[When] I say that Steppenwolf functions as a "bible" I mean that it seems to serve as THE book for certain people, as the one book that says it all, that grabs you and will not let you go, to the point of physical as well as mental commitment. (p. 440)

A book that is to produce martyrs or converts among its readers need not show the balance of a genuine "classic," need not fulfill the highest aesthetic standards of harmony and bearing and sublimity…. Common to a "bible," however, is a despairing attitude toward the very possibility of interpersonal relationships. The overriding issue in a "bible" is not basically aesthetic, ethical, or social in nature, but religious. It is a question of faith, and what, if anything, one can have faith in. (pp. 440-41)

The novel Steppenwolf is for the most part treated as a memoir left behind by an "outsider." Harry Haller, our forty-eight year old German intellectual, has already written several books and articles about the sad state of Europe between the two World Wars. He has been married and divorced and now finds himself in a middle-sized city, deliberately cut off from former friends and acquaintances, and generally in a funk.

Note however that his isolation and intellectual despair is pretty much self-imposed….

Cut off as he is from society, he is also at odds with himself. In particular he finds that his intellectual side is firmly locked in battle with his more elemental passions and desires, to the point where he considers himself composed of two parts, man and wolf. His internal struggle dictates his appearance to the world at large as one who hates himself and hence cannot love others. (p. 441)

A series of mysterious events contrives to bring Harry, in the moment of deepest despair and on the verge of suicide, in contact with a barroom courtesan who convinces Harry that she understands him. It is here that Harry enters a world of jazz, women, and drugs and begins to learn to live a little. Harry has been mentally prepared for the new experiences he is facing by a theoretical treatise, the famous "Treatise of the Steppenwolf." This tract is presented in the text as an analysis of Harry's problems by an objective observer…. [From] now on Harry will, as the students say, "blow his mind." At the same time he will be cautioned to take himself much less seriously. He will in the process experience a further disintegration of his twofold personality until he sees himself as composed of a hundred, even a thousand souls. Finally he will begin to hear the icy laughter of the immortals. (pp. 441-42)

Now, it is in many respects immediately obvious why students go for this story. One student told me that Harry was brought up in a way that he too felt he had been brought up…. Students often feel themselves pushed toward the intellectual life whether they want it or not. It is expected by parents and teachers that one go to college and it is necessary for those who must avoid the draft. Yet these same students are bored with being trapped in college and want to live life instead of learning about it…. Of course neither Harry nor the student reader can make a clean break with his solid middle class background…. [We] find Harry sitting on the steps looking at that alcove with the potted araucaria tree that represents all these values just as we find the student still at school learning life as he thinks his parents created it. Thus it is easy for both Harry and the student reader to enter the Magic Theater and climb deeper into themselves in an effort to escape. Pablo the saxophonist says to Harry: "You have often been sorely weary of your life. You were striving, were you not, to escape? You have a longing to forsake this world and its reality and to penetrate to a reality more native to you, to a world beyond time."… Pablo is glad to oblige. He offers drugs and a magical-mystical tour of Harry's disintegrated personality which bares both the ecstasies of fantasy freedom and the horrors of subconscious conflict made conscious. Clearly we witness here a drug induced psycho-drama. And Harry recalls the experience in protest: "This Magic Theater was clearly no paradise. All hell lay beneath its charming surfaces. O God, was there even here no release?"…

The answer to Harry's rhetorical question and to the student reader's unsatisfactory psychedelic trip is both yes and no. Or rather, we are ready to go into another series of digressions concerning Steppenwolf as a "bible." For only in that way can we understand what kind of release is expected and what kind of release a "bible" can provide. Now, theoretical messages of comfort, no matter how nicely disguised, will never be of help to anyone who is in deep isolation and despair. Thus the Treatise on the Steppenwolf, with its promises of eventual deliverance, has in some respects the tone of a solicitous old lady or worse, of a Sunday preacher. It is nice to know that one can be saved, but knowledge alone will not do the trick.

No, a "bible" doesn't make release possible through its messages of comfort, but precisely because it portrays existing circumstances as a self-made hell. The emphasis here is on "self-made." For although the "Establishment" or "Society" may in the first place have caused the withdrawal into ultra-subjectivity, the fact remains that both opposition to society and opposition to self-isolation are rooted in a self-made attitude that no amount of sociology and no amount of psychology can correct.

