CHAPTER SEVENMOTHER EVE
In the holidays I went once to the house in which, years before, Max Demian and his mother had lived. An old lady was walking in the garden. I entered into conversation and learned that the house belonged to her. I enquired after the Demians. She remembered them very well. But she did not know where they were living at that moment. As she felt my interest, she took me into the house, searched through a leather album and showed me a photograph of Demian’s mother. I scarcely had any recollections of what she was like. But when I saw the little picture my heart stood still. It was my dream picture! There it was, the tall, almost masculine woman’s figure, resembling her son, with traits of motherliness, traits which denoted severity, and deep passion, beautiful and alluring, beautiful and unapproachable, demon and mother, destiny and mistress. That was she!
I was filled with a wild wonder, when I learned that my dream picture lived on earth! There was a woman, then, who looked like that,who bore my fate in her features! Where was she? Where? And she was Demian’s mother!
I started on my travels soon after. A strange journey! I went restlessly from place to place as impulse directed, always in search of this woman. There were days when I met shapes which reminded me of her, and which resembled her. These shapes led me on through the streets of strange towns, into railway stations, into trains, as in a tangled dream. There were other days when I saw how useless my search was. Then I sat inactive, anywhere, in a park or the garden of a hotel, in a waiting room; I looked into myself and tried to make the picture live in me. But it was now shy and elusive. I could not sleep, I only nodded for a quarter of an hour or so on railway journeys through country unknown to me. Once in Zürich, a woman followed me, a pretty, rather forward woman. I scarcely noticed her and went on, as if she were air. I would rather have died at once, than have shown sympathy for another woman, even if only for an hour.
I felt that my destiny was leading me on. I felt that fulfillment was nigh. I was mad with impatience, to think that I could do nothing to help myself. Once at a station, I think it was at Innsbruck, I saw, at the window of a train which was just moving out, a form which reminded me of her, and I was miserable for days. And suddenly the form appeared again to meat night in a dream. I woke up with a feeling as of shame, realizing the fruitlessness and senselessness of my chase, and I went home by the most direct route.
A couple of weeks later I matriculated in the University of H——. Everything disappointed me. The course of lectures I followed, on the history of philosophy, was just as vain and mechanical as the common ground of student life. Everything was so much according to pattern, one person did as the other, and the boyish faces, although inflamed with a forced gaiety, looked so distressingly vacant. It was like the gloss of a ready-made article! But I was free, I had the whole day to myself, and lived quietly in a beautiful old building outside the town. I had a couple of volumes of Nietzsche on my table. I lived with him, feeling the loneliness of his soul, sensing his destiny, which impelled him onwards unceasingly. I suffered with him, and was happy that there had been one who had gone his way so inflexibly.
Late one evening I wandered through the town; an autumn wind was blowing and I heard the student societies singing in their taverns. Tobacco smoke rose in clouds through the open windows; songs were being roared out, loudly and tensely; but the noise did not soar up, it fell dully on the ear, and was lifelessly uniform.
I stood at a street corner and listened. From two cafés the flood of song rolled forth into thenight. Everywhere community, everywhere this huddling together, everywhere this unloading of the burden of destiny, this flight into the warm proximity of the herd!
Two men passed me by slowly. I caught a phrase of their conversation.
“Isn’t it just like an assembly of youths in a nigger village?” said one. “They all do the same things. Even tattooing is in fashion. Look, that’s the young Europe.”
The voice rang suggestively in my ear. I followed behind the two in the dark street. One of them was a Japanese, small and elegant. I saw his yellow smiling face shine under the lamp.
The other spoke again.
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s any better with you in Japan. People who do not follow the herd are everywhere rare. There are a few here, too.”
Every word went through me. I felt pleasure and dread. I recognized the speaker. It was Demian.
In the windy night I followed him and the Japanese through the dark streets, listening to their conversation and enjoying the ring of Demian’s voice. It had the old tone, the old, beautiful sureness and tranquillity, and it had the same power over me. Now everything was right. I had found him.
At the end of a street in the suburbs the Japanese took leave and closed a house door behindhim. Demian took the way back. I had remained standing, and awaited him in the middle of the street. With beating heart I saw him approaching erect and walking with an elastic step. He wore a brown raincoat and carried a thin stick, hanging from his arm. He advanced without altering his regular stride until he got right up to me. He took off his hat, displaying his old, bright face with the determined mouth and the peculiar brightness on the broad forehead.
