The Significance of the Epiphany in der Steppenwolf

In its literary dimension, the term "epiphany" refers to an occasion on which a character in a work of fiction is suddenly overtaken by a moment of insight into the tenor of his or her life. Originally the word had a religious connotation, since it refers to the experience of the biblical wise men who traveled to Bethlehem under the guidance of a bright star to bear witness to a miraculous birth. This element of a penumbra heightens the symbolic value of the epiphany in its figurative sense. A contemporary of Hermann Hesse, James Joyce made particular use of the epiphany as a poetic device in his early work. Striking examples appear in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and in the prose poems he wrote to demonstrate the momentary illumination of the thoughts and commonplace objects that exalted him. There is no direct evidence that Hermann Hesse knew Joyce, although Joyce lived for a time and died (in 1941) in Zurich, a city quite familiar to Hesse and a primary location in the Steppenwolf's search for an identity. There is every reason to suppose, however, that Hesse would have been aware of, if not closely acquainted with, Joyce's linguistically challenging work. It is also likely that he was familiar with Joyce's concept of the role of the artist-writer in society, a subject of paramount interest to both writers. (1) Within this frame of reference, this essay explores Hesse's use of the epiphany as a prototype in his most celebrated novel, Der Steppenwolf (1927), and will establish his expansion of its significance in a literary text. (2) Critics have paid markedly little attention to the subject of the moment of epiphany as Hesse puts it to use in his fiction; at the same time, they have repeatedly taken note of his practice of embellishing his realistic accounts with fantastic events and magical transformations. These occur with some frequency throughout Hesse's work, including the disappearance of Hermann Lauscher in the novel Hinterlassene Schriften von Hermann Lauscher (Hermann Lauscher's Legacy of his Writings, 1901) and of Hermann Hesse himself in the Kurzgefasster Lebenslauf (Concise Autobiography, 1924). Joseph Milek, in Hermann Hesse: Life and Art, explores the concept of the epiphany to a limited extent but holds it to be an aspect of the concept of grace. Milek postulates Hesse's propensity, acquired as a child raised in a Protestant household, to associate Christ's birth with God's gift of grace rather than with an occasion for the presentation of gifts. (3) Through such an overlapping of general and private symbolism, Hesse uses the literary device of the epiphany to describe effectively the turmoil of his life and times and the transcendence beyond the resultant despair. It is this theme which underlies his fiction. In his Understanding Hermann Hesse, Lewis W. Tusken has given the epiphany motif in Der Steppenwolf another designation, proposing that "Harry labels these magic moments Gottesspuren (traces of God)--Jung's `flashes of insight.'" (4) Oskar Seidlin leaves aside such religious and psychological connotations and summarizes Hesse's literary search for his selfhood in these terms: "[H]is entire work seems an endless recording of the process of awakening" (my emphasis). (5) Ralph Freedman uses the philosophic concept of unio mystica to characterize the moment of sudden insight that overwhelms the protagonist in stories dealing with the experience of an epiphany. (6) In accord with Freedman, David G. Richards describes the Steppenwolf's progress toward experiencing a corona-embellished rebirth in these words: "Haller's despair and thoughts of suicide may be seen as manifestations of this stage (`the dark night of the soul') which generally precedes the mystical experience of illumination (the unio mystica)." (7) Yet, critics of Der Steppenwolf have largely neglected to examine the exact nature of this moment of enlightenment in the novel. …