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    Demian: A Novel
    Demian: A Novel
    Demian: A Novel
    Ebook187 pages3 hours

    Demian: A Novel

    By Hermann Hesse

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    About this ebook

    A brilliant journey of the psyche written by one of Germany's most influential writers and thinkers, Herman Hesse

    First published in 1919 under the pseudonyn Emil Sinclair, Demian follows the life of a troubled German youth as he navigates the duality of a world filled with illusions and spiritual truth. When Sinclair first meets childhood classmate Max Demian, his eyes are opened to the contradictions of his existing Christian knowledge. As Sinclair continues to question his worldview, the two friends are separated and reunited throughout their lives, with each encounter being a vantage for Sinclair to reconcile a world at discord. He ascends on his path to freedom and a realization of self as the friendship evolves in surprising and explosive ways.

    Demian is a classic coming-of-age story that continues to inspire generations of readers in its exploration of good and evil, morality, and self-discovery.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 22, 2013
    ISBN9781466835535
    Demian: A Novel
    Author

    Hermann Hesse

    Hermann Hesse was born in 1877. His books include Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Magister Ludi. He died in 1962.

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    Reviews for Demian

    4/5

    1,641 ratings36 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This was swallowed the same period as Steppenwolf. I recall this one for the inclusion of jazz in its milieu. Not much of a chance for a return.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1919, it’s the coming-of-age story of a middle class boy and his struggle between a “world of light” and a "world of illusion". This was my first Hermann Hesse book, and I’ve added several more to my reading list. Good stuff.
    • 3/5
      Although an early work Hesse was 42 at time of publication and no youth. Overall I think he tried to do too much and the novel doesn't come together dissolving into a morass of symbols. The ideas are complex requiring external reading and in the end unless you are religious it won't be terribly profound, except as an intellectual exercise. It was perfect for the post-FIrst World War generation in Germany who questioned authority and God in the face of defeat. And I might have liked it as a younger person in the 1960s counter-culture environment. Hesse is a godfather of counter-culture, though not by design, he was 40 years ahead of his time and couldn't have predicted beats and hippies. But there is a connection worth exploring. Germany's collapse created a new culture that spread westward, not unlike what is happening with new Russian culture spreading in the decades after its collapse. Sadly the Russians do it through a different form of art then prestige literature.
    • 5/5
      Demian, is a book about the growth of an individual,a story about a boy becoming an adult.Demian offers a poignant statement of the terrors and torments of adolescence."Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits." _ Hermann HesseOne of the major themes is the existence of opposing forces (good and evil) and the idea that both are necessary using the God Abraxas as a Symbol through the story.
    • 5/5
      I like this novel and I want to read it everyday
    • 5/5
      a great book about a person (sencialr) with multiple personalities (demian and his mother eva). it explores sencialr's life starting with the event when he created the first personality up to the moment when he decides to let go and live on his own.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. Hermann Hesse has a beautiful way of writing when it comes to describing relationships between friends, lovers and relatives and is excellent at conveying emotions. It was a pleasure to read this book and to gain insight into such of a complex character and still be able to relate to him. Therefore, I really felt like I was going through his journey as well, being a teenager myself. When a book gets me excited about growing as a person and succesfully helps me do that, it's crucial to recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1919, it’s the coming-of-age story of a middle class boy and his struggle between a “world of light” and a "world of illusion". This was my first Hermann Hesse book, and I’ve added several more to my reading list. Good stuff.
    • 5/5
      The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.

