I picked up Herman Hess’s Demian because I’d heard his name in a coffee shop. There was one not unattractive lady, nearing 40 by my guess, who would sit reading her book by Hess with an obvious effort that the cover would be visible to store traffic. I made an attempt to crochet a scarf for my little sister, a project I did at the shop, and that lady was happy to sit very close to me, very close, and getting closer all the time, to me, and teach me how to crochet correctly. As it happens, I am decent at crochet now. It also turns out that the coffee shop owned the book she was broadcasting. It was a book called My Belief. I read a couple essays from that book and enjoyed them, so when I was in a used book store looking for anything by Hemingway, the Hess section was next to the Hemingway section. I thought, “I know both these names. This is a sign.” I bought 7 books that day for less than $20. So…I have all of these books by Herman Hess and I recently started reading the shortest one, which is called Demian.
The first chapter of the book is called “Two Realms.” It is about the way his early life seemed to him to be constructed of two realms. There was the home life, of God, and good, and duty, and safety etc. The other realm was the bad realm, with murders, and evil, and liquor, and sex, and secrets. I insterted the words good and bad. I don't think he used those words. He relates feeling drawn to each realm.
My first thought upon reading this was to wonder what Jesus would say to this, since he was the one who said that we will love one master and hate the other, or we will love the other master and hate the first. I’m faced with the concept that a kingdom divided cannot stand, meshed against knowing Hess’s experience coincides with my own. I grew up knowing two worlds. One world was good and home, and the other was bad and other than home. I’ve known this, and I have struggled, always feeling that the two worlds were always too one sided. Each world was incomplete without the other world, and I longed to live only in the good world…until...Eventually I wanted only to live in one world without regard to if it was the good one or the bad one. I wanted to live in either world without the other world infringing on that world’s perfection. I wanted to be without scope, and I could not.
I’m interested to find out where Hess is going with this book that seems to be an autobiography of his thought-life throughout his development. I’m interested to see where I will make a solid break from my agreement with him, and start disagreeing with him. I’ve found that working out exactly where I can no longer go along with a thought process is very enriching to me. I enjoy it.
Oh, and the lady who helped with my crocheting had just suffered a terrible breakup. She was wonderfully informative about crochet as well as philosophy, and good company to boot. She was probably younger than I said before. Last I saw her, she had found someone new, and is currently living happily ever after.
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