“Demian!” I called.
He stretched out his hand to me.
“So it’s you, then, Sinclair? I expected you.”
“Did you know I was here?”
“I did not know for certain, but I hoped it might be true. I saw you first this evening. You have been behind us the whole time.”
“You recognized me then at once?”
“Of course. You’re very much changed to be sure; but you have the sign. We used to call it the mark of Cain, if you recollect. It is our sign. You have always had it; for that reason I became your friend. But now it is clearer.”
“I did not know. Or rather I did. I once painted a picture of you, Demian, and was astonished that it was also like me. Was that the sign?”
“That was it. It’s fine that you are here now! My mother will be glad as well.”
I started.
“Your mother? Is she here? She doesn’t know me a bit.”
“Oh, she knows of you. She will know, without even my asking her, who you are. You haven’t let me hear from you for a long time.”
“Oh, I often wanted to write, but nothing came of it. For some time past I have felt I should find you. I was waiting for it every day.”
He pushed his arm through mine and we went on. Tranquillity seemed to emanate from him and pass on to me. We were soon chatting together as formerly. We mentioned our schooldays, the confirmation class and that unlucky meeting of ours in the holidays—only no mention was made of the earliest and closest bond between us, of the affair with Frank Kromer.
Unexpectedly we found ourselves in the middle of a singular and ominous conversation. Having recalled Demian’s discourse with the Japanese, we spoke of student life in general and from that we had branched off to something else, which seemed to be rather out of the way of the former trend of our talk. Nevertheless, from Demian’s manner of introducing the subject, there seemed to be no lack of coherence in our conversation.
He spoke of the spirit of Europe, and of modern tendencies. Everywhere, he said, reigned a desire to come together, to formherds, but nowhere was freedom or love. All this life in common, from the student clubs and choral societies to the state, was an unnatural, forced phenomenon. The community owed its origin to a sense of fear, of embarrassment, to a desire for flight; inwardly it was rotten and old, and approaching a general break-up.
“Community,” Demian said, “is a beautiful thing. But what we see blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time the world will be remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds. Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another—the masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the intellectuals for theirs! And why are they afraid? One is only afraid when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who are afraid of the unknown in themselves! They all feel that the laws of their life no longer hold good, that they are living according to outworn commandments. Neither their religion nor their morals conform to our needs. For a hundred years and more Europe has simply studied and built factories. They know exactly how many grams of powder it takes to kill a man, but they do not know how to pray to God. They have no idea how to amuse themselves,even for an hour. Look at these students drinking in their tavern! Or take any place of amusement where rich people go! Hopeless! My dear Sinclair, no cheerfulness, no serenity can come of all that. These creatures, who move about so uneasily in crowds, are full of fear and full of wickedness, no one trusts the other. They adhere to ideals which have ceased to exist, and they stone everyone who proposes a new one. I feel that there are troubles ahead of us. They will come, believe me, they will come soon! Of course the world won’t be bettered! Whether the workmen kill the manufacturers, or whether the Russians and Germans shoot at one another, it will only be a change of proprietors. But it will not be in vain. It will free the world from the chains of present-day ideals, there will be a clearing away of Stone-Age gods. The world, as it is now, wants to die, it wants to perish, and it will.”
“And what will happen to us then?” I asked.
“To us? Oh, perhaps we shall perish as well. They can also murder people in our position. Only we shall not be entirely wiped out. The will of the future will realize itself from what remains of our influence, or with the aid of those of us who survive. The will of humanity will make itself felt, which our Europe has for a long time past tried to drown in its sale yard of scientifically manufactured articles. And then it will be seen that there is nothing in commonbetween the will of humanity and that of our present-day communities, of the states and peoples, of the societies and churches. But what nature wills with man, is written in the individual few, in you and in me. It is found in Jesus, in Nietzsche. For these (the only important currents of thought which naturally can alter their course each day) there will be place when the present-day communities break up together.”
It was late when we made a halt before a garden by the river.
“We live here,” said Demian. “Come and see us soon! We shall expect you.”
