In this blog post, we will examine Hermann Hesse’s novel *Narcissus and Goldmund*, focusing on the work’s background, main characters, and how the conflict between spirituality and the senses is manifested in the narrative and artistic philosophy.
Overview of the Work
“……You are an artist, and I am a philosopher. You fall asleep nestled in your mother’s bosom, while I wake up in the desert. The sun shines upon me, while moonlight and starlight pour down upon you. You dream of a girl, and I of a boy……”—Narcissus to Goldmund
There was a young monk. He was a young man as cold and beautiful as a marble sculpture, his entire being radiating a pale, sharp intellect. He did not need to sense everything directly through his own skin to understand the structure of the world. He had the mediators of intellect: thought, language, and writing. Through them, he could experience and perceive in his mind the world imagined by all humanity, and thus he was able to devote his life entirely to the sacred discipline of the monastery. Without going anywhere, he penetrated the world with his mind alone. His name was Narcissus, embodying the evolutionary achievements of the world of consciousness or the realm of thought.
There was a beautiful boy. For him, perception was experience itself. He did everything himself to know himself. While Narcissus penetrated everything with his thoughts alone, without moving a single chess piece, he became every chess piece himself and roamed everywhere. For him, sensation had to be real at all times. His thinking was formed in close connection with experience. To live as fully as possible, he sought to be in as many spaces and places as possible. John Locke’s saying, “Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu (The mind knows nothing that was not first in the senses),” was meant for him. His name was Golden Mouth, Goldmund.
Hugo Ball, a German writer and one of the pioneers of Dadaism and sound poetry (Lautgedicht), died of stomach cancer on September 14, 1927, in Collina d’Oro, Switzerland. After moving to the Swiss canton of Ticino, he formed a close friendship with Hermann Hesse, and in the summer of 1927, shortly before his death, the biography of Hesse that he had written was published alongside Hesse’s novel *Steppenwolf*.
In the pouring rain, Hugo Ball was buried in the Sant’Ambrogio Cemetery. Friends stood gathered around the coffin, holding candles. That night, his wife Emmy and daughter Annemarie were invited to Hesse’s home, Casa Camucci. It was Hesse’s way of ensuring they were not left alone. Hesse read the opening section of a new novel he had just begun writing to the mother and daughter. It was *Narcissus and Goldmund*.
Hesse wrote in a letter: “With Val’s death, I have lost the only person with whom I was spiritually close, who fully understood my language, and with whom I could converse on spiritual matters at a profound level. One cannot meet such a friend twice. He was not merely someone who liked me and showed me recognition and affection; he was the only person who truly knew me and sincerely understood why I had to think and act the way I did.”
Analysis of Theme and Characters
‘Narcissus and Goldmund’ bears the subtitle “A Story of Friendship.” Narcissus, the embodiment of spirituality and intellect, and Goldmund, the son of nature and art; the ascetic Narcissus and Goldmund, a figure of sensation and passion.
This book is a story of the spiritual relationship between two protagonists who thoroughly embody the extreme dualities of human nature, and a story about the conflict and fusion of two worlds represented by the father and the mother. In the preface to this novel, Hesse wrote that when two beings embodying two great principles—two eternally opposing worlds—meet in different physical forms, their fate is sealed. They are drawn to each other, captivate one another, and are compelled to either conquer or elevate each other, or else utterly destroy one another. The meeting of Narcissus and Goldmund was precisely such a case.
The relationship between the two, who first met at the Mariabronn Monastery as an assistant teacher and a student, seems to far transcend the typical meaning of same-sex friendship, yet it does not cross any ultimate taboo. Although the novel’s historical setting is not precisely specified, the images depicted—such as the quaint monastery far removed from the secular world, the wandering gypsies and the itinerant student, the knight’s castle and the plague, and Goldmund’s life of wandering—evoke the Middle Ages. Hesse wrote this novel between 1927 and 1929, a time when Germany was in extreme turmoil due to its defeat in World War I and economic collapse. In such an era, this work—which championed the path of self-realization and the pursuit of art—could not escape criticism of being an “escape into the past,” but Hesse himself stated that he intended to confess his love for the German spirit and ideals he had cherished since childhood.
