Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Narcissus and Goldmund

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Narcissus and Goldmund by Ursule Molinaro, Hermann Hesse

4 reviews

night3aven's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Narcissus and Goldmund - review

"Narcissus and Goldmund" is an excellent novel with great potential, which, however, due to some rather questionable narrative choices, fails to totally shine and become the masterpiece it could have been, while presenting itself as a certainly decent work.

Hesse's style is appreciable and mostly engaging, but still keeps a certain narrative detachment, presenting pathos and emotion then in the thoughts of the characters rather than in the narrative itself.
The chosen setting also does not seem to have aged well, and for a modern reader it can easily be boring or not particularly interesting (

the strongly Christian basis in a medieval setting such as the one chosen can also influence in a way that is not always appreciable the message the author wants to put forward

). The same goes for the structure of the story, which can certainly be fascinating but also not particularly engaging, due to its totally linear and almost totally lacking in surprises or detours.

Themes:
The author addresses several themes, attempting to give personal insights in relation to each of them and presenting the reader with his own ideas about the world and life.
The main theme is the caducity of human life and the dual nature of human beings, drawing on the concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian presented by Nietzsche (

Narcissus represents order, rigor and rationality, while Goldmund represents instinct, inner chaos and the creative nature of human beings

).
The idea is undoubtedly pleasing, but it can still be limiting and at times binary, as it may seem to want to ultimately reduce human beings to only two natures and not fully address the question of the multiplicity of their being.
In line with this, Hesse presents an: interpretation of the Heraclitean concept of the harmony of opposites, proposing that the two natures of man, while unable to join and merge, can meet halfway and succeed in creating a strong bond, bringing them closer to the coveted unity of the "perfect being."
To accomplish this, wandering and exploring the world are seen as means of knowing the inner self (a typically Eastern perspective is taken up), and realizing one's own nature in the best way is seen as the main purpose of earthly life:

Goldmund realizes himself through art, which unites the two contrasting natures of man, while Narcissus seems to realize himself through the use of reason and thought to help others know their true nature (in the same way he helped Boccadoro find himself at the beginning of the novel)

.

Characters:
The characters constitute both some of the best and some of the worst elements of the novel.
The personalities of the two main characters are well delineated (albeit not always addressed with depth), while many of the secondary characters turn out to be really poorly characterized, not to mention all the female characters, rendered completely two-dimensional and lacking in depth

, as their only purpose within the work is to awaken Goldmund's chaotic/artistic nature and his pleasure

.
Speaking of Goldmund, it is impossible to deny that he very often turns out to be an extremely irritating protagonist, as well as unrealistic and at times stereotypical (

in the course of his life, before old age, every woman magically falls at his feet thanks to his arts of seduction and every person is enchanted at the sight of him

).
In fact, the most insightful and truly excellent parts of the book are those in which we observe Goldmund and Narcissus interacting with each other and confronting their different but ultimately mutual natures, thus creating a perfectly dialectical and intriguing dialogue between the two characters.
But alas, this happens only at the beginning and end of the book, and moreover quite briefly.
The central and main part of the plot is...

Goldmund's wandering, which with its centrality constitutes the real Achilles' heel of the entire work.
For most of the time, in fact, the reader finds himself observing Goldmund frequenting several women and having sex with them, only to become an artist but soon fall back into his vagabond life of which the reader has already read numerous (and very often superfluous) pages. Not to mention the part about the plague: a terrible surplus, perhaps in keeping with the plot and Goldmund, but ultimately unnecessary, emphasizing elements already seen and addressed before

.
For Goldmund is not capable of holding up the role of protagonist on his own; he can only be if placed alongside Narcissus, and letting him become the main character of the story is certainly a questionable choice, as is the choice to give Narcissus so little space within the entire book.
It turns out to be ultimately correct, then, to say that the basic idea of the book is excellent, but its implementation is not entirely well handled.

Herman Hesse thus comes across as a skillful and assured author with great control over language and his work, who, however, due to some fatal narrative errors fails to make this book a masterpiece, while still presenting an interesting work not to be disdained.

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

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