 Chapter 6 Part 1 of Damian by Herman Hess This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Michelle Frye, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Chapter 6 Jacob wrestles with God Part 1 I cannot relate in brief all that I learned from the singular musician Pistorius about Abraxas. The most important result of his teaching was that I made a further step forward on the road to self-realization. I was then about eighteen years old. I was a young man, rather out of the ordinary, precocious in a hundred things and in a hundred other things backward and helpless. When from time to time I used to compare myself with others, I was often proud and conceited, but just as frequently I felt depressed and humiliated. I had often looked upon myself as a genius, often as half-mad. I could not share the pleasures and life of the fellows of my age, and often I heaped reproaches on myself and was consumed with cares, thinking I was hopelessly cut off from them, and that life was closed to me. Pistorius, himself full-grown and an eccentric, taught me to preserve my courage and my self-esteem. Then constantly finding some value in my words, in my dreams, in the play of my imagination and in my ideas, in taking them seriously and discussing them, he set me an example. You have told me, he said, that you like music because it is not moral. Well, all right, but you should be no more or less yourself. You should not compare yourself with others. If nature had created you to be a bat, you ought not to want to make yourself into an ostrich. You often consider yourself as singular. You reproach yourself with going ways different from most people. You must get out of that habit. Look in the fire, look at the clouds, and as soon as you have presentiments and the voices of your soul begin to speak, yield to them, and don't first ask what the opinion of your master or your father would be or whether they would be pleasing to some god or other. One spoils oneself that way. In doing that, one treads the common road, becomes a fossil. Sinclair, my dear fellow, the name of our god is Abraxas. He is god and he is Satan. He has the light and the dark world in him. Abraxas has no objection to urge against any of your ideas or against any of your dreams. Never forget that. That he deserts you if you ever become blameless and normal. He deserts you and seeks out another pot in order to cook his ideas therein. Of all my dreams, that dark love dream occurred most frequently. Often, often have I dreamed of it. Often I stepped under the crest with the bird on it into my house and wished to draw my mother to me, but instead of her I found I was embracing the tall, manly, half-motherly woman of whom I was afraid and yet to whom I was drawn by the most ardent desire. And I could never relate this dream to my friend. I kept it back, although I had opened my heart to him on everything else. It was my secret, my retreat, my refuge. When I was depressed, I used to beg Pistorius to play me the Pesachaglia of the old Bux de Hude. I sat in the dark church in the evening engrossed in this singularly intimate music which seemed to be harkening to itself as if entirely self-absorbed. Each time it did me good and made me more ready to follow the promptings of my inward self. Sometimes we stayed a while in the church after the strains of the organ had died away. We sat and watched the feeble light shine through the high-lancet window. The light seemed to lose itself in the body of the church. It sounds funny, said Pistorius, that I once did theology and almost became a parson. But it was only an error in form that I committed. To be a priest, that is my vocation and my aim. Only I was too easily satisfied and gave myself to the service of Jehovah before ever I knew a braxis. Ah, every religion is beautiful. Religion is soul. It is all one whether you take communion as a Christian or whether you make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then really you might have been a clergyman, I suggest it. No, Sinclair, no. I should have had to have lied in that case. Our religion is so practiced as if it were none. It is carried on as if it were a work of the understanding. A Catholic I could well be, if need were, but a Protestant clergyman, no. There are two kinds of genuine believers, I know such, who hold gladly to the literal interpretation. I could not say to them that for me Christ was not a mere person, but a hero, a myth, a wonderful shadow picture in which mankind sees itself painted on the wall of eternity. And what should I find to say to the other sort? Those who go to church to hear wise words, to fulfill a duty, to leave nothing undone, etc. Convert them, you think, perhaps? But that is not at all my idea. The priest does not wish to convert. He only wants to live among the believers, among those of his own kind, so that through him they may find expression for the feeling out of which we make our gods. He broke off, then he continued. Our new faith, for which we have now chosen the name of Abraxas, is beautiful, my friend. It is the best we have. But it is still a nestling. Its wings have not yet grown. Alas, a lonely religion that is not yet the true one. It must become an affair of many. It must have cult and orgy, feasts and mysteries. He was sunk in reflection. Can one not celebrate mysteries alone or in a very small circle? I asked hesitatingly. Yes, one can, he nodded. I have been celebrating them for a long time past. I have celebrated cults for which I should have been imprisoned for years in a convicts station if they had been found out. But I know it is not the right thing. He suddenly clapped me on the shoulder, making me jump. Young friend, he said impressively, you also have mysteries. I know that you must have dreams of which you make no mention to me. I don't wish to know them, but I tell you, live them, these dreams. Play your destined part. Build altars to them. It is not yet the perfect religion, but it is a way. Whether you and I and a few other people will one day renew the world remains to be seen. But we must renew it daily within us, otherwise we are of no account. Think it over. You are 18, Sinclair. You don't go with loose women. You must have love, dreams, desires. Perhaps they are such that you are frightened by them. They are the best you have. Believe me, I have lost a great deal by doing violence to those love dreams when I was your age. One should not do that. When one knows of a braxis, one should do that no more. We should fear nothing. We should hold nothing forbidden, which the soul in us desires. Frightened, I object it, but you can't do everything which comes into your mind. You can't murder a man because you can't tolerate him. He pressed closer to me. There are cases when you can. Only generally it is a mistake. I don't mean that you can simply do everything which comes into your mind. No, but you shouldn't do injury to those ideas in which there is sense. You shouldn't banish them from your mind or moralize about them. Instead of getting oneself crucified or crucifying others, one can solemnly drink wine out of a cup, thinking the while on the mystery of sacrifice. One can, without such actions, treat one's impulses and one's so-called temptations with esteem and love. Then you discover their meaning, and they all have meaning. Next time the idea takes you to do something really mad and sinful, Sinclair. If you would like to murder someone or do something dreadfully obscene, then think a moment that it is a braxis who is indulging in a play of fancy. The man you would like to kill is never really Mr. So-and-so. That is really only a disguise. When we hate a man, we hate in him something which resides in us ourselves. What is not in us does not move us. Never had Pistorius said anything to me which went home so deeply as this, I could not reply. But what moved me most singularly and most powerfully was that Pistorius, in this conversation, had struck the same note as Damien, whose words I had carried in my mind for years and years past. They knew nothing of one another, and both said to me the same thing. The things we see, said Pistorius softly, are the same things which are in us. There is no reality except that which we have in ourselves. For that reason, most people live so unreally because they hold the impressions of the outside world for real, and their own world in themselves never enters into their consideration. You can be happy like that. But if once you know of the other, then you no longer have the choice to go the way most people go. Sinclair, the road for most people is easy. Ours is hard. Let us go. A few days later, after I had on two occasions waited for him in vain, I met him late one evening in the street. He came stumbling round a corner, blown along by the cold night wind. He was very drunk. I did not like to call him. He passed by without noticing me, staring in front of him with strange, glowing eyes, as though he were moving in obedience to a dark call from the unknown. I followed him down one street. He drifted along as if drawn by an invisible wire, with the swaying gait of a fanatic, or like a ghost. Sadly, I went home to the unsolved problems of my dreams. Thus he renews the world in himself, I thought, and felt instantly that my thought was base and moral. What did I know of his dreams? Perhaps in his intoxication he was going a sureer way than in my anxiety. In the intervals between lessons, it struck me once or twice that a boy who had never before attracted my notice was hovering about in my proximity. It was a little, weak-looking, slim youngster with reddish-blonde, thin hair, who had something peculiar in his look and behavior. One evening, as I came home, he was on the watch for me in the street. He let me pass by, then walked behind me, and remained standing in front of the door of the house. Can I do anything for you? I asked. I only want to speak to you, he said timidly. Be good enough to come a few steps with me. I followed him, observing that he was deeply excited and full of expectation. His hands trembled. Are you a spiritualist? he asked quite suddenly. No, Knower, I said, laughing, not a bit. How did you get hold of that idea? But you are a theosophist? No, again. Oh, please don't be so reserved. I feel with absolute certitude that there is