Review: Steppenwolf

I have always been fascinated by Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, and since I’ve read that more than once, and often recommend it, I always toy with the idea of reading his other work such as Steppenwolf, Demian, or Narcissus & Gold. What made me pick this up is that I have heard the word Steppenwolf and was curious to learn more about where it came from. I had some prior understanding that Herman Hesse circled around the duality of man, the spiritual nature of man, and the sense that men fall into Jungian archetypes.

I felt that Steppenwolf was a huge exploration on exactly each of those themes. Where Siddhartha felt more spiritual of a journey, this felt more like a journey through psychological turmoil. The book is about Harry Haller, a polite intellectual man who has an air of bourgeoisie to him. The story of his identity is told through some metafictional lenses: from someone who boarded in the same house as him, from Harry’s own journal, and from a treatise within his journal.

The wolf and the man

You learn quite quickly that ‘steppenwolf’ is a wolf on the steppes, an untamed wolf that is lonely in nature. Right away you start to guess at the duality of Harry’s nature. However, it feels like this lonely wolf nature is self-imposed rather than his true nature. Often in his recollection, he sounds like he’s admonishing people for seeking joy and covering himself up in his own intellectualism as an escape and isolation mechanism. I thought that was interesting, it almost reads like “I’m better than you” mentality. So he acts polite in bourgeois society, but then internally he copes with his view of them by isolating himself behind that guise and mentality.

“He felt himself to be single and alone, whether as a queer fellow and a hermit in poor health, or as a person removed from the common run of men by the prerogative of talents that had something of genius in them. Deliberately, he looked down upon the ordinary man and was proud that he was not one. Nevertheless his life in many aspects was thoroughly ordinary.”

The nephew of the landlady also notices this. He wonders how and why, if Harry is so intellectual and full of ideas, isn’t he the one giving lectures at a university? A quaint observation, but it says a lot about Harry. His genius is really just something in his own head, something he decided for himself. It’s not that anyone externally is acknowledging that genius.

At some point Hesse drops a line that encapsulates how chasing something so prized often turns that prize into the source of ruin for that person. There’s a hint that Harry’s prized isolation and intellectualism will turn around and also be his ruin:

“The Man of Power is ruined by power, the Man of Money by Money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.”

Snobbery as self-defense

Harry passes by a gathering where jazz is playing, which he finds repugnant. He contrasts it with his more intellectual and ‘higher’ artistic leanings. He saw himself above those in the gathering for having a ‘higher’ taste in something like Mozart. However, secretly he liked the jazz. To me this felt like he himself had an inferiority complex, to put himself above those who were enjoying jazz, he felt the need to remind himself that he was superior because he enjoys Mozart.

“On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. That is the point, Monsieur. Though I carried the complete works of Bach and Haydn in my head and could say the cleverest things about them, not a soul would be the better for it. But when I take hold of my mouthpiece and play a lively shimmy, whether the shimmy be good or bad, it will give people pleasure. It gets into their legs and into their blood. That’s the point and that alone. Look at the faces in a dance hall at the moment when the music strikes up after a longish pause, how eyes sparkle, legs twitch and faces begin to laugh. That is why one makes music.”

Pablo represents the opposite of the Harry we are reading about. Where Harry is all about the ‘high arts’, Pablo is about succumbing to pleasure. Pablo is the spiritual guide that takes you through an experience as a learning event to free you from some intellectual prison. I thought this was an interesting difference from Siddhartha as well, since the spiritual guidance from Pablo comes from a non-peaceful place, but rather a hedonistic place.

The female mirror

I saw Hermine as Harry’s outlet to seek pleasure. He is drawn to her so that he may escape his isolation, almost like she’s trying to balance him out and call him out on his bullshit intellectualism at times. She’s mysterious in nature, and not something he can easily pin down: from her name, to where she lives, to what her intentions are.

Final thoughts

Early in the book there’s the Treatise on the Steppenwolf, which lays out that theory of him and then complicates it:

“Man is not yet a finished creation.”

I believe it’s clear in the journey of Harry that he himself is not yet ‘complete’ and is still discovering these other selves or archetypes of his own. He’s told he needs to learn to laugh, learn to dance, etc. in order to truly live.

This wasn’t easy or hard to read, but I did enjoy the structure it was given in: a recount from the nephew, a journal, a treatise inserted in the journal, etc.

I gave this a 4 because I genuinely thought it was quite a deep book and a slice into many a person’s mind. Hesse cleverly depicted his own and many others’ separation from main society and their playbook or ideal, as well as those isolated people’s struggle with it. Although I think it’s a great book, I have a hard time thinking I will re-read it, or recommend it. I’ll always recommend Siddhartha, but I do think I would likely only recommend this to specific people I know or come across.