Демиан

DEMIAN

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Prologue

I cannot tell my story without going a long way back.

If it were possible I would go back much farther still to

the very earliest years of my childhood and beyond them

to my family origins.

When poets write novels they are apt to behave as if

they were gods, with the power to look beyond and comprehend any human story and serve it up as if the

Almighty himself, omnipresent, were relating it in all

its naked truth. That I am no more able to do than the

poets. But my story is more important to me than any

poet's story to him, for it is my own-and it is the story

of a huffian being-not an invented, idealised person

but a real, live, uniq:-e being. What constitutes a real,

live human being is more of a mystery than ever these

days, and men-each one of whom is a valuable, unique

experiment on the part of nature-are shot down wholesale. If, however, we were not something more than

unique human beings and each man jack of us could

really be dismissed from this world with a bullet, there

would be no more point in relating stories at all. But

ev~ man is not only himself; he is also the unique,

particulaJ:, always significant and remarkable point

where the phenomena of the world intersect once and

for all and never again. That is why every man's story

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DEMIAN

is important, eternal, sacred; and why every man while

he lives and fulfils the will of nature is a wonderful

creature, deserving the \ltmOSt attention. In each individual the spirit is made 'flesh, in each one the whole of

creation suffers, in each one a Saviour is crucified.

Few people nowadays know what man is. Many feel it