I cheerfully wended my long way home through the night, which had become cold. Here and there brawling students were lurching through the town. I had often felt, sometimes with a feeling of privation, sometimes with scorn, the contrast between their curious sort of gaiety and my lonely life. But now, tranquil and strong in a sense of secret power I felt as never before how little that affected me, how far removed was their world from mine. I reminded myself of officials of my native town, worthy old gentlemen, who clung to memories of the semesters they had passed in drinking, as they would to memories of a blissful paradise, and who practised a cult, calling up reminiscences of the vanished “freedom” of their University life with all the seriousness which some poet orother romantic would devote to an account of his childhood. Everywhere the same! Everywhere they sought “liberty” and “happiness” behind them, in the past, for fear of being reminded of their own responsibility, of being warned they were not striking out for themselves, but merely going the way of all the world. Two or three years passed in drinking and jollification, and then they crept under the common shelter and became serious gentlemen in the service of the state. Yes, it was rotten, our whole system was rotten and these student sillinesses were less stupid and not so bad as a hundred others.
However, when I reached my distant dwelling and went to bed, all these thoughts had flown. Everything else was in suspense as I looked forward to the fulfillment of the promise made to me that day. As soon as I wished, in the morning if I liked, I could see Demian’s mother. Let the students hold their drinking bouts and tattoo their faces, let the world be rotten and on the brink of ruin—what had that to do with me? I was waiting for one single thing, that my fate might meet me in a new picture.
I woke up late in the morning from a deep sleep. The day broke for me as a solemn festal day, such as I had not experienced since the Christmas celebrations of my boyhood. I was full of a deep unrest, yet entirely without fear.I felt that an important day had broken for me. I saw and felt the world around me changed: it was full of secret portent, expectant and solemn. Even the gently falling autumn rain was beautiful, full of the quiet, glad, serious music of a festal day. For the first time the outer world was in tune with my inner world—then it is a feast-day for the soul, then living is worth while! No house, no shop window, no face in the street disturbed me. Everything was as it had to be, but did not wear the empty features of every day and of the habitual. It was like expectant nature, standing full of awe to meet its fate. Thus, as a little boy, I used to see the world on the morning of a great feast-day, at Christmas or at Easter. I had not known that this world could still be so beautiful. I had been accustomed to living shut up in myself, and to content myself with the idea that my understanding for the outside world had been lost, that the loss of glistening colors was inevitably connected with the loss of childish vision.
So the hour came when I found again that garden in the suburbs, at the gate of which I had taken leave of Max Demian the night before. Concealed behind trees in a grey mist of rain stood a little house, bright and homely, tall flowers stood behind a big glass partition, and behind shining windows were dark room walls with pictures and bookcases. The frontdoor led immediately into a little hall, and a silent old servant, black, with white apron, showed me in and took my raincoat from me.
She left me alone in the hall. I looked about me. I looked round; and immediately I was in the middle of my dream. On the dark wood wall above a door, under glass and in a black frame, hung a picture I knew well, my bird with the golden yellow hawk’s crest, forcing its way out of the sphere. Much moved, I remained standing. My heart felt glad and sorry, as if in that moment everything I had done and had experienced came back to me as answer and fulfillment. Like a lightning flash a crowd of pictures passed through my soul: my home, the house of my father, with the old stone crest over the arch of the door, the boy Demian drawing the crest, myself as a boy, fearsome under the evil spell of my enemy Kromer, myself, as a youth, at the table in my little room at school painting the bird of my dream, the soul caught in a web of its own weaving, and everything, everything up to this moment found echo in me again, and was confined, answered, approved.
With misty eyes I stared at my picture and read in the book of my soul. My glance dropped. In the open door under the picture of the bird stood a tall lady in a dark dress. It was she.
I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a friendly way beneathfeatures like her son’s, timeless and without age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment, her greeting meant home-coming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She seized both mine with her strong, warm ones.
“You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you!”
Her voice was deep and warm, I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I looked up in her tranquil face, into the black eyes of unfathomable depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore the sign.
“How glad I am!” I said to her and kissed her hands. “I believe I have been on my way all my life long—but now I have come home.”
She smiled in a motherly way.
“One never comes home,” she said gently. “But where friendly roads converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home.”
She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her. Her voice and her words were like those of her son, and yet quite different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured. But just as Max in years past had made on no one the impression of being a mere boy, so his mother did not look like the mother of a grown-up son, so young and sweet was the breath of her face and hair, so smooth her golden skin, so blossoming her mouth. More queenly still than in my dream she stood beforeme. Her presence was love’s happiness, her look was fulfillment.
