Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Steppenwolf was a man nearing fifty who one day some years ago called at my aunt's block of flats in search of a furnished room.... He led a quiet life, keeping himself to himself, and had it not been for the odd chance meeting on the stairs or in the corridor, occasioned by the proximity of our bedrooms, we would probably not have become acquainted at all.

For the man was not sociable; indeed he was unsociable to a degree that I had never observed in anyone before. He really was, to use the term he himself did on occasion, a Steppenwolf, or wolf of the steppes: an alien, wild but also timid - even very timid - creature from a world different to mine.

Mind you, it was only after reading the notebooks he left here that I discovered how profoundly isolated a life he had, by virtue of his temperament and destiny, gradually made his own, and how consciously he recognised this isolation as his lot. Still, even before reading them, through meeting and talking with him briefly on a number of occasions, I did get to know him to some extent.


Translated from German by David Horrocks