The bird is in its cage of freedom from the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy a world.«p>

This main sentence is the essence of the book, and everything else is just branches and leaves of this trunk. Emily Dickinson, the narrator of this story, gradually reaches a point where her previous experiences have shown her that the pure and innocent world of childhood comes to an end at a certain point, and beside this pure world, there is a dark world that complements it. And the beginning of the book is represented by the moment when the bird first introduces the first crack into that egg.«p>

The sentence "The first tear in the father's dignity, the first crack in the pillar on which my childhood life was peaceful and settled, the pillar that Herford had to destroy before it changed into itself" is very important, but any reader can easily pass it by. However, the dignity of this positive-thinking and innocent narrator is precisely this belief in the fatherly God and goodness, and ignoring the other side of existence, which is darkness and the animal nature that causes problems for him until he realizes that in order to create a new world, we must overthrow the old world of thoughts.«p>

He believes that in him, the first sparks of self-knowledge can lead to the excitement that gives him the power to fly. "The only true path for each person is to find a way to self-knowledge," and whoever has a unique path for himself "we can understand each other, but only each person can discover the meaning of his own existence." The life of such an individual is worthy of attention, and it is important to describe and write about his way of life. Because "every human being is not only himself, but also a unique, special point, always precious and worthy of attention, where the phenomena of nature meet only once and in an unrepeatable way. Therefore, the passing of every human being is important, valuable, and unique."

Paulo Coelho's books have brought back so many memories for me. I really need to do some more research on their similarities and differences. But just like his other works, it talks about the lost truth of humanity and the hidden spirituality without actually stating what that truth is or showing a way towards that spirituality. It was just a description of the revelations and the strange and wonderful qualities of the characters, which surely doesn't hold true in the real world.

Besides that, the first half of the story was good. The plot of a child who is caught between the duality of the bright, pure, and untainted world inside his home and the dark and polluted world outside his home, and then with the arrival of "Max Demian" gains a new understanding of these two worlds, changes, and grows up.

However, the second half of the story, the story has lost its soul. Without saying anything specific or showing a way, it kept repeating that "I was looking for the truth" and "I was looking for the truth." And of course, just "being in search of the truth" can't advance the story very much.

Ugh. I really had to force myself to get through this short book.

In the end, I was left with the feeling that it simply wasn't worth all the effort.

I initially picked it up because I had such a profound love for Siddhartha (although it has been years since I last read it, and now I'm left wondering if it would still have the same impact on me).

However, I found Demian to be terribly melodramatic and overly wrought.

I just couldn't seem to bring myself to really care much about Sinclair and all of his angst-ridden inner turmoil.

There were, admittedly, a few interesting and lovely passages.

Only on a couple of occasions did I feel a thrill of poetry in the language or encounter an inspired idea.

Otherwise, I found the entire book completely tedious and disappointing.

If anyone else wants to give it a try, I would be more than happy to pass along my paperback copy.

Many people seem to absolutely adore this book, and I'm certain that it will be better appreciated by someone other than me.

Perhaps they will be able to see the beauty and depth that I simply couldn't find.

It just goes to show that everyone has different tastes and interpretations when it comes to literature.

This is a very philosophical text, and I didn't understand a lot of it.

...........

"And thus I did not consider my parents..

My problem is to balance with myself and find my way, and like most well-educated children, I behaved incorrectly."

"Examine a person closely and carefully, and you will know more about him than he knows about himself."

"I only wanted to live in accordance with the motives that stem from my true self, so why was it so difficult?"

"When you need something badly, and then you find it..

This is not a coincidence..

Your refined desire and your passionate impulse are the two that lead you to it."

"All of this music was saying one thing, all of it was expressing what is in the soul of the music: hesitation and total collapse in the world, and the struggle for freedom, the burning sigh for the oppressed soul, and the noble acceptance and deep contempt for the miracle."

"For every person, there is one essential task, which is to find a way to oneself."

"Yes, you must find your dream, and then the path becomes easy, but..

There is no dream that lasts forever..

Every dream is followed by another dream, and a person should not be attached to a specific dream."

