Demian

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It's a hit!

This fairly short work was written towards the end of World War I. The narrator goes through much of his life as a lonely, solitary person who sea... (show more)

This fairly short work was written towards the end of World War I. The narrator goes through much of his life as a lonely, solitary person who searches for something that cannot be found. He searches for something intangible that always seems just out of reach. Yet, when he concentrates his efforts inward, as opposed to the outer world, he has moments during which all existence is bliss.

Much great literature, it seems to me, is about a search or a quest for something better. The search, in this novel, is very much the central theme. The narrator searches, early on, for solutions to a problem he has created for himself. He later wanders through the towns where he attends school and then university. He spends hours and days at a time cought up in his reflections and musings about dreams and ideas.

Ultimately, as in many cases, I think, his journey does not end the way he would have hoped. The underlying homoeroticism is part hero worship, part denial, part confusion, and somewhat unrealized. The search through all these years ends pretty much where it started; with the title charcater. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

No, it's a flop!

Interesting Book a bit too mystical at the end for my liking. Unfortunately after I read the book, I read the notes on the author and the fact th... (show more)

Interesting Book a bit too mystical at the end for my liking. Unfortunately after I read the book, I read the notes on the author and the fact that he was committed to an insane asylum for a bit. That was disconcerting especially since I just read his thoughts and seriously digested them. The forward was written by Thomas Mann and since I havent read him, I decided to check out Buddenbrooks...... (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

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  Demian to me seemed to be a novella on self-discovery and finding yourself as cliched as that sounds.

  Through traumatic childhood experiences, friendships gained as a result and continual advice throughout his life; the protagonist, Emil begins to awake to his own self aided by the mentoring he receives throughout the book. Women in this book seem to be viewed as ideal, something to pull one out of destroying themselves. Women continue to be valuable throughout.

  The book also refers to the ... (show more)

  Demian to me seemed to be a novella on self-discovery and finding yourself as cliched as that sounds.

  Through traumatic childhood experiences, friendships gained as a result and continual advice throughout his life; the protagonist, Emil begins to awake to his own self aided by the mentoring he receives throughout the book. Women in this book seem to be viewed as ideal, something to pull one out of destroying themselves. Women continue to be valuable throughout.

  The book also refers to the long lost (as far as I'm aware) concepts of Gnosticism and the opening up of the mind to spirituality, in the same sort of way (but obviously different too) as in Siddhartha.

  I would definitely recommend both of these. No matter what they give you, and they will give you something. I was very skeptical about these books as have not heard of them from anyone else but they relaxed me, they made me think. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook User on Nov 11, 2009 at 10:59PM

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  I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. If it were possible I would reach back farther still- into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond then into distant ancestral past.
  Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in ev... (show more)

  I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. If it were possible I would reach back farther still- into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond then into distant ancestral past.
  Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's to him- for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men- each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature- are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would loose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
  Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story.
  I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
  Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that- one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth- the slime and eggshells of his primeval past- with his to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us- experiments of the depths- strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone. (show less)

   

  by Jessica Stipe on Sep 17, 2009 at 08:52PM

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