something singular about you. It is in your eyes. I thought it's certain you communed with spirits. I'm not asking out of curiosity, Sinclair. No, I am myself a seeker, you know, and I am so lonely. Tell me then, I encouraged him. I know absolutely nothing of ghosts. I live in my dreams. That is what you have felt about me. Other people live in dreams as well, but not in their own. That is the difference. Yes, perhaps so, he whispered. Only it depends on the sort of dreams you live in. Have you ever heard of white magic? I had to admit my ignorance. It's when you learn to get the mastery over yourself. You can be immortal and have magical powers as well. Have you never practiced such experiments? On my events and curiosity with regard to those practices, he was mysteriously silent, but when I turned to go, he burst out in explanation. For example, when I go to sleep or when I wish to concentrate my thoughts, I do such exercises. I think of something or other, a word for instance, or a name, or a geometrical figure. Then I think it into myself as strongly as I can. I try to get it into my head until I feel it is there. Then I think it in my neck and so on until I am quite full of it. Then my thoughts are concentrated and nothing more can disturb my repose. I understood to a certain degree what he meant, yet I felt he had something else in his mind. He was oddly excited and hasty. I tried to make the questions easy for him and he soon gave me an indication of what immediately concerned him. You are also continent, he asked me anxiously. What do you mean by that? Do you mean it from the sex point of view? Yes, yes, I have been continent for two years since I knew of what I have told you. Before that, I practiced a vice, you know what? You've never been with a woman then? No, I said, I haven't found the right one. But if you should find her, the one you consider the right one, then would you sleep with her? Yes, naturally. If she had nothing against it, I said with some scorn. Oh, then you are on a false track. One can only perfect one's inner forces if one remains entirely continent. I have done it for two whole years, two years and a little more than a month. Oh, it's so hard. Often I can scarcely hold out any longer. Listen, canower, I don't believe that continency is so terribly important. I know, he parried, they all say that, but I did not expect to hear it from you. Whoever will go the higher spiritual way must remain pure unconditionally. Well, then do so, but I don't understand why one man should be purer than another because he represses his sex instincts or can you switch off all sexual matters from your thoughts and dreams. He looked despairingly at me. No, that's just it. God, and yet it must be. At night I have dreams which I couldn't relate even to myself. Terrible dreams, terrible. I recollected what Pistorius had said to me, but however much I felt his words to be right, I could not pass them on. I could not give advice which did not result in my own experience, advice the observance of which I did not yet feel myself equal to. I was silent and felt humiliated that someone should come to me for counsel when I had none to give. I have tried everything welled, canower, beside me. I have done all that a man can do with cold water, with snow, with gymnastic exercises and running, but all that doesn't help a bit. Each night I wake up out of dreams on which I dare not think. And most dreadful of all, I am by degrees losing everything that I had gained spiritually. It is almost impossible for me any longer to concentrate my thoughts or to lull myself to sleep. Often I lie awake the whole night through. I shall not be able to bear that much longer. Finally, when I can carry on the struggle no further, when I give in and make myself impure again, then I shall be worse than all the others who have never struggled against it. You understand that, don't you? I nodded but could say nothing to the point. He began to bore me and I was horrified at myself because his obvious need and despair made no deep impression on me. My only sentiment was, I can't help you. Then you know nothing that would help me? He asked at last, exhausted and sad. Nothing at all, there must be some way. How do you manage? I can't tell you anything, Kanauer. People can't help one another in this case. No one has helped me either. You must think of something yourself and you must obey the prompting which really comes from your own nature. There is nothing else. If you cannot find yourself, you won't find any spirits either. Disappointed and suddenly become dumb, the little fellow looked at me. Then his looks suddenly glowed with hate. He made a grimace at me and cried with rage. Ah, you're a nice sort of saint. You have your vice as well, I know. You pretend to wisdom and secretly you stick in the same field as I and all of us. You're swine, swine like myself. We're all swine. I went away and left him standing there. He made two, three steps in my direction. Then he stopped, turned round and ran away. I felt sick from a feeling of pity and horror. I could not get rid of the feeling until I got home to my little room and placing my few pictures before me. I surrendered myself up with passionate fervor to my dreams. My dreams came back at once, the dream of front door and crest of mother and the strange woman. And I saw the features of the woman so very clearly that I began to draw her picture the same evening. In a few days, this drawing was finished, painted in as if unconsciously in dreamy quarter of an hour periods. In the evening, I hung it on the wall, put the reading lamp in front of it, and stood before it as before a spirit with whom I had to fight until victory should be decided one way or the other. It was a face similar to the former, resembling my friend Damien in certain traits, even resembling myself. One eyes stood perceptibly higher than the other. The look passed over me, sunk in a staring gaze full of destiny. I stood before it, such was my inward exertion that I became cold to the marrow. I questioned the picture, I abused it, I caressed it, I prayed to it, I called it mother, I called it beloved, I called it strumpet and whore, called it a braxis. Meanwhile, words of Pistorius crossed my mind, or of Damien. I could not recollect on what occasion they had been spoken, but I thought I heard them again. They were the words of Jacob, wrestling with the angel of God. I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. The painted face in the lamp light changed at each appeal. It was bright and shiny, was black and gloomy. It closed pale lids over dead eyes, opened them again and flashed a burning look. It was a woman, man, girl. It was a little child, an animal, vanished to a speck, was again tall and clear. At last, in response to a strong inward prompting, I closed my eyes and saw the picture inwardly in me, stronger and more powerful. I wished to kneel down before it, but it was so much within me that I could separate it from myself no more. It seemed as if it had entirely identified itself with me. Then I heard a thou confused roar as of a spring storm. I trembled in an indescribably new feeling of fear and excitement. Stars darted before me and died out, recollections even of the first forgotten years of my childhood, of a time further back still, of a pre-existence and the early stages of existence pressed through me. But the recollections which seemed to piece together my life's whole history, even to its most secret details, did not cease with yesterday and today. They went further, mirrored the future, tearing me away from today, changing me into new forms of life of which the pictures were very bright and blinding. But of none of them could I call up a just image later. End of chapter two, part one. Jacob wrestles with God. Chapter six, part two of Damien by Hermann Hess. This leverbox recording is in the public domain, read by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Chapter six, Jacob wrestles with God, part two. In the night I woke up out of a deep sleep. I was dressed and lying transversely across the bed. I struck a light, feeling that I must try to remember something important that had happened. I knew nothing of the hours just passed. I turned on the light and recollection came back gradually. I looked for the picture. It was not hanging on the wall. Neither was it lying on the table. I thought confusedly that I must have burned it. Or was it a dream that I had burned it in my hands and had eaten the ashes? A great inquietude convulsed me and drove me forth. I put on my hat, went out of the house and down the street, as if under coercion. I walked and walked through streets and squares as if blown along by a storm. I listened in front of the gloomy church of my friend, searched in obedience to a blind impulse without knowing what I was looking for. I went through a suburb where brothels stood. Here and there a light was still shining. Further on stood new buildings and brick heaps covered in port with gray snow. I went on through this wilderness, driven forward by a strange impulse, like a man walking in a dream. The thought of the new building in my native town crossed my mind, that building to which my tormentor, Cromer, had drawn me to settle accounts with him. In the gray night a similar building stood there in front of me, its black doorway yawning wide. I was drawn towards it, but wanted to shun it and stumbled over sand and rubbish. The impulse was stronger than I, I had to go in. I staggered over planks and broken bricks into the deserted room. There was a moldy smell of damp, cold stones, a heap of sand lay there, a gray bright speck, otherwise all else was dark. Suddenly a terrified voice called to me, in God's name Sinclair, where have you come from? And a human figure rose out of the darkness close to me, a little thin shape like a ghost. I recognized while yet my hair was standing on end my school companion, Knower. How did you get here? He asked as if mad with excitement, how have you been able to find me? I did not understand. I wasn't looking for you, I said dazed. I spoke with difficulty. The words came from me painfully as if from dead heavy frozen lips. You weren't looking for me? No, I was drawn here. Did you call me? You must have called. But what are you doing here? It's still