Hermann Hesse’s "Steppenwolf," a summary

Hermann Hesse’s novel reveals the rift of an intellectual caught in the grip of the European interwar crisis. This book is a confessional diary with a double refraction, where the gaze of an outside witness collides with the hero’s delusional visions. The writer completed the final manuscript in January 1927, when the breakup of his second marriage and psychoanalytic sessions near Zurich intensified thoughts of suicide.

In 1974, American director Fred Hines released a film adaptation of the book of the same name, starring Max von Sydow.

Notes of a Guest

The elderly landlady’s nephew recalls a strange tenant in his fifties. Harry Haller rented an attic room with a tiny bedroom, lugging along a trunk full of travel stickers and a crate of rare books. He spent his days reading eighteenth-century authors, inhaling tobacco smoke, and taking gout powders. Sometimes the lodger would sit for long periods on the landing outside the widow’s apartment. The fresh scent of turpentine, wax, and a well-tended potted araucaria beckoned him. The bourgeois comfort seemed an unattainable paradise to him. Nine months later, the lodger disappeared without a farewell, leaving behind a bundle of scribbled notebooks.

Meeting at a blank wall

Haller drags his feet through the wet evening streets of the old town. In the darkness, near the sleepy monastery wall, a dim illuminated sign flashes. The letters spell out the message: "Magic Theatre. Not for everyone. For the insane only."

The heavy gate handle refuses to budge. A tired peddler emerges from the alleyway, his tray slung over his belly. The man hands Harry a thin fair brochure for a few pennies.

In a rented attic, a traveler opens a book entitled "A Treatise on Steppenwolf." The text examines in detail Haller’s own fate. The hero senses within himself the eternal conflict between the human mind and the wolf’s carnivorous savagery. The author of the treatise rejects such shallow divisions. The soul consists of a thousand separate principles, shimmering with a myriad of nuances. The bourgeois stifles such sparks for the sake of a dull, satiated peace. The intellectual, however, finds temporary salvation in his fiftieth birthday, designated as the day of irrevocable reckoning, razor in hand.

Dinner at the Professor’s

In the morning, an unknown citizen is buried in the cemetery. Harry trudges behind the stranger’s coffin through the soggy clay, disdaining the priest’s false speeches.

A chance encounter with a university philologist draws the outcast into the staid professor’s home. A saccharine engraving of Goethe’s portrait adorns the living room dresser. The host praises a militaristic newspaper article denigrating the pacifist Haller. The enraged guest reveals his true identity, insults the bourgeois portrait of his idol, and flees.

Mentor at the Black Eagle

The fugitive’s feet carry him to a suburban tavern called the Black Eagle. Music thunders in the smoke-filled room.

A pale stranger with a wilted camellia in her short hair sits at a table. The girl immediately takes control of the bewildered stranger. She orders Harry to wipe his glasses, feeds him a sandwich with mustard, and offers him a rich Burgundy. Her companion reminds him of a schoolmate named Hermann. The new acquaintance answers to the name Hermine. The young woman demands unquestioning obedience. She promises to teach the recluse simple dances and frivolity, and in return demands that he fulfill her final command: to one day end her life with a razor blade. That night, in his hotel room, Haller dreams of the old man Goethe, laughing at human seriousness and hiding a living woman’s foot in a box.

Shimmy and the Gramophone

Hermine forces her student to buy a portable gramophone and a stack of trendy records. Lessons begin right there in the attic, among the volumes.

Dancing is given to the body with great difficulty.

At the Balance Hotel restaurant, his mentor introduces Harry to the musician Pablo. A Creole with a veil in his eyes, he masterfully plays the saxophone, rolls cigarettes, smiles, and remains silent during any debates about the spiritual heights of classical scores. Later, Hermine nudges her student toward a charming regular. Maria glides effortlessly across the parquet floor, guiding her companion’s timid steps.

Soon, Harry finds Maria in his bed. This generous carnal pleasure was bestowed upon him by the omniscient Hermione. The lovers rent a separate room for secret rendezvous, where the woman reveals to the man the delights of silk trinkets, perfume, and caresses.

Ballroom frenzy

In the depths of winter, the night of the masquerade arrives in the halls of the Globe. Haller wanders for a long time in tails among jesters, devils, and naked women. The melancholy of loneliness once again weighs on his temples. He decides to leave the stuffy revelry, approaches the coat rack, and discovers his ticket is missing.

A random mummer in a yellow and red tights hands him a piece of cardboard with the inscription: "Magic Theatre. Entrance only for madmen. Admission fee: reason. Hermine in hell."

Harry rushes down the stairs to a black-walled basement tavern. The mentor herself, dressed in an impeccable tuxedo, sits at the counter, playing the role of young Herman. Together, they turn the ladies’ heads, drink ice-cold champagne, and melt into the general chorus. Toward dawn, the girl dons a white columbine jabot. The partners converge in a final foxtrot to the strains of "Longing."

Labyrinth of Reflections

The party fades. Pablo leads the exhausted couple into the theater’s circular room. The saxophonist treats his friends to elixir from colorful vials and hands them thin yellow cigarettes. Reality loses its familiar heaviness.

Pablo leads Haller to a tall mirror.

The glass surface explodes with dozens of reflections. Little boys, cheeky schoolchildren, old men, and ragged people run out of the frame. All of them are facets of Harry’s being.

A musician arranges chess pieces, fashioned from fragments of human nature, on a small board. Each combination creates new life. The player is free to rearrange these pieces at will, transforming tragedy into comedy.

Haller walks down an arched corridor lined with endless boxes. Behind the first door, a war of extermination between humans and machines rages, where his school friend Gustav shoots cars speeding down the serpentine road with a rifle. Behind another door, a wolf is being trained, devouring chocolate and lapping up sheep’s blood. The third door opens a gateway to his youth, allowing him to relive the pure love he felt for Rosa Kreisler and dozens of other women he’s encountered.

At the last door hangs a grim sign: “How love kills.”

Instead of chess pieces, a heavy folding knife appears in his jacket pocket. Haller pushes the door open and sees the naked lovers asleep on the carpet. Pablo and Hermine are asleep after a wild encounter. A fresh bite mark is visible under the beauty’s left breast. Harry plunges the blade into the dark spot, right up to the hilt.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appears nearby, wearing a modern frock coat. The composer mockingly flicks the switches on the radio. From the tin horn, the divine sounds of Handel’s concerto, distorted by interference, wheeze and whistle. Mozart laughs at Harry’s pathos, confusing ghostly images with real life.

The court sentences the murderer to eternal life, public ridicule, and a twelve-hour ban from the theater. The immortal maestro suddenly transforms into Pablo. The smiling saxophonist lifts Hermine’s dead body from the carpet, crushes it in his fingers until it resembles a tiny chess piece, and tucks it into the pocket of his silk housecoat. Haller is left alone with cold eternity and the hope of one day learning the saving laughter.