Steppenwolfe (Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse)

Member Name: chickpea

Product:	Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Date:	19/06/01 (990 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Too many to list

Disadvantages: It would be sacriledge to even think of one

I found Steppenwolfe in a WHSmiths in a great big crowded shopping centre. I was alone, and tired, and wanted something to read with my coffee. On the back cover it said 'The hip bible of 1950s counter-culture.' and I thought, 'This one's for me.'

I sat down and became mesmerised. This is the most amazing, feeling, indescribably wonderful book I have ever come accross. I am vacilliating because I am struggling over words to describe the impact it had on me. I couldn't stop telling people about it - everyone I knew I told. It gave me a philosophy, it let me understand myself. It changed my life. Not drastically, but it gave me a sense of meaning and identity at a time where I was increasingly feeling more and more alone.

Steppenwolfe is about a man in his late middle age. He is incredibly intelligent, incredibly sensitive. He sees through all the hype and play of life. He knows so much that so much is meaningless to his vast and superior mind. He cannot cope with other people, who hurt him without meaning to, who cannot understand him, who cannot relate. He is so terribly alone, and so terribly unhappy in his isolation, that he suffers daily overwhelming physical and mental pain.

If you have ever felt so lonely it hurts, this book will touch you at your deepest nerve. It is the story of a man who is isolated by his intellect, who was born in the wrong time. It is also a very philosophical book, with many important messages. Hesse was deeply influenced by Nietszche in particular, and nihilism, and the counter-nihilism of Nietszche's later years play a large part in the symbolist storyline.

You see, Steppenwolfe sounds depressing, and a lot of people find it so. But Hesse did not mean it to be that way. Steppenwolfe is the story of a man who realises that there is beauty in everything around him, that his life is full of love, that his world is full of opportunities. It gets a bit surre
al towards the end, but it is done with such masterful tact and delicacy that you barely notice the transition, and the meaning is explicit and revelatory.

Steppenwolfe comments that it is only rarely that he is ever 'happy' - sometimes, when he hears a piece of music, or sees a sudden amazing sight, a 'golden thread of the divine' runs through his life. How beautiful, how sublime, is that? Steppenwolfe is about the dull, monotony of modern life - the meaninglessness of everything. Yet it is also about all that is beautiful. Utterly Nietszchean - read some of his work to best understand Steppenwolfe - this is the most sensitive book I have ever read. It made me feel that I was not alone. Steppenwolfe shocked me back to reality in a way because in him I saw my own isolation magnified by a hundred, and saw the way out of it.

This work is written with every attention to detail. It is profound, filled with rawest emotion and meaning. It is impossible to put down and impossible to forget about. I have never been so overwhelmed in my life as I was by this book. Please read it, and tell me if you felt the same.

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