Este no es un libro fácil de reseñar.

Es una obra muy compleja, a pesar de lo corta que pueda parecer por su cantidad de páginas. Sin embargo no es breve, cada frase está cargada de significado y te hace pensar. No es una lectura precisamente liviana, pero sí una que recomendaría mucho. Sólo hace falta una mente abierta.

Emil Sinclair nos narra desde su infancia la manera en que su mente ha ido cambiando, sus ideas mutando y el recorrido mental y espiritual que hace durante su adolescencia para encontrarse a si mismo y darle un significado a la vida.

De pequeño, era un niño dulce y bueno que creció en una familia con una posición económica cómoda, pero que principalmente lo rodeó de amor, cariño, respeto y fe. A esta realidad él la llama su'mundo bueno', donde todo es paz y buenos sentimientos.

Un poco por soledad, comienza a rodearse de chicos que pertenecen a lo que él llama el 'mundo malo', de posición económica más baja y moral dudosa, que muchas veces cometen pequeños delitos un poco como travesura, y un poco como iniciación a un modo de vida que Emil no comparte.

Es para impresionarlos que inventa una historia de un robo cometido por él, y con el cual sólo consigue que el líder del grupo comience a chantajearlo. Temeroso de que su imagen caiga a ojos de su padre, pero considerando que es muy tarde para contar la verdad, Emil comienza a deprimirse a causa del miedo constante que siente por su chantajista, cuyas demandas se hacen cada vez más constantes y difíciles de realizar. En este punto considera que su'mundo bueno' ha desaparecido para siempre.

Es en la escuela donde conoce a Max Demián, un personaje enigmático, seguro y demasiado maduro para su edad. Es gracias a él que se libra de sus problemas y vuelve a ver el mundo luminoso en el que siempre vivió. Todos parecen temerle a Demián, todos excepto Emil, quien siente una gran fascinación y a la vez un vivo rechazo hacia él.

Las conversaciones que tienen son esporádicas, pero cada vez que hablan Demian le abre los ojos a Emil y lo hace pensar y cuestionarse todo aquello que él siempre dio por cierto y seguro.

Emil tiene una personalidad voluble y es fácilmente impresionable. Es por esto que esas breves conversaciones con Demian lo marcarán y acompañarán durante años, aunque haya perdido contacto con el otro muchacho.

Al crecer e ir a un internado se aleja de Demian, pero a pesar de perder contacto, él sigue en su mente. No es obsesión, creo que es el aura de misterio que lo rodea, lo impenetrable, la forma en que le hablaba y lo hacía replantearse todo aún a tan corta edad. Demián aparece poco en el libro, pero las pocas veces que lo vemos causará una gran impresión en Emil y hará que su vida cambie o gire.

Habla de la vida, de Dios, del diablo, de religión, del pensamiento humano y el comportamiento, de la forma en que la mayoría de las personas se dejan influenciar por las masas, del amor, del odio, del miedo.

Seguiremos viendo la vida de Emil y su búsqueda de algo que ni él conoce, el despertar de su mente y su cuerpo en la adolescencia, y finalmente al llegar a la edad adulta, la gran conclusión que no es otra cosa sino un nuevo comienzo.

No quiero dejar de hacer un pequeño comentario: me impresionó mucho que Demián pronostique una gran oscuridad llena de muerte acercándose, algo como lo que nunca se ha visto.

Si consideramos que el libro fue publicado en 1919 en Alemania (año del fin de la Primera Guerra Mundial) y pensamos en la proximidad de la Segunda Guerra y todo lo que trajo, esa profecía resulta escalofriante.

Este es un libro lleno de filosofía existencialista, con ciertas disquisiciones que supongo que habrán sido (o podrían ser) consideradas herejes, y una visión del mundo diferente y muy particular.

El final es extraño y abierto, pero muy adecuado a la historia. Es un libro excelente que me hizo pensar, me tocó el alma y conmovió en muchos momentos. ¿Qué más se puede pedir?

\\n  Reseña de Libros junto al mar\\n

This was quite similar to Hesse's Narcissus and Goldman as it vividly embodied the dichotomy of life.

