Hello Readers;

This segment deals with the most influential book of the 1960′s Counterculture, “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse.  It is very like John Fowles’ book “The Magus” in the plot and story-line.  So let’s look at this classic book and compare it to “The Magus” next.

“Steppenwolf” is a fictional book long thought in part to be autobiographical to author Hermann Hesse himself who was a WWI veteran who is the lead character Harry Haller.  BUT… this book is also a biography beyond Hesse to a real life war veteran who was a famed 1800′s Philosopher that wrote the text for Existentialism, Friedrich Nietzsche.

“Steppenwolf” was Hesse’s 10th novel (1927).  His most famed before “Steppenwolf” was “Siddhartha” (1922), which was based on the Life of Prince Siddhartha Gautama who gave up his name to become the Buddha and based in part upon the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and the Rig Vedas. “Siddhartha” was like a condensed version of the Ideas of these Eastern Texts out of Hinduism.

Steppenwolf was originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and fantastic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the wild steppes in the Wilderness.

The story in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse’s spiritual world in the 1920s while memorably portraying the protagonist’s split between his humanity, and his wolf-like aggression and homelessness. The novel became an international success, although Hesse would later claim that the book was largely misunderstood.

That in part because Countercultural Groups like the Beatniks in the 50′s and the 60′s Counterculture Generation idolized the Magic Theatre in the book, and missed the message… and the hidden yet open aspect that beyond the expression of Hesse’s Life, it was about the Existentialist Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

This is never discussed so we’ll look at the plot and what is says…

The plot begins at an apartment where someone is cleaning the apartment after the tenant Harry Haller has left, and his journal is found and so it’s picked up and read and the story unfolds…

The book is presented as a manuscript by its protaginist, a middle-aged man named Harry Haller, who leaves it to a chance acquaintance, the nephew of his landlady. The acquaintance adds a short preface of his own and then has the manuscript published. The title of this “real” book-in-the-book is Harry Haller’s Records (For Madmen Only).

As it begins, the hero is beset by reflections on his being ill-suited for the world of everyday regular people, specifically for frivolous bourgeois society.  Haller as a WWI Veteran is bi-polar and has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome/PTSDS and he’s clearly suffered from the trauma of war having DID/Dissociative Identity Disorder.  And evidence is clear that Hesse suffered it in part and Nietzsche there can be no denial after his Military time suffered trauma and diseaese.

Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) as a Medical Orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle feeling the after-effects the rest of his Life like Veterans from the late 1800′s who’ve had PTSD/DID after high tech war. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentary. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter.

So lets compare Niezsche to Hesse in WWI:

At the outbreak of WWI in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial Army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front. He was found unfit for combat duty, but was assigned to service involving the care of war prisoners much like Nietzsche as Medical Orderly…

On 3 November 1914, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Hesse’s essay “O Friends, Not These Tones” (“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne“) appeared, in which he appealed to German intellectuals not to fall for “Patriotism”.  What followed from this, Hesse later indicated, was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss and the French writer Romain Rollard, whom Hesse visited in August 1915.

This public controversy was not yet resolved when a deeper life crisis befell Hesse with the death of his father on 8 March 1916, the serious sickness of his son Martin, and his wife’s schizophernia and his own from WWI trauma. He was forced to leave his military service and begin receiving psychotherapy.

This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysis; through which he came to know Carl Jung personally, and was challenged to new creative heights. During a three-week period in September and October 1917, Hesse penned his novel Demian, which would be published following the armistice in 1919 under the pseudonym/pen~name Emil Sinclair.

Also, both Hesse and Nietzsche played with Esoteric Philosophies and Esoteric Practices that they were NOT capable of dealing with.

Dr. Israel Regardie who was Occultist/Satanist Aleister Crowley’s secretary in the 1920′s and an Elite High Member=Initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O. warned people desiring to play with Esoteric/Occult Practices stating without exception that mentally ill and unstable people playing with Occult Practices would  make such ones become broken more psychologically and drive them insane over time.  History has long confirmed what Regardie warned Humanity about.  He himself had bouts of Asthma from Occult practices for long years until some Wilhelm Reichian Therapy healed his Asthma.

Reading of Hesse and Nietzsche, their Lives parallel much and they were unstable and broken after War experiences.  Their indulgences in Mystic/Magic Practices only increased their personal issues and sense of isolation and de-identification from Society and Reality.  This led to insanity in Nietzsche before his death:

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect the horse, and then collapsed to the ground.

