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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
+.25☆ for the last chapter i guess this book was very silly and there were many ridiculous moments but it was moving at times
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
can't believe goldmunds last words were: "narcissus u should get laid before u die mate"
Women are not mythical dream creatures to project your Dionysian fantasies into, Goldmund/Hesse!
But the Narcissus/Goldmund relationship is so well-drawn and complex and the descriptions of the German medieval landscape are so fascinating that I liked it in spite of itself.
But the Narcissus/Goldmund relationship is so well-drawn and complex and the descriptions of the German medieval landscape are so fascinating that I liked it in spite of itself.
I am giving this 4 stars because of the writing, the vivid descriptions and the intense loving friendship between Narcissus and Goldmund. To be honest, I only enjoyed listening to the chapters when it pertained to both Narcissus and Goldmund. It was when these two friends were together that I was engaged and enthralled listening to their conversations, debates and as they deeply learning about each other and themselves. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Hesse describing Goldmund's journeys through the forest, the meadows, the Abbott and finding the bodies ravaged by the Black Plague.
The rest of the chapters I was indifferent too.
The rest of the chapters I was indifferent too.
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
12.23.2010
I spent Christmas weekend with Herr Hesse. You know what? He makes really really good eggnog. Just kidding. He’s been dead for almost fifty years.
Hesse is intellectually heavy but not forbiddingly so. One of the pleasures of reading him is his accessibility, especially in Narcissus and Goldmund. I don’t feel completely outgunned, like I do around Thomas Mann. I know I am not picking up everything Hesse is laying down, but his ideas don’t lay there like great choking loaves of dry bread, not a glass of milk in sight. With my autodidact’s scattershot ken of intellectual history, I get the sense and the flavor of the ideas that inform his prose: there’s some Frued, some Jung (the feminine as the source of creativity. Wait, is that Jung? Don’t quote me), Nietzsche’s Apollo/ Dionysius dichotomy, the obsession with freedom that would later be called existentialist. And Hesse is a great storyteller. A PhD is not a prerequisite for enjoying his crisp, economical prose. And the protagonists aren’t just walking index cards with capital-I Ideas written on them. They are complex and contradictory.
And fuck I’m not an essay writer anyway, and you know it. Not like anyone but me has read this far.
Two friends in 14th Century Germany who could not be more different are drawn to each other with a quasi-sexual magnetism. Narcissus, a scholarly prodigy, distinction surrounding him ‘like a chilling draft,’ lives within his mind. Goldmund, beautiful and winsome, rides his emotions and the flowering chaos of the image world in his imagination. Yet they bond. They meet in Mariabronn Cloister, where Narcissus, who seeks comfort, order and certainty, burrows in like a holy tick. But Goldmund is passionate and expansive, unsuited for the routines and rigidities of a settled life, let alone the ascetic and asexual confinement a monk must embrace. Narcissus, though his name suggests self-absorption, is observant and caring and sees this very clearly. He confronts Goldmund, telling his friend plainly and painfully that he is strait-jacketing his soul by trying to become a scholar. He evokes his friend’s little-known mother whom Narcissus sees haunting his friend’s consciousness and iacta alea est.
Goldmund breaks down at the recollection of her, a wanton woman who seduced travelers and ran away when he was young. He realizes his entire dream of being a monk was imposed by his father who wanted to punish her. Goldmund, freed from his father’s strictures, allows his mother’s image to return to him, where through the course of his waking and dreaming life, she will merge with Eve, with the Virgin, and with every lover he will ever have.
Goldmund leaves the cloister and gives himself up to sensual and emotional experience, drifting from village to village, woman to woman. His driftings take up most of the novel.
He is not amoral. He always takes the path that gives him the most independence. Sometimes the choice is his: he refuses a comfortable sinecure as a master artisan. Sometimes the path is imposed on him: he is evicted from a knight’s home because of the sexual and emotional tension stemming from his refusal to marry one of his daughter or seduce the other one. By the way, the scene where Julia and Lydia both come to Goldmund’s bed is a jewel of erotic writing.
