Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

First published:Narziss und Goldmund, 1930 (Death and the Lover, 1932; better known as Narcissus and Goldmund)

Type of work: Philosophical romance

Time of work: The late Middle Ages

Locale: The German Empire

Principal Characters:

• Goldmund, a student, a wanderer, and an artist
• Narcissus, a teacher, a monk, and an intellectual

The Novel

Narcissus and Goldmund is a tale about the vagrant and erotic adventures of Goldmund (golden mouth) and his quest for the meaning of life and death. The novel, written in the third person, contrasts Goldmund’s spontaneity and sensualism with the scholarly Narcissus’ orderliness and rationalism. Hermann Hesse also provides historical insights into the medieval monasteries, the artistic guilds, the persecution of the Jews, and the Black Death.

As the novel begins, the naive eighteen-year-old Goldmund is sent by his father to the Mariabronn cloister, where knowledge of the arts and sciences is passed from one generation to another. Goldmund, an extroverted adolescent, becomes an eager student because he is attracted to his teacher, Narcissus, a young man of keen perception and analytical thinking. Goldmund is also drawn to Abbot Daniel because of his saintliness. As a result of his regard for these men—the humble abbot and the brilliant scholar—Goldmund finds himself pursuing the idealistic but unachievable goal of emulating both, thereby causing himself much suffering. Narcissus, sensing in Goldmund his own opposite and complement, wants to guide him in his confusion, but he holds back, aware that his jealous brethren might accuse him of falling in love with a pupil. His duty is to educate the mind, not to become emotionally involved.

One night, some students persuade Goldmund to sneak out to the village, where they are to meet some girls. Goldmund only observes, but when leaving, he is kissed by a girl. Later, he forgets the excitement of sneaking away from the cloister, but he cannot forget the girl’s kiss. Troubled and undecided about life in the cloister, Goldmund is sent out to the fields to contemplate nature and pick flowers, where he fortuitously meets a young woman who teaches him about the nature of love. Exhilarated by this new experience of life, he bids farewell to the monastery and to Narcissus and returns to the woman. He tells himself that he is not leaving because of her. On the contrary, he has abandoned the shelter of the cloister because he is no longer a child or a student; he is now a man.

Goldmund ventures into the world, enduring its hardships and relishing its freedom. He does not want to think too much but wants simply to take things as they come. Many women of high and low rank love him briefly and then return to their husbands and homes, unwilling to give up everything, even an abusive husband, for the wandering life. While Goldmund feels a general guilt, which he identifies as the burden of Original Sin, he does not feel the personal guilt of adultery. He is often lonely yet he cherishes his freedom.

During one miserable winter, Goldmund meets and travels with Viktor, a shrewd vagrant who tries to rob and murder him. In self-defense, Goldmund kills him. This experience gives rise to meditation about death and about the fact that a man could exist and then be gone without a trace. Perhaps, Goldmund thinks, the fear of death is the root of all art; since artists themselves are transitory, they want to create something that will outlive them.

Goldmund becomes a student of the well-known artist Master Niklaus and tries to create, in art, the sorrow and joy that he has experienced in life. He wants to re-create the universal mother of men, the source of life, the face of all the women he has known. His best achievement, however, turns out to be a statue of Saint John, the artistic embodiment of his friend Narcissus. During this period as a disciplined artist, Goldmund is still much desired by women and unpopular with men. For Goldmund, love and ecstasy give life its value; ambition, power, and materialism are unimportant. Despising the spoiled burghers who live for money and routine, he leaves his artistic post to taste more of the beauty and horror of the world.

The horror is soon evident in the plague, the Black Death. He learns that the plague is indiscriminate and ugly, but at the same time it is sweet and motherly, an enticement. He and his female companion Lene set up house in the forest, away from the plague-stricken city. Soon he kills again; the victim this time is a rapist who was attacking Lene. After a while, Goldmund knows that he has had enough of the domestic life and must move on. Lene dies of the plague, and Goldmund is again liberated.

Caught with the count’s mistress, Goldmund comes face-to-face with his own death when he is sentenced to hang. He wants to accept his death, but he is still unwilling to leave everything and every woman. Regardless of whether there is an eternity, he wants this insecure and transitory life, even if it means that he must kill the priest who will hear his last confession and escape in the priest’s clothes. He recognizes the priest as his old friend Narcissus, who has brought Goldmund a pardon for his sins.

Narcissus, now the abbot of the monastery, gives Goldmund a workshop where he can continue his artwork. After completing an art project, Goldmund feels empty; his life is in disorder. He is no longer young and attractive to women. Growing old and full of suffering, he leaves the cloister only to return before the winter. In the hope that dying will be a happiness as great as love, Goldmund finally welcomes death, his mother.