Nietzsche’s mental illness was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis, in accordance with a prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators regard his breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, French Esoteric Author Georges Bataille who was of the early 1900′s Parisian French Secret Society the Fleche d’Or/Golden Arrow in drops dark hints (“”man incarnate” must also go mad”) and René Girard’s post-mortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful rivalry with Composer who was Ariosophist Philosopher Richard Wagner who was a much greater source of Roots in the Philosophy of the Nazis than Nietzsche ever was. The diagnosis of syphilis was challenged, and manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis, followed by vascular dementia was put forward by Cybulska prior Schain’s and Sax’s studies; Orth and Trimble confirm that Fronto-Temporal Dementia is indicated rather than syphilis, but refrain from speculating as to the cause. Other researchers agree that syphilis is contra-indicated, but argue against Sax’s revival of Hildebrandt’s hypothesis of a benign brain tumor, positing instead a syndrome called CADASIL.

In his aimless wanderings about the city the Harry Haller character encounters a person carrying an advertisement for a magic theatre who gives him a small book, Treatise on the Steppenwolf. This treatise, cited in full in the novel’s text as Harry reads it, addresses Harry by name and strikes him as describing himself uncannily. It is a discourse of a man who believes himself to be of two natures: one high, the spiritual nature of man; while the other is low, animalistic; a “wolf of the steppes”.

This man (Hesse/Nietzsche) Haller is entangled in an irresolvable struggle, never content with either nature because he cannot see beyond this self-made concept.

The pamphlet gives an explanation of the multifaceted and indefinable nature of every man’s soul, which Harry is either unable or unwilling to recognize because Haller/Hesse/Nietzsche were bi-polar only seeing themselves as two split persons in one body in conflict with each other.

It also discusses his suicidal intentions, describing him as one of the “suicides”; people who, deep down, knew they would take their own life one day. But to counter this it hails his potential to be great, to be one of the “Immortals”.

Trying to postpone returning home (to where he has planned suicide), Harry walks aimlessly around the town for most of the night, finally stopping to rest at a dance hall where he happens on a young woman, Hermine (aspect of bi-polar Herman Hesse), who quickly recognizes his desperation. They talk at length; Hermine alternately mocks Harry’s self-pity and indulges him in his explanations regarding his view of life, to his astonished relief. Hermine promises a second meeting, and provides Harry with a reason to live (or at least a substantial excuse that justifies his decision to continue living) that he eagerly embraces.

During the next few weeks, Hermine introduces Harry to the indulgences of what he calls the “bourgeois”. She teaches Harry to dance, introduces him to the casual use of drugs, finds him a lover (Maria), and more importantly, forces him to accept these as legitimate and worthy aspects of a full life.

The Magic Theatre

Hermine also introduces Harry to a mysterious saxophonist named Pablo, who appears to be the very opposite of what Harry considers a serious, thoughtful man. After attending a lavish masquerade ball, Pablo brings Harry to his metaphorical “magic theatre”, where concerns and notions that plagued his soul disintegrate while he participates with the ethereal and phantasmal.

The Magic Theatre is a place where he experiences the fantasies that exist in his mind. They are described as a long horseshoe-shaped corridor that is a mirror on one side and a great many doors on the other as in a Maze with all its Trap-Doors and Dead-Ends.

Then, Harry enters (Occult Initiation) five of these labeled doors, each of which symbolizes a fraction of his life.

This echoes the Life of Hesse himself and Nietzsche who upon returning to Basel in 1870 Nietzsche observed the establishment of the German Empire and the following era of Otto von Bismarck as an outsider and with a degree of skepticism regarding its genuineness. And he drifted more and more into isolation and madness…

In the preface to the novel’s 1960 edition, Hesse wrote that Steppenwolf was “more often and more violently misunderstood” than any of his other books. Hesse felt that his readers focused only on the suffering and despair that are depicted in Harry Haller’s life, thereby missing the possibility of transcendence and healing.

The “magic theatre” sequences in Steppenwolf were interpreted by some as drug-induced psychedelia. These and other Hesse novels were republished in paperback editions and were widely read by university students and young people in the UK, United States and elsewhere.

This book was the most influential book of the 1960′s Counterculture in its misinterpretations than all of the 60′s literature.  So much so that the famed 60′s Canadian Rock band Steppenwolf named itself after this book.  And the classic song “Born To Be Wild” echoes Hesse’s book much.  Ironic, eh?

In the next article we’ll compare The Magus and Steppenwolf and it will make sense in new ways for the Reader.  These two books have much in common in the plot-line and the implications on the World we ALL Live in.