Jankp Splits In 3 To Review Hesse's Steppenwolf

Author's Note--This isn't actually a Dr. Freudine review since she's only in jankp's head and italicized, along with jankp's inner critic in bold print. Dr. Freudine is a psychiatrist character helping me review books and movies.


I’ve just finished reading a madman’s story, so please forgive me for being a touch rattled. I’m not even sure if talking about this book is a nightmare or me laying on Dr. Freudine’s couch. You see, the author of Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse, believes that we have multiple personalities, all of us, from the past, present and future, making up who we are, but we strive to tame them and mold them into just one to seem normal. Artists, inventors, deep thinkers and geniuses are examples of people who have embraced their many sides... Hmm. This would explain AliventiAsylum’s many voices in her head and mike.holmes’ unwanted one. I wonder...

Say, did I just hear Dr. Freudine? Where is she and how did she find me? Well, that’s odd. As I was going to say, this madman called Harry Haller recognizes two of his personalities and is nearly a genius.

Part human, part wolf, is his simplistic description of himself, caught in two feuding worlds. The human in him wants to be noble and spiritual, especially in his connection with the divine music of Mozart and classic works of thought from Goethe. The wolf in him mocks his desire to be good, find pleasure in living and be content with the bourgeoisie or middle-class comfort...What a sad, sad man! So lonely, filled with hate for the world, yet it’s only a cover-up because he feels insecure and guilty of not fitting in...

I turn around quickly, crying her name. So she wants to play games, does she? It’s obvious she hasn’t read the 1929 German novel, translated here in 1963. I’ll just mislead her, I will...I wouldn’t do that if I were you—and I am...Huh? Who’s talking with my voice in my head?...Oh, bother, just get on with the review. I’d start with the beginning of the novel...

This is getting weird. Okay, first we have a long preface from a guy who boards at the house that Harry comes for lodging. He describes Harry in quite some detail as being peculiar in bearing and exuding a foreign-like presence, starting with Harry’s unpleasant observation that it smelled so good in the house when there wasn’t any smell that he could detect. It’s a good enough warm-up to the main event with the madman, having been introduced, proceeding to tell his story after coming to the clean, orderly house with the sweet old landlady and the curious boarder.

Not bad. You’ll make a reviewer yet...Reviewer? Who’s a silly reviewer? I’m a psychiatrist!...Hey! What’s going on here? Who’s the critic and is Doc analyzing me? I can’t take this, I tell you! Now if you just shut up, oh, what am I saying? Harry never sounded this confused, did he?...Well, he did at the end when he finally experienced the Magic Theater. Until then, jankp, he only had two personalities screaming for attention...Yes, the story picked up when he was out walking at night and received those ghostly messages about the Magic Theater for madmen only. He realized they were from another world and time that only he could see...

I grit my teeth, pressing my hands to my ears. So did this mean I, too, was in another world and time like Harry was? I must be dreaming, after all! Who was the one who read all 218 pages? Me. Who started talking about the book? Me. They are the unreal ones!

Now you should describe Hermine, you know...I sigh in exasperation, releasing my hands. Ok, Harry one night is too afraid to go home because the razor and suicidal death await him. He’s afraid to live and afraid to die, poor madman...I would call him frustrated and sad in need of therapy, but a madman, jankp?...Hey, Doc, what do you know, anyway? So he enters a strange bar on the other side of town and meets a boyish-looking, pretty girl who can read his mind and tells him what to do as if he’s a lost puppy. He guesses her name, Hermine, because she reminds him of a great childhood friend, Herman. She becomes like a mirror, reflecting his feelings and thoughts that convinces him to live on, but she warns him that he’ll kill her when she eventually commands him to. First he must learn to dance, to make love with a beautiful woman (not her) and to fall in love with her at last.

That’s a good teaser, yes, leave your audience dying to know what happens...Audience? What audience? I’m her psychiatrist and am bound to confidentiality with my clients...Oh, get lost, Doc! You’re more screwed up than she is...What?!...I clench my teeth and scream. They keep arguing over who’s more in need of therapy and I faint. All becomes black and quiet for a few moments, then I wake groggily.

Now look at what you’ve done...Me? You!...Oh, I’ll just have to finish this review like the professional I am. The writing is positively gorgeous, romantic and poetic like a deep, starry night and as filled with as much wisdom as the number of stars. Listen:

And so in the tender beauty of the night many pictures of my life rose before me who had for so long lived in a poor, pictureless vacancy. Now, at the magic touch of Eros, the source of them was opened up and flowed in plenty. For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life, and how thronged the soul of the wretched Steppenwolf with high eternal stars and constellations...(pp 140)

You’re so romantic! What I love is the psychology of the novel. ‘Thus stood the two Harrys, neither playing a very pretty part, over against the worthy professor, mocking one another, watching one another and spitting at one another...’ He gets into drugs, the jazz scene, threesomes, too, it’s the 20s and the advent of machines, which he hates, and goes against his nature out of love even to kill when he’s so against the senselessness of war. Harry becomes more than two personalities...and must learn to accept being more than a Steppenwolf...

So must we all, Doc, learn to live, to laugh at it all as Eastern mysticism teaches us...

Do you think this was all just a dream, Harry’s dream? Besides the obvious ones with Goethe and then Mozart in the Magic Theater?

The reviewer bursts out laughing, a slightly maniacal laugh much like Mozart’s as he tuned in the newfangled, croaking, distorted sounds of the radio where underneath pulsed the spirit of Handel’s beautiful melodies. Oh, but what we must put up with, she seems to imply, to enjoy the beauty of life...and Hesse’s Steppenwolf.