Know Thyself through Literature:
Steppenwolf, can you sadly relate? Part II:
As I mentioned in Know Thyself #133 in reading Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, I couldn’t get far without stopping and thinking about what I read, and then writing about it. I find this book.…so far….wordy and entirely cerebral. As a slow reader to begin with, books such as these take me ages and I have to pepper in filler books to not get mad at myself for not finishing the first one.
Therefore and as predicted my comment in above mentioned post, on a particularly looonnnggg passage from Steppenwolf, will be spread across three posts. Here is #2
In KT post #133 the passage ended with:
I did not regret the past. My regret was for the present day, for all the countless hours and days I lost to mere passivity and that brought me nothing, not even the shocks of awakening.
But thank God, there were exceptions. There were now and then, though rarely, the hours that Brough the welcome shock,, pulled down the walls and brought me back again from my wanderings to the living heart of the world. Sadly and yet deeply moved, I set myself to recall the last of these experiences. it was at a concert of lovely old music. After two three notes of the piano, the door was opened of a sudden to the other worlds. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a diving and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more.
To me these are those memories of moments, people, experiences, that rush onto you when you least expect it, and you feel it all over again. Optimistically, I do not believe all my lifelong cherished memories have already happened, but especially when it comes to loved ones who are gone, sometime conversations or smells of moments I lived with them, rush back to my consciousness.
I think these moments happen more often than we properly take notice of.
What do YOU think?
Last Updated on 04/28/2026 by Death of Hypatia Inc.
Leave a Reply