هروقت این را خوانده‌ام آنقدر هیجان زده شده ام که بدون اراده فریادش زده ام و از شدت شوق اشک در جشمانم جمع شده است. به خصوص قسمت بهاریه‌اش (بخش دوم پس از صبوحیه) زیباترین تابلویی است که کلمات انسانی می توانند از زیباترین بهار جهان نقاشی کنند.
آمد بانگ خروس مؤذن میخوارگان
صبح نخستین نمود روی به نظارگان
که به کتف برفکند چادر بازارگان
روی به مشرق نهاد خسرو سیارگان
باده فراز آورید چارهٔ بیچارگان
قوموا شرب الصبوح، یا ایها النائمین
می‌زدگانیم ما، در دل ما غم بود
چارهٔ ما بامداد رطل دمادم بود
راحت کژدم زده، کشتهٔ کژدم بود
می زده را هم به می دارو و مرهم بود
هر که صبوحی کند با دل خرم بود
با دو لب مشکبوی، با دو رخ حور عین
ای پسر میگسار، نوش لب و نوش گوی
فتنه به چشم و به خشم فتنه به روی و به موی
ما سیکی خوارنیک، تازه رخ و صلحجوی
تو سیکی خواربد، جنگ کن و ترشروی
پیش من آور نبید در قدح مشکبوی
تازه چو آب گلاب، پاک چو ماء معین
در همه وقتی صبوح خوش بودی ابتدی
بهتر و خوشتر بود وقت گل بسدی
خاسته از مرغزار غلغل تیم و عدی
در شده آب کبود در زره داودی
آمده در نعت باغ عنصری و عسجدی
و آمده اندر شراب آن صنم نازنین
بر کف من نه نبید، پیشتر از آفتاب
نیز مسوزم بخور، نیز مریزم گلاب
میزدگان را گلاب باشد قطرهٔ شراب
باشد بوی بخور، بوی بخار کباب
آخته چنگ و چلب، ساخته چنگ و رباب
دیده به شکر لبان، گوش به شکر توین
خوشا وقت صبوح، خوشا می خوردنا
روی نشسته هنوز، دست به می بردنا
مطرب سرمست را با رهش آوردنا
وز کدوی بربطی باده فرو کردنا
گردان در پیش روی بابزن و گردنا
ساغرت اندر یسار، شاهدت اندر یمین
کرده گلو پر ز باد قمری سنجابپوش
کبک فرو ریخته مشک به سوراخ گوش
بلبلکان با نشاط، قمریکان با خروش
در دهن لاله مشک، در دهن نحل نوش
سوسن کافور بوی، گلبن گوهر فروش
وز مه اردیبهشت کرده بهشت برین
شاخ سمن بر گلو بسته بود مخنقه
شاخ گل اندر میان بسته بود منطقه
ابر سیه را شمال کرده بود بدرقه
بدرقهٔ رایگان بی طمع و مخرقه
باد سحرگاهیان کرده بود تفرقه
خرمن در و عقیق بر همه روی زمین
چوک ز شاخ درخت خویشتن آویخته
زاغ سیه پر و بال غالیه آمیخته
ابر بهاری ز دور اسب برانگیخته
وز سم اسبش به راه لؤلؤ تر ریخته
در دهن لاله باد، ریخته و بیخته
بیخته مشک سیاه، ریخته در ثمین
سرو سماطی کشید بر دو لب جویبار
چون دو رده چتر سبز در دو صف کارزار
مرغ نهاد آشیان‌بر سر شاخ چنار
چون سپر خیزران بر سر مرد سوار
گشت نگارین تذرو پنهان در کشتزار
همچو عروسی غریق در بن دریای چین
وقت سحرگه کلنگ تعبیه‌ای ساخته‌ست
وز لب دریای هند تا خزران تاخته‌ست
میغ سیه بر قفاش تیغ برون آخته‌ست
طبل فرو کوفته‌ست، خشت بینداخته‌ست
ماه نو منخسف در گلوی فاخته‌ست
طوطیکان با نوا، قمریکان با انین
گویی بط سپید جامه به صابون زده‌ست
کبک دری ساقها در قدح خون زده‌ست
بر گل‌تر عندلیب گنج فریدون زده‌ست
لشکر چین در بهار بر که و هامون زده‌ست
لاله سوی جویبار لشکر بیرون زده‌ست
خیمهٔ او سبزگون، خرگه او آتشین
از دم طاووس نر ماهی سربر زده‌ست
دستگکی موردتر، گویی برپر زده‌ست
شانگکی ز آبنوس هدهد بر سرزده‌ست
بر دو بناگوش کبک غالیهٔ تر زده‌ست
قمریک طوقدار گویی سر در زده‌ست
در شبه گون خاتمی، حلقهٔ او بی‌نگین
باز مرا طبع شعر سخت به جوش آمده‌ست
کم سخن عندلیب دوش به گوش آمده‌ست
از شغب خردما لاله به هوش آمده‌ست
زیر به بانگ آمده‌ست بم به خروش آمده‌ست
نسترن مشکبوی مشکفروش آمده‌ست
سیمش در گردنست، مشکش در آستین
چون تو بگیری شراب مرغ سماعت کند
لاله سلامت کند، ژاله وداعت کند