night. He put his thin arms convulsively round me. Yes, night, but it must soon be morning. Oh, Sinclair, to think that you didn't forget me. Can you ever forgive me? What then? Ah, I was so hateful. Then I recollected our conversation. Had that taken place four, five days ago, it seemed to me like a lifetime. But suddenly I knew all. Not only what had occurred between us, but also why I had come and what Knower wanted to do there. You wanted then to take your life, Knower? He shuddered through cold and fear. Yes, I wanted to. I don't know whether I could have. I wished to wait until morning came. I drew him into the open, the first oblique rays of day glimmered indescribably cold through the gray atmosphere. I led the boy on my arm a little way. I heard my own voice saying, now go home and don't say anything to anybody. You were on a false track, and we are not swine, as you think. We are men. We make gods, and we wrestle with them, and they bless us. Silently we went on and separated. When I came home, it was day. The best that mystery in St. Blank had yet to give me was the hours with Pistorius at the organ or by the chimney fire. We read a Greek text about a Braxist together. He read to me portions of a translation of the Vita and taught me to say the sacred, ohm. However, it was not this learned instruction which was of service to my inner self, but rather the contrary. What did me good was the self-progression I made, the increasing confidence in my own dreams, thoughts and presentiments, and the consciousness of the power that I carried in me. I had an excellent understanding with Pistorius in every way. I needed only to think intently of him, and I could be sure that he or a greeting from him would come to me. I could ask him, just as I could Damien, something or other, without his being there in person. I needed only to imagine his presence and put my questions to him as intensive thoughts. Then all the soul force I had put into the question came back to me as answer. Only it was not the person of Pistorius which I called up in my imagination, nor that of Max Damien, but it was the picture I had painted and of which I had dreamed. It was the half-man, half-woman, dream picture of my demon to which I called. It lived now, not only in my dreams, it was no longer painted on paper, but it was in me as a desire picture and an enhancement of my spiritual self. The relation into which the unsuccessful suicide of Canauer entered with me was peculiar and sometimes amusing. Since the night I had been sent to him, he dogged my steps like a faithful servant or hound sought to attach himself to me and followed me blindly. He came to me with curious questions and wishes. He wanted to see spirits to learn the cabala and he did not believe me when I assured him I understood nothing of all these things. He credited me with being able to do anything, but it was singular that he often came to me with his queer and silly questions just at the moment when I myself had a mental notch to be disentangled. His moody ideas and concerns often gave me the cue, the impulse which helped me in the solution of my own problems. He was often tiresome and I imperiously drove him away. I felt, however, that he had been sent to me and what I gave to him I received twofold in return. He also was a guide or rather a way. The mad books and publications he brought me and in which he sought the key to happiness taught me more than I realized at the time. This Canauer vanished later from my path, neither did I miss him. No arrangement, no understanding was necessary with him but it was with Pistorius. Towards the close of my school career in St. Blank I lived through another peculiar experience with my friend. Even innocuous innocent people are not altogether spared the shock of a conflict. Even they come once in their lives in conflict with the beautiful virtues of piety and gratitude. Each must make the step which parts him from his father, from his teachers. Each must once feel something of the bitterness of loneliness so most people cannot support it for long and soon creep back to their homes again. It was not a great struggle for me to part from my parents in their world, the bright world of my beautiful childhood but slowly and almost imperceptibly I had got further from them and become more of a stranger to them. I regretted it. It often caused me bitter hours during my visits home but it was not deep. I could bear it. But when we have offered love and reverence of our own accord and not out of habit when we have been disciples and friends with our innermost feelings then it is a bitter and terrible moment when the realization is suddenly brought home to us that the guiding current of our life is bearing us away from those we love. Then every thought of ours which rejects our friend and teacher enters our own heart like a poisoned sting. Every blow of self-defense strikes back into our own face. Then he who felt that the dictates of his own conscience were an authentic guide reproaches himself with the terms faithlessness and ingratitude. Then the terrified heart flees anxiously back to the valleys of childhood virtues and cannot believe that the rupture must take place that another bond must be severed. In the course of time a feeling had slowly developed in me which refused to recognize my friend Pistorius unconditionally as my guide. What I experienced in the most important moments of my youth was my friendship with him, his counsel, his consolation, his proximity. God had spoken to me through him. Through him my dreams returned to me. From his mouth came their explanation. From him I learned their significance. He had given me the courage to realize myself and now alas I felt a growing opposition against him. In his conversation he evinced too clearly a desire to instruct me. I felt it was only one side of my nature that he thoroughly understood. There was no quarrel, no scene between us, no rupture. I said to him only a single really harmless word but nevertheless it was the moment when an illusion between us fell in colored pieces. The presentiment had for some time already oppressed me but one Sunday in his scholarly old room this presentiment changed to a definite feeling. We were lying on the floor before the fire. He was speaking of mysteries and religious forms which he was studying and on which he was meditating. He occupied himself with trying to picture their possible future. To me all this seemed curious and interesting but scarcely of vital importance. It smacked of irredition. It was like a fatiguing search among the ruins of former worlds. And all at once I felt an aversion from the whole business, from this cult of mythology, from this sort of piecing together, this mosaic work of religious forms which had been handed down to posterity. Pistorious, I said suddenly, in a malicious outburst which surprised and frightened even myself, relate a dream, a real dream, one that you have had in the night. What you have just been talking about is so, so cursedly antiquarian. He had never heard me speak thus. With shame and terror I realized the very same moment that the arrow I had shot at him and which had entered his heart was taken from his own quiver. I realized that I had heard him reproach himself in an ironical tone on this very account and that now I had maliciously turned one of his own reproaches against him like a resharpened arrow. He felt it instantly and was silent. I looked at him with terror in my heart and saw that he had become very pale. After a long, very heavy pause he put some wood on the fire and said quietly, you are quite right, Sinclair. You're a wise fellow. I will spare you all this antiquarian business. He spoke very quietly, but his tone told me how deeply he had been wounded. What had I done? I was on the point of tears. I wanted to beg his pardon with all my heart to assure him of my affection and gratitude. Moving words came into my mind, but I could not utter them. He was silent as well. And so we lay there while the flames leaped up and then sank and with each flame that paled fell something beautiful and fervid that ceased to glow and had vanished, never again to come back. I fear you have misunderstood me, I said at last, much crushed and with a dry, hoarse voice. The silly, senseless words came as if mechanically from my lips as if I had been reading them out of a news sheet. I understood you perfectly, said Pistorius softly. You are quite right. We waited, then he continued slowly, so far as one man can be right in his judgment of another. No, no, a voice inside me said, I am wrong, but I could not say anything. I knew that I had aimed my single little word at his one essential weakness. I had touched the point of which he himself was distrustful. His idea was antiquarian. He was a seeker, but regressive. He was a romantic. And suddenly I realized that it was just what he had been to me and had given me that he could not be and to give to himself. He had guided me to a point on the road beyond which he, the guide, could not go. God knows how I could have uttered such a word. I had not meant it badly. I had had no idea it would lead to a catastrophe. I had uttered something, the import of which I did not myself realize at the moment of utterance. I had surrendered myself to a somewhat witty, somewhat malicious inspiration, and fate used it as her instrument. I had been guilty of a little thoughtlessness, prudeness, and he had accepted it as a judgment. Oh, how much I wished then that he would have got angry, have defended himself, have shouted at me, but he did nothing. I had all that to do within myself. He would have smiled had he been able. The fact that he could not showed me more than anything else how hard I had hit him. And because Pistorius took the blow from me, his presumptuous and ungrateful pupil, so quietly, because he silently agreed with me, because he recognized my word as a judgment of fate, he caused me to hate myself. He made my thoughtlessness seem a thousand times greater than it was. As I struck, I had thought to hit a strong man capable of defending himself. Now he was a meek, suffering creature, defenseless, who surrendered in silence. We remained a long time lying before the dying fire in which each glowing figure, each crumbling ash heap, called to my memory