This, then, was the new picture, in which my fate displayed itself, no longer severe, no longer isolating, but mature and full of promise. I took no resolutions, I made no vows. I had attained an end, I had reached a point of vantage on the way, from which the further road displayed itself, broad and lovely, leading on to lands of promise, shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of delight. Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman’s existence in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence. Whether she would be to me mother, mistress, goddess—what mattered it as long as she was present! As long as my way lay near to hers!
She indicated my picture of the hawk.
“You have never given Max more pleasure than by sending this bird,” she said musingly. “And I was pleased as well. We expected you, and when the picture arrived we knew that you were on the way to us. When you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son came one day from school and said: ‘There’s a boy who has the sign on his forehead, he must be my friend.’ That was you. You have not had an easy time of it, but we had confidence in you. Once in the holidays when you were at home, Max met you again. You were at that time about sixteen years old. Max told me——”
I interrupted: “Oh, that he should have told you that. It was the most miserable time I have had!”
“Yes, Max said to me: ‘Now Sinclair has the hardest time before him. He is making an attempt to escape to the community, he has even taken to drinking with the others; but he won’t succeed in that. His sign has become dulled, but it shines secretly.’ Was not that the case?”
“Oh yes, it was, exactly. Then I found Beatrice, and finally a guide came to me. His name was Pistorius. For the first time it was clear to me why my boyhood was so bound up with Max’s, why I could not break away from him. Dear lady—dear mother, at that time I often thought I should have to take my life. Is the way so hard for everyone?”
She let her fingers stray through my hair, as gently as if a light breeze were blowing.
“It is always hard, to be born. You know, it is not without effort that the bird comes out of the egg. Look back and ask yourself: was the way then so hard?—only hard? Was it not beautiful as well? Could you have had one more beautiful, more easy?”
I shook my head.
“It was hard,” I said, as if in sleep, “it was hard, until the dream came.”
She nodded and looked at me penetratingly.
“Yes, one must find one’s dream, then the way is easy. But there is no dream which enduresfor always. Each sets a new one free, to none should one wish to cleave.”
I started. Was that already a warning? Was that already a warding-off? But no matter, I was ready to let myself be led by her, and not enquire after the end.
“I do not know,” I said, “how long my dream is to last. I wish it would be forever. My fate received me under the picture of the bird, like a mother, and like a mistress. To it I belong and to no one else.”
“As long as the dream is your fate, so long must you remain true to it,” she said, in earnest confirmation of my remark.
I was very sad, and I wished ardently to die in this hour of enchantment; I felt the tears—for what an interminably long time had I not wept—rise irresistibly and overmaster me. I turned violently away from her. I stepped to the window, and looked out, my eyes blinded with tears, away over the flower-pots.
I heard her voice behind me; it rang out calmly and yet was so full of tenderness, like a cup filled to the brim with wine.
“Sinclair, what a child you are! Of course your fate loves you. One day it will belong to you entirely, just as you dreamt it, if you remain true to it.”
I had composed myself and turned my face to her again. She gave me her hand.
“I have a few friends,” she said, smiling,“very few, very close friends, who call me Mother Eve. You may call me so as well, if you like.”
She led me to the door, opened it and indicated the garden. “You will find Max out there, I think.”
I stood under the tall trees, stunned and stupefied. I knew not whether I was more awake or more dreaming than ever. Softly the rain dripped from the branches. I went slowly through the garden, which stretched far along the river bank. At last I found Demian. He stood in an open summer house. Naked to the waist, he was doing boxing exercises with a little sack of sand hung from a beam.
Astonished, I remained standing there. Demian looked magnificent; his broad chest, the firm manly head, the uplifted arms were strong and sturdy. The movements came from the hips, the shoulders, the joints of the arm, as easily as if they bubbled out of a spring of strength.
“Demian!” I called. “What are you doing there?”
He laughed gaily.
“I am exercising. I have promised to box with the little Jap; the fellow is as agile as a cat, and naturally just as sly. But he won’t be able to manage me. I owe him just one little beating.”
He drew on shirt and coat.
“You have already seen mother?” he asked.
“Yes, Demian, what a marvellous mother you have! Mother Eve! The name suits her perfectly; she is like the mother of all being.”
He gazed for an instant musingly in my face.
“You know her name already? You ought to be proud, young friend. You are the only one to whom she has said it in the first hour’s acquaintance.”
