“I wasn’t looking for you,” I said, dazed. I spoke with difficulty, the
words came from me painfully, as if from dead, heavy, frozen lips.
“You weren’t looking for me?”
“No. I was drawn here. Did you call me? You must have called. But what
are you doing here? It’s still night.”
He put his thin arms convulsively round me.
“Yes, night. But it must soon be morning. Oh, Sinclair, to think that
you didn’t forget me! Can you ever forgive me?”
“What then?”
“Ah, I was so hateful!”
Then I recollected our conversation. Had that taken place four, five
days ago? It seemed to me like a lifetime. But suddenly I knew all. Not
only what had occurred between us, but also why I had come and what
Knauer wanted to do there.
“You wanted, then, to take your life, Knauer?”
He shuddered through cold and fear.
“Yes, I wanted to. I don’t know whether I could have. I wished to wait
until the morning came.”
I drew him into the open. The first oblique rays of day glimmered
indescribably cold through the grey atmosphere.
I led the boy on my arm a little way. I heard my own voice saying: “Now
go home, and don’t say anything to anybody. You were on a false track,
a false track! And we are not swine, as you think. We are men. We make
gods, and we wrestle with them, and they bless us.”
Silently we went on, and separated. When I came home it was day.
The best that mystery in St. ---- had yet to give me was the hours with
Pistorius at the organ or by the chimney fire. We read a Greek text
about Abraxas together. He read to me portions of a translation of the
Veda and taught me to say the sacred “Om.” However, it was not this
learned instruction which was of service to my inner self, but rather
the contrary. What did me good was the self-progression I made, the
increasing confidence in my own dreams, thoughts and presentiments, and
the consciousness of the power that I carried in me.
I had an excellent understanding with Pistorius in every way. I needed
only to think intently of him, and I could be sure that he, or a
greeting from him, would come to me. I could ask him, just as I could
Demian, something or other, without his being there in person. I
needed only to imagine his presence and to put my questions to him as
intensive thoughts. Then all the soul-force I had put into the question
came back to me as answer. Only it was not the person of Pistorius
which I called up in my imagination; nor that of Max Demian, but it
was the picture I had painted and of which I had dreamed. It was the
half-man, half-woman, dream picture of my dæmon, to which I called. It
lived now not only in my dreams, it was no longer painted on paper, but
it was in me, as a desire-picture and an enhancement of my spiritual
self.
The relation into which the unsuccessful suicide Knauer entered with
me was peculiar and sometimes amusing. Since the night I had been sent
to him, he dogged my steps like a faithful servant or hound, sought
to attach himself to me and followed me blindly. He came to me with
curious questions and wishes. He wanted to see spirits, to learn the
Cabbala, and he did not believe me when I assured him I understood
nothing of all these things. He credited me with being able to do
anything. But it was singular that he often came to me with his queer
and silly questions just at the moment when I myself had a mental knot
to be disentangled. His moody ideas and concerns often gave me the cue,
the impulse which helped me in the solution of my own problems. He was
often tiresome and I imperiously drove him away. I felt, however,
that he had been sent to me, and what I gave to him, I received
twofold in return. He also was a guide, or rather a way. The mad books
and publications he brought me, and in which he sought the key to
happiness, taught me more than I realized at the time.
This Knauer vanished later from my path, neither did I miss him. No
arrangement, no understanding was necessary with him. But it was with
Pistorius. Towards the close of my school career in St. ---- I lived
through another peculiar experience with my friend.
Even innocuous, innocent people are not altogether spared the shock
of a conflict. Even they come once in their lives in conflict with
the beautiful virtues of piety and gratitude. Each must make the step
which parts him from his father, from his teachers. Each must once feel
something of the bitterness of loneliness, though most people cannot
support it for long and soon creep back to their homes again. It was
not a great struggle for me to part from my parents and their world,
the “bright” world of my beautiful childhood. But slowly and almost
imperceptibly I had got further from them and become more of a stranger
to them. I regretted it; it often caused me bitter hours during my
visits home; but it was not deep. I could bear it.
But when we have offered love and reverence of our own accord, and
not out of habit, when we have been disciples and friends with our
innermost feelings--then it is a bitter and terrible moment when the
realization is suddenly brought home to us that the guiding current of
our life is bearing us away from those we love. Then every thought of
ours which rejects our friend and teacher enters our own heart like a
poisoned sting, every blow of self-defense strikes back into our own
face. Then he who felt that the dictates of his own conscience were an
authentic guide reproaches himself with the terms “faithlessness” and
“ingratitude.” Then the terrified heart flees anxiously back to the
valleys of childhood virtues, and cannot believe that the rupture must
take place, that another bond must be severed.
In the course of time a feeling had slowly developed in me which
refused to recognize my friend Pistorius unconditionally as my guide.
What I experienced in the most important moments of my youth was my
friendship with him, his counsel, his consolation, his proximity.
