Demian by Hermann Hesse

Published 1919 · 184 pages · 47,596 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Demian to read?

Demian scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
Hesse writes in German (here translated), with Jungian and spiritual vocabulary. The ideas are more challenging than the language.
Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
Clear, meditative prose that tracks Sinclair is inner development. The style is accessible, suited to a coming-of-age narrative.
Abstraction: 65 out of 100
Highly abstract in its concerns—self-realization, good and evil, the nature of destiny. Sinclair is journey is psychological and spiritual.
Information density: 50 out of 100
Dense with ideas rather than incident. Hesse is novel requires engagement with its spiritual philosophy.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Sinclair tells his story directly, but what Demian represents—guide, alter ego, symbol—is left for interpretation.
Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
Abraxas, the mark of Cain, the egg and the bird—Hesse builds an elaborate symbolic system. The novel is almost allegorical.
Ironic distance: 35 out of 100
Hesse writes with earnest intensity. There is no ironic distance from Sinclair is quest; the novel asks to be taken seriously.
Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
Sinclair achieves a kind of awakening, though what it means practically is left open. The resolution is spiritual rather than narrative.
Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
A linear Bildungsroman following Sinclair from boyhood to war. The structure is traditional; the content is mystical.

How Demian is regarded

Demian holds a literary regard score of 73 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Demian sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (125 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Demian scores 58 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Jeder Mensch aber ist nicht nur er selber, er ist auch der einmalige, ganz besondere, in jedem Fall wichtige und merkwürdige Punkt, wo die Erscheinungen der Welt sich kreuzen, nur einmal so und nie wieder.
Symbol: Anagogic
Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott heißt Abraxas.
Mythos: Romance (Quest) iii (romance iii)
Man fand mich nahe bei der Pappel, mit Erde bedeckt und mit vielen Wunden.
Genre: Confession + Romance
Meine Geschichte aber ist mir wichtiger als irgendeinem Dichter die seinige; denn sie ist meine eigene, und sie ist die Geschichte eines Menschen — nicht eines erfundenen, eines möglichen, eines idealen oder sonstwie nicht vorhandenen

Where the story of Demian takes place

  • Gymnasium town St. and university town H., adolescence, c. 1900-1914 (1900 to 1913), the main setting
  • Provincial German town, boyhood, c. 1895-1900 (1895 to 1900)
  • Western Front in Flanders, winter 1914-15 (1914 to 1915)

7 things that are true of Demian, with the passage for each

  1. The narrator invents a story of stealing apples and swears to it by God and salvation, which gives Franz Kromer his hold over him.

    Also sag: Bei Gott und Seligkeit!“ Ich sagte: „Bei Gott und Seligkeit.“

  2. Kromer demands two marks, and Sinclair can scrape together only sixty-five pfennigs, by breaking open his savings box.

    Es waren fünfundsechzig Pfennige.

  3. Demian reinterprets the biblical Cain as a bold man whose 'mark' was misread by frightened people.

    Kurz, ich meine, der Kain war ein famoser Kerl, und bloß, weil man Angst vor ihm hatte, hängte man ihm diese Geschichte an.

  4. A note slipped into Sinclair's schoolbook names Abraxas as the god the bird flies to.

    „Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott heißt Abraxas.“

  5. The organist and former theology student Pistorius lives in a pastor's house; his brass nameplate reads 'Pistorius, Hauptpfarrer'.

    „Pistorius, Hauptpfarrer,“ las ich darauf.

  6. Demian predicts a coming war, tells Sinclair he is a lieutenant, and will be at the front within eight days.

    Sobald mobilisiert wird, rücke ich ein. Ich bin Leutnant.“

  7. At the end Sinclair wakes in a field hospital beside Demian, who gives him Frau Eva's kiss; by morning another man lies on the mattress.

    Es lag ein fremder Mensch darauf, den ich nie gesehen hatte.

Scenes in Demian that Frye would name

32 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, Beatrice
Wie hatte ich das erst so spät finden können! Es war Demians Gesicht. The painted face is recognised as Demian's, then as Sinclair's own daemon.
Anagnorisis, Anfang vom Ende
sehe mein eigenes Bild, das nun ganz Ihm gleicht, Ihm, meinem Freund und Führer. The final recognition: his self-image has become Demian's.
Confession, passage 1
Meine Geschichte ist nicht angenehm, sie ist nicht süß und harmonisch wie die erfundenen Geschichten A programmatic prologue of introverted, truth-telling autobiography.
Agon, Jakobs Kampf
Es waren Worte über den Kampf Jakobs mit dem Engel Gottes, und das „Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn“. The vision-struggle with his painted daemon is explicitly framed as Jacob's wrestling.
Anagnorisis, Jakobs Kampf
Das war mein Traumbild! Das war sie, die große, fast männliche Frauenfigur, ihrem Sohne ähnlich Recognition of the dream-mother in Frau Eva's photograph.
Anagnorisis, Frau Eva
Unter dem Vogelbilde in der geöffneten Tür stand eine große Frau in dunklem Kleid. Sie war es. The dream-figure is met in the flesh beneath the hawk painting.

Books that share these scenes with Demian

About the author

Hermann Hesse