The Characters

In Greek mythology, Narcissus is the youth who rejected love from others and, as a consequence, contemplates only himself. He falls in love with his own reflection in a pool and eventually turns into a flower. In Narcissus and Goldmund, Narcissus represents one pole in the dichotomy of human nature, the mind. Hesse writes, “All was mind to him, even love; he was unable to give in to an attraction without thinking about it first.” His home is the world of ideas rather than of experience and the senses. Even as a novice in the monastery, he was singled out as the disciple of Aristotle and Saint Thomas, as a man worthy of teaching his peers.

Narcissus is attracted to his opposite, the sensual Goldmund, but he knows that they will never understand each other completely. Yet Goldmund teaches Narcissus that there are many paths to knowledge, that the path of the mind is not the only one. Narcissus also learns that the artist translates thought into art, thus re-creating God’s order. Narcissus has been enriched by Goldmund, but at the same time he has been weakened: “The world in which he lived and made his home, his well-constructed edifice, had been shaken and now filled with doubt.”

Although at peace with the spiritual life in the monastery, Narcissus is challenged by Goldmund: “But how will you die when your time comes, Narcissus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.”

Goldmund, named for the golden-mouthed preacher Saint John Chrysostom, is the main character and the complement to Narcissus. Whereas Narcissus is “analytical, a thinker,” Goldmund is “a dreamer with the soul of a child.” Something they have in common bridges those differences; “both were refined; both were different from the others because of obvious gifts and signs; both bore the special mark of fate.” Goldmund is more than simply the opposite of Narcissus; he is a complex figure who, at different times, plays the pliable student, the sensual vagabond, and the disciplined artist.

Goldmund takes his character from his mother, whom he lost at an early age. He is forever trying to recover her in women, nature, and death. He goes through several stages in his search, and in each he experiences both joy and suffering. He learns that death and ecstasy are one. Eve, the mother of life, is for Goldmund “the source of bliss as well as of death; eternally she gave birth and eternally she killed; her love was fused with cruelty.” Goldmund discovers that the ecstasy of love brings the suffering of birth; the sensual life gives birth to the painful creation of art. Throughout his life, Goldmund attains temporary understanding of the polarization of the world. Still, he is not satisfied. He continually quarrels about “God’s imperfect creation,” but in the end, he accepts life’s dichotomy.

All the minor figures in the novel appear as archetypes, basically unperturbed by life. For example, Abbot Daniel is a saintly ascetic in his own spiritual kingdom who belongs neither to the world of the mind nor to the world of the body. The women all belong merely to the world of the senses: The peasant woman is lusty, the daughter of the knight is aloof and unwilling to forgo her inheritance, and the middle-class Lene is satisfied simply to have a man and a house. Viktor, who exploits friends and society, represents the evil side of the vagabond. Master Niklaus is an artist who is so driven by the ordered discipline of art that he misses out on life.

Critical Context

Narcissus and Goldmund appeared in 1930, following three successful novels by Hesse: Demian (1919; English translation, 1923), an examination of psychoanalysis and the subconscious; Siddhartha (1922; English translation, 1951), a meditation on Eastern philosophy; and Der Steppenwolf (1927; Steppenwolf, 1929), the story of a man torn between middle-class respectability and his baser instincts. Structurally and thematically, Narcissus and Goldmund fits between Demian and Siddhartha: Goldmund continues the personality crisis of Demian, yet he does not find the harmony that Siddhartha finds. Narcissus and Goldmund is lighthearted and clear, a natural counterpoint to the depressing and dreamlike Steppenwolf. Both novels concentrate on the “natural” or “female” side of man.

Since Hesse’s own philosophy was closer to that of the thinker Narcissus than that of the sensualist Goldmund, the escapades in the novel cannot be traced to Hesse’s life. Still, several of Hesse’s personal conflicts are evident: his departure from Maulbronn seminary, his doubts about faith, his relationships with teachers and peers, his flights into Freudian and Jungian psychology, his disgust with World War I, and the breakup of his own marriage.

Some critics claim that this novel is Hesse’s best work, while others see it as too unstructured in form and too simplistic in theme. They believe that Hesse is more interested in expressing his ideas about polarization than in forming plausible characters. Whatever the judgment of the critics, Narcissus and Goldmund has become Hesse’s most popular novel. It can be enjoyed both as a medieval romantic quest and as a philosophical tract.

Bibliography

Boulby, Mark. Hermann Hesse: His Mind and Art, 1967.

Digan, Kathleen E. Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund: A Phenomenological Study, 1975.

Field, George Wallis. Hermann Hesse, 1970.

Mileck, Joseph. Hermann Hesse: Life and Art, 1978.

Ziolkowski, Theodore. The Novels of Hermann Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure, 1965.