God had spoken to me through him. Through him my dreams returned to
me, from his mouth came their explanation, from him I learned their
significance. He had given me the courage to realize myself. And now,
alas, I felt a growing opposition against him. In his conversation he
evinced too clearly a desire to instruct me. I felt it was only one
side of my nature that he thoroughly understood.
There was no quarrel, no scene between us, no rupture. I said to him
only a single, really harmless word, but nevertheless it was the
moment when an illusion between us fell in colored pieces.
The presentiment had for some time already oppressed me, but one Sunday
in his scholarly old room this presentiment changed to a definite
feeling. We were lying on the floor before the fire. He was speaking
of mysteries and religious forms which he was studying, and on which
he was meditating. He occupied himself with trying to picture their
possible future. To me all this seemed curious and interesting, but
scarcely of vital importance. It smacked of erudition. It was like a
fatiguing search among the ruins of former worlds. And all at once I
felt an aversion from the whole business, from this cult of mythology,
from this sort of piecing together, this mosaic work of religious forms
which had been handed down to posterity.
“Pistorius,” I said suddenly, in a malicious outburst which surprised
and frightened even myself, “relate a dream, a real dream, one that you
have had in the night. What you have just been talking about is so--so
cursedly antiquarian!”
He had never heard me speak thus. With shame and terror I realized
the very same moment that the arrow I had shot at him, and which had
entered his heart, was taken from his own quiver--I realized that I had
heard him reproach himself in an ironical tone on this very account,
and that now I had maliciously turned one of his own reproaches
against him like a resharpened arrow.
He felt it instantly, and was silent. I looked at him with terror in my
heart and saw that he had become very pale.
After a long, heavy pause he put some wood on the fire and said
quietly: “You are quite right, Sinclair. You’re a wise fellow. I will
spare you all this antiquarian business.”
He spoke very quietly, but his tone told me how deeply he had been
wounded. What had I done!
I was on the point of tears. I wanted to beg his pardon with all my
heart, to assure him of my affection and gratitude. Moving words came
into my mind--but I could not utter them. He was silent as well, and so
we lay there, while the flames leaped up and then sank, and with each
flame that paled fell something beautiful and fervid that ceased to
glow and had vanished--never again to come back.
“I fear you have misunderstood me,” I said at last, much crushed,
and with a dry, hoarse voice. The silly, senseless words came as if
mechanically from my lips, as if I had been reading them out of a news
sheet.
“I understood you perfectly,” said Pistorius softly. “You are quite
right.” We waited. Then he continued slowly: “So far as one man can be
right in his judgment of another.”
No, no, a voice inside me said, I am wrong; but I could not say
anything. I knew that I had aimed my single little word at his one
essential weakness. I had touched the point of which he himself
was distrustful. His idea was “antiquarian.” He was a seeker, but
retrogressive, he was a romantic. And suddenly I realized that it was
just what he had been to me and had given me that he could not be and
give to himself. He had guided me to a point on the road, beyond which
he, the guide, could not go.
God knows how I could have uttered such a word! I had not meant it
badly. I had had no idea it would lead to a catastrophe. I had uttered
something, the import of which I did not myself realize at the moment
of utterance. I had surrendered myself to a somewhat witty, somewhat
malicious inspiration, and fate used it as her instrument. I had been
guilty of a little thoughtlessness, crudeness, and he had accepted it
as a judgment.
Oh, how much I wished then that he would have got angry, have defended
himself, have shouted at me! But he did nothing. I had all that to do
within myself. He would have smiled, had he been able. The fact that he
could not, showed me more than anything else how hard I had hit him.
And because Pistorius took the blow from me, his presumptuous and
ungrateful pupil, so quietly, because he silently agreed with me,
because he recognized my word as a judgment of fate, he caused me to
hate myself, he made my thoughtlessness seem a thousand times greater
than it was. As I struck, I had thought to hit a strong man, capable of
defending himself--now he was a meek, suffering creature, defenseless,
who surrendered in silence.
We remained a long time lying before the dying fire, in which each
glowing figure, each crumbling ash heap called to my memory happy,
beautiful, rich hours, making my guilt and my obligation to Pistorius
greater and greater. Finally I could bear it no longer. I got up and
went. A long time I stood before his door, a long time I listened on
the dark staircase, a long time I stood outside in front of the house,
waiting to see whether perhaps he would come out to me. Then I went on,
walking for hours and hours through town and suburbs, park and wood,
until evening fell. At that moment I felt for the first time the mark
of Cain on my forehead.
I fell to pondering and rumination. I had every intention, in thinking
matters over, to accuse myself and to defend Pistorius. But all ended
to the contrary. A thousand times I was ready to repent of my rash word
and to withdraw it--but it had been true, nevertheless. Now I succeeded
in understanding Pistorius, in building up his whole dream. This dream
had been to be a priest, to proclaim a new religion, to invent new
forms of exultation, of love, of worship, to set up new symbols. But
this was not within his province. He lingered too long in the past, he
knew too much of what had been, he knew too much of Egypt, of India,
of Mithras, of Abraxas. His love was attached to ideas with which
the world was already familiar. And in his inmost self he probably
recognized that the new religion had to be different, that it had to
spring from fresh sources and not be drawn out of collections and
libraries. His office was, perhaps, to help men to find themselves, as
he had done with me. But to found a new doctrine, to give new gods to
the world, was not his function in life.