happy, beautiful, rich hours, making my guilt and my obligation to Pistorius greater and greater. Finally, I could bear it no longer. I got up and went. A long time I stood before his door. A long time I listened on the dark staircase. A long time I stood outside in front of the house, waiting to see whether perhaps he would come out to me. Then I went on, walking for hours and hours through town and suburbs, park and wood, until evening fell. At that moment I felt for the first time the mark of cane on my forehead. I felt pondering and rumination. I had every intention in thinking matters over to accuse myself and to defend Pistorius, but all ended to the contrary. A thousand times I was ready to repent of my rash word and to withdraw it, but it had been true nevertheless. Now I succeeded in understanding Pistorius in building up his whole dream. This dream had been to be a priest, to proclaim a new religion, to invent new forms of exultation, of love, of worship, to set up new symbols. But this was not within his province. He lingered too long in the past. He knew too much of what had been. He knew too much of Egypt, of India, of Mithras, of Abraxas. His love was attached to ideas with which the world was already familiar. And in his inmost self, he probably recognized that the new religion had to be different, that it had to spring from fresh sources and not be drawn out of collections and libraries. His office was perhaps to help men find themselves as he had done with me, but to find a new doctrine, to give new gods to the world was not his function in life. And at this point, the realization came upon me that everyone has an office, a charge, but to no one is it permitted to choose his office for himself and to discharge it as he likes. It was wrong to want new gods. It was entirely wrong to wish to give the world anything. A man has absolutely no other duty than this to seek himself, to grope his own way forward, no matter whether it leads. That thought impressed itself deeply on me. That was the fruit of this new event for me. Often had I pictured the future, I had dreamed of filling roles which might be destined for me as poet perhaps or as prophet, as painter or some such role. All that was of no account. I was not here to write, to preach, to paint, neither I nor anyone else was here for that purpose. All that was secondary. The true vocation for everyone was only to attain to self-realization. He might end as poet or as madman, as prophet or as criminal. That was not his affair. That was of no consequence in the long run. His business was to work out his own destiny, not any destiny, but his own to live for that entirely and uninterruptedly. Everything else was merely an attempt to shun his fate, to fly back to the ideals of the masses, to adapt himself to circumstances. It was fear of his own inner being. There rose before me this new picture, terrible and sacred, suggested to me a hundred times ere this, perhaps often already expressed, but now for the first time lived. I was a throw from nature's dicebox, a projection into the unknown, perhaps into something new, perhaps into the void, and my sole vocation was to let this throw up from primeval depths, work itself out in me, to feel its will in me, and to make it mine, that solely. I had already known what it was to be very lonely. Now I felt I could be lonelier still, and that I could not escape from it. I made no attempt to reconcile myself with Pistorius. We remained friends, but our relation towards one another had changed. Only one single time did we mention it, or rather it was only he who spoke of the matter. He said, I want to be a priest, you know that. I would best of all like to be the priest of the religion of which we have so many presentiments. I can never be that, I know. I have known it already for some time, without fully admitting it. I will do some other priestly service, perhaps at the organ, perhaps in another way, but I must always be surrounded by something which I find beautiful and sacred. Organ music and mysteries, symbol and myth, I need that, and I cannot persuade myself to leave it. That is my weakness. I often realize, Sinclair, that I should not have such desires that they are a luxury and a weakness. It would be greater, it would be more right if I placed myself quite simply at the disposition of fate without pretensions. That is the sole thing I cannot do. Perhaps you will sometime be able to do it. It is hard. It is the only thing really hard there is, my friend. I have often dreamed of it, but I cannot do it. I tremble at the thought of it. I cannot stand so completely naked and alone. I am a poor weak hound who needs a little warmth and food who occasionally likes to feel the proximity of his own kind. He whose only desire is to work out his own destiny, has no kith or kin, but stands alone and has only the cold world space around him. Do you know, that is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. There have been martyrs who willingly let themselves be nailed to the cross, but even they were not heroes, they were not free. They also wished for something to which they had become accustomed, which they had loved, with which they had felt at home. They had examples or ideals. He who will fulfill his destiny has neither examples nor ideals. He has nothing dear to him, nothing to comfort him. And one really ought to go this way. People like you and I are certainly very lonely, but we still have each other. We have the secret satisfaction of being different, of revolting, of wanting the unusual. But we must drop that too if we would go the whole way. We must not wish to be revolutionaries or examples or martyrs, to think the thought to its logical end. No, one could not think beyond that, but one could dream of it, could sense it, could anticipate it. A few times I realized something of this in a very quiet hour, then I looked straight into the open, staring eyes of my fate. They could have been full of wisdom or full of madness. They could be full of love or full of wickedness. It was all one. One was to choose nothing of all that. One was to want nothing. One was only to want oneself, once destiny. In that way had Pistorius served me for a time as guide. In those days I walked about as if I were blind, storms roared within me. Every step meant danger. I was conscious of nothing but the precipitous darkness in front of me, down to which all the roads I had tried and hitherto seemed to lead. And in my inward self I saw the picture of the guide who resembled Damien and in whose eyes stood my fate. I wrote on a sheet of paper, a guide has left me. I stand in complete darkness. I cannot take a step alone. Help me. I wished to send that to Damien, yet I omitted to do this. For each time I wished to do it, it seemed foolish and meaningless. But I knew that little prayer by heart and often said it to myself. It accompanied me hourly. I began to realize what prayer is. My school career was over. My father had arranged that during the holidays I wish to travel and then I was to go to university. In which faculty I knew not. I was to be allowed to take philosophy for one semester. I should have been equally content with anything else. End of chapter six, part two, Jacob wrestles with God. Chapter seven, part one of Damien by Herman Hess. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Michelle Fry, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Chapter seven, Mother Eve, part one. In the holidays I went once to the house in which years before Max Damien and his mother had lived. An old lady was walking in the garden. I entered into conversation and learned that the house belonged to her. I inquired after the Damien's. She remembered them very well, but she did not know where they were living at that moment. As she felt my interest, she took me into the house, searched through a leather album and showed me a photograph of Damien's mother. I scarcely had any recollections of what she was like, but when I saw the little picture, my heart stood still. It was my dream picture. There it was, the tall, almost masculine woman's figure resembling her son with traits of motherliness, traits which denoted severity and deep passion, beautiful and alluring, beautiful and unapproachable, demon and mother, destiny and mistress, that was she. I was filled with a wild wonder when I learned that my dream picture lived on earth. There was a woman then who looked like that, who bore my fate in her features. Where was she? Where? And she was Damien's mother. I started on my travels soon after. A strange journey. I went restlessly from place to place as impulse directed, always in search of this woman. There were days when I met shapes which reminded me of her and which resembled her. These shapes led me on through the streets of strange towns, into railway stations, into trains, as in a tangled dream. There were other days when I saw how useless my search was. Then I sat inactive, anywhere in a park or the garden of a hotel, in a waiting room. I looked into myself and tried to make the picture live in me. But it was now shy and elusive. I could not sleep. I only nodded for a quarter of an hour or so on railway journeys through country unknown to me. Once in Zurich, a woman followed me, a pretty rather forward woman. I scarcely noticed her and went on as if she were heir. I would rather have died at once than have shown sympathy for another woman, even if only for an hour. I felt that my destiny was leading me on. I felt that fulfillment was nigh. I was mad with impatience to think that I could do nothing to help myself. Once at a station, I think it was at Innsbruck, I saw at the window of a train which was just moving out, a form which reminded me of her and I was miserable for days. And suddenly the form appeared again to me at night in a dream. I woke up with a feeling as of shame, realizing the fruitlessness and senselessness of my chase and I went home by the most direct route. A couple of weeks later I'm attriculated in the University of H. Everything disappointed me. The course of lectures I followed on the history of philosophy was just as vain and mechanical as the common ground of student life. Everything was so much according to pattern one person did as the other and the boyish faces, although inflamed with a forced