از سمن و مشک و بید، باغ شراعت کند
وز گل سرخ و سپید شاخ صواعت کند
شاخ گل مشکبوی زیر ذراعت کند
عنبرهای لطیف، گوهرهای گزین
باد عبیر افکند در قدح و جام تو
ابر گهر گسترد در قدم و گام تو
یار سمنبر دهد بوسه بر اندام تو
مرغ روایت کند شعری بر نام تو
خوبان نعره زنند بر دهن و کام تو
در لبشان سلسبیل در کفشان یاسمین
I opened it. What I saw was a simple and beautiful picture. On a rug on the floor lay two naked figures, the beautiful Hermine and the beautiful Pablo, side by side in a sleep of deep exhaustion after love's play. Beautiful, beautiful figures, lovely pictures, wonderful bodies. Beneath Hermine's left breast was a fresh round mark, darkly bruised—a love bite of Pablo's beautiful, gleaming teeth. There, where the mark was, I plunged in my knife to the hilt. The blood welled out over her white and delicate skin. I would have kissed away the blood if everything had happened a little differently. As it was, I did not. I only watched how the blood flowed and watched her eyes open for a little moment in pain and deep wonder. What makes her wonder? I thought. Then it occurred to me. that I had to shut her eyes. But they shut again of themselves. So all was done. She only turned a little to one side, and from her armpit to her breast I saw the play of a delicate shadow. It seemed that it wished to recall something, but what I could not remember. Then she lay still.
Steppenwolf
Then the door of the box opened and in came Mozart. I did not recognize
him at the first glance, for he was without pigtail, knee breeches and
buckled shoes, in modern dress. He took a seat close beside me, and I
was on the point of holding him back because of the blood that had
flowed over the floor from Hermine's breast. He sat there and began
busying himself with an apparatus and some instruments that stood beside
him. He took it very seriously, tightening this and screwing that, and I
looked with wonder at his adroit and nimble fingers and wished that I
might see them playing a piano for once. I watched him thoughtfully, or
in a reverie rather, lost in admiration of his beautiful and skillful
hands, warmed too, by the sense of his presence and a little
apprehensive as well. Of what he was actually doing and of what it was
that he screwed and manipulated, I took no heed whatever.
I soon found, however, that he had fixed up a radio and put it
in going order, and now he inserted the loudspeaker and said: "Munich is
on the air. Concerto Grosso in F Major by Handel."
And in fact, to my indescribable astonishment and horror, the
devilish tin trumpet spat out, without more ado, a mixture of bronchial
slime and chewed rubber; that noise that owners of gramophones and
radios have agreed to call music. And behind the slime and the croaking
there was, sure enough, like an old master beneath a layer of dirt, the
noble outline of that divine music. I could distinguish the majestic
structure and the deep wide breath and the full broad bowing of the
strings.