From this day on I went in and out of the house like a son and a brother, but also like a lover. When I closed the gate behind me, even when I saw the tall trees of the garden emerge in the distance, I was happy. Outside was “reality,” outside were streets and houses, human beings and institutions, libraries and lecture rooms—here inside were love and the life of the soul, here was the kingdom of fairy stories and dreams. And yet we lived by no means shut off from the world. In thought and word we often lived in its midst, only on another plane. We were not separated from the majority of creatures by boundaries, but rather by a different sort of vision. Our task was to be, as it were, an island in the world, perhaps an example, in any case to proclaim that it was possible to live a different sort of life. I, who had been isolated for so long, learned to what extent community of feeling is possible between people who have experienced complete loneliness. I no longer desired to be back at thetables of the happy, at the feasts of the merry. I no longer felt envious or homesick when I saw others living in community. And slowly I was initiated into the mystery of those who bore “the sign.”
We, who bore the sign, were probably justly considered by the world as peculiar—yes, mad even, and dangerous. For we were awake, or were waking, and our endeavor was to be more and more completely awake, whereas the others strove to be happy, attaching themselves to the herd, the opinions and ideals of which they made their own, taking up the same duties, making their life and happiness depend on common interests. True, there was a certain greatness, a vigorousness, in their endeavor. But whereas, from our point of view, we who bore the sign carried out the will of nature as individuals and as men of the future, the others persisted in a stubbornness which hindered all progress. For them mankind, which they loved just as we did—was something already complete, which must be maintained and protected. For us mankind was a distant future, to which we were all on the way. No one could image this future, neither did its laws stand written in any book.
Besides Mother Eve, Max and myself, there belonged to our circle in a greater or lesser degree of intimacy many seekers of very various sorts. Many of them were going along theirown special paths, had set up special aims and adhered to special opinions and duties. Amongst these were astrologers and cabbalists, also an adherent of Count Tolstoy, and all kinds of tender, timid, sensitive people, followers of new sects, men who practised Indian cults, vegetarians and others. With all these we had really nothing of a spiritual nature in common, except the esteem which each accorded the secret life-dream of the other. Some were in closer contact with us, such as those who traced the searchings of mankind after gods and new ideals in the past, and whose studies often reminded me of my friend Pistorius. They brought books with them, translated for us texts from ancient tongues and showed us illustrations of ancient symbols and rites. They taught us to see how all the ideals of mankind up to the present have their origin in dreams of the subconscious soul, dreams in which humanity is, as it were, feeling its way forward into the future, guided by premonitions of the future’s potentialities. So we went through the religious history of the ancient world with its thousand gods, to the dawn of Christianity. The confessions of the isolated saints were known to us, and the changes of religion from race to race. And from all the knowledge we thus acquired resulted a criticism of our era and of present-day Europe, of this continent which through enormous exertions had created powerful newweapons for humanity, only to fall finally into a deep spiritual devastation, the effects of which were at last being felt. For it had gained the whole world, only to lose its own soul.
There were with us believers as well, advocates of doctrines of salvation, in the efficacy of which they were very hopeful. There were Buddhists who wished to convert Europe, and disciples of Tolstoy, and of other confessions. We in our narrow circle listened, but accepted none of these doctrines except as symbols. We who bore the sign had no cares as regarded the formation of the future. To us every confession, every doctrine of salvation appeared in advance dead and useless. Our whole duty, our destiny, was, we felt, to attain to self-realization, in order that in us nature might find scope for its full activities, and that the unknown future might find us ready to fill any rôle which should be allotted us.
Whether we expressed our opinion in so many words or not, it was clear to all of us that a break-up of the present-day world was approaching, to be followed by a new birth. Demian said to me on more than one occasion: “What will come is beyond conception. The soul of Europe is an animal which has been chained up for an immeasurably long period. When it is set free, its first movements will not display much amiability. But the way it will take, whether direct or indirect, is not of importance,provided that the soul’s true need is realized, this soul which has been deluded and dulled for so long. Then our day will come, then we shall be needed, not as guides or new law-givers—we shall not live to see the new laws—but rather as volunteers, as those who are ready to follow and to stand wherever fate shall call us. Look, all men are ready to perform the incredible, when their ideals are threatened. But no one comes forward when a new ideal, a new, perhaps dangerous and uncanny impulse of spiritual growth declares itself. We shall be of those few who are there, ready to go forward. For that purpose have we been singled out just as Cain was marked with the sign to inspire fear and hate, to drive the men of his time out of a narrow idyllic existence into the broad pastures of a greater destiny. All men whose influence has affected the march of humanity, all such, without differentiation, owe their capabilities and their efficacy to the fact that they were ready to do the bidding of destiny. That applies to Napoleon and Bismarck. The immediate purpose to which they direct their energies does not lie within their choice. If Bismarck had understood the social democrats and had thrown in his lot with them, he would have been a prudent fellow, but he would never have been the instrument of fate. The same applies to Napoleon, to Caesar, to Loyola, to all of them! One must always look at suchthings from the point of view of biology and evolution! When the changes which took place in the earth’s surface transferred to the land animals which lived in water, and vice versa, then those specimens which were ready to fulfill their functions as instruments of fate, brought new and unheard-of things to pass and were able, through new adaptations, to save their kind. Whether these specimens were the same that had previously been conservatives and preservers of the status quo or the eccentrics and revolutionaries, is not known. They were ready to be used by fate, and for that reason were able to help their race through a new stage of evolution. That we do know. For that reason we want to be ready.”
