the face and said: “You’ve grown a lot,
Sinclair.” He himself seemed quite unchanged, just as old, just as
young as ever.
He proposed we should go for a walk, and we talked of secondary
matters, not of the past. I remembered that I had written to him
several times, without having received an answer. I hoped he had
forgotten this as well, those silly, silly letters. He made no mention
of them.
At that time there was no Beatrice and no picture, I was still in the
period of my dissipation. Outside the town I invited him to come with
me into an inn. He came. With much ostentation I ordered a bottle
of wine and filled a couple of glasses. I clinked glasses with him,
showing him how conversant I was with student drinking customs, and I
emptied my first glass at a gulp.
“Do you frequent public houses often?” he asked me.
“Oh yes,” I said with a drawl, “what else is there to do? It’s
certainly more amusing than anything else; after all.”
“You think so? Perhaps. It may be so. There’s certainly something very
pleasing about it--intoxication, bacchanalian orgies! But I find, with
most people who frequent public houses, this sense of _abandon_
is lost. It seems to me there is something typically Philistine,
bourgeois, in the public house habit. Of course, for just one night,
with burning torches, to have a proper orgy and drunken revel. But
to do the same thing over and over again, drinking one glass after
another--that’s hardly the real thing. Can you imagine Faust sitting
evening after evening drinking at the same table?”