"My God," I cried in horror, "what are you doing, Mozart? Do you
really mean to inflict this mess on me and yourself, this triumph of
our day, the last victorious weapon in the war of extermination against
art? Must this be, Mozart?"
How the weird man laughed! And what a cold and eerie laugh! It
was noiseless and yet everything was shattered by it. He marked my
torment with deep satisfaction while he bent over the cursed screws and
attended to the tin trumpet. Laughing still, he let the distorted, the
murdered and murderous music ooze out and on; and laughing still, he
replied:
"Please, no pathos, my friend! Anyway, did you observe the
ritardando? An inspiration, eh? Yes, and now you tolerant man, let the
sense of this ritardando touch you. Do you hear the basses? They stride
like gods. And let this inspiration of old Handel penetrate your
restless heart and give it peace. Just listen, you poor creature, listen
without either pathos or mockery, while far away behind the veil of
this hopelessly idiotic and ridiculous apparatus the form of this divine
music passes by. Pay attention and you will learn something. Observe
how this crazy funnel apparently does the most stupid, the most useless
and the most damnable thing in the world. It takes hold of some music
played where you please, without distinction, stupid and coarse,
lamentably distorted, to boot, and chucks it into space to land where it
has no business to be; and yet after all this it cannot destroy the
original spirit of the music; it can only demonstrate its own senseless
mechanism, its inane meddling and marring. Listen, then, you poor thing.
Listen well. You have need of it. And now you hear not only a Handel
who, disfigured by radio, is, all the same, in this most ghastly of
disguises still divine; you hear as well and you observe, most worthy
sir, a most admirable symbol of all life. When you listen to radio you
are a witness of the everlasting war between idea and appearance,
between time and eternity, between the human and the divine. Exactly, my
dear sir, as the radio for ten minutes together projects the most
lovely music without regard into the most impossible places, into
respectable drawing rooms and attics and into the midst of chattering,
guzzling, yawning and sleeping listeners, and exactly as it strips this
music of its sensuous beauty, spoils and scratches and beslimes it and
yet cannot altogether destroy its spirit, just so does life, the
so-called reality, deal with the sublime picture-play of the world and
make a hurley-burley of it. It makes its unappetizing tone—slime of the
most magic orchestral music. Everywhere it obtrudes its mechanism, its
activity, its dreary exigencies and vanity between the ideal and the
real, between orchestra and ear. All life is so, my child, and we must
let it be so; and, if we are not asses, laugh at it. It little becomes
people like you to be critics of radio or of life either. Better learn
to listen first! Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the
rest. Or is it that you have done better yourself, more nobly and fitly
and with better taste? Oh, no, Mr. Harry, you have not. You have made a
frightful history of disease out of your life, and a misfortune of your
gifts. And you have, as I see, found no better use for so pretty, so
enchanting a young lady than to stick a knife into her body and destroy
her. Was that right, do you think?"
Steppenwolf
Gustav smiled. "Yes, there are indeed too many men in the world. In
earlier days it wasn't so noticeable. But now that everyone wants air
to breathe, and a car to drive as well, one does notice it. Of course,
what we are doing isn't rational. It's childishness, just as war is
childishness on a gigantic scale. In time, mankind will learn to keep
its numbers in check by rational means. Meanwhile, we are meeting an
intolerable situation in a rather irrational way. However, the
principle's correct—we eliminate."
"Yes," said I, "what we are doing is probably mad, and
probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing
when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order
matters that are not susceptible of rational treatment. Then there
arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both
are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression
and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The
likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a
machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it
again."
With a laugh Gustav replied: "You talk like a book, my boy. It
is a pleasure and a privilege to drink at such a fount of wisdom. And
perhaps there is even something in what you say. But now kindly reload
your piece. You are a little too dreamy for my taste. A couple of bucks
can come dashing by here again any moment, and we can't kill them with
philosophy. We must have ball in our barrels."