Mother Eve was often present when such conversations took place, but she did not join in. For each of us who chose to express his thoughts she was as it were a listener and an echo, full of confidence, full of understanding. It appeared as if our ideas all emanated from her and returned to her again. My happiness consisted in sitting near her, in hearing her voice from time to time, and in participating in that atmosphere of maturity and of the soul, which surrounded her.
She felt immediately when a change was taking place in me, when my soul was troubled, or when a renewal was in progress. It seemed to me as if the dreams I had in my sleep wereinspired by her. I often related them to her. She found them quite comprehensible and natural, there were no peculiarities which she could not follow clearly. For a time I had dreams which were like reproductions of the day’s conversation. I dreamed that the whole world was in revolt, and that I, alone or with Demian, tensely waited the signal of fate. Fate remained half concealed, but bore somehow or other the traits of Mother Eve—to be chosen or rejected by her, that was fate.
Sometimes she said with a smile: “Your dream is not complete, Sinclair, you have forgotten the best part”—and it sometimes happened that I recalled it then, and I could not understand how I had come to forget any of it.
At times I was discontented and was tormented by desire, I thought I could not bear to see her near me any longer without taking her in my arms. She noticed that immediately. Once, when I had stayed away for several days and had returned distraught, she took me aside and said: “You should not give yourself up to wishes in which you do not believe, I know what you wish. You must give up these desires, or else surrender yourself to them completely. If one day you are able to ask, convinced that your wishes will be fulfilled, then you will find satisfaction. But you wish, and repent again, and are afraid. You must overcome all that. I will tell you a fairy-tale.”
And she told me of a youth who was in love with a star. He stood on the sea-shore, stretched out his hands, and prayed to the star. He dreamed of it and all his thoughts were of it. But he knew, or thought he knew, that a star could not be embraced by a man. He held it to be his fate to love a star without hope of fulfillment, and he created from this thought a whole life-poem about renunciation, and mute, faithful suffering which should better him and purify him. But his dreams all went up to the star. Once again he stood at night by the sea-shore, on a high cliff. He gazed at the star, and his love for it flamed up within him. And in a moment of great longing he made a spring, throwing himself into space to meet the star. But at the moment of leaping, the thought flashed through his mind: it is impossible! And so he was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. He did not know how to love. Had he had the strength of soul, at the moment of leaping, to believe in the fulfillment of his wish, he would have flown up and have been united with the star.
“Love must not beg,” she said, “nor demand either. Love must have the force to be absolutely certain of itself. Then it is attracted no longer, but attracts. Sinclair, I am attracting your love. As soon as you attract my love, I shall come. I do not want to make a present of myself. I want to be won.”
On a later occasion she told me another fairy-story. There was a lover, who loved without hope of success. He withdrew entirely into himself and thought his love would consume him. The world was lost to him, he saw the blue sky and the green wood no longer, he did not hear the murmuring of the stream, or the notes of the harp; all that meant nothing to him, and he became poor and miserable. But his love grew, and he would much rather have died and have made an end of it all than renounce the chance of possessing the beautiful woman whom he loved. Then he suddenly felt that his love had consumed everything else in him, it became powerful and exercised an irresistible attraction, the beautiful woman had to follow, she came and he stood with outstretched arms to draw her to him. But as she stood before him, she was completely transformed, and with a thrill he felt and saw that he had drawn into his embrace the whole world, which he had lost. She stood before him and surrendered herself to him, sky and wood and brook, all was decked out in lovely new colors, all belonged to him, and spoke his tongue. And instead of merely winning a woman, he had taken the whole world to his heart, and each star in the heaven glowed in him, and twinkling, communicated desire to his soul. He had loved, and thereby had found himself. But most people love only to lose themselves thereby.
