This is a beautifully written book. It is posed as a dialectic of sorts between two friends. Narcissus - Masculinity, Order, Rationality, Philosophy, and Goldmund - Femininity, Chaos, Passion, Art.
Throughout the story, we are mostly with Goldmund. We see how his lack of will to keep his impulses in check lead to suffering. We see how his lack of structure leads him to nihilism and hedonism. We also see him find meaning in art and beauty, and then lose it. We see Goldmund struggle. We do not see much of Narcissus at all, which is one of the reasons why I believe this text does not work as a dialectic as well as it should.
Another reason why this book did not work for me is its synthesis, its reconciliation of the two worlds.
Narcissus to Goldmund: "Yes, certainly one can think without imagining anything! Thinking and imagining have nothing whatsoever in common. Thinking is done not in images but with concepts and formulae. At the exact point where images stop, philosophy begins. That was precisely the subject of our frequent quarrels as young men; for you, the world was made of images, for me of ideas. I always told you that you were not made to be a thinker, and I also told you that this was no lack since, in exchange, you were a master in the realm of images. Pay attention and I'll explain it to you. If, instead of immersing yourself in the world, you had become a thinker, you might have created evil. Because you would have become a mystic. Mystics are, to express it briefly and somewhat crudely, thinkers who cannot detach themselves from images, therefore not thinkers at all. They are secret artists: poets without verse, painters without brushes, musicians without sound. There are highly gifted, noble minds among them, but they are all without exception unhappy men. You, too, might have become such a man. Instead of which you have, thank God, become an artist and have taken possession of the image world in which you can be a creator and a master, instead of being stranded in discontentment as a thinker."
Focus on what is being said about mystics. I can understand why such a thing is being said by Narcissus, but I do not understand why the idea is not challenged by Hesse at all. The perfect synthesis between Narcissus’ world and Goldmund’s world is a mystics world, and the only time mystics are mentioned, it is for mysticism to be dismissed without any proper reasoning. An empty statement uttered by a character we barely saw of and there it goes.
It is simply disappointing, because I know Hesse was capable of turning this work into something that transcends ordinary literature. Instead, we got a book which is, at best mediocre, at worst an exhibit of incompetence in regards to intellectual imagination. It pains me, truly!