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Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

 Spoiler

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joys. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. The tale of the Steppenwolf culminates in the surreal Magic Theater — For Madman Only!

The battle of one's self between the outspoken hatred and silent longing of humanity.

ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

 Quote

This shrinking was in course of time replaced by a sympathy inspired by pity for one who has suffered so long and deeply, and whose loneliness and inward death I witnessed. In course of time I was more and more conscious, too, that this affliction was not due to any defects of nature, but rather to a profusion of gifts and powers which had not attained to harmony. I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain. I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt; for however mercilessly he might annihilate institutions and persons with his talk he never spared himself. It was always at himself first and foremost that he aimed the shaft, himself first and foremost whom he hated and despised.