These choices are not simple for him. Moving on is always fraught, often melancholy and even despair-inducing, but Goldmund never regrets it. At his lowest, spending a frantic night in a prison cell, awaiting his execution at dawn for theft, he uses the edge of a stair tread to saw the ropes that bind his wrists and vows to murder the priest who will come in the morning to hear his confession before he is borne to the gallows. The priest, fatefully, is Narcissus, rechristened John, who has secured a pardon for his friend. Invited to resettle at Mariabronn, Goldmund tentatively agrees, but the cloister chafes as much as the ropes that bound his hands, and though eternally grateful, he decides to again move on.
Beautiful book.
12.23.2010
I spent Christmas weekend with Herr Hesse. You know what? He makes really really good eggnog. Just kidding. He’s been dead for almost fifty years.
Hesse is intellectually heavy but not forbiddingly so. One of the pleasures of reading him is his accessibility, especially in Narcissus and Goldmund. I don’t feel completely outgunned, like I do around Thomas Mann. I know I am not picking up everything Hesse is laying down, but his ideas don’t lay there like great choking loaves of dry bread, not a glass of milk in sight. With my autodidact’s scattershot ken of intellectual history, I get the sense and the flavor of the ideas that inform his prose: there’s some Frued, some Jung (the feminine as the source of creativity. Wait, is that Jung? Don’t quote me), Nietzsche’s Apollo/ Dionysius dichotomy, the obsession with freedom that would later be called existentialist. And Hesse is a great storyteller. A PhD is not a prerequisite for enjoying his crisp, economical prose. And the protagonists aren’t just walking index cards with capital-I Ideas written on them. They are complex and contradictory.
And fuck I’m not an essay writer anyway, and you know it. Not like anyone but me has read this far.
Two friends in 14th Century Germany who could not be more different are drawn to each other with a quasi-sexual magnetism. Narcissus, a scholarly prodigy, distinction surrounding him ‘like a chilling draft,’ lives within his mind. Goldmund, beautiful and winsome, rides his emotions and the flowering chaos of the image world in his imagination. Yet they bond. They meet in Mariabronn Cloister, where Narcissus, who seeks comfort, order and certainty, burrows in like a holy tick. But Goldmund is passionate and expansive, unsuited for the routines and rigidities of a settled life, let alone the ascetic and asexual confinement a monk must embrace. Narcissus, though his name suggests self-absorption, is observant and caring and sees this very clearly. He confronts Goldmund, telling his friend plainly and painfully that he is strait-jacketing his soul by trying to become a scholar. He evokes his friend’s little-known mother whom Narcissus sees haunting his friend’s consciousness and iacta alea est.
Goldmund breaks down at the recollection of her, a wanton woman who seduced travelers and ran away when he was young. He realizes his entire dream of being a monk was imposed by his father who wanted to punish her. Goldmund, freed from his father’s strictures, allows his mother’s image to return to him, where through the course of his waking and dreaming life, she will merge with Eve, with the Virgin, and with every lover he will ever have.
Goldmund leaves the cloister and gives himself up to sensual and emotional experience, drifting from village to village, woman to woman. His driftings take up most of the novel.
He is not amoral. He always takes the path that gives him the most independence. Sometimes the choice is his: he refuses a comfortable sinecure as a master artisan. Sometimes the path is imposed on him: he is evicted from a knight’s home because of the sexual and emotional tension stemming from his refusal to marry one of his daughter or seduce the other one. By the way, the scene where Julia and Lydia both come to Goldmund’s bed is a jewel of erotic writing.
These choices are not simple for him. Moving on is always fraught, often melancholy and even despair-inducing, but Goldmund never regrets it. At his lowest, spending a frantic night in a prison cell, awaiting his execution at dawn for theft, he uses the edge of a stair tread to saw the ropes that bind his wrists and vows to murder the priest who will come in the morning to hear his confession before he is borne to the gallows. The priest, fatefully, is Narcissus, rechristened John, who has secured a pardon for his friend. Invited to resettle at Mariabronn, Goldmund tentatively agrees, but the cloister chafes as much as the ropes that bound his hands, and though eternally grateful, he decides to again move on.
Beautiful book.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
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
I really tried, but I could not read more than half of this. The idea is interesting, we have this distinction between Narcissus and Goldmund, a very clear distinction, but I think this book goes on and on with it. This is how much I can take before giving it up. Normally I do not dnf books, I try my best to finish them. Maybe I will come back to this later, but now is not a good time.