Our conversation had reached a lower level, had deteriorated. I was no longer a clever little fellow, I was just a mere boy listening to a man. But even then—in comparison with what my life had been for months and months, this was delicious, this was heaven. Besides, as I gradually began to realize, all this was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, everything from sitting in a public house, down to the subject of our conversation. In any case, I thought I was showing spirit; I was in revolt.
I can recollect that night with the greatest clearness. We both of us wended our way home at a late hour under the dimly burning gas lamps through the cool, damp night, and for the first time in my life I was drunk. It was not agreeable, it was in the highest degree unpleasant, but there was a sort of charm about it, a sweetness—it smacked of orgy and revolt, of spirit and life. Beck bravely took me in hand, and although he grumbled at me as being a bloody novice, he half carried, half dragged me home, where, by good fortune, he was able to smuggle us both through a window which stood open on the ground floor.
But a maddening pang accompanied the sobering up as I painfully awoke after a short heavy sleep. I sat up in bed and saw that I was still wearing my shirt. My clothes and shoes lay round about on the floor, smelling of tobacco and vomit. And between headache, nausea and a maddening thirst, a picture came before my mind on which I had not set eyes for many a long day. I saw my home, the house where dwelt my parents. I saw father and mother, my sisters and the garden. I saw my peaceful, homely bedroom, the school and the marketplace. Demian and the confirmation class—and all this was bright, lustrous, all was wonderful, godly and pure, all that, I realized now, had until yesterday belonged to me, had waited for me. But now, in this hour, it was mine no longer, it spurned me and looked upon me with disgust. All that was loving and intimate, all that I had received from my parents since the first golden days of my childhood, each kiss mother had given me, each Christmas, each godly bright Sunday morning there at home, each flower in the garden, all that was laid waste, I had trampled on it all with my foot! If the police had come for me then and had bound me and led me away to the gallows as a desecrator and as the scum of humanity, I should have acquiesced; should have gone gladly. I would have found it right and fitting.
That was the state of my feelings. I, who had gone about despising the world! I, who had been so proud in spirit and who had shared Demian’s thoughts! So I appeared a filthy pig, to be classed with the scum of the earth, drunk and befouled, disgusting and common, a dissolute beast, carried away by abominable instincts. So I appeared, I who came from those gardens whose bright flowers had been purity and sweet gentleness, I who had loved Bach’s music and beautiful poetry! I could still hear, with aversion and disgust, my own laugh, the drunken, uncontrolled, convulsive and silly laugh which escaped me. That was I!
But in spite of everything there was a certain enjoyment in suffering these torments. I had lived for so long a blind, dull existence, for so long had my heart been silent, impoverished and shut up, that even this self-accusation, this self-aversion, this entirely dreadful feeling was welcome. At least it was feeling; flowers were flaring up, emotion was quivering therein. I experienced in the midst of my misery a confused sensation of liberation, of the approach of spring.
However, as far as outward appearances went, I was going fast down the hill. The first debauch was soon followed by others. There was much drinking at school, and other things not in accord with study. I was among the youngest who carried on in this way, but from being just tolerated and looked upon as a mere youngster, I soon rose to be considered as a leader and a star. I was renowned as a daredevil and could drink with the best. Once again I belonged entirely to the dark world, to the devil, and I passed in this world for being a splendid fellow.
But at the same time I was in a pitiful state of mind. I lived in a whirl of self-destroying debauchery, and while I was looked up to by my friends as a leader and the devil of a good fellow, as a cursed witty and spirited drinking companion, my anxious soul was full of apprehension. I remember on one occasion tears started to my eyes when, on coming out of a tavern one Sunday morning, I saw children playing in the street, bright and contented, with freshly combed hair, and in their Sunday clothes. And while I amused and often terrified my friends with monstrous cynicisms, as we sat at dirty tables stained with puddles of beer, in low public houses, I had in my heart a secret, deep reverence for everything at which I scoffed—inwardly I was weeping bitterly at the thought of my past life, of my mother, of God.
There is a good reason for the fact that I was never one with my companions, that I remained lonely even in their midst, that I suffered in the manner above described. I was