My whole life seemed to be contained in my love for Mother Eve. But every day she looked different. Many times I felt decidedly that it was not her person for which my whole being was striving, but that she was a symbol of my inward self, and that she wished only to lead me to see more deeply into myself. I often heard words fall from her lips, which sounded like answers to the burning questions asked by my subconscious self. Then again there were moments when in her presence I burnt with desire, and afterwards kissed objects she had touched. And by degrees sensual and unsensual love, reality and symbol merged into one another. Then it happened that I could think of her at home in my room with quiet fervor. I thought I felt her hand in mine and my lips pressed to hers. Or I was at her house, gazing up into her face, talking with her and listening to her voice; and I did not know whether it was really she, or whether it was a dream. I began to foresee how one can have a lasting and immortal love. In reading a book I had acquired new knowledge, and it was the same feeling as a kiss from Mother Eve. She stroked my hair and smiled at me, I sensed the perfume of her warm ripe mouth, and I had the same feeling as if I had been making progress within myself. All that was important and fateful for me seemed to be contained in her. She could transform herself into each of my thoughts, andevery one of my thoughts was transformed into her.
I feared that it would be torture to spend the two weeks of the Christmas holidays, separated from Mother Eve, with my parents at home. But it was no torture, it was lovely to be at home and to think of her. When I returned to H—— I remained away from her house another two days, in order to enjoy the security and independence of her actual presence. I also had dreams in which my union with her was accomplished by way of allegory. She was a sea, into which I, a river, flowed. She was a star, and I myself was a star on my way to her. We felt drawn to one another. We met, and remained together always, turning blissfully round one another in close-lying orbits, to the music of the spheres.
I related this dream to her, when I visited her again after the holidays.
“It is a beautiful dream,” she said softly. “See that it comes true!”
There came a day in early spring that I shall never forget. I entered the hall. A window stood open and the heavy scent of hyacinths, wafted by a warm breath of air, permeated the room. As no one was to be seen, I went upstairs to Max Demian’s study. I knocked softly on the door and entered without waiting for permission, as I was in the habit of doing with him.
The room was dark. The curtains were all drawn. The door to a little room adjoining stood open, where Max had set up a chemical laboratory. From there came the bright, white light of the spring sun, shining through rain clouds. I thought no one was there and pulled back one of the curtains.
There I saw Max Demian, sitting on a stool by a curtained window. His attitude was cramped and he was oddly changed. The thought flashed through me: You have seen him like this once before! His arms were motionless at his side, his hands in his lap; his face inclined slightly forward, with open eyes, was without sight, as if dead. In the eyes there glimmered dully a little reflex of light, as in a piece of glass. The pale face was self-absorbed and without any expression, save that of great rigidity. He looked like a very ancient mask of an animal at the door of a temple. He appeared not to be breathing.
The recollection came to me—thus, exactly thus, had I once seen him, many years ago, when I was still quite a boy. Thus had his eyes stared inwards, thus his hands had been lying motionless, close to one another, a fly had been crawling over his face. And he had then, six years ago perhaps, looked just as old and as ageless, not a wrinkle in his face had changed.
I was frightened, and went softly out of the room and down the stairs. In the hall I metMother Eve. She was pale and seemed tired: I had not seen her like that before. A shadow came through the window, the bright white sun had suddenly disappeared.
“I went into Max’s room,” I whispered hastily. “Has anything happened? He is asleep, or absorbed, I don’t know what; I once saw him like that before.”
“But you didn’t wake him?” she asked quickly.
“No. He did not hear me. I came out immediately. Mother Eve, tell me, what is the matter with him?”
She passed her hand over her forehead.
“Don’t worry, Sinclair, nothing has happened to him. He has retired into himself. It will not last long.”
She got up and went out into the garden, although it had begun to rain. I felt that I must not follow her. So I walked up and down in the hall, inhaling the scent of the hyacinths which dulled my senses, and gazing at my picture of the bird over the door. I felt oppressively the odd shadow which seemed to fill the house that morning. What was it? What had happened?
Mother Eve came back soon. Rain drops hung in her dark hair. She sat down in her easy chair. She was very tired. I went to her, bent down and kissed the raindrops in her hair.Her eyes were bright and soft, but the raindrops tasted like tears.
