【有声英语文学名著】德米安（6a）

 Demian

by Hermann Hesse
6) Jacob Wrestling
It is impossible to recount briefly 1 all that Pistorius the eccentric musician told me about Abraxas. Most important was that what I learned from him represented a further step on the road toward myself. At that time, I was an unusual young man of eighteen, precocious 2 in a hundred ways, in a hundred others immature 3 and helpless. When I compared myself with other boys my age I often felt proud and conceited 4 but just as often humiliated 5 and depressed 6. Frequently I considered myself a genius, and just as frequently, crazy. I did not succeed in participating in the life of boys my age, was often consumed by self-reproach and worries: I was helplessly separated from them, I was debarred from life.
Pistorius, who was himself a full-grown eccentric, taught me to maintain my courage and self-respect. By always finding something of value in what I said, in my dreams, my fantasies and thoughts, by never making light of them, always giving them serious consideration, he became my model.
"You told me," he said, "that you love music because it isamoral. That's all right with me. But in that case you can't allow yourself to be a moralist either. You can't compare yourself with others: if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich 7. You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don't ask first whether it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earthbound, a vegetable. Sinclair, our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous 8 and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel 9 in which to brew 10 his thoughts."
Among all my dreams the dark dream of love was the most faithful. How often I dreamed that I stepped beneath the heraldic bird into our house, wanted to draw my mother to me and instead held the great, half-male, half-maternal woman in my arms, of whom I was afraid but who also attracted me violently. And I could never confess this dream to my friend. I kept it to myself even after I had told him everything else. It was my corner, my secret, my refuge.
When I felt bad I asked Pistorius to play Buxtehude's passacaglia. Then I would sit in the dusk-filled church completely involved in this unusually intimate, self-absorbed music, music that seemed to listen to itself, that comforted me each time, prepared me more and more to heed 11 my own inner voices.
At times we stayed even after the music had ceased: we watched the weak light filter through the high, sharply arched windows and lose itself in the church.
"It sounds odd," said Pistorius, "that I was a theology student once and almost became a pastor 12. But I only committed a mistake of form. My task and goal still is to be a priest. Yet I was satisfied too soon and offered myself to Jehovah before I knew about Abraxas. Oh, yes, each and every religion is beautiful; religion is soul, no matter whether you take part in Christian 13 communion or make a pilgrimage to Mecca."
"But in that case," I intervened, "you actually could have become a pastor."
"No, Sinclair. I would have had to lie. Our religion is practiced as though it were something else, something totally ineffectual. If worst came to worst I might become a Catholic, but a Protestant pastor -- no! The few genuine believers -- I do know a few -prefer the literal interpretation 14. I would not be able to tell them, for example, that Christ is not a person for me but a hero, a myth, an extraordinary shadow image in which humanity has painted itself on the wall of eternity 15. And the others, that come to church to hear a few clever phrases, to fulfill 16 an obligation, not to miss anything, and so forth 17, what should I have said to them? Convert them? Is that what you mean? But I have no desire to. A priest does not want to convert, he merely wants to live among believers, among his own kind. He wants to be the instrument and expression for the feeling from which we create our gods."
He interrupted himself. Then continued: "My friend, our new religion, for which we have chosen the name Abraxas, is beautiful. It is the best we have. But it is still a fledgling. Its wings haven't grown yet. A lonely religion isn't right either. There has to be a community, there must be a cult 18 and intoxicants, feasts and mysteries. . ."
He sank into a reverie and became lost within himself.
"Can't one perform mysteries all by oneself or among a very small group?" I asked hesitantly.
"Yes, one can." He nodded. "I've been performing them for a long time by myself. I have cults 19 of my own for which I would be sentenced to years in prison if anyone should ever find out about them. Still, I know that it's not the right thing either."