gaiety looked so distressingly vacant. It was like the gloss of a ready-made article. But I was free. I had the whole day to myself and lived quietly in a beautiful old building outside the town. I had a couple of volumes of Nietzsche on my table. I lived with him, feeling the loneliness of his soul, sensing his destiny, which impelled him onwards unceasingly. I suffered with him and was happy that there had been one who had gone his way so inflexibly. Late one evening I wandered through the town and autumn wind was blowing and I heard the student societies singing in their taverns. Tobacco smoke rose in clouds through the open windows. Songs were being roared out loudly and intensely, but the noise did not soar up. It fell dullly on the ear. It was lifelessly uniform. I stood at a street corner and listened from two cafes. The flood of song rolled forth into the night. Everywhere community, everywhere this huddling together, everywhere this unloading of the burden of destiny, this flight into the warm proximity of the herd. Two men passed me by slowly. I caught a phrase of their conversation. Isn't it just like an assembly of youths in a nigger village? Said one. They all do the same things. Even tattooing is in fashion. Look, that's the young Europe. The voice rang suggestively in my ear. I followed behind the two in the dark street. One of them was a Japanese, small and elegant. I saw his yellow smiling face shine under the lamp. The other spoke again. Well, I don't suppose it's any better with you in Japan. People who do not follow the herd are everywhere rare. There are a few here too. Every word went through me. I felt pleasure and dread. I recognized the speaker. It was Damien. In the windy night, I followed him and the Japanese through the dark streets, listening to their conversation and enjoying the ring of Damien's voice. It had the old tone, the old beautiful sureness and tranquility, and it had the same power over me. Now everything was right. I had found him. At the end of a street in the suburbs, the Japanese took leave and closed a house door behind him. Damien took the way back. I had remained standing and waited him in the middle of the street. With a beating heart, I saw him approaching erect and walking with an elastic step. He wore a brown raincoat and carried a thin stick hanging from his arm. He advanced without altering his regular stride until he got right up to me. He took off his hat, displaying his old bright face with the determined mouth and the peculiar brightness on the broad forehead. Damien, I called. He stretched out his hand to me. So it's you then, Sinclair. I expected you. Did you know I was here? I didn't know for certain, but I hoped it might be true. I saw you first this evening. You have been behind us the whole time. You recognized me then at once. Of course, you're very much changed, to be sure, but you have the sign. We used to call it the Mark of Cain if you recollect. It is our sign. You have always had it. For that reason, I became your friend. But now it is clearer. I did not know. Or rather, I did. I once painted a picture of you, Damien, and was astonished that it was also like me. Was that the sign? That was it. It's fine that you are here now. My mother will be glad as well. I started. Your mother? Is she here? She doesn't know me a bit. Oh, she knows of you. She will know without even my asking her who you are. You haven't let me hear from you for a long time. Oh, I often wanted to write, but nothing came of it. For some time past, I have felt that I should find you. I was waiting for it every day. He pushed his arm through mine, and we went on. Tranquilities seemed to emanate from him and pass on to me. We were soon chatting together as formerly. We mentioned our school days, the confirmation class, and that unlucky meeting of ours in the holidays. Only no mention was made of the earliest and closest bond between us of the affair with Frank Kroemer. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves in the middle of a singular and ominous conversation. Having recalled Damien's discourse with the Japanese, we spoke of student life in general, and from that, we had branched off to something else, which seemed to be rather out of the way of the former trend of our talk. Nevertheless, from Damien's manner of introducing the subject, there seemed to be no lack of coherence in our conversation. He spoke of the spirit of Europe and of modern tendencies. Everywhere, he said, reigned a desire to come together, to form herds, but nowhere was freedom or love. All this life in common, from the student clubs and choral societies, to the state was an unnatural, forced phenomenon. The community owed its origin to a sense of fear of embarrassment to a desire for flight. Inwardly, it was rotten and old and approaching a general breakup. Community, Damien said, is a beautiful thing, but what we see blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time, the world will be remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds. Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another. The masters combine for their own ends the workmen for theirs and the intellectuals for theirs. And why are they afraid? One is only afraid when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who are afraid of the unknown in themselves. They all feel that the laws of their life no longer hold good, that they are living according to outworn commandments. Neither their religion nor their morals conform to our needs. For a hundred years and more, Europe has simply studied and built factories. They know exactly how many grams of powder it takes to kill a man, but they do not know how to pray to God. They have no idea how to amuse themselves even for an hour. Look at these students drinking in their taverns or take any place of amusement where rich people go. Hopeless. My dear Sinclair, no cheerfulness, no serenity can come of all that. These creatures who move about so uneasily in crowds are full of fear and full of wickedness. No one trusts the other. They adhere to ideals which have ceased to exist and they stone everyone who proposes a new one. I feel that there are troubles ahead of us. They will come, believe me. They will come soon. Of course the world won't be bettered whether the workmen kill the manufacturers or whether the Russians and Germans shoot at one another. It will only be a change of proprietors. But it will not be in vain. It will free the world from chains of present day ideals. There will be a clearing away of stone age gods. The world as it is now wants to die. It wants to perish and it will. And what will happen to us then? I asked. To us? Oh, perhaps we shall perish as well. They can also murder people in our position. Only we shall not be entirely wiped out. The will of the future will realize itself from what remains of our influence or with the aid of those of us who survive. The will of humanity will make itself felt which our Europe has for a long time passed tried to drown in its sail yard or scientifically manufactured articles. And then it will be seen that there is nothing in common between the will of humanity and that of our present day communities of the states and peoples, of the societies and churches. But what nature wills with man is written in the individual few, in you and in me. It is found in Jesus, in Nietzsche. For these, the only important occurrence of thought which naturally can alter their course each day, there will be place when the present day communities break up together. It was late when we made a halt before our garden by the river. We live here, said Damien. Come and see us soon. We shall expect you. I cheerfully wended my long way home through the night which had become cold. Here and there, brawling students were lurching through the town. I had often felt, sometimes with a feeling of privation, sometimes with scorn, the contrast between their curious sort of gaiety and my lonely life. But now, tranquil and strong and a sense of secret power, I felt as never before how little that affected me. How far removed was their world from mine. I reminded myself of officials of my native town, worthy old gentlemen, who clung to memories of the semesters they had passed in drinking as they would to memories of a blissful paradise and who practiced a cult, calling up reminiscences of the vanished freedom of their university life with all the seriousness which some poet or other romantic would devote to an account of his childhood. Everywhere the same. Everywhere they sought liberty and happiness behind them in the past for fear of being reminded of their own responsibility, of being warned they were not striking out for themselves, but merely going the way of all the world. Two or three years passed in drinking and gelification and then they crept under the common shelter and became serious gentlemen in the service of the state. Yes, it was rotten. Our whole system was rotten and these student sillinesses were less stupid and not so bad as a hundred others. However, when I reached my distant dwelling and went to bed, all these thoughts had flown. Everything else was in suspense as I looked forward to the fulfillment of the promise made to me that day. As soon as I wished in the morning if I liked, I could see Damien's mother. Let the students hold their drinking bouts and tattoo their faces. Let the world be rotten and on the brink of ruin. What had that to do with me? I was waiting for one single thing that my fate might meet me in a new picture. I woke up late in the morning from a deep sleep. The day broke for me as a solemn, festal day such as I had not experienced since the Christmas celebrations of my boyhood. I was full of a deep unrest yet entirely without fear. I felt that an important day had broken for me. I saw and felt the world around me changed. It was full of secret portent, expectant and solemn. Even the gently falling autumn rain was beautiful, full of the quiet, glad, serious music of a festal day. For the first time, the outer world was in tune with my inner world. Then it is a feast day for the soul. Then living is worthwhile. No house, no shop window, no face in the street disturbed me. Everything was as it had to be, but did not wear the empty features of every day and of the habitual. It was like expectant