It also adhered to the same patterns of personal growth through experience, the process of coming-of-age, and ultimately arriving at self-discovery.

Throughout this short novel, there were some underlying Jungian archetypes, religious undertones, and a clear acknowledgment of the duality of life.

There were countless references to this duality, such as "holiness and hideousness...angelic and satanic...human and animal...good and evil." (pg 77)

The story, like Narcissus and Goldman, came full circle and sort of followed the same pattern.

Personally, I enjoyed the latter more and would unhesitatingly recommend it over this one.

Thanks!

We never reach the destination, but our paths intersect.

This simple yet profound statement holds a great deal of truth. In life, we are constantly on a journey, striving towards our goals and dreams. However, the reality is that we may never truly arrive at that final destination. There are always new challenges, new opportunities, and new directions that come our way.

Despite this, our paths intersect with those of others. These intersections can bring about meaningful connections, collaborations, and experiences. They can enrich our lives and help us to grow and learn.

Sometimes, these intersections are brief, like a passing encounter on the street. Other times, they can lead to long-lasting friendships or partnerships.

In conclusion, while we may never reach the end of our journey, the intersections along the way make it all worthwhile.

A story dominated by ideological nature, based on the idea of the eternal struggle between good and evil, and the struggle of man between consciousness and unconsciousness in his extensive and continuous journey in life, and how the human mind can handle the duality of the virtuous and the corrupt and distinguish between them.

The psychological depth from which the story originates is fear and its ability to turn a person's life into hell, turning the good into evil in the blink of an eye.

This story is generally similar to many fairy tales in Arab cultures that preserve religious values and traditions that hide many inequalities and prevent many from asking questions, researching, and thinking, and sanctify them as they are.

The characters of Sinkler and Damian invite us to search within ourselves, ask questions, and reject sacred ideas without prejudice and thinking, while accepting differences with and from others, and moving away from ready-made ideologies that lead to rigid and bloody ideas.

It is interesting and invites you to listen to your ideas and strengthen them through research, reading, and investigation instead of blindly following the obvious.

Demian is a complex bildungsroman that is influenced by Hesse's personal crisis and the analytic treatment he underwent with a Jungian apprentice. All the themes of Jungian theory are present: the acceptance of one's "shadow" side, the search for the personal daimon, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. It is difficult to enter into the spirit of the novel without knowledge of this theory, which forms a kind of structural framework and supports the development of the narrative.

However, in any case, the theme of duality between spirit and matter, which is translated on the one hand as the aspiration to pure spirituality and on the other hand as the fascination with the materiality of life, is recurrent in H.H. It is a theme that we find in Narcissus and Goldmund and in Siddhartha.

Here, in particular, there is the transition from childhood to adolescence, there is the trauma of transformation: the loss of a known and reassuring world and the facing of the unknown, the feeling of walking on the edge of an abyss, the danger inherent in the choices that will determine one direction or another of adult life.

"Childhood crumbled around me in a heap of rubble. [...] A prosaic aura falsified and faded the usual feelings and joys, the garden was without fragrance, the forest without lures, the world surrounded me like a shop of old, worn-out and unattractive things, the books were paper, the music was noise. Thus the leaves fall around the tree in autumn."

Therefore, Demian is the story of a fundamental struggle, that which will see the birth of the self from the fragmentation of the ego, whose multiplicity must somehow be known, reworked, and brought back to unity.

And in the meantime, all around, the outside world is also falling apart, and something new must be born from the disintegration of war. But here Hesse's language becomes more allusive or perhaps truly obscure.

All I desired was to attempt and bring to fruition whatever lay within me. Why was that such a Herculean task?

Demian is truly an enigma. It centers around a boy named Emil Sinclair, who finds himself torn between two distinct 'worlds': the familiar world of his family and the alluring world of 'danger and mystery'.

