And this beautiful flower, strange to say, continued to be
nonetheless the gift that Hermine had made me. Hermine continued to stand in
front of her and to hide her with a mask. Then suddenly the thought of Erica
intervened—my distant, angry love, my poor friend. She was hardly less pretty
than Maria, even though not so blooming; and she was more constrained, and not
so richly endowed in the little arts of making love. She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly
and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in
a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.
And so in the tender beauty of the night many pictures of my
life rose before me who for so long had 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. My childhood and my
mother showed in a tender transfiguration like a distant glimpse over mountains
into the fathomless blue; the litany of my friendships, beginning with the
legendary Herman, soul-brother of Hermine, rang out as clear as trumpets; the
images of many women floated by me with an unearthly fragrance like moist sea
flowers on the surface of the water, women whom I had loved, desired and sung,
whose love I had seldom won and seldom striven to win. My wife, too, appeared. I had lived with her many years and she had
taught me comradeship, strife and resignation.
In spite of all the shortcomings of our life, my confidence in her
remained untouched up to the very day when she broke out against me and
deserted me without warning, sick as I
was in mind and body. And now, as I looked
back, I saw how deep my love and trust must have been for her betrayal to have
inflicted so deep and lifelong a wound.
These pictures--- there were hundreds of them, with names
and without—all came back. They rose
fresh and new out of this night of love, and I knew again, what in my
wretchedness I had forgotten, that they were my life’s possession and all it’s
worth. Indestructible and abiding as the
stars, these experiences, thoughts forgotten, could never be erased. Their series was the story of my life, their
starry light the undying value of my being.
My life had become weariness. It
had wandered in a maze of unhappiness that led to renunciation and nothingness;
it was bitter with the salt of all human things; yet had laid up riches, riches
to be proud of. It had been for all its
wretchedness a princely life. Let the little
way to death be as it might, the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It had
purpose and character and turned not on trifles, but on the stars.
Time has passed and much has happened, much has changed; and
I can only remember a little of all that passed that night, a little of all we
said and did in the deep tenderness of love, a few moments of clear awakening
from the deep sleep of love’s weariness. That night, however, for the first
time since my downfall gave me back the unrelenting radiance of my own life and
made me recognize chance as destiny once more and see the ruins of my being as
fragments of the divine. My soul
breathed once more. My eyes were opened. There were moments when I felt with a glow
that I had only to snatch up my scattered images and raise my life as Harry
Haller and as the Steppenwolf to the unity of one picture, in order to enter
myself into the world of imagination and be immortal. Was not this, then the goal set for the
progress of every human life?
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