Hermann Hesse: “But Every Man is More than Just Himself”

Parva Scaena (Brief Scenes): Set One

“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.”

― Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

Hermann Hesse: “I Was One Who Seeks”

Photographer Unknown, (World Life Tattoo)

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

Hermann Hesse: “Those Who Had Awoken”

Photographers Unknown, (Those Who Had Awoken)

“We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd.

They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature’s determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind–which they loved as much as we did–was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren’t written down anywhere.”

-Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend