Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse(1927)
Novelc. 245 pages
“Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength.”
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One great work, every day
by Hermann Hesse(1927)
“Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength.”
Hermann Hesse(1927)
Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf, believes himself half-man, half-wolf, torn between bourgeois respectability and wild abandon. Then he meets Hermine, who leads him into a world of jazz, dancing, and the Magic Theater. Hesse published this in 1927, and it became a countercultural touchstone in the 1960s. The novel is about integration, about accepting all parts of the self, about the thousand souls within us. The ending in the Magic Theater is hallucinatory and ambiguous. Hesse offers no easy resolution, only the possibility of learning to laugh.