nature standing full of awe to meet its fate. Thus as a little boy, I used to see the world on the morning of a great feast day at Christmas or at Easter. I had not known that this world could still be so beautiful. I had been accustomed to living shut up in myself and to content myself with the idea that my understanding of the outside world had been lost, that the loss of glistening colors was inevitably connected with the loss of childish vision. So the hour came when I found again that garden in the suburbs at the gate of which I had taken leave of Max Damien the night before. Concealed behind trees in a gray mist of rain stood a little house bright and homely, tall flowers stood behind a big glass partition and behind shining windows were dark room walls with pictures and bookcases. The front door led immediately into a little hall and a silent old servant, black with white apron, showed me in and took my raincoat from me. She left me alone in the hall. I looked about me, I looked round and immediately I was in the middle of my dream. On the dark wood wall above the door, under glass and in a black frame, hung a picture I knew well, my bird with the golden yellow hawks crest forcing its way out of the sphere. Much moved, I remained standing. My heart felt glad and sorry as if in that moment everything I had done and had experienced came back to me as answer and fulfillment. Like a lightning flash, a crowd of pictures passed through my soul, my home, a house of my father, with the old stone crest over the arch of the door, the boy Damien drawing the crest, myself as a boy, fearsome under the evil spell of my enemy Cromer, myself as a youth at the table in my little room at school painting the bird of my dream. The soul caught in a web of its own weaving and everything, everything up to this moment found echo in me again and was confined, answered, approved. With misty eyes I stared at my picture and read in the book of my soul. My glance dropped. In the open door, under the picture of the bird, stood a tall lady in a dark dress. It was she. I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a friendly way beneath features like her son's, timeless and without age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment. Her greeting meant homecoming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She seized both mine with her strong warm ones. You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you. Her voice was deep and warm. I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I looked up in her tranquil face into the black eyes of unfathomable depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore the sign. How glad I am, I said to her and kissed her hands. I believe I have been on my way all my life long, but now I have come home. She smiled in a motherly way. One never comes home, she said gently, but where friendly roads converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home. She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her. Her voice and her words were like those of her son and yet quite different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured. But just as Max in years past had made on no one the impression of being a mere boy, so his mother did not look like the mother of a grown-up son. So young and sweet was the breath of her face and hair, so smooth her golden skin, so blossoming her mouth. More queenly still than in my dream, she stood before me. Her presence was love's happiness, her look was fulfillment. This then was the new picture in which my fate displayed itself no longer severe, no longer isolating, but mature and full of promise. I took no resolutions, I made no vows. I had attained an end, I had reached a point of vantage on the way from which the further road displayed itself broad and lovely, leading to lands of promise, shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of delight. Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman's existence in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence, whether she would be to me, mother, mistress, goddess, what mattered it as long as she was present, as long as my way lay near to hers. She indicated my picture of the hawk, you have never given Max more pleasure than by sending this bird, she said musingly, and I was pleased as well. We expected you, and when the picture arrived, we knew that you were on the way to us. When you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son came one day from school and said, there's a boy who has the sign on his forehead, he must be my friend. That was you, you have not had an easy time of it, but we had confidence in you. Once in the holidays when you were at home, Max met you again, you were at that time about 16 years old, Max told me. I interrupted, oh, that he should have told you that. It was the most miserable time I have had. Yes, Max said to me, now Sinclair has the hardest time before him. He is making an attempt to escape to the community. He has even taken to drinking with the others, but he won't succeed in that. His sign has become dulled, but it shines secretly. Was that not the case? Oh, yes, it was exactly. Then I found Beatrice and finally a guide came to me. His name was Pistorius. For the first time it was clear to me why my boyhood was so bound up with Max's, why I could not break away from him. Dear lady, dear mother, at that time I often thought I should have to take my life. Is the way so hard for everyone? She let her fingers stray through my hair as gently as if a light breeze were blowing. It is always hard to be born. You know, it is not without effort that the bird comes out of the egg. Look back and ask yourself, was the way then so hard? Only hard, was it not beautiful as well? Could you have had one more beautiful, more easy? I shook my head. It was hard, I said, as if in sleep. It was hard until the dream came. She nodded and looked at me penetratingly. Yes, one must find one's dream, then the way is easy. But there is no dream which endures for always. Each sets a new one free, to none should one wish to cleave. I started. Was that already a warning? Was that already a warning off? But no matter, I was ready to let myself be led by her and not inquire after the end. I do not know, I said, how long my dream is to last. I wish it would last forever. My fate received me under the picture of the bird, like a mother and like a mistress. To it I belong and to no one else. As long as the dream is your fate, so long must you remain true to it. She said in earnest confirmation of my remark. I was very sad and I wished ardently to die in this hour of enchantment. I felt the tears, for what an interminably long time I had not wept, rise irresistibly and overmaster me. I turned violently away from her. I stepped to the window and looked out, my eyes blinded with tears away over the flower pots. I heard her voice behind me. It rang out calmly and yet was so full of tenderness, like a cup filled to the brim with wine. Sinclair, what a child you are. Of course your fate loves you. One day it will belong to you entirely, just as you dreamt it, if you remain true to it. I had composed myself and turned my face to her again. She gave me her hand. I have a few friends, she said, smiling. Very few, very close friends, who call me Mother Eve. You may call me so as well, if you like. She led me to the door, opened it and indicated the garden. You will find Max out there, I think. I stood under the tall trees, stunned and stupefied. I knew not whether I was more awake or more dreaming than ever. Softly the rain dripped from the branches. I went slowly through the garden, which stretched far along the riverbank. At last I found Damien. He stood in an open summer house. Naked to the waist, he was doing boxing exercises with a little sack of sand hung from a beam. Astonished, I remained standing there. Damien looked magnificent. His broad chest, the firm manly head, the uplifted arms were strong and sturdy. The movements came from the hips, the shoulders, the joints of the arm as easily as if they bubbled out of a spring of strength. Damien, I called, what are you doing there? He laughed gaily. I am exercising. I have promised to box with a little jab. The fellow is as agile as a cat and naturally just as sly, but he won't be able to manage me. I owe him just one little beating. He drew on shirt and coat. You've already seen mother, he asked. Yes, Damien, what a marvelous mother you have. Mother Eve, the name suits her perfectly. She is like the mother of all being. He gazed for an instant musingly in my face. You know her name already. You ought to be proud, young friend. You're the only one to whom she has said it in the first hour's acquaintance. From this day on I went in and out of the house like a son and a brother, but also like a lover. When I closed the gate behind me, even when I saw the tall trees of the garden emerge in the distance, I was happy. Outside was reality. Outside were streets and houses, human beings and institutions, libraries and lecture rooms. Here inside were love and the life of the soul. Here was the kingdom of fairy stories and dreams. And yet we lived by no means shut off from the world. In thought and word we often lived in its midst, only on another plane. We were not separated from the majority of creatures by boundaries, but rather by a different sort of vision. Our task was to be, as it were, an island in the world, perhaps an example in any case to proclaim that it was possible to live a different sort of life. I, who had been isolated for so long, learned to what extent community of feeling is possible between people who have experienced complete loneliness. I no longer desired to be back at the tables of the happy, at the feasts of the merry. I no longer felt envious or homesick when I saw others living in community. And slowly I was initiated into the mystery of those who bore the sign. End of chapter seven, part one, Mother Eve. Chapter seven, part two of Damien by Hermann Hess. