Narcissus and Goldmund
By Hermann Hesse
The Author
Hermann Hesse’s literary career was long and distinguished. His first published works were poems and short stories, written shortly before the turn of the century, which he followed with four early novels – Peter Camenzind (1904), Beneath the Wheel (1906), Gertrude (1910), and Rosshalde (1914). All of these stories dealt, in one way or another, with the unreconcilable struggles men face in their lives: intellect versus emotion, art versus family, spirit versus self. These books received some critical success, launching Hesse into a career as a freelance writer.
The 1910s were a life-changing decade for Hesse. In 1911 he travelled to India, where he developed what would become a lifelong fascination with Eastern philosophies. Also during this time, he underwent psychoanalysis under a disciple of Carl Jung’s, which would also play a role in much of his fiction. Finally, in 1919 he published Demian, a portrait of a young man struggling for “self-awareness” in his life, which proved to be Hesse’s breakthrough novel, and was especially popular among recent World War I veterans.
Hesse followed this success with several important novels in the 1920s and ‘30s. Siddharta (1922) combined elements of Eastern philosophy with Jungian psychology; it eventually became a hallmark of 1950s Beat culture after its translation into English. Steppenwolf (1927), like many of Hesse’s novels, had elements of autobiography within it, describing the spiritual struggles of an aging intellectual in the late 1920s. Its protagonist, Harry Haller, is isolated from society by the internal division between man and wolf he senses within himself, until he meets a doppelgänger-self in the person of a strange woman, Hermine. Finally, in 1930 Hesse published Narcissus and Goldmund, a medieval novel about two men’s disparate paths – spiritual and sensual, intellectual and artistic – toward fulfillment and the “Great Mother.”
From 1931-43, Hesse composed his masterpiece, Das Glasperlenspiel (“The Glass Bead Game,” later published in English as Magister Ludi), for which he won a Nobel Prize. This novel told of a futuristic society in which the intellectual elite live a life separate and apart from the rest of society, passing on their wisdom through a mysterious Glass Bead Game. The book takes the form of a biography, whose “subject,” Joseph Knecht, rises up to become Master of the Game. Following receipt of the Nobel Prize, Hesse published no major works, but continued to write essays and short fiction until his death in 1962.
The Plot
Narcissus and Goldmund concerns two medieval men, both educated at a cloister called Mariabronn, but whose lives take dramatically different paths. Narcissus is a gifted scholar, who avidly embraces asceticism and monkhood, going on to become Abbot of Mariabronn. In contrast, Goldmund discovers early on that he is not, by nature, a scholar. The two become friends, and Narcissus helps Goldmund to discover his own nature by assisting him in recalling his long-repressed memory of his mother. While Narcissus finishes his novitiate and becomes a monk, Goldmund soon leaves the cloister and sets out to make his fortune, surviving by his wits and his ability to make any woman fall madly in love with him. Eventually he is drawn to a career as an artist, and discovers his true calling. After working for many years and fashioning his masterpiece – a sculpture of St. John modelled after Narcissus – Goldmund returns to the monastary in his waning years. There he discovers the great prestige to which his boyhood friend has risen. The two men are both greatly moved by their reunion, and by the wonderous contrast between their lives that is now evident. After going on one last expedition – unsuccessfully – and doing some artistic pieces for the cloister, Goldmund falls ill and dies, leaving Narcissus to contemplate his fate.
Goldmund's adventures merit some more detail exposition. After a few years of random trysts, Goldmund’s first real “adventure” comes when he stays at the house of a nobleman, only to fall in love with both of the lord’s two teenaged daughters (Julie, a young temptress, and Lydia, whom Goldmund truly loves). Working as a tutor, Goldmund endures this complex situation for a while, until the lord finds out and gets angry, and chases him off.
In his subsequent wanderings, he meets a vagrant named Viktor and travels with him a while; eventually, Viktor attempts to rob him, and Goldmund slays him in self-defense. Later, while staying at a cloister, Goldmund sees a beautiful madonna statue and – moved by the amazing artistry of its creator – resolves to become an artist himself. He travels to a nearby town, where he apprentices himself to the madonna’s sculpter, one Master Niklaus. After years of hard work, Goldmund has become a master sculptor and has produced his own masterpiece – St. John in Narcissus’ image. However, his insatiable wanderlust resurfaces and he leaves behind his career as Niklaus’ partner in scultping.
His second period of wandering is marked by living through the Plague years in a small cottage on the outskirts of a town, along with his wife Lene and a companion, Robert. (One noteworthy incident during this period occurs when Goldmund encounters a young Jewish girl, Rebekkah, whose family had been persecuted as scapegoats for the plague. This is interesting in the historical context of burgeoning jingoism and anti-Semitism in Germany at the time the novel was written.) After several years, Lene dies and Goldmund resolves to return to his artistic pursuits and craft his life-defining work: a madonna in the image of his mother.
Again seeking out Master Niklaus, he returns to the city to find the Master dead and his formerly beautiful daughter a withered spinster. Resettling himself, he soon falls in love with and seduces a beautiful woman – Agnes, who is, by chance, the mistress of the city’s Count. This ends badly, when the count discovers Goldmund in her chambers and sentences him to be hanged as a thief. While waiting for his death, Goldmund is miraculously saved by Narcissus, now the Abbot John of the Mariabronn monastary, who just happened to be passing by. With Narcissus, Goldmund returns to Mariabronn, where he spends his waning years. He ultimately crafts his madonna there in the image of Lydia, his first (and only?) true love; he then dies, essentially at peace.
Some Analysis
The Gender of God:
Masculinity, Femininity, and Religion in Narcissus and Goldmund