Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Narziss and Goldmund

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Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

6 reviews

annasbookjournal's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I find that the kinds of books that don’t have a defined plot and don’t necessarily pertain to a specific genre are the ones that stay in your heart (e.g. The Count of Monte Cristo).

This is one of those books that, if someone asked me to describe what it’s about, I wouldn’t be able to tell them in one sentence. Of course, I could attempt to and say that Narcissus and Goldmund is a book about finding your own true nature and leaning into it in order to be truly happy, instead of comparing yourself to how someone else goes about life. But it truly deals with hundreds of aspects of being a human being, and it’s now become my favourite book after it has delved into my soul and put into place all of the confusing bits about me.

The features of the characters’ personalities and their natures are the main focus for the story (when, usually, their characteristics are just an addition to an already-written plot): they are introduced right at the beginning in a general way and no set plot is shown to the reader. With any other book, I would have left the story, uninterested. But here, because the true natures of Narcissus and Goldmund (and, really, the true, raw, and mysterious natures that we can find in all people) have just been alluded to, you find yourself wanting to read the story and find out how each character and their general description would act in the real world if something happened to them. You are given such a specific description of their personalities that you’d be able to logically guess how they would react if they found out that their dead mother was alive, for example. So, it’s naturally a book about following what you are in life, paying attention to your nature and leaning into it, even though it might be different from the people that are surrounding you at that moment. And even though the path may be very very hard, you have to follow it because only that way will you truly be happy in life.

But this book is not only about two men with very different paths and very different goals in life; it is also about the feeling that everyone has to want to make this fleeting life and these fleeting experiences, relationships, friendships, discoveries, sentiments LAST. It’s about how everyone wants to immortalise everything that has had an impact on them and that has shaped them and their soul. So, one of the questions that the book poses is: How do you do that? How do you immortalise it? And it gives us its answer.

What I found extremely interesting was seeing how many events in the book could be (potentially) linked to Hermann Hesse’s life. Firstly, how he found his religious school to be too strict and ran away just like Goldmund did. His attempted suicide at a very young age and his troubled teens and adult life reflected into Goldmund’s psychological uncertainty. His open criticism of Hitler’s antisemitism shown in Goldmund’s encounter with a young Jewish girl, whose family had been killed because of their religion. Finally, Hesse’s negative experience in World War I being expressed by a disheartened Goldmund, seeing death and heartless human actions take place.

But, arguably, more than “logic vs art” being the main topic, it is “father vs mother”. The latter topic further explains the former, and adds another layer to it. My explanation doesn’t even compare to Hesse’s, but here is gist of it. On the one hand, Narcissus likes to stay in the logical and spiritual world, where reason lies, and he has a fatherly pull towards which he thrives to go to. Goldmund, on the other hand, is more material; he prefers for spiritual things, souls, and sentiments to be represented in art (such as sculptures or drawings).

And this book is definitely also about the relationship between Narcissus and Goldmund. Their love story and their friendship truly break my heart. They have been points of reference for each other all of their lives but only get a couple of years together; they change each other and help the other find out their truest self and be happy in this life. And it breaks me that in his years of wandering, Goldmund only wanted to talk to Narcissus about all of the difficult situations that he had to face alone. We see Goldmund’s life from 18 years old to up to his thirties, whose changes, events, trauma, and solitude we have to witness without being able to do anything. We see how, even though his suffering would go away if he just came back to Narcissus, he wouldn’t be able to find himself, his art and his nature and be truly satisfied.

Lastly, the title deserves a paragraph of analysis. I wasn’t sure what the meaning of it was; sure, Goldmund (meaning “mouth of gold” in English) might be related to him being able to convince anyone to help him or, in most cases, to spend the night with him. But I couldn’t understand the relation between our Narcissus and the character from Greek mythology. After asking the advice of a friend, I understood that maybe what the author is trying to communicate to us is, just like the mythological person who is focused only on himself and doesn’t see the rest of the world, our Narcissus, being the abbot circling reason and spirit, is so focused on his own spirituality that he almost doesn’t need to know what happens in the world.

Needless to say, I’ve never written so much for a book, and it will forever stay in my heart and make me silently cry whenever I remember the love story between Narcissus and Goldmund.