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Michelle Frye, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Chapter seven, Mother Eve, part two. We, who bore the sign, were probably justly considered by the world as peculiar. Yes, mad even, and dangerous. For we were awake, or were waking, and our endeavor was to be more and more completely awake, whereas the others strove to be happy, attaching themselves to the herd, the opinions and ideals of which they made their own, taking up the same duties, making their life and happiness depend on common interests. True, there was a certain greatness of vigorousness in their endeavor. But whereas from our point of view, we who bore the sign carried out the will of nature as individuals and as men of the future, the others persisted in a stubbornness which hindered all progress. For them, mankind, which they loved just as we did, was something already complete, which must be maintained and protected. For us, mankind was a distant future to which we were all on the way. No one could imagine this future. Neither did its laws stand written in any book. Besides Mother Eve, Max and myself, they belonged to our circle in a greater or lesser degree of intimacy, many seekers of very various sorts. Many of them were going along their own special paths, had set up special aims and adhered to special opinions and duties. Amongst these were astrologers and capitalists, also an adherent of Count Tolstoy and all kinds of tender, timid, sensitive people, followers of new sects, men who practiced Indian cults, vegetarians and others. With all these, we had really nothing of a spiritual nature in common except the esteem which each accorded the secret life dream of the other. Some were in closer contact with us, such as those who traced the searchings of mankind after gods and new ideals in the past and whose studies often reminded me of my friend Bistorius. They brought books with them, translated for us, texts from ancient tongues and showed us illustrations of ancient symbols and rites. They taught us to see how all the ideals of mankind up to the present have their origin in dreams of the subconscious soul, dreams in which humanity is, as it were, feeling its way forward into the future, guided by premonitions of the future's potentialities. So we went through the religious history of the ancient world with its thousand gods to the dawn of Christianity. The confessions of the isolated saints were known to us and the changes of religion from race to race and from all the knowledge we thus acquired resulted a criticism of our era and of present-day Europe of this continent which through enormous exertions had created powerful new weapons for humanity only to fall finally into a deep spiritual devastation the effects of which were at last being felt for it had gained the whole world only to lose its own soul. There were with us believers as well, advocates of doctrines of salvation in the efficacy of which they were very hopeful. There were Buddhists who wished to convert Europe and disciples of Tolstoy and of other confessions. We in our narrow circle listened but accepted none of these doctrines except as symbols. We who bore the sign had no cares as regarded the formation of the future. To us every confession, every doctrine of salvation appeared in advance dead and useless. Our whole duty, our destiny was we felt to attain to self-realization in order that in us nature might find scope for its full activities and that the unknown future might find us ready to fill any role which should be allotted us. Whether we expressed our opinion in so many words or not it was clear to all of us that a breakup of the present-day world was approaching to be followed by a new birth. Damien said to me on more than one occasion what will come is beyond conception. The soul of Europe is an animal which has been chained up for an immeasurably long period. When it is set free its first movements will not display much amiability but the way it will take whether direct or indirect is not of importance provided that the soul's true need is realized, this soul which has been deluded and dulled for so long. Then our day will come, then we shall be needed not as guides or new lawgivers, we shall not live to see the new laws but rather as volunteers as those who are ready to follow and to stand wherever fate shall call us. Look, all men are ready to perform the incredible when their ideals are threatened but no one comes forward when a new ideal, a new perhaps dangerous and uncanny impulse of spiritual growth declares itself. We shall be of those few who are there ready to go forward. For that purpose have we been singled out just as Cain was marked with the sign to inspire fear and hate to drive the men of his time out of a narrow, idyllic existence into the broad pastures of a greater destiny. All men whose influence has affected the march of humanity all such without differentiation owe their capabilities and their efficacy to the fact that they were ready to do the bidding of destiny. That applies to Napoleon and Bismarck. The immediate purpose to which they direct their energies does not lie within their choice. If Bismarck had understood the social democrats and had thrown in his lot with them, he would have been a prudent fellow but he would never have been the instrument of fate. The same applies to Napoleon, to Caesar, to Loyola, to all of them. One must always look at such things from the point of view of biology and evolution. When the changes which took place in the Earth's surface transferred to the land animals, which lived in water and vice versa, then those specimens which were ready to fulfill their functions as instruments of fate brought new and unheard of things to pass and were able, through new adaptations, to save their kind. Whether these specimens were the same that had previously been conservatives and preservers of the status quo or the eccentrics and revolutionaries is not known. They were ready to be used by fate and for that reason were able to help their race through a new stage of revolution. That we do know. For that reason we want to be ready. Mother Eve was often present when such conversations took place but she did not join in. For each of us who chose to express his thoughts, she was as it were a listener and an echo full of confidence, full of understanding. It appeared as if our ideas all emanated from her and returned to her again. My happiness consisted in sitting near her in hearing her voice from time to time and in participating in that atmosphere of maturity and of the soul which surrounded her. She felt immediately when a change was taking place in me, when my soul was troubled or when a renewal was in progress. It seemed to me as if the dreams I had in my sleep were inspired by her. I often related them to her. She found them quite comprehensible and natural. There were no peculiarities which she could not follow clearly. For a time I had dreams which were like reproductions of the day's conversation. I dreamed that the whole world was in revolt and that I alone or with Damien tensely weighted the signal of fate. Fate remained half concealed but bore somehow or other the traits of Mother Eve. To be chosen or rejected by her, that was fate. Sometimes she said with a smile, your dream is not complete, Sinclair, you have forgotten the best part. And it sometimes happened that I recalled it then and I could not understand how I had come to forget any of it. At times I was discontented and was tormented by desire. I thought I could not bear to see her near me any longer without taking her in my arms. She noticed that immediately. Once when I had stayed away for several days and had returned to strut, she took me aside and said, you should not give yourself up to wishes in which you do not believe. I know what you wish. You must give up these desires or else surrender yourself to them completely. If one day you are able to ask, convinced that your wishes will be fulfilled, then you will find satisfaction. But you wish and repent again and are afraid. You must overcome all that. I will tell you a fairy tale. And she told me of a youth who was in love with a star. He stood on the seashore, stretched out his hands and prayed to the star. He dreamed of it and all his thoughts were of it. But he knew or thought he knew that a star could not be embraced by a man. He held it to be his fate to love a star without hope of fulfillment. And he created from this thought a whole life poem about renunciation and mute, faithful suffering which should better him and purify him. But his dreams all went up to the star. Once again he stood at night by the seashore on a high cliff. He gazed at the star and his lover had flamed up within him. And in a moment of great longing he made a spring throwing himself into space to meet the star. But at the moment of leaping, the thought flashed through his mind, it is impossible. And so he was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. He did not know how to love. Had he had the strength of soul at the moment of leaping to believe in the fulfillment of his wish, he would have flown up and have been united with that star. Love must not beg, she said, nor demand either. Love must have the force to be absolutely certain of itself. Then it is attracted no longer, but attracts. Sinclair, I am attracting your love. As soon as you attract my love, I shall come. I do not want to make a present of myself. I want to be one. On a later occasion she told me another fairy story. There was a lover who loved without hope of success. He withdrew entirely into himself and thought his love would consume him. The world was lost to him. He saw the blue sky and the green wood no longer. He did not hear the murmuring of the stream or the notes of the harp. All that meant nothing to him and he became poor and miserable. But his love grew and he would much rather have died and have made an end of it all than renounce the chance of possessing the beautiful woman whom he loved. Then he suddenly felt that his love had consumed everything else in him. It became powerful and exercised an irresistible attraction. The beautiful woman had to follow. She came and he stood with outstretched arms to draw her to him. But as she stood before him, she was completely transformed and with a thrill he felt and saw that he had drawn into his embrace the whole world which he had lost. She stood before him and surrendered herself to him. Sky and wood and brook all was decked out in lovely new colors, all belonged to him and spoke his tongue. And instead of merely winning