I am currently reading this most intriguing book of two distinct friends who meet in a cloister where one is destined to be a priest and the other to lead the life of a wanderer/artist and experience life to it's fullest. When Goldmun (the wanderer/artist) enters the cloister he falls in love with admiration for Narcissus. A very strict, intelligent and perceptive man who had become an authority figure at an early age due to his intellect. Goldmun wants to immediately learn from Narcissus so he begins to learn deals in order to speak and make friends with this man. He finally gets a chance to converse with Narcissus but two conversations later Narcisuss achieves an unknown goal to Goldmun, which was to awaken him to the fact that he wasn't meant to lead the cloister life. Goldmun finds this hard to accept but later on realizes that Narcissus was right and that he was only following his father's wishes and not his own. In a most brilliant conversation Hesse (author of the book) pans out the differences between Goldmun & Narcissus...
P. 39 Hesse "Narcissus and Goldmun"
Goldmun: "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."
Goldmun: "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."
Goldmun: "Neither can science."
Narcissus: "Perhaps, it can. Not that science is more intelligent than the child, but it has more patience; it remembers more than just the most obvious characteristics."
Goldmun: "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 mierely say, you are different."
Goldmun: "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 Chrstians, 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."
Goldmun: "Narcissus, you are a sophist. We'll never come together on that kind of road."
Narcissu: "No road will bring us together."
Goldmun: "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."
This book helps me reflect on the many things that I've seen and
experienced in my life...some part of myself that I have often shared
with individuals to acquire and answer, and also to receive an answer
from individuals who have not been able to understand why I set up
differences and hold on to them and why I understand and perceive
certain things the way that I do. However, I can only say that I
began my life like Narcissus and became I guess a combination of Goldmun and Narcissus but I still don't
know if the beginning was for pure admiration or if it was because that
which I admired wasn't my destiny. Because like Goldmun to have
experience life it means to sacrifice and to sacrifice is a difficult
choice and to know one thing and not many things for me is just as painful and
sacrificial of a choice....To quote Hesse's Goldmun "Either one lived
and let one's senses play..which brought great bliss but was no
protection against death...or else one put up a defence, imprisoned
oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage
of life-then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted
in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process
and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life." p.246 Although, in the end Goldmun was past 25 years of age and I have just gotten there, I say that I have quite the upperhand on a lot of things but still haven't been able to settle into that idea of enlisting into something fixed...I guess time will tell but for now that chill still runs through my spine at the thought of becoming a caged bird...Perhaps is like Hesse's Narcissus says, "you are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I
call a man awake who knows is his conscious reason his innermost
unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with
them." P. 42 I have more to learn and I love books
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