Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Children of the devil

"I don't despair. As to suffering-oh, yes, i know all about that! You are surprised that i should be unhappy when i can dance and am so sure of myself in the superficial things of life. And I, my friend, am surprised that you are so disillusioned with life when you are at home with the very things in it that are deepest and most beautiful, spirit, art, and thought! That is why we were drawn to one another and why we are brother and sisters. I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy. Do you know that we are both children of the devil?"

"Yes, that is what we are. The devil is the spirit, and we are unhappy children. We have falled out of the nature and hang suspended in space. And that reminds me of something. In the Steppenwolf treatise that I told you about, there is something to the effect that is only a fancy of his to believe that he has one soul, or two, that he is made up of one or two personalities, Every human being, it says consists of ten, or a hundred, or a thousand souls"

"I like that very much," cried Hermine. "In your case, for example, the spiritual part is very highly developed and so you are very backward in all the little arts of living. Harry, the thinker, is a hundred years old, but Harry, the dance is scarcely half a day old. It is he we want to bring on, and all his little brothers who are just as little and stupid and stunted as he is."

Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse

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