Free Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse Page B

company of all sorts of people. As soon as I was no longer alone, the wine affected me differently; I became gregarious yet not exuberant. I felt a strange cool fever. An aspect of my character suddenly blossomed forth that belonged less to the species of decorative garden flower than to the species of thistle or nettle. As I became more eloquent a sharp, cool spirit would take hold of me, making me self-assured, superior, critical, and witty. If there were people whose presence irked me, I quickly began needling them—delicately at first, then coarsely and stubbornly until they left. Since childhood, I had never found people indispensable or had great need of them. Now I began to regard them with a critical, ironic eye. I preferred inventing and telling stories in which people’s relationships with one another were represented satirically or were bitterly mocked. I had no idea how I came upon this deprecatory tone; it erupted from me like a long-festering sore and it was to stay with me for years. If, for a change, I happened to spend an evening drinking by myself again, I would again dream of mountains, stars, and melancholy music.
    During this time I wrote a number of sketches on society, culture, and contemporary art, a venomous little book which was the product of my barroom conversations. My historical studies, which I still pursued assiduously, provided me with background material that I used as a kind of underpinning for my satires.
    This book helped me become a regular contributor to one of the larger newspapers, and I now had almost enough money to live on. These sketches soon afterward were published in book form and were even quite successful. I now abandoned philology altogether. I had reached the upper echelons; connections with German periodicals were forged as a matter of course and raised me from my previous obscurity and impoverishment into the circle of recognized authors. I was earning my living; I relinquished scholarship. I was sailing rapidly toward the despicable life of a professional man of letters.
    Despite my success and my vanity, despite my satires and my unrequited love, the warm glow of youth—its lightheartedness and sadness—still enveloped me. Despite my gift for irony and a harmless touch of the supercilious, I had not lost sight of the goal of my dreams—some great fortune, a completion of myself. I had no idea what form it would take. I only felt that life would have to toss some very special luck at my feet—perhaps it would be fame or love, perhaps a satisfaction of my longing and an elevation of my being. I was like a page who dreams of noble ladies, accolades, and princely honors.
    I thought I was on the verge of some momentous happening. I did not know that everything I had so far experienced was mere chance, that my life still lacked a deep individual melody of its own. I did not know yet that I suffered from a longing which neither love nor fame can satisfy. Therefore I enjoyed my slight and somewhat questionable success with all the exuberance I could command. It felt good to be in the company of intelligent people and to see their faces turn eagerly and attentively to me when I spoke.
    At times I was struck by the fervor with which these souls longed for some form of redemption. Yet what strange paths they were taking toward that goal. Though belief in God was considered foolish, almost in bad taste, people believed in names like Schopenhauer, Buddha, Zarathustra, and many others. There were young unknown poets who performed solemn rites before statues and paintings in fashionably furnished apartments. They would have been ashamed to do so before God, but they knelt down before the Zeus of Otricoli. There were miserably dressed ascetics who tortured themselves with abstinence: their god’s name was either Buddha or Tolstoy. There were artists who, by resorting to wallpaper in carefully selected color schemes, to music, food, wines, perfumes, or cigars,