From: Steppenwolf
Hermine ... said:
"I want to tell you something today, something that I have
known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never
said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know
about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a
thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is
great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the
more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the
greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and
despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them.
And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and
sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny,
has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your
faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is
that true, Harry? Is that your fate?"
I nodded again and again.
"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge,
and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then
you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no
sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with
heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are
quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and
wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him—the heroic and
the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the
saints—is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same
for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a
high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could
have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the
beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a
martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly
good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have
gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put
the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right,
and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams
that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And
as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a
good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances,
fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew
that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had
been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right
that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in
poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a
money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become
some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his
loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble
with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual—but it
was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the
fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of
jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your
dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and
irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over
the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that
people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the
celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right,
Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the
wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing
and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many.
Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and
me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul
instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of
foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours—"
.............................................
"Always as it is today? Always a world only for politicians,
profiteers, waiters and pleasure-seekers, and not a breath of air for
men?"
"Well, I don't know. Nobody knows. Anyway, it is all the same.
But I am thinking now of your favorite of whom you have talked to me
sometimes, and read me, too, some of his letters, of Mozart. How was it
with him in his day? Who controlled things in his times and ruled the
roost and gave the tone and counted for something? Was it Mozart or the
business people, Mozart or the average man? And in what fashion did he
come to die and be buried? And perhaps, I mean, it has always been the
same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all
we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and
fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the
schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a
given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time
and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the
shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing
but death."
"Nothing else?"
"Yes, eternity."
"You mean a name, and fame with posterity?"
"No, Steppenwolf, not fame. Has that any value? And do you
think that all true and real men have been famous and known to
posterity?"
"No, of course not."
"Then it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the
schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity. The pious
call it the kingdom of God. I say to myself: all we who ask too much
and have a dimension too many could not contrive to live at all if
there were not another air to breathe outside the air of this world, if
there were not eternity at the back of time; and this is the kingdom of
truth. The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great
poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and
suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of
every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity
just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it
or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity."
"You are right."
"The pious," she went on meditatively, "after all know most
about this. That is why they set up the saints and what they call the
communion of the saints. The saints, these are the true men, the
younger brothers of the Savior. We are with them all our lives long in
every good deed, in every brave thought, in every love. The communion
of the saints, in earlier times it was set by painters in a golden
heaven, shining, beautiful and full of peace, and it is nothing else
but what I meant a moment ago when I called it eternity. It is the
kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we
belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for. And
for that reason, Steppenwolf, we long for death. There you will find
your Goethe again and Novalis and Mozart, and I my saints, Christopher,
Philip of Neri and all. There are many saints who at first were
sinners. Even sin can be a way to saintliness, sin and vice. You will
laugh at me, but I often think that even my friend Pablo might be a
saint in hiding. Ah, Harry, we have to stumble, through so much dirt
and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our
only guide is our homesickness."
Steppenwolf -
"No, that's another matter. Those are things she would not understand. Maria is wonderful. You are fortunate. But between you and me there are things she has not a notion of. Naturally I told her a lot about you, much more than you would have liked at the time. I had to win her for you, you see. But neither Maria nor anyone else will ever understand you as I understand you. I've learned something about you from her besides, for she's told me all about you as far as she knows you at all. I know you nearly as well as if we had often slept together.."
Hermine tells Harry - Steppenwolf
It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him, saw always only the one side in him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
From Steppenwolf - TREATISE ON THE STEPPENWOLF
These records, however much or however little of real life may lie at the back of them, are not an attempt to disguise or to palliate this widespread sickness of our times. They are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full.
A remark of Haller's gave me the key to this interpretation. He said to me once when we were talking of the so-called horrors of the Middle Ages: "These horrors were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilization. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, everyone does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche's had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today."
I often had to think of these words while reading the records. Haller belongs to those who have been caught between two ages, who are outside of all security and simple acquiescence. He belongs to those whose fate it is to live the whole riddle of human destiny heightened to the pitch of a personal torture, a personal hell.
From Steppwnwolf _Preface