a woman, he had taken the whole world to his heart and each star in the heaven glowed in him and twinkling communicated desire to his soul. He had loved and thereby had found himself. But most people love only to lose themselves thereby. My whole life seemed to be contained in my love for Mother Eve. But every day she looked different. Many times I felt decidedly that it was not her person for which my whole being was striving but that she was a symbol of my inward self and that she wished only to lead me to see more deeply into myself. I often heard words fall from her lips which sounded like answers to the burning questions asked by my subconscious self. Then again there were moments when in her presence I burnt with desire and afterwards kissed objects she had touched. And by degrees sensual and unsensual love, reality and symbol merged into one another. Then it happened that I could think of her at home in my room with quiet fervor. I thought I felt her hand in mine and my lips pressed to hers or I was at her house gazing up into her face talking with her, listening to her voice and I did not know whether it was really she or whether it was a dream. I began to foresee how one can have a lasting and immortal love. In reading a book I had acquired new knowledge and it was the same feeling as a kiss from Mother Eve. She stroked my hair and smiled at me. I sensed the perfume of her warm ripe mouth and I had the same feeling as if I had been making progress within myself. All that was important and faithful for me seemed to be contained in her. She could transform herself into each of my thoughts and every one of my thoughts was transformed into her. I feared that it would be torture to spend the two weeks of the Christmas holidays separated from Mother Eve with my parents at home but it was no torture. It was lovely to be at home and to think of her. When I returned to age, I remained away from her house another two days in order to enjoy the security and independence of her actual presence. I also had dreams in which my union with her was accomplished by way of allegory. She was a sea into which I, a river flowed. She was a star and I myself was a star on my way to her. We felt drawn to one another. We met and remained together always turning blissfully round one another in close lying orbits to the music of the spheres. I related this dream to her when I visited her again after the holidays. It's a beautiful dream, she said softly. See that it comes true. There came a day in early spring that I shall never forget. I entered the hall, a window stood open and the heavy scent of hyacinths wafted by a warm breath of air permeated the room. As no one was to be seen, I went upstairs to Max Damien's study. I knocked softly on the door and entered without waiting for permission as I was in the habit of doing with him. The room was dark, the curtains were all drawn. The door to the little room adjoining stood open where Max had set up a chemical laboratory. From there came the bright white light of the spring sun shining through rain clouds. I thought no one was there and pulled back one of the curtains. There I saw Max Damien sitting on a stool by a curtained window. His attitude was cramped and he was oddly changed. The thought flashed through me. You have seen him like this once before. His arms were motionless at his side, his hands in his lap, his face inclined slightly forward with open eyes, was without sight as if dead. In the eyes there glimmered Dolly, a little reflex of light as in a piece of glass. The pale face was self-absorbed and without any expression save that of great rigidity. He looked like a very ancient mask of an animal at the door of a temple. He appeared not to be breathing. The recollection came to me, thus exactly thus had I once seen him many years ago when I was still quite a boy. Thus had his eyes stared inwards, thus his hands had been lying motionless, close to one another, a fly had been crawling over his face and he had then six years ago perhaps looked just as old and as ageless, not a wrinkle in his face had changed. I was frightened and went softly out of the room and down the stairs. In the hall I met Mother Eve, she was pale and seemed tired. I had not seen her like that before. A shadow came through the window, the bright white sun had suddenly disappeared. I went into Max's room, I whispered hastily, has anything happened? He is asleep or absorbed, I don't know what. I once saw him like that before. But you didn't wake him, she asked quickly. No, he did not hear me. I came out immediately. Mother Eve, tell me what is the matter with him? She passed her hand over her forehead. Don't worry, Sinclair, nothing has happened to him. He has retired into himself. It will not last long. She got up and went out into the garden. Although it had begun to rain, I felt that I must not follow her. So I walked up and down in the hall, inhaling the scent of the hyacinths, which dulled my senses, and gazing at my picture of the bird over the door. I felt oppressively the odd shadow which seemed to fill the house that morning. What was it? What had happened? Mother Eve came back soon. Raindrops hung in her dark hair. She sat down in her easy chair. She was very tired. I went to her, bent down, and kissed the raindrops in her hair. Her eyes were bright and soft, but the raindrops tasted like tears. Shall I go and see how he is? I asked in a whisper. She smiled weakly. Don't be a child, Sinclair, she admonished loudly, as if to relieve her own feelings. Go now and to come back later. I cannot talk to you now. I went. I walked out of the house and out of the town towards the mountains. The thin rain was falling obliquely. The clouds were driving at a low altitude under heavy pressure as if in fear. Down below there was hardly any breeze, but on the heights above, a storm seemed to be raging. Several times the sun, pale and bright, broke for an instant through the steely gray of the clouds. There came a fleecy yellow cloud driving across the sky. It collided with the gray cloud wall, and in a few seconds the wind formed a picture of the yellow and blue of a bird of giant size which tore itself free from the blue melee and with wide fluttering wings disappeared in the sky. Then the storm became audible and rain mixed with hail rattled down. A short burst of thunder with an unnatural and terrific sound cracked over the whipped landscape. Immediately after the sun broke through and on the mountains closed at hand, above brown woods glistened pale and unreal, the fresh snow. When I returned after several hours wet from the rain and wind, Damien himself opened the front door to me. He took me with him up to his room. A gas flame burned in the laboratory, paper lay about. He appeared to have been working. Sit down, he invited. You must be tired. It was a terrible storm. It's evidence you were overtaken by it. Tea is coming at once. Something is the matter today. I began hesitatingly. It can't only be that bit of a storm. He looked at me penetratingly. Have you seen anything? Yes, I saw a picture clearly in the clouds for an instant. What sort of a picture? It was a bird. The hawk, was it that? The bird of your dream? Yes, it was my hawk. It was yellow and of giant size. It flew up into the blue black heaven. Damien took a deep breath. Someone knocked at the door. The aged servant brought in tea. Take a cups in Claire, do. I don't think it was by chance you saw the bird. Chance, does one see such things by chance? Well, no, it means something. Do you know what? No, I only feel. It means a violent shock. The approach of fate. I think it will affect all of us. He walked violently up and down. The approach of fate, he exclaimed loudly. I dreamed the same thing myself last night. And my mother yesterday had a premonition pretending the same thing. I dreamed I was going up a ladder placed against a tree trunk or a tower. When I reached the top, I saw the whole country. It was a wide plain with towns and villages burning. I cannot yet relate everything because it isn't all quite clear to me. Do you interpret the dream as affecting you? I asked. Me, naturally. No one dreams of what does not concern him. But it does not concern me alone, you are right. I distinguish tolerably well between the dreams which indicate agitation of my own soul and the others, the rare ones, which bear on the fate of all humanity. I have seldom had such dreams and never one of which I can say that it was a prophecy and that it has been fulfilled. The interpretations are too uncertain. But this I know for a certainty. I have dreamed of something which does not concern me alone. For the dream belongs to others, former ones I have had. This is the continuation. These are the dreams, Sinclair, in which I had the premonitions which I have already mentioned to you. We know that the world is absolutely rotten, but that is no reason to prophesy its ruin or to make a prophecy of a like nature. But for several years past I have had dreams from which I can include or feel or what you will, which then give me the feeling that the breakup of an old world is drawing near. At first they were simply faint presentiments, but since they have become more and more significant. Even now I know nothing more than that something big and terrible is approaching, which will concern me. Sinclair, we shall go through the experiences of which we have so often talked. The world is about to renew itself. It smacks of death. Nothing new comes without death. It is more terrible than I had thought. Frightened, I looked at him fixedly. Can't you tell me the rest of your dream? I begged timidly. He shook his head. No. The door opened and Mother Eve entered. There you are, sitting together. Children, I hope you aren't sad. She looked fresh. Her fatigue had quite vanished. Damien smiled at her. She came to us as a mother comes to frightened children. We aren't sad, Mother. We were simply trying to solve the riddle of these new signs, but that is of no importance. What is to come will be here all of a sudden, and then we shall learn what we need to know. But I did not feel happy. When I said goodbye and went down alone through the hall, I felt that the hyacinths were faded and withered, reminding me of corpses. A shadow had fallen over us. End of chapter seven, Mother Eve.