[1/??] Hey there! :) Not sure if this will be of any help (since you already did quite a lot of research) but since Demian was a German novella, I figured there might be some more information about it on German sites, so I looked a few things up!
[2/??] So I don’t know how far you’ve come with your research so far, however, even though it deals with murder and the differences between the two worlds, it’s mostly about Sinclair’s development throughout the book. [3/??] Back then Hesse described the intention of his work as the following:[4/??] “Demian is about a specific duty and distress of youth which surely doesn’t stop after youth, but certainly involves it the most. It’s the fight for individualization, the fight for the development of a personality.” [5/??] This also gets clear in the beginning of the novella. It already starts like this (loose translation): “Many a person never becomes a human, stays a frog, stays a lizard, stays an ant. Many a person is human on the top and fish on the bottom. [6/??] However, everyone is a toss of nature towards the human being. And everyone shares the same origin, the mothers, we all came from the same maw; but everyone aims, an attempt and toss out of the depths, at their own target.“[7/??] "We might understand each other; but we can interpret only our own.”[8/??] Here’s also an extract of the German Wikipedia page: “Hesse’s novella “Demian” deals with the childhood and youth of Emil Sinclair from the protagonist’s perspective.[9/??] Progressively the advancement of the protagonist from a ten year old child to a mature, self-reflective adult is depicted. With every stage of his journey he grows in confidence and personality, with every stage Sinclair finds himself. I NEVER GOT A 10 SORRY [11/??] In earliest childhood Sinclair senses the existence of two worlds in his life: One of them is the warm, bright, secure, clean and tender father and mother world. It is faced by the other, the forbidden, dark, evil, generally contrasting world [12/??] Sinclair considers latter one all the more exciting and tempting because of that.”[13/??] So not sure if this is of any help (actually totally feel free to ignore all these messages), the translation is also nowhere as fancy as the original, sorry for my English on that, but personally [14/??] I think the concept is actually finding oneself and growing in personality by experiencing all aspects of life (like… the dark and the bright side) and also losing one’s way sometimes. [15/15] Okay, I hope tumblr didn’t eat any of the messages now haha! Sorry for the spam ;-;
OK 1) I LOVE YOU for doing so much research and explaining it to me instead of on your blog 2) Holy crap, I think I should just read the whole goddamn book. I’m not even joking. If we read the book, I think we would get it all. 3) Your English is amazing and 4) Don’t ever feel sorry for talking to me! I love all of you guys 5) I also think you are completely right. That’s what I was trying to say in my posts, but you worded it way better. It’s about the inner struggle or GETTING OUT OF the inner struggle of youth. HYYH was about the struggle itself. In Young Forever, they got out. Not its about what to do next. Finding a place, finding a purpose, individuality like you said. That’s prolly why it all connects. It’s a flow. Like a life story. It connects to all of us too. Personally, I am still in the struggle. Life is hard, but until I am independent, I can’t find my own self. ITS AN INCREDIBLE PIECE OF ARTWORK and I cannot wait for the album.
