Narcissus and Goldmund

by Hermann Hesse

  Narcissus pondered a great deal about his friend. His special gift of spotting and emotionally recognizing the nature and destiny of others had long since told him about Goldmund. All that was alive and radiant in this young man spoke only too clearly: he bore all the marks of a strong human being, richly endowed sensually and spiritually, perhaps an artist, but at any rate a person with a great potential for love, whose fulfillment and happiness consisted of being easily inflamed and able to give himself. Then why was this being with such rich and perceptive senses so set on leading the ascetic life of the mind? Narcissus thought at great length about it. He knew that Goldmund's father favored his son's determination. Could the father have inspired it? What spell had he cast over his son to make him believe that this was his destiny, his duty? What sort of a person was this father? Narcissus had often intentionally touched on the subject of this father--and Goldmund had frequently spoken of him--and yet he could not imagine him, could not see him. Was it not strange and suspicious? Whenever Goldmund told a story about a trout he had caught as a boy, when he described a butterfly, imitated the call of a bird, spoke of a friend, a dog, a beggar, he created a vivid picture. Whenever he spoke of his father, one saw nothing. No, if his father had really been such an important, powerful, dominant figure in Goldmund's life, he would have been able to describe him differently, to conjure up vivid images of him. Narcissus did not think highly of this father, he did not like him; sometimes he wondered if he were really Goldmund's father. But what gave him such power? How had he succeeded in filling Goldmund's soul with dreams so alien to his soul?

  Goldmund also brooded a great deal. He did feel warmly loved by his friend, and yet he often had the unpleasant sensation of not being taken seriously, of being treated a little like a child. And what did it mean when his friend insinuated, again and again, that he was not like him?

  Yet thinking did not fill all of Goldmund's days. He was not able to think for too long at a time. There were other things to be done in the course of a day. He often went to see the friar porter, with whom he was on excellent terms. He'd beg and coax for an opportunity to ride the horse Bless for an hour or two, and he was very popular with the few nearby cloister tenants, especially with the miller. He'd often stalk otters with the miller's man, or they'd bake pancakes with the finely ground prelate's flour, which Goldmund could tell from all other kinds of flour, eyes closed, just by the smell of it. Although he spent time with Narcissus, there still remained a number of hours in which he pursued his old habits and pleasures. And usually the service was also a joy to him. He loved to sing in the student choir; he loved to say a rosary in front of a favorite altar, to listen to the solemnly beautiful Latin of the mass, to see the gold of the receptacles and ornaments glitter through clouds of incense, and the quiet venerable saints' figures standing on columns, the evangelists with the beasts, St. Jacob with his hat and pilgrim's satchel.

  He felt drawn toward these wood and stone figures; he liked to think that they stood in secret relationship to him, perhaps like immortal, omniscient godfathers who protected and guided his life. He felt the same secret bond and love for the columns and capitals of the windows and doors, for the altar ornaments, for the beautifully profiled staves and wreaths, for the flowers and thickets of sprouting leaves that burst from the stone of the columns and unfolded so eloquently and intensely. It seemed a valuable, intimate secret to him that, outside of nature with its plants and creatures, there existed a second, silent, manmade nature: these men, beasts, and plants of stone and wood. He spent many of his free hours copying these figures, animal heads and leaf clusters; sometimes he also tried to draw real flowers, horses, human faces.

  And he was very fond of the hymns, especially of those in honor of Mary. He loved the firm severe pace of these songs, their constantly recurring rhythms and praises. He could follow their reverent meaning adoringly, or he could forget their meaning and become engrossed in the solemn cadence of the verses and let himself be filled by them, by the deep, drawn-out notes, the full sound of the vowels, the pious refrains. Deep down in his heart he had no love for learning, grammar, and logic, although they, too, had their beauty. His real love was for the image-and-sound world of liturgy.

  And every so often, for brief moments, he'd break the estrangement that had set in between him and his classmates. It annoyed and bored him in the long run to find himself surrounded by rejection and coolness. Every so often he'd make a grumpy bench companion laugh or start a taciturn bed neighbor chatting; he'd work at it for an hour, ingratiating himself and winning back a couple of friends for a while. Twice these approaches brought him, much against his intention, an invitation to "go to the village." Then he'd become frightened and quickly draw back. No, he was not going to the village again, and he managed to forget the girl with the braids, never--or almost never--to think of her any more.

  4

  NARCISSUS'S long siege had not succeeded in bringing Goldmund's secret out into the open. For a long time he had apparently labored in vain to awaken him, to teach him the language in which the secret could be told.

