Narcissus and Goldmund

by Hermann Hesse

  The adolescent would sink deeply into these dreams, into these many-threaded webs of soul-inhabited senses. Enchantingly they resurrected not only the beloved past: childhood and mother love, the radiantly golden morning of life; but in them also the future swung, menacing, promising, beckoning, dangerous. At times these dreams, in which mother, Virgin, and mistress all fused into one, seemed horrendous crimes to him afterwards, blasphemies, deadly, unpardonable sins; at other times he found in them nothing but harmony and release. Life stared at him, filled with secrets, a somber, unfathomable world, a rigid forest bristling with fairy-tale dangers--but these were mother secrets, they came from her, led to her, they were the small dark circle, the tiny threatening abyss in her clear eye.

  So much of his forgotten childhood surged up during these mother dreams, so many small flowers of memory bloomed from the endless depth of forgetfulness, golden-faced premonition-scented memories of childhood emotions, of incidents perhaps, or perhaps of dreams. Occasionally he'd dream of fish, black and silver, swimming toward him, cool and smooth, swimming into him, through him, coming like messengers bearing joyous news of a more gracious, more beautiful reality and vanishing, tails flipping, shadowlike, gone, having brought new enigmas rather than messages. Or he'd dream of swimming fish and flying birds, and each fish or bird was his creature, depended on him, could be guided like a breath, radiated from him like an eye, like a thought, returned to him. Or he'd dream of a garden, a magic garden with fabulous trees, huge flowers, and deep blue-dark caves; the eyes of unknown animals sparkled in the grass, smooth-muscled serpents slid along the branches; giant moist-glistening berries hung from vine or bush, he'd pick them and they'd swell in his hand and leak warm juices like blood, or they had eyes which they'd move with cunning seduction; groping, he'd lean against a tree, reach for a branch, and see and feel between trunk and branch a curling nest of thick tousled hair like the hair in the pit of an arm. Once he dreamed of himself, or of his name-saint, he dreamed of Goldmund of Chrysostom, who had a mouth of gold, who spoke words with his golden mouth, and the words were small swarms of birds that flew off in fluttering groups.

  Once he dreamed that he was tall and adult but sat on the floor like a child, that he had clay in front of him and was modeling clay figures, like a child: a small horse, a bull, a tiny man, a tiny woman. The modeling amused him and he gave the animals and men ridiculously large genitals; it seemed wonderfully witty to him in his dream. Then he grew tired of the game and walked off and felt something alive at his back, something soundless and large that was coming nearer and when he looked around he saw with great astonishment and shock, but not without joy, that his small clay figures had grown and come to life. Huge mute giants, they marched past him, continuing to grow, monstrous, silent; tower-high, they traveled on into the world.

  He lived in this dream world more than in the real one. The real world: classroom, courtyard, library, dormitory, and chapel were only the surface, a quivering film over the dream-filled super-real world of images. The smallest incident could pierce a hole in this thin skin: a sudden hint in the sound of a Greek word during a tedious lesson, a whiff of scent from Father Anselm's herb satchel, the sight of a garland of stone leaves protruding from the top of a column in a window vault--these small stimulants were enough to puncture the skin of reality, to unleash the raging abysses, streams, and milky ways of an image world of the soul that lay beneath peacefully barren reality. A Latin initial changed to his mother's perfumed face, a long note in the Ave became the gate to Paradise, a Greek letter a galloping horse, a rearing serpent that quickly slithered off through the flowers, leaving the rigid page of grammar in its place.

  He rarely spoke of it, only occasionally did he give Narcissus a hint of his dream world.

  "I believe," he once said, "that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or it becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away. You probably don't appreciate letters like that very much, do you, Narcissus? But I say: with them God wrote the world."

