HERMANN HESSE AND THE DIALECTICS OF TIME Salvatore C. P. ...

The various sections do not [...] really reflect ironically upon each other; there
is no such complex or self-questioning relationship between them they
present us rather with a sequence of clearly expanding and deepening
insights. (93)
In other words, the three sections offer all concordant portrayals of Haller, and the
reader never comes to question the authority of the narrative voice. 63 Der Steppenwolf
is not the only work by Hesse where this lack of narrative irony emerges at least in
the form it appears in the twentieth century (see discussion below) and Stewards
observation may well be extended to the whole of his fiction. Hesse's reader never
experiences that startling feeling of surprise and confusion Mann's novels, for
instance, are able to elicit when their author suddenly casts a shadow on the narrator
through the direct utterance of one of the characters. Doktor Faustus, for example,
largely builds on Zeitblom's (narrator's) veneration of the protagonist and composer
Adrian Leverkuhn, on the exaltation of the latter's geniality and 'aufierordentlich[e]
Gaben' (Mann 1947, 87). In Zeitblom's account, Leverkiihn's sharp mind even allows
him to engage in a subtle and intellectually sophisticated dialogue with the 'devil',
who appears to the composer in Chapter XXV (221-51). 64 Zeitblom's portrayal of
Leverkuhn is maintained untarnished until the last few pages of the novel when
Adrian himself presents his last work ('Leverkiihns apokalyptische[s] Oratorium',
486) to a few friends whom he summoned for the occasion. Zeitblom describes the
composition as a combination of '[das] Seligst[e]' (ibid.) with '[das] Grafilichst[e]'
(ibid.), and the reader expects the composition to be the zenith of Leverkiihn's career
and the ultimate musical creation. However, the dramatic tension is shattered, and
the reader's image of Adrian is suddenly called into question at the beginning of
Leverkuhn's speech ('Anrede', 495), characterised by convoluted, ludicrous, archaic
phrasing that conjures up more the image of someone who has lost his reason than
that of a musical genius:
63 Borrowing Boulby's terminology from his discussion on Narzifl und Goldmund, the three sections of
Steppenwolf offer ' restatement [s] in reflective form' (242).
64 The encounter with the devil marks a turning point in Leverkuhn's life and underscores one of the facets of
temporality in the novel; as for the other literary incarnations of Faust, Adrian's longing for eternity is indeed the
motive behind his deal with the devil.
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