Goldmund, a cheerful, fair-haired young boy, is sent to a monastery by his strict father. (According to his father’s claim,) it was his destiny to embrace the ascetic life of a monk to atone for his mother’s sins of promiscuity. However, Narcissus, a genius monk at the monastery, realizes at a glance that this boy’s nature is unsuited for monastic life. Ultimately, as Narcissus had prophesied, Goldmund leaves the monastery and embarks on a wandering life guided by nature and his senses.
After their parting, the novel is structured entirely from Goldmund’s perspective and chronicles his life. Goldmund meets many women and enjoys various romantic adventures, falling into fateful, deep love with some of them. In doing so, he gradually learns about life and the world, and discovers the path he had been searching for—the life of an artist. However, driven to the brink of crisis by his excessive passion, he is saved by Narcissus’s help and returns to the monastery. Goldmund, having experienced wounds, sin, and despair as a wild man and a prodigal son, became an artist as a result.
Throughout the novel, vocabulary denoting forms, images, paintings, appearances, and outward appearances appears frequently, hinting at Goldmund’s development as a visual artist. Goldmund, who had longed to give visible form to the image of his eternal mother within his mind, ultimately accepts not the act of shaping his mother, but rather being shaped by her—death—and passes away at Narcissus’s side.
The structure and motifs of this novel are not unfamiliar to readers of Hesse. Narci, the guide of the soul, overlaps with the character in *Demian*, and Goldmund, the artist seeking God in the midst of life, appears like a déjà vu of the wanderer *Knulp*. The fragmented self found in *Klein and Wagner*, *Klingsor’s Last Summer*, and *Steppenwolf* is reenacted in the two characters, Narcissus and Goldmund. The Mariabron monastery described in the novel’s opening evokes the Maulbronn monastery in *Beneath the Wheel* in many ways, and the Madonna statue completed by Goldmund—who returns to the monastery as a sculptor—also bears similarities.
The eternal mother, the Madonna—a woman embodying both the sacred and the secular, pleasure and death, love and cruelty—is the idealized, ultimate mother figure whom Goldmund, who never knew his real mother, longs for throughout his life and with whom he finally becomes one in death. It is said that among the titles Hesse initially considered were “Narcissus, or The Way to the Mother” and “In Praise of Sin.” Underlying all of this is the trauma Hesse experienced when he was sent to a boys’ boarding school in Basel at the age of six.
“Narcissus and Goldmund” is not merely a celebration of friendship or a work that contrasts Logos and Eros. One of the novel’s most striking features is that it serves as a record of a lifelong process of psychological healing. In the first half of the novel, the role that the intellectually and spiritually gifted Narcissus plays for Goldmund is akin to that of a psychotherapist. Through conversation, Narcissus discovers the image of the mother hidden in Goldmund’s unconscious and brings it to the surface. Goldmund is shocked and resists, but ultimately, as Narcissus predicted, he leaves the monastery and chooses the life of a wanderer.
Goldmund’s journey to find the image of his mother brings to mind Carl Gustav Jung’s archetypes. In fact, Hesse underwent psychoanalytic therapy for a long time, and traces of psychoanalysis are evident in the novel. However, toward the end of the novel, the relationship between healer and patient is subtly reversed. At the moment of Goldmund’s death, if Goldmund is an outstanding analyst who knows all the knowledge of the world and can insightfully understand the human heart, then the therapist Narcissus gazes into his patient like a mirror, seeing what he himself has missed.
Viewing the world as a set of polar opposites is a prominent feature of Hesse’s novels. Two opposing traits may appear as distinct individuals, like Narziss and Goldmund, or coexist within a single person. Hesse himself confessed in a letter that both he and Goldmund were “half-beings.” He wrote that Goldmund could only become whole through his relationship with Narcissus, and that Hesse, the artist, also needed to be completed through another self that revered the spirit, contemplation, and discipline.
*Narcissus and Goldmund* is Hesse’s greatest commercial success, selling 200,000 copies during his lifetime. While many readers and critics praised the work, conservative readers criticized Goldmund’s immoral behavior. One Hitler supporter denounced him as a “lecherous old man,” and a female reader, as a mother of two sons, stated that she would not allow her children to read such a novel. In response, Hesse replied that he never regretted writing passages that celebrated sexuality. He pointed out that parents had instilled fear by teaching children that sex was a sinister lie, and as a result, young people were left to struggle with the power of sexuality on their own.