      It's unfortunate that time travel doesn't exist because it would be lovely to go back and hand this novel to my 16 year old self and watch her scribble quotes in her diary. As a (somewhat cynical adult), the Freud dripping from every page was a little too on point, but I still felt a melancholy quaver at the inevitable end.
    • 5/5
      Demian was the Holden Caulfield of my undergraduate years. What a devestatingly beautiful piece of literature.
    • 3/5
      One of the books that made Hesse into such a hero back in the day. We are entertained, but also prodded into thinking.
    • 4/5
      Herman Hesse has a way with writing that it makes you feel like he is telling you the secrets of the world. The book is mainly insight driven. You experience a person's struggle as he grows up and experiences the world outside the safety of his home. There are many allusions of good vs evil and I feel Herman Hesse does a good job showing that it is not as easy to define as some would think. The protagonist meets many "guides" along the way that help him with his journey, which only we could all be so lucky. But it served as a good way of detailing the ups and downs of life, growth and experiences, but mainly that you really have to work on yourself to figure out who you are and where you would like to fit in the world. While this book is good, if you are looking to start a Herman Hesse book I would recommend starting with his other books as they are much stronger reads.
    • 5/5
      This book made such a progress in my brain, that at the moment I finished it, I literally threw it in the ground and couldn't speak for half an hour. It made me think of things I have never thought before. Amazing. :D
    • 3/5
      Not what I expected. But it did follow along the same lines as his other novel I read, Siddhartha. This was more about a boy coming to manhood but they are both dealing with the whole good vs evil in the world concept. And the good vs evil in ourselves that wwe are always battling.
    • 5/5
      By means of a novella, exposure of the duality of human nature and the quest for inner peace, while confronted by war and idiocy. Hesse was born in a provincial town of parents with a missionary background. Young Emil Sinclair, comes of age through suffering -- "in each of us a redeemer is crucified".
    • 3/5
      Demian is the story of Emil Sinclair, a boy who doesn't fit in with the other boys, his family, or society in general, and how he comes to embrace his uniqueness as he grows into adulthood with the help of another oddball named Max Demian. So far, so good.Unfortunately, the latter part of the novel consists mainly in a lot of self-congratulatory mutual back-patting about how special they are, along with Max's mother Eva, and not part of the herd...but as far as I could tell, there was practically no substance behind their sense of their own specialness (or their utter contempt for the masses), which was rather based on nothing more than their choice to be their own little herd of three. This illustrates the problem with this sort of Nietzschean pseudo-egoism very well: the alternative to populism is not elitism, but individualism...and elitism is by definition not individualism. As one dictionary aptly puts it, elitism is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group"...it may be a smaller group, but it is still defining oneself primarily in terms of and in relation to the group.Then there's all that stuff about Emil's crush on his best friend's mother, which came off not so much as liberating as just plain awkward. Throw in some all-too-obvious Jungian symbolism and bad Nietzschean philosophy (Nietzsche is explicitly mentioned more than once), and what started out as an interesting coming of age story degenerates into an overblown and in some respects absolutely ludicrous exercise in pomposity.Still, I enjoyed this more than Siddhartha...but not as much as Narcissus and Goldmund, which felt both more honest and more relevant to me. But there are some nice passages here, and the beginning was pretty good, and it was certainly instructive to see what Beyond Good and Evil would look like put into practice (not very impressive)...so it might be worth reading once if you're interested in this sort of thing.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Why had I not discover this book when I was a teenager? Would I have enjoyed it so much if I had??

      Hesse is a great writer. A great read for anyone really interested in exploring what it means to think independently.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I love Hesse, one of my favorite authors ever. Not only is the spirtualism/sensualism dichotomy (which forms the major theme of all of his works) one of the more interesting philosophical questions of mankind, but I can't think of any author who has continually revealed his own personal neuroses and self-doubts through their characters. This quality has always provoked a certain empathy, admiration, and even self-recognition when I read his books. As someone concerned with those important questions of life, I can identify with his characters, and, because his characters are so autobiographical, I feel like I can consequently identify with Hesse himself.

      One of the more fascinating thought exercises related to Hesse is studying his works as attempts to reconcile these two aspects of life: the ethereal, divine and ecstatic with the corporeal, material and sensual. As brilliant as he was, he never figured out how to do it completely, which is what makes all of his novels ultimately unsatisfying. The interesting part, however, is that each successive novel comes closer to the answer, so that Demian feels by far the least developed, and while Hesse realizes "Nirvana" in Siddhartha, it never feels authentically earned. Steppenwolf feels altogether more on the right track before devolving into a psychedelic madhouse (perhaps precisely because he didn't know where next to take it?), and then Narcissus and Goldmund and The Journey to the East get even closer to the ultimate reconciliation while still falling short. The Glass Bead Game is by far the most developed of his novels and gets tantalizingly close to a "solution" for this problem, but it still leaves the reader vaguely grasping at the "how" of Hesse's prescription.