P.S. This is also one of those books that make your heart ache because of all of the things that the main character has to go through just to find themselves.

Content Warnings

mercurue's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

nikolas_kolinski's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Narcissus and Goldmund - review

"Narcissus and Goldmund" is an excellent novel with great potential, which, however, due to some rather questionable narrative choices, fails to totally shine and become the masterpiece it could have been, while presenting itself as a certainly decent work.

Hesse's style is appreciable and mostly engaging, but still keeps a certain narrative detachment, presenting pathos and emotion then in the thoughts of the characters rather than in the narrative itself.
The chosen setting also does not seem to have aged well, and for a modern reader it can easily be boring or not particularly interesting (

the strongly Christian basis in a medieval setting such as the one chosen can also influence in a way that is not always appreciable the message the author wants to put forward

). The same goes for the structure of the story, which can certainly be fascinating but also not particularly engaging, due to its totally linear and almost totally lacking in surprises or detours.

Themes:
The author addresses several themes, attempting to give personal insights in relation to each of them and presenting the reader with his own ideas about the world and life.
The main theme is the caducity of human life and the dual nature of human beings, drawing on the concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian presented by Nietzsche (

Narcissus represents order, rigor and rationality, while Goldmund represents instinct, inner chaos and the creative nature of human beings

).
The idea is undoubtedly pleasing, but it can still be limiting and at times binary, as it may seem to want to ultimately reduce human beings to only two natures and not fully address the question of the multiplicity of their being.
In line with this, Hesse presents an: interpretation of the Heraclitean concept of the harmony of opposites, proposing that the two natures of man, while unable to join and merge, can meet halfway and succeed in creating a strong bond, bringing them closer to the coveted unity of the "perfect being."
To accomplish this, wandering and exploring the world are seen as means of knowing the inner self (a typically Eastern perspective is taken up), and realizing one's own nature in the best way is seen as the main purpose of earthly life:

Goldmund realizes himself through art, which unites the two contrasting natures of man, while Narcissus seems to realize himself through the use of reason and thought to help others know their true nature (in the same way he helped Boccadoro find himself at the beginning of the novel)

.

Characters:
The characters constitute both some of the best and some of the worst elements of the novel.
The personalities of the two main characters are well delineated (albeit not always addressed with depth), while many of the secondary characters turn out to be really poorly characterized, not to mention all the female characters, rendered completely two-dimensional and lacking in depth

, as their only purpose within the work is to awaken Goldmund's chaotic/artistic nature and his pleasure

.
Speaking of Goldmund, it is impossible to deny that he very often turns out to be an extremely irritating protagonist, as well as unrealistic and at times stereotypical (

in the course of his life, before old age, every woman magically falls at his feet thanks to his arts of seduction and every person is enchanted at the sight of him

).
In fact, the most insightful and truly excellent parts of the book are those in which we observe Goldmund and Narcissus interacting with each other and confronting their different but ultimately mutual natures, thus creating a perfectly dialectical and intriguing dialogue between the two characters.
But alas, this happens only at the beginning and end of the book, and moreover quite briefly.
The central and main part of the plot is...

Goldmund's wandering, which with its centrality constitutes the real Achilles' heel of the entire work.
For most of the time, in fact, the reader finds himself observing Goldmund frequenting several women and having sex with them, only to become an artist but soon fall back into his vagabond life of which the reader has already read numerous (and very often superfluous) pages. Not to mention the part about the plague: a terrible surplus, perhaps in keeping with the plot and Goldmund, but ultimately unnecessary, emphasizing elements already seen and addressed before

.
For Goldmund is not capable of holding up the role of protagonist on his own; he can only be if placed alongside Narcissus, and letting him become the main character of the story is certainly a questionable choice, as is the choice to give Narcissus so little space within the entire book.
It turns out to be ultimately correct, then, to say that the basic idea of the book is excellent, but its implementation is not entirely well handled.

Herman Hesse thus comes across as a skillful and assured author with great control over language and his work, who, however, due to some fatal narrative errors fails to make this book a masterpiece, while still presenting an interesting work not to be disdained.

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

Content Warnings