Although this is often overlooked in Korea, when I revisited *Narcissus and Goldmund* as an adult, I found it could be read both as a coming-of-age novel for boys and as an idealistic erotic novel exploring the search for one’s erotic nature. Goldmund’s love is not dedicated to a specific girl but is an adventure, a journey, and a process of maturation and union of the spirit and Eros, as he constantly moves from one unknown woman to another, approaching an abstract and ideal archetype through the sensations of a new body each time. The way Goldmund, having left the monastery, plunges unhesitatingly into the world of sensuality is a rare aspect not often seen in Hesse’s other works.
Many of these adventures in sensuality and pleasure are depicted as a form of learning, ultimately leading to the creation of a work of art. Every process through which Goldmund perceives the world—every step in which he awakens to sensuality and develops his senses through his relationships with women—is ultimately connected to art and leads toward the ultimate goal of creation. The repeated depictions of women’s bodies and gestures, as well as observations of nature, may seem verbose at first glance, but they also foreshadow Goldmund’s destiny to become a sculptor.
All the women left something behind for him: a certain gesture, a type of kiss, a special act of love, or a particular way of offering or defending her body. Goldmund accepted everything. He was infinitely flexible, like a baby who could never get enough to eat, and he accepted every temptation. It was not merely physical beauty that drew so many women to him. His childlike nature, his openness, the innocent passion born of curiosity, and his willingness to give the women everything they craved made him an even more alluring figure.
He continued to learn. In a short time, he not only learned countless types and techniques of love and accumulated experiences with numerous women within himself, but he also learned to see, feel, touch, and smell the various facets of women. He developed a sensitive ear capable of hearing any voice, and could almost accurately gauge a woman’s disposition and capacity for love based solely on her voice. With his eyes closed in the darkness, he could distinguish hair types by the light touch of his fingers alone, and he could tell the difference between skin and downy hair. He intuitively sensed that this was the very meaning of his wandering life.
There are studies that interpret the female characters in Hesse’s works by relating them to his actual life. To modern female readers, the overly idealized, conceptual view of women in Hesse’s novels may feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, the image of the male artist who attains art solely through femininity is no longer unfamiliar today. In this novel, the author focuses on only two of the many women Goldmund encounters: Agnes, the count’s mistress who was his last lover and the only one who seemed to share a nature similar to Goldmund’s, and Rebecca, the Jewish girl who rejects and hates Goldmund.
Most of the female characters are portrayed in a two-dimensional manner, resembling archetypes or symbols rather than actual individuals. However, Agnes and Rebecca are strong, independent characters who follow their own will and path, rather than dedicating themselves to a specific purpose. Goldmund fails to win the love of either of them. Agnes believed that Goldmund merely sought a sexual adventure, just as he had with other women, and because of her, Goldmund faces a life-threatening crisis and ultimately brings about his own destruction. Rebecca is the only character who sees through Goldmund’s instrumental view of women and rejects his advances.
Rebecca’s father was burned to death simply because he was Jewish. To her, Goldmund presents himself as someone who can recognize and protect beauty, but Rebecca despises his attitude, which is focused solely on physical pleasure, and declares that she will choose suffering over joy. Goldmund senses her strong will to die and eventually withdraws. He carries the burden of his own powerlessness—knowing that he can do nothing to help her despite foreseeing her humiliating death—deep in his heart for a long time.
In a letter, Hesse confessed, “Throughout my life, I have never been able to experience love and friendship beyond what is depicted in *Narcissus*.” Based on this, scholars have suggested that the two-dimensional portrayal of the women in *Narcissus* was not merely a matter of narrative economy. It is possible that he wrote the work based on his actual relationships with women. Behind this may have been the image of Hesse’s mother—a deeply devout and strict Pietist—from his boyhood. This maternal figure casts a deep shadow over his entire body of work.
“Mother gave birth eternally and killed eternally. Within Mother, love and cruelty were one.”
