“Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse (post 2): “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” tells Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf, that he has multiple, not dual, personalities.

I have just read “Treatise on the Steppenwolf,” pages 66-116 of this 389-page edition of the novel. It tells the main character—Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf—his true nature.

Harry had considered himself to have two natures, that of a man, Harry Haller, and that of a wolf of the Steppes (the plains): “…the Steppenwolf had two natures, a human and a wolfish one…[who were] in continual and deadly enmity [with each other]…and the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them…” (1, pp. 68-72).

“There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of this kind…(1, p. 74).

“It is possible that [Harry] will learn one day to know himself. He may get hold of one of our little mirrors. He may encounter the Immortals. He may find in one of our magic theaters the very thing that is needed…(1, p. 96-97).

“…to come to the point…the Steppenwolf is a fiction. When Harry feels himself to be a were-wolf, and chooses to consist of two hostile and opposed beings, he is merely availing himself of a mythological simplification…Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two…(1, pp. 98-100).

In psychological terms, the Treatise divides humanity into two groups: 1. the majority of people, who are multifaceted, but not distinctly self-divided, and 2. a minority of people, who are distinctly self-divided, and who may be aware of a small number of their personalities, but usually have more than they realize. In the second group are “many artists.”

The Treatise posits a spiritual realm, whose beings are the “Immortals,” and whose spokesman is narrating the Treatise. In psychological terms, the Immortals might correspond to the novelist’s muse or spiritual characters. In multiple personality, it is common to have any kind of alternate personality that would be consistent with the person’s art, personal history, religion, and culture.

1. Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf [1927]. Translation from the German by Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz (1963). New York, Picador Modern Classics/Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015.