Steppenwolf

:This article is about the novel. For the 1960s rock band known primarily for "Born to Be Wild" and "Magic Carpet Ride", see Steppenwolf (band). Steppenwolf is a German language word which means a desert dog, or "wolf of the steppes."

Notes

• In the early 1926 Hesse had several sessions of psychoanalysis with Dr. I. Lang, a student of Carl Jung; Jungian notions of "self", or "the I", as a complex superimposition and not a monolithic whole form the philosophical basis of the book.
• In the winter of the same year Hesse was taking dance lessons with Julia Laubi-Honegger (Hermine's prototype), and attended with her a masked ball at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich.
• Hesse's landlady and the apartment he rented from her in the winter of 1924 in Basel are described in the novel as those of Haller.
• The symbol of the Steppenwolf itself can be traced to Nietzsche's "differentiated loner", whom he also termed a "beast" and a "genius".
• It is likely that the figure of Pablo and the depiction of jazz music in the book is influenced by Hesse attending several performances by Sidney Bechet.
• A consistent motif in the book is the excellent simplicity of Mozart, particularly in comparison with more weighty, "complex, dense" German composers such as Johannes Brahms.