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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
I've read the cult classic Siddhartha, and I've now read Demian, and I proudly proclaim that Demian clearly outshines Siddhartha by a ballpark for me. I have personal reasons to hold this book in high regard and crown it as one of the best books I've ever read.
Like most Hesse stories, Demian follows a protagonist's stream of consciousness journey to discovering themselves. While Siddhartha was more about a rich boy from India, Demian is about Emil Sinclair, a middle-class European boy caught between imposed religious dogmas and his own truth. An early incident with one of his schoolmates introduces him to the dark side of human existence, one which religion and parents had shielded him from. Sinclair starts seeing the duality in the world, and this is when he meets Demian. Max Demian helps Sinclair make peace with the fact that the world is, in fact not black and white but more bits of grey between which you find yourself.
I resonated with Sinclair on so many levels that I lost count after the second chapter. Much like Sinclair, I was raised in a religious household but witnessing the world opened my eyes to the flawed concepts of right and wrong. Since I could feel Sinclair's disconnect with the world around him that followed the rote religious ideologies, I could also connect with his quest for peace.
In Siddhartha, I was highlighting sentences, but in Demian, I've highlighted paragraphs and pages, making it one of my most heavily annotated books so far. I don't know what's it about Hesse that makes me feel as if his dialogues are speaking to me. As if the author knew what this anxious lady would want to hear almost a hundred years later.
It is good to know that we have within us one who knows everything about us, wills everything, does everything better than we can ourselves.
Only the thoughts that we live out have any value.
Smart talk is absolutely worthless. All you do in the process is lose yourself. And to lose yourself is a sin. One has to be able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise.
Hesse has the unearthly knack of expressing the ordinary and mundane human existence in an extraordinary light, a feat no other author, contemporary or classic, has achieved so far and his Demian explores individualism and liberalisation, two of the life philosophies I hold close to me, through such a fine lens that I've had a near spiritual experience while reading this book.
I'm walking away with a new favorite author here.
Like most Hesse stories, Demian follows a protagonist's stream of consciousness journey to discovering themselves. While Siddhartha was more about a rich boy from India, Demian is about Emil Sinclair, a middle-class European boy caught between imposed religious dogmas and his own truth. An early incident with one of his schoolmates introduces him to the dark side of human existence, one which religion and parents had shielded him from. Sinclair starts seeing the duality in the world, and this is when he meets Demian. Max Demian helps Sinclair make peace with the fact that the world is, in fact not black and white but more bits of grey between which you find yourself.
I resonated with Sinclair on so many levels that I lost count after the second chapter. Much like Sinclair, I was raised in a religious household but witnessing the world opened my eyes to the flawed concepts of right and wrong. Since I could feel Sinclair's disconnect with the world around him that followed the rote religious ideologies, I could also connect with his quest for peace.
In Siddhartha, I was highlighting sentences, but in Demian, I've highlighted paragraphs and pages, making it one of my most heavily annotated books so far. I don't know what's it about Hesse that makes me feel as if his dialogues are speaking to me. As if the author knew what this anxious lady would want to hear almost a hundred years later.
It is good to know that we have within us one who knows everything about us, wills everything, does everything better than we can ourselves.
Only the thoughts that we live out have any value.
Smart talk is absolutely worthless. All you do in the process is lose yourself. And to lose yourself is a sin. One has to be able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise.
Hesse has the unearthly knack of expressing the ordinary and mundane human existence in an extraordinary light, a feat no other author, contemporary or classic, has achieved so far and his Demian explores individualism and liberalisation, two of the life philosophies I hold close to me, through such a fine lens that I've had a near spiritual experience while reading this book.
I'm walking away with a new favorite author here.
Sin duda una obra extraordinaria. Qué pena haberla leído a mis 31 años y no a mis 16, mi historia sería otra.
