Demian

by Hermann Hesse Narrated by Jason McCoy

Overview

"All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?" Generations of readers have recognized the impassioned cry that introduces the young narrator of Demian, and embraced this tale of a troubled young man's struggle toward self-awareness. Initially published in Berlin in 1919, the novel met with instant critical acclaim, as well as great popular success among people seeking answers amid the devastating aftermath of World War I. A brilliant psychological portrait of an individual's departure from social conventions in the search for spiritual fulfillment, Demian encompasses many of the themes associated with Hermann Hesse, its Noble Prize-winning author, particularly the duality of human nature and the quest for inner peace. Considered an important work in the evolution of 20th-century European literature, this perceptive coming-of-age novel enjoys a particular resonance with young adults, a fact that has made Demian a perennial favorite in schools and colleges all over the world. This inexpensive edition, featuring an excellent new English translation, is sure to be welcomed by teachers and students, and by the legions of confirmed Hesse fans.

Editorial Reviews

Saturday Review

An Existentialist intensity and a depth of understanding rare in contemporary fiction.

From the Publisher

Hesse is a writer whose peculiar vision is worth inspecting. His world is shadowy and close to areas of the heart that will probably never see light. But his vision is a rare one, as commendable for its humane solicitude as for its strangeness and unearthly color.” — National Review

"What Catcher in the Rye has come to mean for America's younger generation, Demian proved to be for Germany's early post-WWI youth. . . . A quite believable, fascinating, moving portrait of youth." — Kirkus Reviews

National Review

Hesse is a writer whose peculiar vision is worth inspecting. His world is shadowy and close to areas of the heart that will probably never see light. But his vision is a rare one, as commendable for its humane solicitude as for its strangeness and unearthly color.

National Review

Hesse is a writer whose peculiar vision is worth inspecting. His world is shadowy and close to areas of the heart that will probably never see light. But his vision is a rare one, as commendable for its humane solicitude as for its strangeness and unearthly color.

DECEMBER 2008 - AudioFile

As faces or body types can seem to belong to a particular era—the 1890s, 1920s, modern day—so can voices. Hesse's 1919 semi-fantastical coming-of-age novel about the psychological and spiritual growth of a mystic could easily be made to sound archaic and European. But Jeff Woodman's voice is contemporary and American, making the book sound very much of our time. The familiar tone of his voice risks banality, but his vocal ability and skill more than compensate by making the book accessible and vivid. He gives each passage appropriate emotional weight—never too much—and varies voices distinctively but with subtlety. Woodman delivers a brisk, bright, attractive reading of a book that, at times mysterious, even arcane, is here well rendered for modern listeners. W.M. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177491431
Publisher:	HN Publishing
Publication date:	10/10/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

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 them 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 GodHimself 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 is to biro 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 ire 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 lose 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's story is important, eternal, sacred; 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, withineach 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 him 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.

Videos