“Gentlemen, there stands before you Harry Haller, accused and found guilty of the wilful misuse of our magic theatre. Haller has not alone insulted the majesty of art in that he confounded our beautiful picture gallery with so-called reality and stabbed to death the reflection of a girl with the reflection of a knife; he has in addition displayed the intention of using our theatre as a mechanism of suicide and shown himself devoid of humour. Wherefore we condemn Haller to eternal life and we suspend for twelve hours his permit to enter our theatre. The penalty also of being laughed out of court may not be remitted. Gentlemen, all together, one-two-three!”
On the word “three” all who were present broke into one simultaneous peal of laughter, a laughter in full chorus, a frightful laughter of the other world that is scarcely to be borne by the ears of men.
When I came to myself again, Mozart was sitting beside me as before. He clapped me on the shoulder and said: “You have heard your sentence. So, you see, you will have to learn to listen to more of the wireless music of life. It’ll do you good. You are uncommonly poor in gifts, a poor blockhead, but by degrees you will come to grasp what is required of you. You have got to learn to laugh. That will be required of you. You must apprehend the humour of life, its gallows-humour. But of course you are ready for everything in the world except what will be required of you. You are ready to stab girls to death. You are ready to be executed with all solemnity. You would be ready, no doubt, to mortify and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes, ready with all my heart,” I cried in my misery.
“Of course! When it’s a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humour or wit, you’re the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don’t care a fig for all your romantics of atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you Berserker! For this imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the severest of penalties.”
“Oh, and what would that be?”
“We might, for example, restore this girl to life again and marry you to her.”
“No, I should not be ready for that. It would bring unhappiness.”
“As if there were not enough unhappiness in all you have designed already! However, enough of pathos and death-dealing. It is time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to listen to life’s wireless music and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at the bim-bim in it. So there you are. More will not be asked of you.”
Gently from behind clenched teeth I asked: “And if I do not submit? And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the Steppenwolf, and to meddle in his destiny?”
“Then,” said Mozart calmly, “I should invite you to smoke another of my charming cigarettes.” And as he spoke and conjured up a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and offered it me, he was suddenly Mozart no longer. It was my friend Pablo looking warmly at me out of his dark exotic eyes and as like the man who had taught me to play chess with the little figures as a twin.
“Pablo!” I cried with a convulsive start. “Pablo, where are we?”
“We are in my Magic Theatre,” he said with a smile, “and if you wish at any time to learn the Tango or to be a General or to have a talk with Alexander the Great, it is always at your service. But I’m bound to say, Harry, you have disappointed me a little. You forgot yourself badly. You broke through the humour of my little theatre and tried to make a mess of it, stabbing with knives and spattering our pretty picture-world with the mud of reality. That was not pretty of you. I hope, at least, you did it from jealousy when you saw Hermine and me lying there. Unfortunately, you did not know what to do with this figure. I thought you had learnt the game better. Well, you will do better next time.”
He took Hermine who at once shrank in his fingers to the dimensions of a toy-figure and put her in the very same waistcoat-pocket from which he had taken the cigarette.
Its sweet and heavy smoke diffused a pleasant aroma. I was utterly done-up and ready to sleep for a year.
I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life’s game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.
One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too.
Colophon
Steppenwolf
was published in 1927 by
Hermann Hesse.
It was translated from German in 1929 by
Basil Creighton.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Lukas Bystricky,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2025 by
Steve Mattern and Distributed Proofreaders
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital
