Hermann Hesse’s 1927 novel Steppenwolf is a curious mixture of mysticism and existential angst. It’s the story of a strange man who appears one day in an unnamed town and rents an attic apartment. By day he stays alone in his rooms, reading Goethe and Novalis. By night he wanders the dark alleyways of the Old Town, like “a wolf of the steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd.”
Despite a strong element of magic in the story, Steppenwolf is essentially an autobiographical book. Hesse wrote it during a time of acute personal crisis, when he had entered middle age and was dealing with the failure of his marriage to a younger woman. Struggling against thoughts of suicide, the bookish Hesse sought to overcome his sense of isolation and estrangement from society by going out at night to the taverns and dance halls. For a sense of his mental state, here is a passage from Steppenwolf in which the protagonist Harry Haller talks in a dream to his “immortal” hero, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Like all great spirits, Herr von Goethe, you have clearly recognized and felt the riddle and the hopelessness of human life, with its moments of transcendence that sink again to wretchedness, and the impossibility of rising to one fair peak of feeling except at the cost of many days’ enslavement to the daily round; and, then, the ardent longing for the realm of the spirit in eternal and deadly war with the equally ardent and holy love of the lost innocence of nature, the whole frightful suspense in vacancy and uncertainty, this condemnation to the transient that can never be valid, that is ever experimental and dilettantish; in short, the utter lack of purpose to which the human state is condemned–to its consuming despair.
But Hesse saw Steppenwolf as an optimistic book. It’s about a man’s journey to self-awareness and spiritual liberation. As he wrote in the introduction, “The ‘Treatise’ [see above] and all those spots in the book dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts and the ‘immortal’ men oppose the Steppenwolf’s world of suffering with a positive, serene, super-personal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing.”
The animated sequence above is from the rarely seen 1974 film of Steppenwolf by Fred Haines, in which the Harry Haller character played by Max von Sydow reads from the “Tractate on the Steppenwolf,” a mysterious text that was given to Haller and then left behind by him, describing the Steppenwolf’s divided nature. The scene features imagery by the Czech artist Jaroslav Bradác.
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I loved Herman Hesse’s novels. They could make a great movie if his heirs would release their insane stranglehood on his works.
I like the film from 74. Had a great jazz score.
I saw this peculiar title back in the late 1980s, and have remained a faithful worshipper of it ever since! I’ve read the original text by Hesse, and, contrary to others take on the source material, find it to be a shining example of what ‘exemplary good’ can be done when translating a classic novel into a feature film. Perhaps Fred Haines film even one-up’s Hesse’s original visions with a spectacular mishmash of hallucinatory images, film effects, animations and trick photography, that certainly elevates the approximation of better illustrating the myriad possibilities of any one individual’s ‘magic theatre’ realism than had been initially imagined in Hesse’s text. Though some of the picture’s attempts at showing us something beyond our normal reach of contemplation (such as the midget Goethe’s suddenly becoming a giant in the room with him and the next moment becoming almost microscopically small) ultimately fail in their execution, Haines’ intentions were clearly inspired, to say the least. A fine, remarkable, entertaining, and in the end, thought-provoking little hippie ‘head’ film which I’m sure will continue to amaze, surprise and provoke (to those willing enough to take their eyes away from their cell-phones for even half a second!) for years to come!
I must admit that, against all probable odds against my ever agreeing with one single word said about Hesse’s Der Steppenvolf novel or of it’s inconsequential little 1974 head trip movie referenced above, not typically in any sort of agreement with anybody like the LSD impaired mind (?) of that disruptive battleaxe prehistoric animations character whose little mini-review I am replying to here… However, in this particular instance I do concur quite readily with every word the ancient toon had to chime in with! The Flintstones really should be feeling quite proud of the old bag right about now, her daughter Wilma & granddaughter Pebbles doubly so. It would appear as though the staunchly impossible has finally actually occurred… Pearl Slaghoople has FINALLY become semi intelligent — though only moderately literate, according to the nonsensical pointlessness of what she has scribbled above regarding
Herr Hesse’s semi-autobiographical search for parallel dimensions & what he believes simply must be the tranquility & relief of finally discovering one’s inner truth & meaning. I’m still positively beside myself, completely flummoxed… Exacerbated, even, that I actually agreed with every word that Wilma Flintstone’s mother had to say about Steppenwolf!! Perchance I shall not but to recover from the shock and disbelief this page has thus far caused me to suffer just now due to the traumatic brain trauma I have suffered on account of even merely contemplating the headache-inducing unlikelihood of Pearl Slaghoople finally having gotten hold of her very own ‘replacement’ working brain, one that even actually seems to work this time round! And it only took her 58 years! What more could I possibly still have to say? I am flabbergasted! Pearl, if you ever see this, contact me please at the old caravan which is still at the same location as when we last saw one another, dear. Let’s do launch & we can discuss starting up yet another Int’l book club for the virgin brides of Christ and wayward, pan-dimensional hand drawn, somehow fully sentient & tangibly existent historical cartoon personalities of television’s distant past!
I must admit that, against all probable odds and even against my iron cast determination Never to agree with a single word spoken in passing about Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf novel or of it’s inconsequential little 1974 head trip movie referenced above, not typically in any sort of agreement with anybody like the LSD impaired mind (?) of that disruptive battleaxe prehistoric animations character whose little mini-review I am replying to here… However, in this particular instance I do concur quite readily with every word the ancient toon had to chime in with! The Flintstones really should be feeling quite proud of the old bag right about now, her daughter Wilma & granddaughter Pebbles doubly so. It would appear as though the staunchly impossible has finally actually occurred… Pearl Slaghoople has FINALLY become semi intelligent — though only moderately literate, according to the nonsensical pointlessness of what she has scribbled above regarding
Herr Hesse’s semi-autobiographical search for parallel dimensions & what he believes simply must be the tranquility & relief of finally discovering one’s inner truth & meaning. I’m still positively beside myself, completely flummoxed… Exacerbated, even, that I actually agreed with every word that Wilma Flintstone’s mother had to say about Steppenwolf!! Perchance I shall not but to recover from the shock and disbelief this page has thus far caused me to suffer just now due to the traumatic brain trauma I have suffered on account of even merely contemplating the headache-inducing unlikelihood of Pearl Slaghoople finally having gotten hold of her very own ‘replacement’ working brain, one that even actually seems to work this time round! And it only took her 58 years! What more could I possibly still have to say? I am flabbergasted! Pearl, if you ever see this, contact me please at the old caravan which is still at the same location as when we last saw one another, dear. Let’s do launch & we can discuss starting up yet another Int’l book club for the virgin brides of Christ and wayward, pan-dimensional hand drawn, somehow fully sentient & tangibly existent historical cartoon personalities of television’s distant past!