The Immersion Library

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.

If only, for the sake of this review, I could wield Hesse’s magically poetic pen; the one he keeps safely locked in his desk drawer, I might be able to properly dictate my thoughts on this work. Alas, I don’t. So forgive the disorganization of my writing to follow.

I will start with my first reaction to Demian; which really dominated my reading through the first half of the novel. I have skimmed through some other reviews on this book which typified it as melodramatic; a Buildings Roman of a mentally hyper-sensitive nature. My reaction was entirely different, or perhaps I should say that I felt the melodrama was warranted. As a ten year old, conflicts, as well as being confronted with one’s insecurities and the “loss of innocence”, seem much more terrifying than what an adult may typically recall of his own childhood. As Hesse said, an adult may trivialize the stresses of their childhood because they are able to describe the resulting feelings as thoughts whereas a child cannot. To a child, these feelings are of a primitively fearful nature; and they have no shield of mental processing to allay their potency. To Hesse’s credit, the narrator’s description of his childhood agitations are true to the child’s perspective. To this I could strongly relate. And if the theme of this work, as it is with many of Hesse’s books, is the personalized spiritual journey of individualism, then the circumstances presented in Sinclair’s youth should have no bearing on a reader’s ability to relate to the emotional turmoil of venturing into the unknown with unrefined coping skills and a total ignorance, or misconception at best, of who they are and how they work.

I felt a bit more alienated from Sinclair as he grew older and delved further into his particular spiritual journey. As some might argue, he went off the deep end. But as I came to his resolution, I found that his conclusion, or culmination, was not much different than what I might consider to be my own. Sinclair’s path, though odd and nearly unreasonable, becomes somehow valid. My ability to relate to his journey on an emotional level, though not necessarily on a spiritual or intellectual one, indicates that our individual differences may dictate how we get there, but they don’t dictate the fact that we all must journey, that that journey is spurred by the same growing pains, and if we pay attention, we may all culminate to similar conclusions.

I was pleased to be able to relate to Sinclair despite the circumstantial and spiritual oddities of his journey. In my opinion, Hesse’s emotionally “melodramatic”, or realistic, depictions make this possible. This was, by far, the most twisted, though strangely insightful, coming-of-age story I’ve read. Hesse’s literary presentation of his ideas and characters is of the highest order.

Hey, y’all remember that movie Fight Club? Yeah, that was a good one…