      As obsessed as Hesse was with this issue, he was never able to solve it, and it leaves us with the suspicion that it is an insoluble problem, perhaps THE insoluble issue of humanity. His books are so enjoyable, though, precisely because nobody has ever taken up the question with such earnest seriousness. All of his books leave us unsatisfied, but upon further thought one concludes that they are unsatisfactory only because they so unerringly reflect the great human predicament: the paradox of the divine animal. **Full Disclosure: I can no longer remember concretely, but I suspect that I owe a lot of credit for this analysis to Colin Wilson, from his fantastic The Outsider.**
    • 5/5
      Herman Hesse writes in the Prologue to Demian, "Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path."(p 2) Is there a reality apart from our "constructed self"? Rather is each man on the road? The story of Emil Sinclair and his relationship with Max Demian is Hesse's attempt to narrate one young man's journey on the road toward himself. Hesse draws upon Nietzsche, Jung and others for his ideas, but the story is almost an archetypical example of the search both for meaning and identity. The forming of an identity involves discovering values, forming beliefs, and learning how to deal with reality. For Emil this includes his dream life. He tells a friend, "I live in my dreams--that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference." (p 118) The experiences of Emil are dramatic and result in a rejection of the convention life for one of a seeker. In his search Emil confronts his beliefs, dreams, and more. An epiphany occurs on one Spring day when he is attracted by a young woman in the park. He names her Beatrice and is soon transformed "into a worshipper in a temple." (p 81) He says,"I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image."(p 81)Thus the narrator describes what in Jungian terms is his "anima". This inspires him to create and to read as his journey takes him in a new direction. For Hesse and the reader it is always a path on "a road toward himself".
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. Great coming of age story with an emphasis on spiritual and philosophical development. Love the subtle supernatural elements. Brilliant and more than a little creepy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I thought this was brilliant when I was a teenager. Someday I should reread it and see if I agree as an adult.
    • 5/5
      Long my favorite novel. I'm just a sucker for an existentialist Bildungsroman.
    • 3/5
      DemianHesse has yet to live up to his reputation as far as I am concerned. Of what little I have read nothing has stood out to me as having been fantastic. Demian did not do much to rectify this. It is another book about hollow nameless spirituality. The book has been described as elusive by the friend who handed it to me. I found it to be vague, though I can understand why some would mistake the one for the other. It has a lot to do with Hesse’s technical skill as a writer. He is, in that respect, good. But it is the substance of the piece that fails. The character Demian is seen throughout the book in an almost magical light, and it is the quest for the root of this magic that drove me as a reader to the end. And then it stopped short. At the end of the tunnel there appeared to be simply more tunnel. Part of it might be my own fault. I am truly one of the people that will one day confront God with a simple ‘Would you have bought it?’ Keeping something vague does not spell a complicated argument for me – it spells poor articulation.At the end of the book knowing that there indeed was this enclave of chosen people – who had somehow mysteriously been uplifted to a higher spiritual existence to which I simply was not and will not be invited – did not make me feel better.It made me feel damned.
    • 3/5
      Hesse is a great writer and thinker; I have always liked his work but I think he misses the mark a bit with Demian. What I liked:- The expression of the importance and difficulty of the path to discovering oneself ("if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich.")- As in some of his other books, Hesse's ability to capture the angst of growing up- Demian's inverted view of the story of Cain and Abel as well as his critical commentary about the story of Christ's death and religion in general- The book is conciseWhat I didn't like:- The story itself is weak; after a couple of very interesting initial chapters it devolves into philosophy- The characters and their actions are often unrealistic (characters feeling their way to find others, or feeling it when another is thinking of them); the book seems overly influenced by Hesse's study of Jung.- Symbolism seems a bit forced; the painting, Eva/Eve, Demian/Daemon, etcFavorite quotes: "Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfullly to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.""But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshipping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil.""But we consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from the face of the earth save for one halfway talented child that had received no education, this child would rediscover the entire course of evolution, it would be capable of producing everything once more, gods and demons, paradises, commandments, the Old and New Testament.""If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
    • 5/5
      A new way of thinking of the Cain & Abel story; an evil guy with an extraordinary power of making everything sound real...Nowadays, he'd probably be a SALES person.One of my favorite Hesse's tales.
    • 5/5
      1173. Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, by Herman Hesse (read 26 Jul 1972) This is the first book of Hesse's I read and I was much moved, being reminded of Kafka and The Wanderer by Alain Fournier, I having read The Wanderer in June of 1961, but felt Demian was much more connected and less obviously dreamlike. I was carried away by the word painting of mood: "But I felt dispirited, and when I took my leave and walked alone thru the hallway, the stale scent of the hyacinth seemed cadaverous. A shadow had fallen over us." I went on to read seven other Hesse books, with appreciation of nearly all of them.
    • 5/5
      wonderfull book, reminded me of some of my own feelings when growing up.
    • 3/5
      a darker yet more approachable child shouting out to the education system, being too smart for his own good, growing up, and dying. hesse at his in-between.
    • 5/5
      a favourite and classic book!
    • 5/5
      An enlightening examination of duality and individual transformation that everyone should read. Those who do not wholly identify with Sinclair will still be absorbed by the great story and beautiful language. Those who do identify with Sinclair however, will be amazed that someone was able to articulate in writing this scarce man whose path is rarely comprehended. None better than Hesse to do it, surely. An amazing novel by an amazing novelist. One of my favorites.

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    Demian - Hermann Hesse

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