We are now talking about a condition that can be called "I-solitude," a word that suggests both loneliness and isolation. I-solitude may be characterized linguistically or grammatically by saying that the afflicted person regards himself in the objective world as an "it," while he regards himself psycho-reflectively as a "me." (pp. 442-43)

The answer to "I-solitude" lies in some kind of direct recognition of its symptoms in oneself, a recognition that no amount of analysis can achieve. I submit that a work that is to function as a "bible" must drive theory and analysis to the brink of absurdity and leave the protagonist of the work as well as the reader balanced on the perilous edge between ultimate failure and a new apprehension of the self's relation to the world. The final step or apprehension, however, cannot be clearly revealed, for both the protagonist and the reader must find that for themselves. Hence the ambiguity and mystery surrounding "biblical" revelations. A "bible" does not supply an answer so much as it suggests in which direction to listen for an answer, in ambiguous enough terms so that the reader feels he can "hear" a voice from beyond his personal "hang-up." But no suggestion of this sort can be of any help until both reader and protagonist are ready to scrap all vestiges of their former world view.

Let us apply all this to the case of Steppenwolf. Here the elaborate break between Harry and his wolf-like alter-ego is referred to by Harry himself as schizo-mania. His explanation of his problems in terms of psychological bifurcations and his treatment of the two sides of his nature as alien individuals who cannot communicate with one another make his "I-solitude" very evident. When the Treatise of the Steppenwolf suggests to him the further possibility of manufacturing hundreds of other alter-egos, Harry finds the whole idea artistically very satisfying. In this regard Harry is both psychologically and artistically creative, but nevertheless a sick man. (p. 444)

Harry's trip through the Magic Theater under the influence of inhibition-releasing drugs allows him to carry his penchant for creating alter-egos to absurd extremes. In an orgy of creative self-indulgence he threatens to disintegrate his personality completely. He is, as Pablo suggests, going to pay for his trip by losing his mind. There is a tremendous risk in this, and Pablo knows it, but the risk is worth it. For just as Harry had to kill his version of Hermine before he could come into proper relationship to her, so he now has to kill his own attitude to himself.

The suicide that Harry has so long contemplated must be carried out in the Magic Theater if Harry is to have a chance at rebirth. Harry's situation is critical: he must die to himself if he is to be resurrected, meaning he must pass from psychological bondage to spiritual communication. But his death must be voluntary and complete in the light of faith, because a suicide out of despair and hopelessness cannot be redeemed. (p. 445)

Harry's predicament, as serious and as absurd as it is, will find a responsive affirmation in the sensitive student reader. I think adults oversimplify the difficulties students have in reconciling themselves with their inherited past and with the image they are supposed to have of themselves in terms of this past. In effect students have first to kill that image and that past in themselves, before they can step back into the world and society as authentic individuals. The self-alienation process that Harry Haller illustrates is an essential step in the self-renewal and reintegration that many students strive for during their college days.

The student, like Harry, must lose faith in himself and in his conflicting versions of himself before he can truly know who he is. This is a religious crisis which psychology cannot solve, and in fact Harry, at the end of the book, is not yet able to take the step from pathetic isolation to spiritual communication. What is lacking for Harry and for many students of this generation is the voice from beyond that steps in to fill the void when the self-posited object-self is on the verge of being rejected. (p. 446)

Steppenwolf the "bible" brings Harry Haller and the sensitive reader to the threshold of conversion. As I have said, Harry himself still has a way to go before he crosses that threshold, and there is a possibility that he will not make it at all. Be that as it may, it is clear that Hermine and Pablo alone cannot take the burden of Harry's I-solitude from him. What then constitutes the "act of grace" which could finally enlighten Harry or the reader who has followed Harry this far? Can one turn to the spirit without an act of grace? Can one become "as a child?" Or is it impossible without God's help? In which case even the words of the immortals would lack the final authority to baptize Harry and the reader into the world of spiritual communication. Questions such as these are frankly theological and beyond the bounds of the book Steppenwolf. Harry is no Christ figure: if he is forsaken by God it is largely because Harry has had no faith in God from the beginning. Yet this brings up the possibility that an act of faith on Harry's part would be identical to an act of grace by God. The moment Harry is truly ready to listen, he will indeed hear the Word. In terms of the Word, his ego-centered relationship to Pablo and Hermine, to Goethe and Mozart will change to a dialogue centered in the spirit of communication. (p. 448)

If those students and young people who regard Steppenwolf as a "bible" and who sing the praises of love have really heard the message, and have begun to establish communication with God and with the immortals, then perhaps we professors can learn to read such a "bible" through the eyes of the students. Perhaps we can all learn to take each other less seriously and enjoy each other's company more, tuning in on all our several worlds. The danger in all this is however evident. Once a new dialogue is established its members very soon forget to be open, tolerant, and responsive to those who they think have not yet received enlightenment. Bibles are soon ignored in favor of bullies who insist on their own final word. Thus perhaps my initial feeling of ambiguity toward the relationship of student readers to Steppenwolf will never wholly disappear. (p. 449)