হেসার 'ডেমিয়ান'-এ ভিন্ন ধর্মদর্শন পাই। অতি প্রাচীন, ভাবনা জাগানিয়া। আব্রাহামিক ধর্মের ইশ্বর শুভ্র, মহৎ, দয়াবান, সুন্দর, সবার অভিভাবকগোছের একজন। সকল শুভবোধের দায়ভার তাঁর। কিন্তু তিনি যা কিছু অশুভ, অসুন্দর তাঁর দায়ভার নেবেন না। গোটা জগতের অর্ধেক ভালো আর অর্ধেক খারাপ। ভালো অর্ধেক জুড়ে থাকবেন, বাকিটুকুতে ধুতিটাও ছোঁয়াবেন না। এই প্রশ্ন অবিশ্বাসের বীজের মত। কিন্তু হেসার ডেমিয়ান যে নতুন, ভিন্ন ইশ্বরের ধারণা দেয়, সেখানে অবিশ্বাসের নামমাত্র নেই। বরং আরো প্রগাঢ়, আরো ব্যক্তিগত, আরো বাস্তব আধ্যাত্মিক বিশ্বাস। এই ইশ্বর 'আব্রাক্সাস', যে একই সাথে ইশ্বর এবং শয়তান। শুভ-অশুভ দুপ্রান্তের মিলিত রূপ। আব্রাহামিক ইশ্বর থেকে উচ্চতর ইশ্বর।
'ডেমিয়ান' অতি অবশ্যই বয়ঃসন্ধির গল্প, বেড়ে ওঠার গল্প। মূল চরিত্র সিনক্লেয়ার লেখকেরই ছন্দনাম। সে বাদে আরেক মূল চরিত্র ডেমিয়ান। ল্যাটিন স্কুলে ক্যারিশমাটিক সহপাঠী ডেমিয়ানের সান্নিধ্যে আসে সিনক্লেয়ার। বয়সের তুলনায় নিতান্তই ভারী, প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক আবহ ডেমিয়ানকে ঘিরে। তাঁকে নিয়ে স্কুলে জল্পনা কল্পনার শেষ নেই।
ক্লাসে কেইন আর আবেলের বিবিলিকাল গল্প পড়ানো হয় নিয়মিত। ডেমিয়ানের কাছে গল্পের ভিন্ন ব্যাখ্যা শোনে সিনক্লেয়ার।
কেইন হয়তো স্বাভাবিকতার বাইরে ছিলো, বুদ্ধিদীপ্ত, চারপাশের মানুষ থেকে আলাদা। স্বভাবমত মানুষ তাঁকে ভয় করা শুরু করলো। তাঁর নামে গল্প রটালো। কেইন আর তাঁর সন্তানদের দেখেই চেনা যেত, এক ধরণের অদৃশ্য প্রজ্ঞার চিহ্ন যেন তাঁদের কপালে সাটানো ছিলো।
বালক সিনক্লেয়ারকে ক্রিশ্চিয়ান পারিবারিক মূল্যবোধে সাটিয়ে বড় করা হয়েছে। তৎক্ষণাৎ ডেমিয়ানের ব্যাখ্যা গ্রহণ না করলেও চারপাশের জগত থেকে শুভ অশুভর টানাপোড়েন পর্যবেক্ষণ করা শুরু করেছিলো। প্রশ্ন আসে, এত কম বয়সে এমন প্রজ্ঞা সিনক্লেয়ারের পক্ষে অর্জন সম্ভব কিনা। বোধহয় সম্ভব, হেসা বলেছিলেন এ গল্প বানানো নয়। তাঁর নিজের গল্প। রক্ত মাংশের চরিত্র। কাল্পনিক চরিত্র বানিয়ে তাঁর সব নাড়ী-নক্ষত্র জেনে ফেলে ইশ্বরের ভূমিকা গ্রহণ করেননি।
সিনক্লেয়ার এরপর বড় হয়েছে। অশুভের হাতছানিতে সঁপেছে। তাঁর জীবনের বিভিন্ন সময় ডেমিয়ানের আবির্ভাব ও প্রভাবে গল্প এগিয়েছে। ধীরে ধীরে আব্রাক্সাসের ধর্মে নিজের নাম লিখিয়েছে সিনক্লেয়ার।
লেখনিতে হেসা একধরনের গ্রাজুয়াল পরিবর্তন করেছেন। প্রথমাংশের বর্ণনার সাথে শেষের বর্ণনার বিরাট হেরফের আছে। সিনক্লেয়ার বালক থেকে বেড়ে উঠেছে, একই সাথে হেসার লেখায় কাঠিন্য এসেছে, বাক্য জটিল হয়েছে ক্রমানুসারে, ধীরে ধীরে। "By a very devious route, I sneaked through the little alleys of a changed town, under a cloudy sky such as I had never seen before." এমন একাধিক সহজ ক্লজের বাক্য বিদেয় নিয়ে একসময় জটিলতর বাক্য হাজির হয়েছে—"I stood braced against a poplar tree staring into the drifting clouds whose mysteriously writhing patches of light soon metamorphosed into huge series of swirling images." আবার
বয়স বৃদ্ধির সাথে নতুন দর্শন, নতুন বিশ্বাস আর নতুন অভিজ্ঞতার সাথে কঠিনতর শব্দমালা যোগ হয়েছে।
একজন পাঠক সিনক্লেয়ারের পরিবর্তন অনুভব করতে পারে প্রচ্ছন্ন, নিশ্চেষ্ট ভাবে।
ডেমিয়ান উপভোগ করেছি বেশ। এই বইয়ের ব্যাপারে বলা কঠিন, বলার চেয়ে পড়া শ্রেয়। কিছু বলেই ভাবটা প্রকাশ করা যাবে না। তাই আমার বকবকানি বাদ দিয়ে বই থেকে কিছু উদ্ধৃতি দিয়ে শেষ করি।
"I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it's the same old story: don't take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental -- true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place." - Demian
“Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to brew his thoughts.” - Demian.
হেসার স্বকীয়তাবাদ, প্রকৃতিবাদ বই জুড়ে প্রকট।
"There's an immense difference between simply carrying the world within us and being aware of it. A madman can spout ideas that remind you of Plato, and a pious little seminary student rethinks deep mythological correspondences found among the Gnostics or in Zoroaster. But he isn't aware of them. He is a tree or stone, at best an animal, as long as he is not conscious. But as soon as the first spark of recognition dawns within him he is a human being. You wouldn't consider all the bipeds you pass on the street human beings simply because they walk upright and carry their young in their bellies nine months! It is obvious how many of them are fish or sheep, worms or angels, how many are ants, how many are bees! Well, each one of them contains the possibility of becoming human, but only by having an intimation of these possibilities, partially even by learning to make himself conscious of them; only in this respect are these possibilities his." - Pistorius
"We, who bore the mark, felt no anxiety about the shape the future was to take. All of these faiths and teachings seemed to us already dead and useless. The only duty and destiny we acknowledged was that each one of us should become so completely himself, so utterly faithful to the active seed which Nature planted within him, that in living out its growth he could be surprised by nothing unknown to come." - Demian
"All men seemed to have become brothers -- overnight. They talked of "the fatherland" and of "honor," but what lay behind it was their own fate whose unveiled face they had now all beheld for one brief moment. Young men left their barracks, were packed into trains, and on many faces I saw a sign -- not ours -- but a beautiful, dignified sign nonetheless that meant love and death. I, too, was embraced by people whom I had never seen before and I understood this gesture and responded to it. Intoxication made them do it, not a hankering after their destiny. But this intoxication was sacred, for it was the result of their all having thrown that brief and terribly disquieting glance into the eyes of their fate." - Sinclair
"At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one. Yet it could not be a personal, a freely chosen ideal; it had to be one mutually accepted." - Sinclair
"The more single-mindedly the world concentrated on war and heroism, on honor and other old ideals, the more remote and improbable any whisper of genuine humanity sounded -- that was all just surface, in the same way that the question of the war's external and political objectives remained superficial. Deep down, underneath, something was taking shape. Something akin to a new humanity. For I could see many men -- and many died beside me -- who had begun to feel acutely that hatred and rage, slaughter and annihilation, were not bound up with these objectives."