  "I do appreciate them greatly," Narcissus said sadly. "Those are magic letters, demons can be exorcised with them. But for the pursuit of science they are, of course, unsuitable. The mind favors the definite, the solid shape, it wants its symbols to be reliable, it loves what is, not what will be, what is real and not what is possible. It does not permit an omega to change to a serpent or a bird. The mind cannot live in nature, only against nature, only as its counterpart. Do you believe now that you'll never be a scholar, Goldmund?"

  Yes, Goldmund had long since begun to believe it, resigned himself to it.

  "I'm no longer intent on striving for a mind like yours," he said, half jokingly. "I feel about mind and learning the way I did about my father: I thought I loved him very much and wanted to become like him and swore by everything he did. But as soon as my mother reappeared, I knew the meaning of love again and my father's image had suddenly shrunk next to hers and become joyless, almost repugnant. And now I'm inclined to regard all things of the mind as father-things, as unmotherly, and mother-hostile, and to feel a slight contempt for them."

  He spoke in a joking tone, and yet he was not able to bring a happy expression to his friend's face. Narcissus looked at him in silence; his look was like a caress. Then he said: "I understand you very well. There's no need for us to quarrel ever again; you are awakened, and now you recognize the difference between us, between mother-heritage and father-heritage, the difference between soul and mind. Soon you'll probably also realize that cloister life and striving for monkhood were a mistake for you, an invention of your father's. He wanted you to atone for your mother's memory, or perhaps avenge himself on her in this way. Or do you still believe that it's your destiny to remain in the cloister all your life?"

  Goldmund looked pensively at his friend's hands. How distinguished they were, severe as well as delicate, bony and white. No one could doubt that they were the hands of an ascetic and a scholar.

  "I don't know," he said in the lilting, slightly hesitant voice he had recently acquired and that seemed to dwell lengthily on every sound. "I really don't know. You judge my father somewhat harshly. He has not had an easy life. But perhaps you're right in this too. I've been in the cloister school for over three years, and he's never come to see me. He wants me to stay here forever. Perhaps that would be best, I thought I wanted it myself. But today I'm no longer sure what I really want and desire. Before, everything was simple, as simple as the letters in my textbook. Now nothing is simple any more, not even the letters. Everything has taken on many meanings and faces. I don't know what will become of me, I can't think about that now."

  "Nor need you," said Narcissus. "You'll find out where your road will lead you. It began by leading you back to your mother, and it will bring you closer to her still. As for your father, I'm not judging him too harshly. Would you want to go back to him?"

  "No, Narcissus, certainly not. If I did, it would have to be as soon as I finished school; right now perhaps. Since I'm not going to be a scholar anyhow, I've learned enough Latin and Greek and mathematics. No, I don't want to go back to my father..."

  Deep in thought, he stared ahead of him. Suddenly he cried out to Narcissus: "How on earth do you do it? Again and again you say words to me, or pose questions that shine a light into me and make me clear to myself. You merely asked if I wanted to go back to my father, and suddenly I knew that I didn't want to. How do you do it? You seem to know everything. You've said so many words that I didn't quite grasp when I heard them but that became so important to me afterwards! It was you who said that I take
my being from my mother, you who discovered that I was living under a spell and had forgotten my childhood! What makes you know people so well? Couldn't I learn that too?"

  Narcissus smiled and shook his head.

  "No, my dear Goldmund, you cannot. Some people are capable of learning a great deal, but you are not one of them. You'll never be a student. And why should you be? You don't need to. You have other gifts. You are more gifted than I, you are richer and you are weaker, your road will be more beautiful and more difficult than mine. There were times when you refused to understand me, you often kicked like a foal, it wasn't always easy, I was often forced to hurt you. I had to waken you, since you were asleep. Recalling your mother to your memory hurt at first, hurt you very much; you were found lying in the cloister garden as though dead. It had to be. No, don't stroke my hair! No, don't! I don't like it."

  "Can't I learn anything then? Will I always remain stupid, a child?"

  "There will be others to teach you. What you could learn from me, you child, you have learned."

  "Oh no," cried Goldmund, "we didn't become friends to end it now! What sort of friendship would that be, that reached its goal after a short distance and then simply stopped? Are you tired of me? Have you no more affection for me?"