  Goldmund's description of his home and childhood gave no clear picture. There was a shadowlike, faceless father whom he venerated, and then there was the legend of a mother who had vanished, or perished, long ago, who was nothing but a pallid name. Narcissus, the experienced reader of souls, had gradually come to recognize that Goldmund was one of those people part of whose lives have been lost; pressure of circumstances or some kind of magic power has obliterated a portion of their past. He realized that nothing would be gained by mere questioning and teaching, that he had overestimated the power of logic and spoken many useless words.

  But the love that bound him to his friend and their habit of spending much time together had not been fruitless. In spite of the vast differences of their characters, each had learned much from the other. Beside the language of reason, a language of the soul had gradually come into being between them; it was as if, branching off the main street, there are many small, almost secret lanes. Gradually the imaginative power of Goldmund's soul had tracked such paths into Narcissus's thoughts and expressions, making him understand--and sympathize with--many of Goldmund's perceptions and feelings, without need for words. New links from soul to soul developed in the warm glow of love; words came later. That is how, one holiday, in the library, there occurred a conversation between the friends that neither had expected--a conversation that touched at the core and purpose of their friendship and cast new, far-reaching lights.

  They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: "You're forever talking of differences--I've finally recognized a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences."

  Narcissus: "Yes. You've hit the nail on the head. That's it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the 'determination to establish differences.' Its essence couldn't be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him."

  Goldmund: "If you like. One man wears wooden shoes and is a peasant; another wears a crown and is a king. Those are differences, I grant you. But children can see them, too, without any science."

  Narcissus: "But when peasant and king are dressed alike, the child can no longer tell one from the other."

  Goldmund: "Neither can science."

  Narcissus: "Perhaps it can. Not that science is more intelligent than the child, but it h
as more patience; it remembers more than just the most obvious characteristics."

  Goldmund: "So does any intelligent child. He will recognize the king by the look in his eyes, or by his bearing. To put it plainly: you learned men are arrogant, you always think everybody else stupid. One can be extremely intelligent without learning."

  Narcissus: "I am glad that you're beginning to realize that. You'll soon realize, too, that I don't mean intelligence when I speak of the difference between us. I do not say, you are more intelligent, or less intelligent; better or worse. I merely say, you are different."

  Goldmund: "That's easy enough to understand. But you don't speak only of our difference in character; you often speak also of the differences in fate, in destiny. Why, for instance, should your destiny be different from mine? We are both Christians, we are both resolved to lead the life of the cloister, we are both children of our good Father in heaven. Our goal is the same: eternal bliss. Our destiny is the same: the return to God."

  Narcissus: "Very good. True, in the view of dogma, one man is exactly like another, but not in life. Take Our Saviour's favorite disciple, John, on whose breast he rested his head, and that other disciple who betrayed him--you hardly can say that they had the same destiny."

  Goldmund: "Narcissus, you are a sophist. We'll never come together on that kind of road."

  Narcissus: "No road will bring us together."

  Goldmund: "Don't speak like that."

  Narcissus: "I'm serious. We are not meant to come together, not any more than sun and moon were meant to come together, or sea and land. We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."

  Goldmund was perplexed. He bowed his head, and his face was sad.

  Finally he said: "Is that why you so often don't take my thoughts seriously?"

  Narcissus hesitated before he answered. His voice was clear and hard when he said: "Yes, that is why. I take only you seriously, dear Goldmund; you'll have to get used to that. Believe me, there isn't an intonation in your voice, not a gesture, not a smile that I don't take seriously. But your thoughts I take less seriously. I take seriously all that I find essential and necessary in you. Why do you want particular attention paid to your thoughts, when you have so many other gifts?"

  Goldmund smiled bitterly: "You've always considered me a child; I've said it before."

  Narcissus remained firm: "Part of your thought I consider a child's thought. Remember what we said earlier: an intelligent child need not be less intelligent than a learned scholar. But when the child wants to assert its opinion in matters of learning, then the scholar doesn't take it seriously."

  Goldmund said with violence: "You smile at me even when we don't discuss matters of learning! For instance, you always act as though all my piety, my efforts to advance my studies, my desire to become a monk were so many childish fantasies."

  Narcissus looked at him gravely: "I take you seriously when you are Goldmund. But you're not always Goldmund. I wish nothing more than to see you become Goldmund through and through. You are not a scholar, you are not a monk--scholars and monks can have a coarser grain. You think you're not learned or logical or pious enough for me. On the contrary, you are not enough yourself."

  Perplexed and even hurt, Goldmund had withdrawn after this conversation. And yet a few days later he himself wished to hear more. And this time Narcissus was able to give Goldmund a picture of their different natures that he found more acceptable.

  Narcissus had talked himself into a fever; he felt that Goldmund was accepting his words more openly and willingly, that he had power over him. His success made him give in to the temptation to say more than he had intended; he let himself be carried away by his own words.