“Shall I go and see how he is?” I asked in a whisper.
She smiled weakly.
“Don’t be a child, Sinclair!” she admonished loudly, as if to relieve her own feelings. “Go now and come back later, I cannot talk to you now.”
I went. I walked out of the house and out of the town, towards the mountains. The thin rain was falling obliquely, and clouds were driving at a low altitude under heavy pressure, as if in fear. Down below there was hardly any breeze, but on the heights above a storm seemed to be raging. Several times the sun, pale and bright, broke for an instant through the steely grey of the clouds.
There came a fleecy, yellow cloud driving across the sky. It collided with the grey cloud wall, and in a few seconds the wind formed a picture of the yellow and blue, of a bird of giant size, which tore itself free from the blue mêlée and with wide fluttering wings disappeared in the sky. Then the storm became audible and rain mixed with hail rattled down. A short burst of thunder with an unnatural and terrific sound cracked over the whipped landscape. Immediately after the sun broke through and on the mountains close at hand above brown woods glistened, pale and unreal, the fresh snow.
When I returned after several hours, wet from the rain and wind, Demian himself opened the front door to me.
He took me with him up to his room. A gas flame burned in the laboratory, paper lay about, he appeared to have been working.
“Sit down,” he invited, “you must be tired, it was a terrible storm; it’s evident, you were overtaken by it. Tea is coming at once.”
“Something is the matter to-day,” I began hesitatingly, “it can’t only be that bit of a storm.”
He looked at me penetratingly.
“Have you seen anything?”
“Yes. I saw a picture clearly in the clouds, for an instant.”
“What sort of a picture?”
“It was a bird.”
“The hawk? Was it that? The bird of your dream?”
“Yes, it was my hawk. It was yellow and of giant size, it flew up into the blue-black heaven.”
Demian took a deep breath. Someone knocked at the door. The aged servant brought in tea.
“Take a cup, Sinclair, do. I don’t think it was by chance you saw the bird.”
“Chance? Does one see such things by chance?”
“Well, no. It means something. Do you know what?”
“No. I only feel, it means a violent shock, the approach of fate. I think it will affect all of us.”
He walked violently up and down.
“The approach of fate!” he exclaimed loudly. “I dreamed the same thing myself last night, and my mother yesterday had a premonition, portending the same thing. I dreamed I was going up a ladder, placed against a tree trunk or a tower. When I reached the top I saw the whole country. It was a wide plain, with towns and villages burning. I cannot yet relate everything, because it isn’t all quite clear to me.”
“Do you interpret the dream as affecting you?” I asked.
“Me? Naturally. No one dreams of what does not concern him. But it does not concern me alone, you are right. I distinguish tolerably well between the dreams which indicate agitation of my own soul, and the others, the rare ones, which bear on the fate of all humanity. I have seldom had such dreams, and never one of which I can say that it was a prophecy, and that it has been fulfilled. The interpretations are too uncertain. But this I know for a certainty, I have dreamed of something which does not concern me alone. For the dream belongs to others, former ones I have had; this is the continuation. These are the dreams, Sinclair, in which I had the premonitions which I have already mentioned to you. We know that theworld is absolutely rotten, but that is no reason to prophesy its ruin, or to make a prophecy of a like nature. But for several years past I have had dreams, from which I conclude, or feel, or what you will, which, then, give me the feeling that the break-up of an old world is drawing near. At first they were simply faint presentiments, but since they have become more and more significant. Even now I know nothing more than that something big and terrible is approaching, which will concern me. Sinclair, we shall go through the experiences of which we have so often talked. The world is about to renew itself. It smacks of death. Nothing new comes without death. It is more terrible than I had thought.”
Frightened, I looked at him fixedly.
“Can’t you tell me the rest of your dream?” I begged timidly.
He shook his head.
“No.”
The door opened and Mother Eve entered.
“There you are, sitting together! Children, I hope you aren’t sad?”
She looked fresh, her fatigue had quite vanished. Demian smiled at her, she came to us as a mother comes to frightened children.
“We aren’t sad, mother. We were simply trying to solve the riddle of these new signs. But that is of no importance; what is to come,will be here all of a sudden, and then we shall learn what we need to know.”
But I did not feel happy. When I said good-bye and went down alone through the hall, I felt that the hyacinths were faded and withered, reminding me of corpses. A shadow had fallen over us.