Narcissus and Goldmund
by Hermann Hesse
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hermann HesseTranslator: Ursule Molinaro
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1984-03-01
ISBN: 0553275860
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Narcissus and Goldmund
Book Review: Art, sex, death
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of my favorite novels in my late teens and early twenties. Ostensibly it is about two medieval seminary friends personifying opposite poles of being: Narcissus, the introspective priest, represents the orderly spiritual and intellectual realm of the father, of the church, and of philosophy and science, while his counterpart Goldmund arrives as an unconfident, confused and dissatisfied student compelled to rebel against the stifling monastery life into which he's been thrust so as to find himself alone in the secular world of art, imagination, and sensuality encompassed by Mother Nature. Like Hesse rereading this same novel after many years ("Events in the Engadine" (1953)) I dusted off and taped together my tattered paperback, underlined and asterisked in revealing passages, and slowly savored it over a recent fall month. Some of the writing seemed a bit overdone and even, "embarrassing", as T. Ziolkowski "The Novels of Hermann Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure," Princeton U. Press (1965) comments, but I still enjoyed re-experiencing Goldmund's picaresque wanderings throughout the Black Death. He camps in the woods and stops in villages, meets fellow wanderers, drinks and socializes in taverns, finds work where he can, and discovers pleasure and temporary respite in his many encounters with women. Throughout his worldly adventures there is always danger and ignorance to be avoided.
Hesse's novels depict individuals at different stages of personal development and N&G picks up where Demian leaves off. A liberated Sinclair is transposed into Goldmund as he seeks out his "Mother Eva" once he's broken from the insular confines of the monastery. What I like most about this novel is the picaresque theme of seeking and personal redemption during times of chaos. To Hesse these redemptive forces are always art. Goldmund meets a master wood carver in a village and becomes his apprentice, eventually becoming a master sculptor himself. The passages where Goldmund is an artist and city-dweller are the most interesting to me, evoking similar scenes from "Steppenwolf" and "Siddhartha", as well as the short stories "Klingsor's Last Summer" and "Knulp". And even though the idyllic medieval setting is simply sketched as a conceptual backdrop, selected by Hesse due to its being a time in which the average European life was ordered around the church, and the ever-present threat of death, it creates space for the reader's imagination and curiosity to wander along with Goldmund.
Yet this time around I felt compelled to focus on Narcissus, hoping against my previous experiences with this novel for a fuller conception of his elusive, rather flatly drawn character, to discover something more profound. While I did re-encounter some descriptive snippets I'd not taken notice of before, especially an insightful dialogue towards the end on "thinking vs. imagining" (p. 277), ultimately, I came to the conclusion that Narcissus should remain the elusive spirit, seemingly devoid of the artistic attention Goldmund receives. Though I would have liked it if Hesse had written more about Narcissus's inner struggles with God and life within Mariabronn, perhaps going off on extended tangents about philosophy and Christianity or celibacy and homosexuality within the church (thus in all likelihood making Hesse enemy #1 to his book-burning countrymen in Nazi Germany, who burned this book anyway; not to mention the probable ire of his editors) but the fact is that Hesse originally conceived the idea of the novel around Goldmund, only later intending for Narcissus to have equal weight. The prototype for N&G can be found in an early, unfinished story called "Berthold" ("Tales of Student Life," Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1976)) in which the focal character of Berthold is essentially an earlier version of Goldmund. Nevertheless, Narcissus's importance is clear in that in the end it is his spiritual life that is the pole from which Goldmund departs and, eventually returns. In any event, a reader wanting more of Narcissus (and many of the philosophical "tangents" & wanderings I mentioned above) will find his reincarnation in Joseph Knecht in the transcendental "The Glass Bead Game". Ultimately, even though Hesse's attempt at a "Doppelroman", or "double-novel" representing two separate lives and realms equally, comes up short in a structural sense, the attempt is perhaps more interesting because of these flaws.
Summary of Narcissus and Goldmund
Hesse's novel of two medieval men, one quietly content with his religion and monastic life, the other in fervent search of more worldly salvation. This conflict between flesh and spirit, between emotional and contemplative man, was a life study for Hesse. It is a theme that transcends all time. The Hesse Phenomenon "has turned into a vogue, the vogue into a torrent. . .He has appealed both to. . . an underground and to an establishment. . .and to the disenchanted young sharing his contempt for our industrial civilization."--The New York Times Book ReviewClassics Books
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