Book Analysis: "Narcissus and Goldmund" by Herman Hesse

I'm calling this a "book analysis" instead of a review because a)I'm not trying to give a recommendation but rather insight into themes and elements of the writing and story; b)I give spoilers

Secrets to finding happiness and satisfaction have been around since people first began to experience feelings of unhappiness and anxiety. Buddhist manuscripts tell of nirvana. The Abrahamic religious tout the ecstacy of being near to G_d.

Unhappiness, it seems, results from a disconnect of some kind. A lack of purpose, too much idleness, not enough work to occupy our attention, or inattention to the beauty in our environment and lives. These are symptoms of life in modern society.

At root, what complicates life and causes anxiety is our tremendous intelligence. The lower species have never experienced ennui or a personal crisis (we think) because they have not evolved enough to be able to live in excess. But we have, and it is due to our big brains. But having satisfied our basic needs and conquered nature, our minds must turn to bigger questions. Namely, how can we find meaning in a meaningless world?

“Narcissus and Goldmund” tells the narrative of two men, each seeking fulfillment in his own way. The story chronicles an entire life and takes us to many places over the course of many decades.

Living in a hidden cloister in medieval Germany, Narcissus is a most learned and pious young acolyte whose search for fulfillment means the pursuit of knowledge and the contemplation of logic, philosophy and theology. When the younger boy Goldmund arrives at the cloister, he recognizes him as his counterpart, his opposite. Reckless, wild and passionate, Goldmund soon makes friends with all the other boys but none becomes as dear to him as Narcissus.

Acting as older brother, confessor, mentor, Narcissus brings Goldmund to realize that his fate does not lie with the Church but in the world, for it is in his nature to seek pleasure and joy from God’s creation. And one night while on a forbidden foray into the village, Goldmund receives a kiss from a young Gypsy woman. He feels remorse at first but his heart aches to pursue this affair. So he meets the girl again the next night and discovers sex and pleasure. With this he beholds his true self and wishes to leave the cloister. With a final word of warning that he guard his heart and his expectations, Narcissus gives his blessing and releases his friend out into the wide world.

Thus begins Goldmund’s saga as vagrant. Traveling around the country for years he discovers the ways of love; he seduces hundreds of women. He feels the horror of death and violence, the beauty of art and labor, and the pain of loss. He begins an unfulfilled tryst with the daughter of a knight and is exiled in the middle of winter. He then takes up with a fellow traveler, whom he later kills to defend himself from robbery. Alone in the world and with murder on his conscience he is rescued by a peasant family and during the night comes to the aid of a woman giving birth. It is then he sees that the look of pain of the face during childbirth and the ecstasy of orgasm are identical. It moves him to realize such a fundamental truth about life.

The worldly Goldmund lives this itinerate life for several years. One day while taking confession at a church he encounters a statue of the Madonna. It is the most beautiful work he has ever seen and he vows to find the master who made it and learn to sculpt like him. Finding this man living in a bustling city he works for him until he finishes his own masterpiece—a likeness of his friend Narcissus in the form of St. John. The master is so taken with his creation that he offers him a position and inclusion into the guild. But Goldmund has again become restless and despondent and resents his sedentary life.

Later he witnesses the horrors of the plague. So much death and madness surround him in the next few years that he fears nothing. He has many love affairs and reflects on his life from time to time. Recurring themes run through his head—belief in God, doubt, the world as inherently corrupt, life as fleeting, love as all-encompassing, and the abstract idea of a “Life-mother” who governs everything and is responsible for birth and death, love and pain, everything that is of the world.

Narcissus and Goldmund represent two divergent paths to fulfillment. Narcissus follows one of asceticism and contemplation. Goldmund, on the other hand, lives a life that is so full of experience, so muddied with the refuse of the world, so corrupted by sin and doubt, that finding his path to fulfillment becomes a cross to bear.

This is indeed the way most of us live in society. Like Goldmund, one day we are drunk on life’s joy while things are in bloom around us, the next we are in the depths of despair because life’s offerings are not as sweet as before. Goldmund personofies the kind of dextrous everyman who can be anything he chooses, but who always wants something more. He does not live in the world of the mind, but in the physical world of love and music and art and death.

Towards the end of the novel, Goldmund and Narcissus reunite and discuss their differing journeys through life. By this time Narcissus has become an abbot in his cloister and he has just spared Goldmund from execution, a broken man with nothing. Whereas Narcissus is still the same man on the same path of knowledge living in the same safe community of monks, Goldmund has changed in profound ways. Narcissus acknowledges the beauty of this transformation, as it is something that his path to fulfillment could never allow him.

Hesse wrote this novel when he was approaching the age of fifty. As in “Siddhartha” (Hesse’s life saga of a Buddha), which preceded this work by a decade, the theme here is the conflict between a man’s dual nature: the desire for knowledge and the will to pleasure. The book vs. the flesh. For Siddhartha, this dual nature was internal; he lived his life discovering the joys of both natures and finding enlightenment by taking the middle path.

For Goldmund and Narcissus, each man occupies only one side of the conflict, each one half of the yin-yang. This is the reason for their bond and understanding of one another—each is incomplete. But together, they become closer to enlightenment, closer to perfection.

Narcissus tries to explain to his friend the meaning of his quest, the importance of the life of the flesh, and he begs him to imagine a thought devoid of an accompanying image. But Goldmund fails to understand because he is forever rooted in the rich earth, in life, and cannot cross the barrier into a pure thought, an imagination without objects and images.

Although both characters have lived meaningful lives, it is clear who has suffered most for it. Narcissus laments that he was never able to enjoy the “fruits of creation” of the God he gave his life to serve. While Goldmund “reveled and played in the imperfect garden God had created” Narcissus “held God’s creation away from him” like an odious plate of food that one refuses to eat. He worries that this wasn’t a wise choice, and wonders whether it pleased God as much as Goldmund’s hedonistic lifestyle had. In the end the man who had pledged his whole being to the attainment of thought and knowledge was betrayed by doubts about the usefulness of this knowledge to his life and his soul.

The lessons of Narcissus and Goldmund are the lessons we grapple with in our lives in this crazy society. We must always make choices that reflect the will to one side or the other of our dual nature. Consider the life of an academic who spends almost all of her time pursuing knowledge and ideas. Is there something incomplete about her path or does she simply have more yin of ego to her yang of id? And what of the man who eschews knowledge and prefers to chase pleasure in physical forms or stimulation from the crassest diversions? Is his character lacking or is he a fully unfolded human being?

Hesse’s answer to both questions is the answer that Narcissus comes to: we must know ourselves, and the only way to do that is to experience life as much as possible, but also to use our minds and be aware so that we can find the path that will lead us to happiness.

Hesse writes in a plain and meditative language that makes it easy to grasp Goldmund’s experiences. There is no rush to move onto the next chapter of life and every action and thought feels in the moment. It is an exercise in Zen to read and the exposition provides contrast for the dialogue and philosophical meanderings of the characters, which are a bit headier. The cumulative effect of this style and this detail stretched over a character’s whole life is that, as a reader, I felt as if I lived with Goldmund on his journey, through the peaks and valleys of his life. The book is beyond Bildungsroman, beyond dealing only with the transformation of boy into man. It is a holistic story about the meaning of life and being human. I was deeply moved by this book.

Whether our path to happiness ends up being in plumbing or computers, professorship or philanthropy, kids or cars, we need to use both our intellect and our amygdale to make decisions about where to go. People who choose one way of being over another will either be something less than human or have a terribly difficult time finding fulfillment in their lives.