Resuming my way through Hesse's text. The central consciousness of this book, Emil Sinclair, has a conversation when he is ten with a slightly older schoolmate, Demian. The conversation concerns a Bible lesson, about Cain and Abel. Demian takes what seems to Emil a shockingly heterodox view: that Cain is the protagonist of the story. "The strong man kills a weaker one," in a story loosely expressing a moment in history when "a race of fearless and peculiar men" had made their presence known in a way quite embarrassing to their contemporaries. Demian avows that his sympathies lie not with the embarrassment but with the fearless sources thereof. Soon thereafter, a crisis passes because Demian does Emil a favor I will not describe here. Emil and Demian are thereafter no longer in regular contact. Emil tells his father, in a confessional spirit, that he has heard that there are people who declare Cain to be better than Abel. Dad (a pastor) is a lit...