And at this point the realization came upon me that everyone has an
“office,” a charge. But to no one is it permitted to choose his office
for himself, and to discharge it as he likes. It was wrong to want new
gods, it was entirely wrong to wish to give the world anything. A man
has absolutely no other duty than this: to seek himself, to grope his
own way forward, no matter whither it leads. That thought impressed
itself deeply on me; that was the fruit of this new event for me.
Often had I pictured the future. I had dreamed of filling rôles which
might be destined for me, as poet perhaps or as prophet, as painter,
or some such rôle. All that was of no account. I was not here to
write, to preach, to paint, neither I nor anyone else was here for
that purpose. All that was secondary. The true vocation for everyone
was only to attain to self-realization. He might end as poet or as
madman, as prophet or as criminal--that was not his affair, that was
of no consequence in the long run. His business was to work out his
own destiny, not any destiny, but his own, to live for that, entirely
and uninterruptedly. Everything else was merely an attempt to shun his
fate, to fly back to the ideals of the masses, to adapt himself to
circumstances. It was fear of his own inner being. There rose before
me this new picture, terrible and sacred, suggested to me a hundred
times ere this, perhaps often already expressed, but now for the first
time lived. I was a throw from nature’s dice box, a projection into the
unknown, perhaps into something new, perhaps into the void, and my sole
vocation was to let this throw-up from primeval depths work itself out
in me, to feel its will in me and to make it mine. That solely!
I had already known what it was to be very lonely. Now I felt I could
be lonelier still, and that I could not escape from it.
I made no attempt to reconcile myself with Pistorius. We remained
friends, but our relation towards one another had changed. Only one
single time did we mention it, or rather, it was only he who spoke of
the matter. He said: “I want to be a priest, you know that. I would
best of all like to be the priest of the religion of which we have
so many presentiments. I can never be that, I know. I have known it
already for some time, without fully admitting it. I will do some
other priestly service, perhaps at the organ, perhaps in another way.
But I must always be surrounded by something which I find beautiful
and sacred, organ music and mysteries, symbol and myth, I need that
and cannot persuade myself to leave it--that is my weakness. I often
realize, Sinclair, that I should not have such desires, that they are
a luxury and a weakness. It would be greater, it would be more right,
if I placed myself quite simply at the disposition of fate, without
pretensions. That is the sole thing I cannot do. Perhaps you will some
time be able to do it. It is hard, it is the only thing really hard
there is, my friend. I have often dreamed of it, but I cannot do it,
I tremble at the thought of it. I cannot stand so completely naked
and alone. I am a poor, weak hound, who needs a little warmth and
food, who occasionally likes to feel the proximity of his own kind.
He whose only desire it is to work out his own destiny has no kith or
kin, but stands alone and has only the cold world space around him.
Do you know, that is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane? There have
been martyrs who willingly let themselves be nailed to the cross, but
even they were not heroes, they were not free, they also wished for
something to which they had been accustomed, which they had loved; with
which they had felt at home. They had examples or ideals. He who will
fulfill his destiny has neither examples nor ideals, he has nothing
dear to him, nothing to comfort him. And one really ought to go this
way. People like you and I are certainly very lonely, but we still
have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different,
of revolting, of wanting the unusual. But we must drop that, too, if
we would go the whole way. We must not wish to be revolutionaries, or
examples, or martyrs. To think the thought to its logical end----”
No, one could not think beyond that. But one could dream of it, could
sense it, could anticipate it. A few times I realized something of
this, in a very quiet hour. Then I looked straight into the open,
staring eyes of my fate. They could have been full of wisdom, or full
of madness, they could be full of love or full of wickedness, it
was all one. One was to choose nothing of all that; one was to want
nothing, one was only to want oneself, one’s destiny. In that way had
Pistorius served me, for a time, as guide.
In those days I walked about as if I were blind, storms roared within
me, every step meant danger. I was conscious of nothing but the
precipitous darkness in front of me, down to which all the roads I
had trodden hitherto seemed to lead. And in my inward self I saw the
picture of the guide, who resembled Demian, and in whose eyes stood my
fate.
I wrote on a sheet of paper: “A guide has left me. I stand in complete
darkness. I cannot take a step alone. Help me!”
I wished to send that to Demian. Yet I omitted to do this, for each
time I wished to do it, it seemed foolish and meaningless. But I
knew that little prayer by heart, and often said it to myself. It
accompanied me hourly. I began to realize what prayer is.
* * * * *
My school career was over. My father had arranged that during the
holidays I was to travel and then I was to go to the University. In
which faculty, I knew not. I was to be allowed to take philosophy for
one semester. I should have been equally content with anything else.