Suddenly he slapped me on the shoulder so that I started up. "Boy," he said intensely, "you, too, have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don't tell me. I don't want to know them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them. It is not yet the ideal but it points in the right direction. Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains 20 to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that! You are eighteen years old, Sinclair, you don't go running to prostitutes. You must have dreams of love, you must have desires. Perhaps you're made in such a way that you are afraid of them. Don't be. They are the best things you have. You can believe me. I lost a great deal when I was your age by violating those dreams of love. One shouldn't do that. When you know something about Abraxas, you cannot do this any longer. You aren't allowed to be afraid of anything, you can't consider prohibited anything that the soul desires."
Startled, I countered: "But you can't do everything that comes to your mind! You can't kill someone because you detest 21 him."
He moved closer to me.
"Under certain circumstances, even that. Yet it is a mistake most of the time. I don't mean that you should simply do everything that pops into your head. No. But you shouldn't harm and drive away those ideas that make good sense by exorcising them or moralizing about them. Instead of crucifying yourself or someone else you can drink wine from a chalice 22 and contemplate 23 the mystery of the sacrifice. Even without such procedures you can treat your drives and so-called temptations with respect and love. Then they will reveal their meaning -- and they all do have meaning. If you happen to think of something truly mad or sinful again, if you want to kill someone or want to commit some enormity, Sinclair, think at that moment that it is Abraxas fantasizing within you! The person whom you would like to do away with is of course never Mr. X but merely a disguise. 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."
Never before had Pistorius said anything to me that had touched me as deeply as this. I could not reply. But what had affected 24 me most and in the strangest way was the similarity of this exhortation 25 to Demian's words, which I had been carrying around with me for years. They did not know each other, yet both of them had told me the same tiling.
"The things we see," Pistorius said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority's path is an easy one, ours is difficult."
A few days later, after I had twice waited in vain, I met him late at night as he came seemingly blown around a corner by the cold night wind, stumbling all over himself, dead drunk. I felt no wish to call him. He went past me without seeing me, staring in front of himself with bewildered eyes shining, as though he followed something darkly calling out of the unknown. I followed him the length of one street; he drifted along as though pulled by an invisible string, with a fanatic 26 gait, yet loose, like a ghost. Sadly I returned home to my unfulfilled dreams.
So that is how he renews the world within himself! it occurred to me. At the same moment I felt that was a low, moralizing thought. What did I know of his dreams? Perhaps he walked a more certain path in his intoxication 27 than I within my dream.
I had noticed a few times during the breaks between classes that a fellow student I had never paid any previous attention to seemed to seek me out. He was a delicate, weak-looking boy with thin red-blond hair, and the look in his eyes and his behavior seemed unusual. One evening when I was coming home he was lying in wait for me in the alley 28. He let me walk past, then followed me and stopped when I did before the front door.
"Is there something you want from me?" I asked him.
"I would only like to talk with you once," he said shyly. "Be so kind as to walk with me for a moment."
I followed him, sensing that he was excited and full of expectation. His hands trembled.
"Are you a spiritualist?" he asked suddenly.
"No, Knauer," I said laughing. "Not in the least What makes you think I am?"
"But then you must be a theosophist?"
"Neither."
"Oh, don't be so reticent 29! I can feel there's something special about you. There's a look in your eyes. . . I'm positive you communicate with spirits. I'm not asking out of idle curiosity, Sinclair. No, I am a seeker myself, you know, and I'm so very alone."
"Go ahead, tell me about it," I encouraged him. "I don't know much about spirits. I live in my dreams -- that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference."
"Yes, maybe that's the way it is," he whispered. "It doesn't matter what kinds of dreams they are in which you live. -- Have you heard about white magic?"
I had to say no.
"That is when you learn self-control. You can become immortal 30 and bewitch people. Have you ever practiced any exercises?"
After I had inquired what these "exercises" were he became very secretive; that is, until I turned to go back. Then he told me everything.
"For instance, when I want to fall asleep or want to concentrate on something I do one of these exercises. I think of something, a word for example, or a name or a geometrical form. Then I think this form into myself as hard as I can. I try to imagine it until I can actually feel it inside my head. Then I think it in the throat, and so forth, until I am completely filled by it. Then I'm as firm as though I had turned to stone and nothing can distract me any more."