  Narcissus was pacing vehemently, his eyes on the floor. Then he stopped in front of his friend.

  "Let that be," he said softly. "You know only too well that my affection for you has not come to an end."

  With doubt in his eyes he studied his friend. Then he began pacing once more, back and forth; again he stopped and looked at Goldmund, his eyes firm in the taut, haggard face. His voice was low, but hard and firm, when he said: "Listen, Goldmund! Our friendship has been good; it had a goal and the goal has been reached; you've been awakened. I would like it not to be over; I would like it to renew itself once more, renew itself again and again, and lead to new goals. For the moment there is no goal. Yours is uncertain, I can neither lead you nor accompany you. Ask your mother, ask her image, listen to her! But my goal is not uncertain, it lies here, in the cloister, it claims me at every hour. I can be your friend, but I cannot be in love. I am a monk, I have taken the vows. Before my consecration I shall ask to be released from my teaching duties and withdraw for many weeks to fast and do exercises. During that period I'll not speak of worldly matters, nor with you either."

  Goldmund understood. Sadly he said: "So you're going to do what I would have done too, if I had joined the order. And after your exercises are over and you have fasted and prayed and waked enough--then what will be your goal?"

  "You know what it is," said Narcissus.

  "Well, yes. In a few years you'll be the novice-master, head of the school perhaps. You'll improve the teaching methods; you'll enlarge the library. Perhaps you'll write books yourself. No? All right, you won't. But what is your goal?"

  Narcissus smiled faintly. "The goal? Perhaps I'll die head of the school, or abbot, or bishop. It's all the same. My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil, the widest field of action. There is no other goal."

  Goldmund: "No other goal for a monk?"

  Narcissus: "Oh, there are goals enough. One monk may find his life's goal in learning Hebrew, another in annotating Aristotle, or embellishing the cloister church, or secluding himself in meditation, or a hundred other things. For me those are no goals. I neither want to increase the riches of the cloister, nor reform the order, nor the church. I want to serve the mind within the framework of my possibilities, the way I understand the mind; no more. Is that not a goal?"

  Goldmund thought for a long while before he answered.

  "You're right," he said. "Did I hinder you much on the road toward your goal?"

  "Hinder me! Oh Goldmund, no one furthered me as much as you did. You created difficulties for me, but I am no enemy of difficulties. I've learned from them, I've partly overcome them."

  Goldmund interrupted him. Half laughingly, he said: "You've overcome them wonderfully well! But, tell me: when you aided me, guided and delivered me, and healed my soul--were you really serving the mind? In so doing you've probably deprived the cloister of an eager, well-intentioned novice, maybe you've raised an enemy of the mind, someone who'll strive for, think and do the exact opposite of what you deem good!"

  "Why not?" said Narcissus in deep earnest. "Dear friend, how little you know me still! Perhaps I did ruin a future monk in you, but in exchange I cleared the path inside you for a destiny that will not be ordinary. Even if you burned down our rather handsome cloister tomorrow, or preached a mad doctrine of error to the world, I would not for an instant regret that I helped you on the road toward it."

  With a friendly gesture he laid both hands on his friend's shoulders.

  "See here, little Goldmund, this too is part of my goal: whether I be teacher, abbot, father confessor, or whatever, never do I wish to find myself in the position of meeting a strong, valuable human being and not know what he is about, not further him. And let me say this to you: whatever becomes of either of us, whether we go this way or that, you'll never find me heedless at any moment that you call me seriously and think that you have need of me. Never."

  It sounded like a farewell; it was indeed a foretaste of farewell. Goldmund stood looking at his friend, the determined face, the goal-directed eyes; he had the unmistakable feeling that they were no longer brothers, colleagues, equals; their ways had already parted. The man before him was not a dreamer; he was not waiting for fate to call to him. He was a monk who had pledged his life, who belonged to an established order, to duty; he was a servant, a soldier of religion, of the church, of the mind. Goldmund now knew he did not belong here; this had become clear to him today. He had no home; an unknown world awaited him. His mother had known the same fate once. She had left house and home, husband and child, community and order, duty and honor, to go out into uncertainty; she had probably long since perished in it. She had had no goal, and neither had he. Having goals was a privilege he did not share with others. Oh, how well Narcissus had recognized all this long ago; how right he had been!