In essence, it resembles any novel where the protagonist encounters a new and extraordinary individual, much like Gatsby, or Dean Moriarty in 'On the Road', or Tyler Durden in 'Fight Club'. Demian is precisely that character in this story: the philosophical, intelligent, and audacious Demian. Ultimately, this book, like many of Hesse's works, is about self-discovery, about finding oneself and determining what one wishes to become. It delves into the perils of falling into the mundane ruts of existence and becoming mere pub crawlers, of forgetting what one truly desires. And most importantly, as we rush towards the conclusion of the novel, it explores the concepts of destiny and our fates.

Here are some quotes from the text that I found particularly captivating.

'My goal became purity, not pleasure; happiness was replaced by beauty and spirituality.'

'It is good to know that we have within us one who knows everything about us.'

"Come," he called out after a time, "we will now practice a little philosophy. That means holding our tongues, lying on our bellies and thinking."

This book, which I consider to be the best of Hesse's works, even better than "Steppenwolf". It truly deserves to be the scripture of a new religion. In this religion, for every sin, people are taught that one should not have a religion, and even more so, one should not have a new religion.

Just like all of Hesse's books, the author delves deep into the study of the essence, the self, always looking at it from both the bright and dark sides. On the bright side, I see something similar to the Zen of Buddhism. On the dark side, I don't quite understand. Partly because of the poor translation (and my English is also bad), and mostly because my mind is too out of balance with Hesse's, so I couldn't grasp the book. I also need a Demian to guide me in understanding this book. But actually, most of it is due to the translation =)).

Overall, the book reads as if it's wild and fictional, but looking back at Hesse's life story, it seems very real. And the main character clearly represents Hesse and no one else (even the pseudonym already says this). Hesse also belongs to the type of non-mainstream who was very scared and wrote this book in three weeks during a bout of excitement. Probably thought about using a different pseudonym for publication. Thomas Mann read it and was ecstatic =)).

Details about the translation. The "Confused Youth" version can be thrown into the trash without regret. The "Demian" version translated by an ARMY (yes, thank you BTS) is very dedicated (with extremely clear annotations), but it's not a good translation either. I really hope there is a German translator who is proficient enough to translate this book. Because it's clearly difficult. I heard that Nhã Nam is going to reprint the "Confused Youth" version, it's really unbelievable!

Herman Hesse said in the preface of his book:

I cannot call myself wise. I have been a seeker and will remain so; but I no longer search in the stars or in books, but rather I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not for print and reading; it is not like the sweet and serious constructed stories. My story has a senseless side of madness, of confusion and of dreams; it is the story of a life which will not flower.

Goodness is a very general concept, but I can say that the suitability, tangibility, comprehensibility and ultimately the enjoyability of a book for anyone depends on the conditions and age at which one reads the book.

I think I read Demian in the best conditions and at the right age and got the most benefit from it, but for the first book I read by Hesse (Steppenwolf), I was a bit hasty and I must read it again without fail.

I liked the book and got a lot of pleasure from it because at the beginning of the story I was confronted with the description of the conditions and mental states of a ten-year-old child who was strangely similar to myself, and since not much time has passed since I was ten years old, I also had a terrifying kinship with the book from the very beginning. Hesse placed the child in conditions that I had been in, and it was really exciting to read the explanation of my behavior from Hesse's language.

The situation I described above is not limited to the chapter related to Emil Sinclair's childhood, and as the story progresses and that ten-year-old child grows up, I saw myself more and more in Hesse's mirror and learned more.

I experienced the climax of the story once in the description of the end of Emil Sinclair's childhood - the inner separation from his father and mother and the freezing and loneliness of the shameful puberty - and once at the end of it.

The part that interests me:

There came years when I felt a restlessness within me that was strange in the world of the proper, the conventional and the permitted. Like the awakening of sexual restlessness which I regarded as hostile, improper, corrupt and a sin. What intrigued me, what drew me to wild dreams and at the same time upset me, was the great secret of puberty that did not fit into the healthy and happy childhood life I had, which was completely secluded and protected. I too behaved like everyone else. I continued a childhood life although I was no longer a child. My conscience stood among the things that were permitted and proper and I denied the new world that was emerging; but beside this life, I also lived another life; the secret life of dreams, of vague desires and longings on which a waking and frightened life built shaky bridges; for my childhood world was falling apart.