Steppenwolf

Hermann Hesse’s novel of Harry Haller, a lonely, ageing intellectual who sees himself as half man and half wolf of the steppes, and whose meeting with a young woman, Hermine, draws him into a world of jazz, dancing and the mysterious Magic Theatre.

Start reading9 sections, about 75,000 words

Famous quotes

• Love of one’s neighbour is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.

  PrefaceIn context

  • Love

• They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.

  PrefaceIn context

  • Thinking

• Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

  PrefaceIn context

  • Change
  • History

• I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.

  Harry Haller’s RecordsIn context

  • Character

• Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold.

  Harry Haller’s RecordsIn context

  • Freedom

• A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self.

  In context

  • Life & Death

• As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

  Treatise on the SteppenwolfIn context

  • Philosophy

• Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

  p. 97In context

  • Time

• One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too.

  Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (6 of 6)In context

  • Laughter

Contents

1. Preface
2. Harry Haller’s Records“For Madmen Only”
3. Treatise on the Steppenwolf
4. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (1 of 6)
5. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (2 of 6)
6. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (3 of 6)
7. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (4 of 6)
8. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (5 of 6)
9. Harry Haller’s Records (continued) (6 of 6)