Demian

“Demian” is a philosophical novel—dark and mystical. It can also be considered autobiographical, as Hesse states in the preface. A landmark work that influenced the writer’s later creation enormously; and the great Thomas Mann compared this book to “The Sorrows of Young Werther.” It is a story of growing up and coming into one’s own of a young man who, step by step, moves farther away from hypocritical norms of public morality and more clearly discovers his deep, dark “self”—free, not subject to the virtuous Pharisaic behavior reigning around him. In this he is helped by the mysterious friend Demian, who bears the “Seal of Cain”—not quite a devil, not quite a mysterious deity, not merely the product of the hero’s imagination…