'ডেমিয়ান' অতি অবশ্যই বয়ঃসন্ধির গল্প, বেড়ে ওঠার গল্প। মূল চরিত্র সিনক্লেয়ার লেখকেরই ছন্দনাম। সে বাদে আরেক মূল চরিত্র ডেমিয়ান। ল্যাটিন স্কুলে ক্যারিশমাটিক সহপাঠী ডেমিয়ানের সান্নিধ্যে আসে সিনক্লেয়ার। বয়সের তুলনায় নিতান্তই ভারী, প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক আবহ ডেমিয়ানকে ঘিরে। তাঁকে নিয়ে স্কুলে জল্পনা কল্পনার শেষ নেই।
ক্লাসে কেইন আর আবেলের বিবিলিকাল গল্প পড়ানো হয় নিয়মিত। ডেমিয়ানের কাছে গল্পের ভিন্ন ব্যাখ্যা শোনে সিনক্লেয়ার।
কেইন হয়তো স্বাভাবিকতার বাইরে ছিলো, বুদ্ধিদীপ্ত, চারপাশের মানুষ থেকে আলাদা। স্বভাবমত মানুষ তাঁকে ভয় করা শুরু করলো। তাঁর নামে গল্প রটালো। কেইন আর তাঁর সন্তানদের দেখেই চেনা যেত, এক ধরণের অদৃশ্য প্রজ্ঞার চিহ্ন যেন তাঁদের কপালে সাটানো ছিলো।
বালক সিনক্লেয়ারকে ক্রিশ্চিয়ান পারিবারিক মূল্যবোধে সাটিয়ে বড় করা হয়েছে। তৎক্ষণাৎ ডেমিয়ানের ব্যাখ্যা গ্রহণ না করলেও চারপাশের জগত থেকে শুভ অশুভর টানাপোড়েন পর্যবেক্ষণ করা শুরু করেছিলো। প্রশ্ন আসে, এত কম বয়সে এমন প্রজ্ঞা সিনক্লেয়ারের পক্ষে অর্জন সম্ভব কিনা। বোধহয় সম্ভব, হেসা বলেছিলেন এ গল্প বানানো নয়। তাঁর নিজের গল্প। রক্ত মাংশের চরিত্র। কাল্পনিক চরিত্র বানিয়ে তাঁর সব নাড়ী-নক্ষত্র জেনে ফেলে ইশ্বরের ভূমিকা গ্রহণ করেননি।
সিনক্লেয়ার এরপর বড় হয়েছে। অশুভের হাতছানিতে সঁপেছে। তাঁর জীবনের বিভিন্ন সময় ডেমিয়ানের আবির্ভাব ও প্রভাবে গল্প এগিয়েছে। ধীরে ধীরে আব্রাক্সাসের ধর্মে নিজের নাম লিখিয়েছে সিনক্লেয়ার।
লেখনিতে হেসা একধরনের গ্রাজুয়াল পরিবর্তন করেছেন। প্রথমাংশের বর্ণনার সাথে শেষের বর্ণনার বিরাট হেরফের আছে। সিনক্লেয়ার বালক থেকে বেড়ে উঠেছে, একই সাথে হেসার লেখায় কাঠিন্য এসেছে, বাক্য জটিল হয়েছে ক্রমানুসারে, ধীরে ধীরে। "By a very devious route, I sneaked through the little alleys of a changed town, under a cloudy sky such as I had never seen before." এমন একাধিক সহজ ক্লজের বাক্য বিদেয় নিয়ে একসময় জটিলতর বাক্য হাজির হয়েছে—"I stood braced against a poplar tree staring into the drifting clouds whose mysteriously writhing patches of light soon metamorphosed into huge series of swirling images." আবার
বয়স বৃদ্ধির সাথে নতুন দর্শন, নতুন বিশ্বাস আর নতুন অভিজ্ঞতার সাথে কঠিনতর শব্দমালা যোগ হয়েছে।
একজন পাঠক সিনক্লেয়ারের পরিবর্তন অনুভব করতে পারে প্রচ্ছন্ন, নিশ্চেষ্ট ভাবে।
ডেমিয়ান উপভোগ করেছি বেশ। এই বইয়ের ব্যাপারে বলা কঠিন, বলার চেয়ে পড়া শ্রেয়। কিছু বলেই ভাবটা প্রকাশ করা যাবে না। তাই আমার বকবকানি বাদ দিয়ে বই থেকে কিছু উদ্ধৃতি দিয়ে শেষ করি।
"I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it's the same old story: don't take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental -- true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place." - Demian
“Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to brew his thoughts.” - Demian.
