Narcissus and Goldmund

The German writer Hermann Hesse published his novel Narcissus and Goldmund in 1930 to tremendous critical acclaim. Hesse, who would eventually go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, explores the philosophical theme of man’s duality through an allegorical fairy tale that is set in a vaguely medieval landscape. The novel’s two main characters exemplify Nietzsche’s theory of the split between the Apollonian versus Dionysian tendencies – the idea that we are torn to either be creatures of pure reason and intellect or be ruled by the need for physical pleasure and earthy pursuits.

The novel’s main character is the beautiful Goldmund, who begins the narrative as a novice at a monastery in the German countryside during the Middle Ages. He is determined to become a monk as a way of atoning for his father’s insistence that his mother was guilty of unspecified sins. In the monastery, Goldmund befriends the equally beautiful but slightly older Narcissus, the youngest of the teachers, although the two men feel that their natures are contradictory.

When Goldmund ventures out to the nearby village, he is seduced by a Gypsy girl – an experience that makes him realize that he is not cut out for the monk life. This clarifies the duality he has experienced in his relationship with Narcissus. The older man is happy to lead a cloistered life of the mind and has no desire for relationships more involved than his intellectual “love” for Goldmund; instead, he retreats even further into solitary meditation. The younger man, on the other hand, decides to leave the monastery and pursue the life of a wanderer and free spirit. As they part, Goldmund is told that he needs to find his mother – psychologically, if not in reality.



For a while, Goldmund works as a scholar in the castle of a Count. He seduces both of the Count’s daughters, although he only has feelings for Lydia, the older. When his adventures come to light, the Count kicks him out and he resumes wandering.

The world is Goldmund’s oyster – life is easy, there is a lot of pleasure in being on the road, and women are constantly throwing themselves at him because of his incredible looks. He racks up the sexual conquest count of fifty men. But not everything is perfect. For instance, he kills a fellow traveler when that man tries to steal the gold coin Lydia gifted Goldmund. Feeling guilty, he confesses his sins to a priest – and then is mesmerized by a sculpture of the Virgin Mary he finds in the church.

Goldmund seeks out its maker, the woodcarver Master Niklaus, who agrees to teach Goldmund everything. Learning “everything” only takes a year, and Goldmund begins working on his own sculpture – an image of the Apostle John, whose face is modeled after Narcissus. Being an artist is deeply meaningful to Goldmund, since it is one way to cross the Apollonian/Dionysian divide. Artists take the lived experience of the body and transform it into a form to be appreciated by the mind. But Goldmund is dismayed that Niklaus works on commission rather than simply for glory and decides to abandon his next great project: his own version of the Virgin Mary (or, the mother figure he is supposed to be looking for).



Goldmund decides to search for the Universal Mother in life rather than in art, and resumes traveling. This time, he encounters villages felled by plague and is rapt by the brutal directness of the piled-up corpses. But, the dead have left behind farms full of food, so Goldmund and his companions stay to feast while they can. His lover Helene is raped by a villager, who also bites her, thus infecting her with plague. Goldmund fights the rapist and is amazed to see his girlfriend look on with desire. In her face he sees his next art project: a lustful Eve.

After Helene dies, Goldmund despairs about the anti-Semitism the plague brings forward as people blame Jews for the infection. He falls in love with a Jewish woman, Rebekka, who is the only one who refuses to have sex with him. The whole situation makes him question God in the style of Job.

Goldmund’s past suddenly catches up with him, and he is arrested and sentenced to death. When the priest comes to hear his confession, he is surprised to see none other than Narcissus. Narcissus is now the monastery’s abbot and has taken the name John. The two men have a long conversation about why God allows evils like plague. For Narcissus, this is the central question of faith; for Goldmund, this is the reality that art can sublimate into meaning.



The pair return to the monastery where Goldmund will work as an artist, which is his way of trying for personal perfection. Soon after making decorative pieces for the abbey, Goldmund is again filled with wanderlust. But this time, when he goes out into the world, he sees that he has become old and is no longer sexually attractive to women. This destroys him, and he gets ready to die. The two men profess their undying love for one another (purely platonic, intellectual love), and Goldmund declares that in death he is finally going to his mother.

Although Narcissus and Goldmund was considered a triumph on first publication, Hesse fell out of literary vogue after WWII. He was rediscovered by those involved in the counterculture movements of the 1960s, who felt that that his ideas meshed well with the anti-establishment philosophy underpinning the social upheaval of that time. As noted in The New York Times Book Review, Hesse’s work “has appealed both to…an underground and to an establishment…and to the disenchanted young sharing his contempt for our industrial civilization.”