I had a vague idea of what he meant. Yet I felt certain that there was something else troubling him, he was so strangely excited and restless. I tried to make it easy for him to speak, and it was not long before he expressed his real concern.
"You're continent, too, aren't you?" he asked reluctantly.
"What do you mean, sexually?"
"Yes. I've been continent for two years -- ever since I found out about the exercises. I had been depraved until then, you know what I mean. -- So you've never been with a woman?"
"No," I said. "I never found the right one."
"But if you did find a woman that you felt was the right one, would you sleep with Her?"
"Yes, naturally -- if she had no objections," I said a little derisively 31.
"Oh, you're on the wrong path altogether! You can train your inner powers only if you're completely continent. I've been -- for two whole years. Two years and a little more than a month! It's so difficult! Sometimes I think I can't stand it much longer."
"Listen, Knauer, I don't believe that continence is all that important."
"I know," he objected. "That's what they all say. But I didn't expect you to say the same thing. If you want to take the higher, the spiritual road you have to remain absolutely pure."
"Well, be pure then! But I don't understand why someone is supposed to be more pure than another person if he suppresses his sexual urges. Or are you capable of eliminating sex from all your thoughts and dreams?"
He looked at me despairingly.
"No, that's just the point. My God, but I have to. I have dreams at night that I couldn't even tell myself. Horrible dreams."
I remembered what Pistorius had told me. But much as I agreed with his ideas I could not pass them on. I was incapable 32 of giving advice that did not derive 33 from my own experience and which I myself did not have the strength to follow. I fell silent and felt humiliated at being unable to give advice to someone who was seeking it from me.
"I've tried everything!" moaned Knauer beside me. "I've done everything there is to do. Cold water, snow, physical exercise and running, but nothing helps. Each night I awake from dreams that I'm not even allowed to think about -- and the horrible part is that in the process I'm gradually forgetting everything spiritual I ever learned. I hardly ever succeed any more in concentrating or in making myself fall asleep. Often I lie awake the whole night. It can't go on much longer like this. If I can't win the struggle, if in the end I give in and become impure 34 again, I'll be more wicked than all the others who never put up a fight. You understand that, don't you?"
I nodded but was unable to make any comment. He began to bore me and I was startled that his evident need and despair made no deeper impression on me. My only feeling was: I can't help you.
"So you don't know anything?" he finally asked sadly and exhausted 35. "Nothing at all? But there must be a way. How do you do it?"
"I can't tell you anything, Knauer. We can't help anybody else. No one helped me either. You have to come to terms with yourself and then you must do what your inmost heart desires. There is no other way. If you can't find it yourself you'll find no spirits either."
The little fellow looked at me, disappointed and suddenly bereft 36 of speech. Then his eyes flashed with hatred 37, he grimaced 38 and shrieked 39: "Ah, you're a fine saint! You're depraved yourself, I know. You pretend to be wise but secretly you cling to the same filth 40 the rest of us do! You're a pig, a pig, like me. All of us are pigs!"
I went off and left him standing 41 there. He followed me two or three steps, then turned around and ran away. I felt nauseated 42 with pity and disgust and the feeling did not leave me until I had surrounded myself with several paintings back in my room and surrendered to my own dreams. Instantly the dream returned, of the house entrance and the coat of arms, of the mother and the strange woman, and I could see her features so distinctly that I began painting her picture that same evening.
When the painting was completed after several days' work, sketched 43 out in dreamlike fifteen-minute spurts 44, I pinned it on the wall, moved the study lamp in front of it, and stood before it as though before a ghost with which I had had to struggle to the end. It was a face similar to the earlier one -- a few features even resembled me. One eye was noticeably higher than the other and the gaze went over and beyond me, self-absorbed and rigid 45, full of fate.
I stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion 46. I questioned the painting, berated 47 it, made love to it, prayed to it; I called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it my beloved, called it Abraxas. Words said by Pistorius -- or Demian? -- occurred to me between my imprecations. I could not remember who had said them but I felt I could hear them again. They were words about Jacob's wrestling with the angel of God and his "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."
The painted face in the lamplight changed with each exhortation -- became light and luminous, dark and brooding, closed pale eyelids 48 over dead eyes, opened them again and flashed lightning glances. It was woman, man, girl, a little child, an animal, it dissolved into a tiny patch of color, grew large and distinct again. Finally, following a strong impulse, I closed my eyes and now saw the picture within me, stronger and mightier 49 than before. I wanted to kneel down before it but it was so much a part of me that I could not separate it from myself, as though it had been transformed into my own ego 50.
Then I heard a dark, heavy roaring as if just before a spring storm and I trembled with an indescribable new feeling of fearful experience. Stars flashed up before me and died away: memories as far back as my earliest forgotten childhood, yes, even as far back as my pre-existence at earlier stages of evolution, thronged 51 past me. But these memories that seemed to repeat every secret of my life to me did not stop with the past and the present. They went beyond it, mirroring the future, tore me away from the present into new forms of life whose images shone blindingly clear -- not one could I clearly remember later on.
During the night I awoke from deep sleep: still dressed I lay diagonally across the bed. I lit the lamp, felt that I had to recollect 52 something important but could not remember anything about the previous hour. Gradually I began to have an inkling. I looked for the painting -- it was no longer on the wall, nor on the table either. Then I thought I could dimly remember that I had burned it. Or had this been in my dream that I burned it in the palm of my hand and swallowed the ashes?
A great restlessness overcame me. I put on a hat and walked out of the house through the alley as though compelled, ran through innumerable streets and squares as though driven by a frenzy 53, listened briefly in front of my friend's dark church, searched, searched with extreme urgency -- without knowing what. I walked through a quarter with brothels where I could still see here and there a lighted window. Farther on I reached an area of newly built houses, with piles of bricks everywhere partially 54 covered with gray snow. I remembered -- as I drifted under the sway of some strange compulsion like a sleepwalker through the streets -- the new building back in my home town to which my tormentor 55 Kromer had taken me for my first payment.
A similar building stood before me now in the gray night, its dark entrance yawning at me. It drew me inside: wanting to escape I stumbled over sand and rubbish. The power that drove me was stronger: I was forced to enter. Across boards and bricks I stumbled into a dreary 56 room that smelled moist and cold from fresh cement. There was a pile of sand, a light-gray patch, otherwise it was dark. Then a horrified 57 voice called out: "My God, Sinclair, where did you come from?" Beside me a figure rose up out of the darkness, a small lean fellow, like a ghost, and even in my terror I recognized my fellow student Knauer.
"How did you happen to come here?" he asked, mad with excitement. "How were you able to find me?"
I didn't understand. "I wasn't looking for you," I said, benumbed. Each word meant a great effort and came only haltingly, through dead lips.
He stared at me. "Weren't looking for me?" "No. Something drew me. Did you call me? You must have called me. What are you doing here anyway? It's night." He clasped me convulsively with his thin arms. "Yes, night. Morning will soon be here. Can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you what?"
"Oh, I was so awful."
Only now I remembered our conversation. Had that been only four, five days ago?
A whole lifetime seemed to have passed since then. But suddenly I knew everything. Not only what had transpired 58 between us but also why I had come here and what Knauer had wanted to do out here.
"You wanted to commit suicide, Knauer?"
He trembled with cold and fear.
"Yes, I wanted to. I don't know whether I would have been able to. I wanted to wait until morning."
I drew him into the open. The first horizontal rays of daylight glimmered 59 cold and listless in the gray dawn.
For a while I led the boy by the arm. I heard myself say: "Now go home and don't say a word to anyone! You were on the wrong path. We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us."
We walked on and parted company without saying another word. When I reached the house, it was already daylight.