Demian

Two worlds coincided there, day and night issued from two poles.

Every person’s life is a journey toward himself,

We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.

I often ardently perceived a longing for relief, the desire for a proper confession, but I also felt in advance that I would be unable to tell and explain things correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that they would receive my words amicably, they would carefully spare my feelings, in fact, pity me, but they wouldn’t fully understand me, and the whole thing would be looked on as a sort of minor infraction, whereas it was actually my fate.
I know that many people won’t believe that a child not yet eleven is capable of such feelings. It is not to those people that I am telling my story. I’m telling it to those who have greater knowledge of humanity. An adult who has learned how to transform part of his emotions into thought processes notices that such thoughts aren’t present in a child, and then concludes that the experiences aren’t present, either. But only seldom in my life have I had such deep and painful experiences as I had then.

Oh, I know it today: nothing in the world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads him to himself!

We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.

Only the thoughts that we live out have any value.

I suddenly found myself disentangled from the demonic snares, I saw the world before me bright and joyous once more, I was no longer subject to anxiety attacks and heart palpitations that choked me. The spell was broken, I was no longer a lost soul in torment, I was once again a schoolboy as always.

) Two Realms
I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.
The sweetness of many things from that time still stirs and touches me with melancholy: dark and well-lighted alleys, houses and towers, chimes and faces, rooms rich and comfortable, warm and relaxed, rooms pregnant with secrets. Everything bears the scent of warm intimacy, servant girls, household remedies, and dried fruits.
The realms of day and night, two different worlds coming from two opposite poles, mingled during this time. My parents' house made up one realm, yet its boundaries were even narrower, actually embracing only my parents themselves. This realm was familiar to me in almost every way -- mother and father, love and strictness, model behavior, and school. It was a realm of brilliance, clarity, and cleanliness, gentle conversations, washed hands, clean clothes, and good manners. This was the world in which morning hymns were sung and Christmas celebrated. Straight lines and paths led into the future: there were duty and guilt, bad conscience and confession, forgiveness and good resolutions, love, reverence, wisdom and the words of the Bible. If one wanted an unsullied and orderly life, one made sure one was in league with this world.
The other realm, however, overlapping half our house, was completely different; it smelled different, spoke a different language, promised and demanded different things. This second world contained servant girls and workmen, ghost stories, rumors of scandal. It was dominated by a loud mixture of horrendous, intriguing, frightful, mysterious things, including slaughterhouses and prisons, drunkards and screeching fishwives, calving cows, horses sinking to their death, tales of robberies, murders, and suicides. All these wild and cruel, attractive and hideous things surrounded us, could be found in the next alley, the next house. Policemen and tramps, drunkards who beat their wives, droves of young girls pouring out of factories at night, old women who put the hex on you so that you fell ill, thieves hiding in the forest, arsonists nabbed by country police -- everywhere this second vigorous world erupted and gave off its scent, everywhere, that is, except in our parents' rooms. And that was good. It was wonderful that peace and orderliness, quiet and a good conscience, forgiveness and love, ruled in this one realm, and it was wonderful that the rest existed, too, the multitude of harsh noises, of sullenness and violence, from which one could still escape with a leap into one's mother's lap.
It was strange how both realms bordered on each other, how close together they were! For example, when Lina, our servant girl, sat with us by the living-room door at evening prayers and added her clear voice to the hymn, her washed hands folded on her smoothed-down apron, she belonged with father and mother, to us, to those that dwelled in light and righteousness. But

Love ought not to make requests,” she said, “but shouldn’t make demands, either. Love must have the strength to reach certainty for itself. Then it no longer undergoes the power of attraction, but exerts it.