  "Look," he said, "I am superior to you only in one point: I'm awake, whereas you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them. For you to learn that about yourself is the potential reason for your having met me. In your case, mind and nature, consciousness and dream world lie very far apart. You've forgotten your childhood; it cries for you from the depths of your soul. It will make you suffer until you heed it.

  "But enough of that! Being awake, as I've already said, makes me stronger than you. This is the one point in which I am superior to you, and that is why I can be useful to you. In every other respect you are superior to me, my dear Goldmund--or rather, you will be, as soon as you've found yourself."

  Goldmund had listened with astonishment, but at the words "you've forgotten your childhood" he flinched as though pierced by an arrow. Narcissus didn't notice; he often kept his eyes closed for long moments while he spoke, or he'd stare straight ahead, as though this helped him to find his words. He did not see Goldmund's face twitch suddenly.

  "I ... superior to you!" stammered Goldmund, feeling as though his whole body had been lamed.

  "Why, yes," Narcissus continued. "Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. Your dreams are of girls; mine of boys..."

  Goldmund listened, wide-eyed. Narcissus spoke with a kind of rhetorical self-intoxication. Several words struck Goldmund like swords. Toward the end he grew pale and closed his eyes, and when Narcissus became aware of it and asked with sudden fear what was wrong, the deathly pale boy said: "Once I broke down in front of you and burst into tears--you remember. That must not happen again. I'd never forgive myself--or you! Please go away at once and let me be alone. You've said terrible words to me."

  Narcissus was overcome. His words had carried him away; he had felt that he was speaking better than usual. Now he saw with consternation that some of his words had deeply affected his friend and somehow pierced him to the quick. He found it hard to leave him at that moment and hesitated a second or two, but Goldmund's frown left him no choice. Confused, he ran off to allow his friend the solitude he needed.

  This time the extreme tension in Goldmund's soul did not dissolve itself in tears. He was still, feeling deeply, desperately wounded, as though his friend had plunged a knife into his breast. He breathed heavily, with mortally contracted heart, a wax-pale face, limp hands. This was the old pain, only considerably sharper, the same inner choking, the feeling that something frightful had to be looked in the eye, something unbearable. But this time there was no relief of tears to overcome the pain. Holy Mother of God, what then could this be? Had something happened? Had he been murdered? Had he killed someone? What had been said that was so frightful?

  He panted, pushing his breath away from him. Like a person who has been poisoned, he was bursting with the feeling that he had to free himself of something deadly, deep inside him. With the movements of a swimmer he rushed from his room, fled unconsciously to the quietest, loneliest parts of the cloister, through passages, down stairways and out into the open. He had wandered into the innermost refuge of the cloister, into the court of the cross. The sky stretched clear and sunny over the few bright flower beds; the scent of roses drifted through the cool stony air in sweet hesitant threads.

  Without knowing it, Narcissus had accomplished his long-desired aim: he had named the demon b
y which his friend was possessed; he had called it out into the open. One of his many words had touched the secret in Goldmund's heart, which had reared up in furious pain. For a long time Narcissus wandered through the cloister, looking for his friend, but he could not find him.

  Goldmund was standing under one of the massive stone arches that led from the passageway out into the little cloister garden; on each column three animal heads, the stone-carved heads of dogs and wolves, glared down at him. Pain was raging inside him, pushing, finding no way toward the light, toward reason. Deathly fear clutched at his throat, knotted his stomach. Mechanically he looked up, saw the animal heads on the capital of one of the columns, and began to feel that those three monstrous heads were squatting, glaring, barking inside him.

  "I'm going to die any moment," he felt with terror. "I'll lose my mind and those animal snouts will devour me."

  His body twitched; he sank down at the foot of the column. The pain was too great; he had reached the limit. He fainted; he drowned in longed-for oblivion.

  *

  It had been a rather unsatisfactory day for Abbot Daniel. Two of the older monks had come to him, foaming with excitement, full of accusations, bringing up petty old jealousies, squabbling furiously. He had listened to them altogether too long, had unsuccessfully admonished them, and dismissed them severely with rather heavy penances. With a feeling of futility in his heart, he had withdrawn for prayer in the lower chapel, prayed, and stood up again, unrefreshed. Now he stepped out into the court a moment for some air, attracted by the smell of roses. There he found the pupil Goldmund lying in a faint on the stones. He looked at him with sadness, frightened by the pallor and remoteness of the usually winsome face. It had not been a good day, and now this to top it all! He tried to lift the young man, but was not up to the effort. With a deep sigh the old man walked away to call two younger brothers to carry Goldmund upstairs and to send Father Anselm to him, the cloister physician. He also sent for Brother Narcissus, who soon appeared before him.