"The self-created loneliness which nothing can assuage, the self-enclosed walls separating him from human beings. One can only feel compassion for that incurable illness of the soul," Anais writes as she reflects on Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf.
Hesse feels that his book has been misunderstood. In his preface to the book, Hesse speaks of how people "recognized themselves in Steppenwolf, identified themselves with him, suffered his griefs, and dreamed his dreams; but they have overlooked the fact that this book knows of and speaks about other things besides Harry Haller and his difficulties, about a second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenwolf and his problematic life. The "Treatise" and all those spots in the books dealing with matters of the spirit, of the arts and the "immortal" men oppose the Steppenwolf's world of suffering with a positive, serene, super-personal and timeless world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of grief and needs; still it is not a book of a man despairing, but of a man believing."
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