হেসার স্বকীয়তাবাদ, প্রকৃতিবাদ বই জুড়ে প্রকট।
"There's an immense difference between simply carrying the world within us and being aware of it. A madman can spout ideas that remind you of Plato, and a pious little seminary student rethinks deep mythological correspondences found among the Gnostics or in Zoroaster. But he isn't aware of them. He is a tree or stone, at best an animal, as long as he is not conscious. But as soon as the first spark of recognition dawns within him he is a human being. You wouldn't consider all the bipeds you pass on the street human beings simply because they walk upright and carry their young in their bellies nine months! It is obvious how many of them are fish or sheep, worms or angels, how many are ants, how many are bees! Well, each one of them contains the possibility of becoming human, but only by having an intimation of these possibilities, partially even by learning to make himself conscious of them; only in this respect are these possibilities his." - Pistorius
"We, who bore the mark, felt no anxiety about the shape the future was to take. All of these faiths and teachings seemed to us already dead and useless. The only duty and destiny we acknowledged was that each one of us should become so completely himself, so utterly faithful to the active seed which Nature planted within him, that in living out its growth he could be surprised by nothing unknown to come." - Demian
"All men seemed to have become brothers -- overnight. They talked of "the fatherland" and of "honor," but what lay behind it was their own fate whose unveiled face they had now all beheld for one brief moment. Young men left their barracks, were packed into trains, and on many faces I saw a sign -- not ours -- but a beautiful, dignified sign nonetheless that meant love and death. I, too, was embraced by people whom I had never seen before and I understood this gesture and responded to it. Intoxication made them do it, not a hankering after their destiny. But this intoxication was sacred, for it was the result of their all having thrown that brief and terribly disquieting glance into the eyes of their fate." - Sinclair
"At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one. Yet it could not be a personal, a freely chosen ideal; it had to be one mutually accepted." - Sinclair
"The more single-mindedly the world concentrated on war and heroism, on honor and other old ideals, the more remote and improbable any whisper of genuine humanity sounded -- that was all just surface, in the same way that the question of the war's external and political objectives remained superficial. Deep down, underneath, something was taking shape. Something akin to a new humanity. For I could see many men -- and many died beside me -- who had begun to feel acutely that hatred and rage, slaughter and annihilation, were not bound up with these objectives."
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Besonders gefallen hat mir die Geschichte über den Vogel, der sich aus dem Ei kämpft. Das Ei ist die Erde und um geboren zu werden bzw. sich selbst im Inneren zu erkennen, muss die Welt zerstört werden. Dieser Vogel fliegt zum höchsten Gott, zu Abraxas. Und Abraxas erkennt beide Welten. Hell und dunkel verschmilzt, es gibt nicht nur Freude, sondern auch Leid und Schmerz.
Der junge Sinclair befindet sich auf einer Reise zu sich selbst und muss die Welt und sich selbst erkennen lernen. Ich finde Demian sehr interessant und das Buch hat mich sehr zum Nachdenken angeregt.
Besonders hat das Buch mein Interesse geweckt, weil es ja in den BTS shortstorys zum Wings-Album zitiert wird und soweit ich weiß, das gesamte Album sehr durch diese Geschichte des Demians geprägt wurde. Sehr spannend!
Der junge Sinclair befindet sich auf einer Reise zu sich selbst und muss die Welt und sich selbst erkennen lernen. Ich finde Demian sehr interessant und das Buch hat mich sehr zum Nachdenken angeregt.
Besonders hat das Buch mein Interesse geweckt, weil es ja in den BTS shortstorys zum Wings-Album zitiert wird und soweit ich weiß, das gesamte Album sehr durch diese Geschichte des Demians geprägt wurde. Sehr spannend!
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i had read it years ago, but coming back now i was able to appreciate the masterpiece that is hesse's writing, impecable
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
a poor work of fiction, but a vivid manifesto. if you can get past the insufferable main character and cyclical, masturbatory writing, demian is actually a very good book
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes