564 Hesse, Hermann
his middle-class inhibitions and prejudices is the
fact that his uptight view of bisexuality and homo-
sexuality gradually loosens. Even though he initially
rejects Pablo’s offer of a threesome with Maria,
Harry is not repulsed when Pablo kisses him on the
eyelids: “I took the kiss as though I believed it came
from Maria, but I knew very well it came from him.”
Eventually Harry accepts his bisexual tendencies
when in the Magic Theater a young, elegant fellow,
who represents one facet of Harry’s personality, leaps
laughing into Pablo’s arms, embraces him, and goes
off with him. When Harry enters a room, which
promises “all girls are yours,” he not only relives
all the love affairs of his youth, rectifying all the
mistakes and omissions he made as a young man, he
also accepts Pablo’s invitation to “fantastic games for
three and four.” This experimentation does not leave
him conflicted, but rather calm, wise, and expert. In
the Magic Theater Harry also encounters Hermine
dressed up as his boyhood friend Hermann and falls
under her hermaphroditic spell. Even though Harry
has come far, he still has far to go. This is revealed
when he finds Hermine and Pablo in deep sleep
after a bout of lovemaking and stabs her with an
imaginary knife in a fit of jealousy. When Mozart,
one of the Immortals, stresses that Harry must learn
not to take life too seriously, Harry agrees that he
still has much to learn: “One day I would be a bet-
ter hand at the game. One day I would learn how
to laugh.”
Karl Stegner
violence in Steppenwolf
Harry Haller’s exploration of his violent impulses
follows a similar trajectory as that of his sexual
and erotic urges. At the beginning of the novel he
is strongly opposed to any form of violence and
aggression. He is a pacifist who is vilified in news-
paper editorials as “a noxious insect and a man who
disowned his native land” because he opposes prepa-
rations for an impending war, which he predicts will
be a good deal more horrible than the last. Harry’s
violent impulses are turned against himself, and he
frequently considers suicide to escape a world that
he despises. At the beginning of his manuscript, for
example, Harry considers cutting his throat with a
straight razor. When Harry is called “a bad fellow,
rotten patriot, and traitor to his country” by a young
professor who has invited him to dinner, he sup-
presses his rage against the ignorant colleague and
instead turns it inward, coming close to ending his
own life. It is revealed in the “Treatise on the Step-
penwolf ” that Harry has set his 50th birthday as
the day upon which he is permitted “to employ the
emergency exit” and that this knowledge makes it
bearable for him to keep on living.
After he meets Hermine, however, Harry realizes
that it is unhealthy to suppress his violent impulses
and he starts exploring them. In the Magic Theater
he first enters a door inscribed “Jolly Hunting. Great
Hunt in Automobiles.” In a darkly comic scene
Harry joins the war between men and machines and,
together with his school friend Gustav, proceeds to
shoot the drivers and passengers of cars. At first, the
friends kill and destroy out of a sense of displea-
sure and despair of the world, but gradually they
enjoy the feeling of power and revenge. Ultimately,
though, Harry comes to regret that he has unleashed
the violence within him: When he is confronted
with a harmless, peaceable, and childlike man, “who
was still in a state of innocence,” Harry is ashamed
of his actions.
The theme of violence is explored further in
the scene entitled “Marvelous Taming of the Step-
penwolf.” Harry encounters an animal tamer, who
appears to be his “diabolically distorted double” and
who forces a wolf to perform circus tricks that run
counter to his wild nature: When presented with a
rabbit and a sheep, the wolf lies between them and
touches them with his paws, forming “a touching
family group.” A sudden role reversal, however, puts
the wolf in charge and lets him recover his wild
nature. The animal tamer then turns into a wild
animal, tearing the rabbit and sheep limb from limb
and chewing the living flesh rapturously. The fact
that Harry flees the scene in horror is an indication
that he is still unable to accept the aggressive, wild
animal within.
Further proof of Harry’s continuing inability to
come to terms with the various facets of his person-
ality is his act of smashing a gigantic mirror that
shows the reflection of a beautiful wolf, who is trans-
formed into Harry himself. In the final scene of the
Magic Theater, entitled “How One Kills for Love,”