Our Stories
Herman Hesse on the Humanity in Story Telling
This is the first essay I began drafting when I was in the early stage of creating my site. I started writing, kept reading Demian, kept reading other things and having other ideas, and though I kept returning to Hesse’s work in my mind, I kept giving my other ideas priority over my Demian essay. I don’t think I felt that I was ready for Demian or that people might not care to read about a book arguably less known than Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics and less popular than the Barbie movie. It’s something I want to be thinking about and therefore writing about now. I’m only going to focus on the prologue of the work, which my dad told me he once memorized in its original German. So I’ll be translating a translation in this analysis, which is pretty cool. If you haven’t read Demian and have no imminent intentions to do so, I hope you at least read the prologue.
This is the Prologue of Herman Hesse’s Demian, translated from the original German into English by Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck.
…
I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. If it were possible, I would reach back farther still - into the very first years of my childhood, and beyond them into distant ancestral past.
Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man’s life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail.
I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood. Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man’s story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams - like the lives of men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that - one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestige of his birth - the slime and eggshells of his primeval past - with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us - experiments of the depths - strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another, but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.
…
OK, so Hesse is a wizard. In a short passage he encapsulates the necessity and beauty of storytelling to our humanity while emphasizing the unavoidable imperfection of every story and the power in that imperfection when embraced as a central feature of our lives. Storytelling is a big part of the recovery journey, and I think the connection that accompanies our deeper understanding of each other’s journeys is the major reason for this practice. We share our testimonies - our experience, strength and hope - for a few reasons. True, there are those inclined to indulge in what are cringingly referred to as ‘drunkalogues’, but even these may have something of merit in them. This is the experience part. The Big Book comments on the purpose of shared story: “we hope that you may pause…and think: ‘Yes, that happened to me’; or, more importantly, ‘Yes, I’ve felt like that’; or, most importantly, ‘Yes, I believe this program can work for me too.’” (xii.). These are the points of connection our stories are meant to cultivate. If a newcomer can show up alone to a meeting feeling misunderstood and other, yet hear a story that he feels shares something of his own unique experience, he’s no longer alone.
Hesse begins at the beginning. He notes the impossibility of telling a story without “reaching a long way back.” Even beyond the limits of his own life span if it were possible. This comment reflects on the fact that our lives are so deeply influenced by not only our childhood experiences and upbringing, but by the generations of lives that have come before us. Generational trauma, though it does not present in our DNA, is just as real and influential an inheritance as our skin color or height. Our childhood experiences, however big or small, also play a pivotal role in the habits we form around relationships, trust and love. To truly understand people as they are today, we need to understand what has happened to them, what has shaped them, and where they have come from.
I like Hesse’s next point - a lesson in humility - and remind myself of it when I have the opportunity to share pieces of my own story. Though we may feign the confidence of novelists spinning out epics, we’re like Hesse - “as little able to do this as the novelist is.” Though ours is the most important, familiar story we will ever tell, it is also impossible for us to understand even as the ones to whom it most pertains. We are constantly revisiting, reevaluating and rediscovering aspects of our past, always living out our present in the raw, undeciphered now, and continuously moving into an uncharted future. So how can we be expected to tell a perfect story if it exists in such a fluid, hazy manner in our minds? Why are we expected to try at all? Because these scant, vague details that we can narrate in such an imperfect way are what make us human and what give us the threads by which we connect ourselves to other humans and their imperfect stories. And by telling and retelling in as honest a manner as we can, all the while accepting that the story is never complete, we come closer to the understanding of self that we seek.
