Demian by Hemrann Hesse Review

Demian is a novel that can move readers beyond words and explanations due to its serene tone, unaggressive intellectualism, and the mesmerizing quality of the writing. It’s the type of writing that does not try to convince you of anything or challenge you as a reader. The writing here is more of a story that perceives the world as it is and throughout its story it reveals the truth to the readers while still allowing them to have their own judgments of it. In fact, Demian searches the path toward the world as a whole.

Since many of Hermann Hesse’s works had been rejected in Germany due to his exile during the war, he decided to write a novel against the war. That decision surfaced around the time when Hesse was a patient of the famous psychiatrist ‘Carl Jung’. And the book itself was written with the help of Jung and his theories of human psychology which has five stages: the first stage is the persona, which is the face or mask we show to the world. Then, the ego which is the conscious mind controls thoughts, emotions, and memories. Next, the shadow, which is a part of ourselves that we hated, cast into oblivion and unconsciousness. After that, the anima/animus, which is the feminine side of the masculine side of the female. And finally, the self, which is the combination of both the unconscious and the conscious in a soul or in other words, a combination of persona, shadow, ego, and anima/animus. 

Emil Sinclair, the narrator, recalls his journey to his inner self from childhood to maturity: the book begins with an image of a disturbed child and ends with an image of a wounded young soldier. We have been warned from the beginning that the story cannot be beautiful since it is based on a true account. Also this story is not a story that anyone can fully relate to, as each person has his/her own way of interpretation.

Sinclair’s journey begins when he is only ten and comes to the realization that the world consists of two realms, the first being laying with the world of light, peaceful, religious, safe, and governed by moral principles, and the second world being is the world of darkness, vigorous, and fear. Sinclair is constantly tempted by things that belong to the dark realm, and in order to become a part of it, he creates a story of theft in order to befriend Kormer, who is someone from the dark realm. But, instead Sinclair is taken advantage of due to a lie and finds himself being tormented by Kormer. During that time, a boy named Demian appears at his school. 

“I saw Demian’s face and remarked that it was not a boy’s face but a man’s and then I saw, or rather became aware, that it was not really the face of a man either, fit had something different about it, almost a feminine element. And for the time being, his face seemed neither masculine nor childish, neither old nor young but a hundred years old, almost timeless and bearing the mark of other periods of history than our own. Animals might look thus, trees or stars. All I saw was that he was different from the rest of us, that he was like an animal, a spirit or an image” (Hesse, 1919).

Demian is the person who frees Sinclair from Kormer. Demian represents the mentor who teaches him the value of good and evil, weakness and strength, and happiness and suffering, without trying to divide them up: emphasized between the harmonization between the values. The main strength of Demian is his will-power that enables him to stay on his own path and he shows that strength to those with the same ‘sign’ that he holds, which is known as the Cain sign. Demian says that Cain was not important in the story because of the fratricide, but rather because of the mark on his face that singularized him. 

In fact, it was that sign that created the story of the fratricide and not the other way around: “What happened and lay behind the whole origin of the story was the ‘sign’. Here was a man who had something in his face that frightened other people. They did not dare lay hands on him; he impressed them, he and his children. It is virtually certain that he bore no actual mark on his brow like a post mark! Real life isn’t as crude as that. Rather there was some hardly perceptible mark, a |little more intelligence and self-possession in his eyes than people were accustomed to. This man had power and they all went in awe of him; he had a ‘sign’. You can explain that how you will. People always want whatever is comfortable and puts them in the right” (Hesse, 1919).

Emil Sinclair acquires the Right View of the world through the dark mirror of the illusions the life blinds us with. His Nirvana is the God Abraxas, and he becomes, if he has not been all along, Demian.

- Balsam Khalid