  Shortly after the day of their conversation, Narcissus seemed to have disappeared, to have become suddenly inaccessible. Another instructor was teaching his courses; his lectern in the library stood vacant. He was still present, he was not altogether invisible, one saw him walk through the arcade occasionally, heard him murmur in one of the chapels, kneeling on the stone floor; one knew that he had begun the great exercise, that he was fasting, that he rose three times each night to exercise. He was still present, but he had crossed over into another world; he could be seen, although not often, but he could not be reached. Nothing could be shared with him; one could not speak with him. Goldmund knew: Narcissus would reappear, he would be standing at his lectern again, sit in his chair in the refectory, he would speak again--but nothing of what had been would be again; Narcissus would belong to him no longer. As he thought about this, it became clear to him that Narcissus alone had made the cloister, the monkish life, grammar and logic, learning and the mind seem important and desirable to him. His example had tempted him; to become like Narcissus had been his ideal. True, there was also the Abbot, whom he had venerated; he had loved him, too, and thought him a high example. But the others, the teachers and classmates, the dormitory, the dining hall, the school, exercises, mass, the entire cloister no longer concerned him without Narcissus. What was he still doing here? He was waiting, standing under the cloister roof like a hesitant wanderer caught in the rain who stops under any roof, a tree, just to wait, for fear of the inhospitality of the unknown.

  Goldmund's life, during this span, was nothing but hesitation and bidding farewell. He visited the different places that had become dear and meaningful to him. He was surprised that there were so few persons and faces it would be hard for him to leave. Brother Narcissus and old Abbot Daniel and good dear Father Anselm, the friendly porter maybe, and th
eir jovial neighbor, the miller--but even they had already become unreal. Harder than that would be saying farewell to the tall stone madonna in the chapel, to the apostles of the portal. For a long time he stood in front of them, in front of the beautiful carvings of the choir pews, of the fountain in the cloister garden, the column with the three animal heads; he leaned against the linden trees in the courtyard, against the chestnut tree. One day, all of this would be memory to him, a small picturebook in his heart. Even now, while he was still in its midst, it started to fade away from him, lose its reality, change phantom-like into something that no longer was. He went in search of herbs with Father Anselm, who liked to have him around; he watched the men at work in the cloister mill; every so often he let himself be invited to a meal of wine and baked fish; but already it felt strange to him, half like a memory. In the twilight of the chapel and the penitence of his cell, his friend Narcissus was pacing, alive, but to him he had become a shadow. The cloister now seemed to be drained of reality, and appeared autumnal and transient.

  Only the life within him was real, the anguished beating of his heart, the nostalgic sting of longing, the joys and fears of his dreams. To them he belonged; to them he abandoned himself. Suddenly, in the middle of a page or a lesson, surrounded by his classmates, he'd sink into himself and forget everything, listening only to the rivers and voices inside himself which drew him away, into deep wells filled with dark melodies, into colorful abysses full of fairy-tale deeds, and all the sounds were like his mother's voice, and the thousands of eyes all were his mother's eyes.

  6

  ONE day Father Anselm called Goldmund into his pharmacy, his pretty herb pantry full of wondrous smells. Goldmund knew his way around there. The monk showed him a dried plant, neatly preserved between two sheets of paper, and asked him if he knew its name and could describe it accurately, the way it looked outside in the fields. Yes, Goldmund could; the plant was John's-wort. He was asked for a precise description of its characteristics. The old man was satisfied and gave his young friend the mission of gathering a good bundle of these plants during the afternoon, in the plant's favorite spots, which he indicated to Goldmund.