Every man’s story is worth considering. Every one of us is more than just a unique human being, which is incredible in itself. But I love that Hesse calls attention that storytelling is so essential because we are more than we appear on a surface level. We are each an intersection of the world’s phenomena, the connection of factors beyond our capacity to comprehend in a unique way that can never be replicated or captured again. Even this thought is a little unfathomable. At every fleeting moment in our lives we are a representation of an ever changing intersection of stories, of lives both human and not. We are not a solitary strand heading forth in a linear trajectory from start to finish but an ever lengthening thread in the great knot of existence. It can seem messy at times, but knots involve intertwining. Knot and knit stem from the same root, and only knot acquires the negative connotation of something we can’t figure out or become stuck in. Our lives, more than just our physical beings, are part of that knot that holds the stories of so many others like us, and all of us are connected in this way. In my last essay on It’s a Wonderful Life, I reflected on George’s experience witnessing a world in which he never existed, and it’s strangely empty for the ones left in it, even those on whom he never imagined he had a weighty impact. Human lives have a purpose in nature, and as Hesse writes, if we can live and fulfill the will of nature, we are wondrous and worthy of every consideration. The will of nature is an interesting word choice here - it’s not our own will we’re meant to fulfill, but that of a higher power. In that lies the purpose we so desperately seek. I’ve spent a lot of effort and time trying to manage my life or control outcomes as I deem best for me, and I didn’t realize for a long time that I was fighting against the natural order of the knot I was meant to be in. I made my knot a problem rather than the connective experience it could be. When I’m able to surrender my will and intentionally say the words “thy will be done” when I pray, I experience a peace I didn’t know before. Surrendering to God’s will means trusting in a plan greater than our minds can comprehend and knowing that life’s terms may not always entail what we would have decided. We may not see order at all times, but we have to trust that there is something greater orienting the careful interweaving of our lives with all life.
Each man’s life represents a road toward himself. Writers love this metaphor of the road and life. We find it in music lyrics, poetry, and literature of every kind and from every time. And while we have a sense of our shared origin, we are on the road and therefore on an unfinished journey. Our stories are inevitably our pasts, though we can also share our hopes and dreams of the future, these stem from the people we’ve become through these pasts. The past doesn’t define us, because nothing can truly define us. The past does tell a lot about us though. The past holds the keys to unlocking why we have come to where we are the way we did. The concept of a fresh slate each day just can’t exist, because we need to look to the past to know how to live now and how to move forward. I’m not proud of a lot of my past. I’ve hurt people, let people down, lied, made countless mistakes and wrong choices, and took the easy, cowardly path many times out of fear. I’ve also been hurt, experienced loss, felt rejected and experienced pain I never want to revisit. But I’ve finally realized that I can’t erase those pieces of my story. Without them, I wouldn’t be in the place I am now as I write this essay. I wouldn’t be in the Hessian intersection of phenomena that I still have only a vague understanding of. And I trust - I have to - that there’s something greater than me when I feel like I’m just in a mess or at a low in life. Trusting that I’m part of something and not alone in my existence keeps me going when I start to feel walled in by fear, shame, unworthiness and grief - my bad guys. I’m not a pro at all this, so the bad guys win a lot still, but I’m working on it. I’m working on becoming in touch with my own story and with the stories of others in my life, because this human practice gives us the insight to view the greater knot as something woven with love and providence.
Finally, Hesse drops the mic on the idea that we can tell our stories and grow in understanding of ourselves and one another, but only interpret ourselves to ourselves alone. This is brilliant. The concept that we interpret or translate ourselves. I talk a bit about translation on my site, and I’ve always loved it because of the fluid nature of it. Translation or interpretation involves two stories, two languages. Both hold so much yet leave so much space between the lines of letters and words. Such are our stories. The meanings and connotations we write into our personal mythologies occupy only the surface levels of our full selves. Telling stories is the beginning of understanding in this way.
I think even more important than telling our stories though is listening to the stories we and others tell. In this way, truly actively listening, we cultivate the conscious connection necessary to our recovery. This is not only vital for our own recovery; it is one of the greatest gifts we can offer of ourselves to others and sometimes the only thing we have sufficient to offer. In listening, we acknowledge the legitimacy and humanity of the stories being shared. We become part of the story being shared through the simple act of knowing it. And sometimes that’s all we can do.
I’m the type of person who likes to have solutions or answers when people share with me, and one of the hardest things I’ve had to practice is just listening and accepting that sometimes words don’t exist to answer the problems we encounter in life. When we’re able to listen with an open mind and heart, we validate the stories we hear, we build deeper connections with the persons in our lives, and we’re able to communicate in something stronger than words, deeper than story.
