Narcissus and Goldmund

Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.

When it came about that a new face appeared in the cloister, which had seen so many faces come and go, and that this new face was not among those that pass unnoticed, and when they are gone, are soon forgotten. It was a little boy, long since announced by his father, who brought him, on a day in spring, to put him to school in the cloister. Under the chestnut tree they tethered their horses, and the porter had come out through the gate to meet them. The boy looked up at the still bare branches of the tree. ‘I have never seen such a tree as that till now,’ he said, ‘a rare, beautiful tree, and I wish I knew what they call it.’ The father, an elderly man, with a peaked, care-lined face, did not heed the words of his little son. But the porter, pleased already with the boy, told him the name of the tree. The little boy thanked him graciously, gave him his hand, and said to him: ‘My name is Goldmimd, and I am to go to school here.’ The porter smiled and led the newcomers through the gates and on up the broad stone steps. Goldmund entered the cloister without dismay, feeling that here he had met two beings, the tree and the porter, with whom he could easily be friends. Ch. I

Books were written and annotated, systems evolved, the writings of the ancients collected, missals illuminated, the people’s belief fostered, the people’s credulity smiled upon. Here there was all, and room for everything, belief and learning, depths and simplicity, the wisdom of the Greeks and the Evangelists, black magic and white - all had their uses.

How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

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 that lasts longer than we do.

(Alternate translation by Geoffrey Dunlop: We shrink from death, shuddering at our frail instability, sadly watching the flowers fade again and again, knowing in our hearts how soon we shall be as withered as they. So that when, as craftsmen, we carve images, or seek laws to formulate our thoughts, we do it all to save what little we may from the linked, never-ending dance of death. Ch. 10

‘How can I tell you, Lydia? What do we care. I can only be happy that I love you, and what will come of it never troubles me. My heart leaps up to see you ride, to hear your voice, and feel your fingers in my hair. I shall be full of joy when I can kiss you.’

‘Goldmund, a man may only kiss his Bride. And did you never think of that, then?

‘No, I never thought of that. Why should I? You know as well as I that you can never be my bride,’

‘So that is it; and since you can never be my goodman, and stay for ever at my side, it was very wicked of you to speak of love to me. Did you really think you could entice me?’

‘I thought of nothing, Lydia, but you only. I think much less than you suppose. And I ask nothing, except that one day you should kiss me. We talk too much; lovers should never talk. Ch IX

My wish for you two young scholars is that you may never lack a superior whose wits are duller than your own. No salve for pride is better than that. Ch. I

For a while the cloister of Mariabronn was renowned for its exorcists and devil-chasers; for a while for the beauty of its plain chaunt; then for a saintly father who healed and wrought miracles; then for its pike broth and stag’s liver pasty - each in its time.

Many generations of cloister schoolboys had trooped past beneath this stranger tree, laughing, gossiping, playing, squabbling, shod or barefoot, according to the season of the year; each with his writing-tablet; boys with a flower between their lips, boys cracking nuts, boys with snowballs. Always there were new ones; every second year brought its fresh faces, though most - tousled and yellow-haired - were very like the boys that had passed. Some stayed and turned into novices, then monks, and their yellow hair was shorn. Ch. I

Of the many monks who had thronged the church, the dormitories and study-rooms, there were two, remarked by all, whom all were watching - Abbot Daniel and the teaching novice, Narziss, only recently entered in the novitiate, yet already, against all tradition, and because of his exceptional gifts, employed, in Greek especially, as a teacher. These two, the novice and the abbot, were respected and heeded by all the house. They were watched and aroused curiosity, admired and envied, slandered in secret. Ch. I

In the cells and schoolrooms of the cloister, between the strong double redstone pillars and rounded arches, monks lived, taught, administered, studied, ruled. Every branch of science was pursued there, and inherited by each new generation: divine and worldly lore, the dark and the light.

All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other.

‘I am not that wanton whose feet you stroked beneath the table. You seem only to know such women as that.’

‘No, God be praised, you are far more beautiful, and finer.’

‘That was not what I meant’

‘No, but it is so. Do you know how beautiful you are?’

‘I have my looking-glass.’

‘Did you ever look and see your forehead in it, Lydia? And your shoulders and your little finger-nails; and then your knees? And have you seen how all these things belong to each other, how all has the same long, beautiful shape? Have you seen it?’ Ch IX

Goldmund smiled up into his eyes, with the new smile he had brought home from his travels, the smile which seemed so frail and old, uncertain, at times, and feeble-witted, and then again pure goodness and pure wisdom.

There was room for repentance and solitude; room for good living and company.

They had sat discussing astrology, a forbidden science, and not pursued in the cloister. Narziss had said that it was a striving to order and arrange after their kinds the many diverse sorts of human beings, their predestined character and their fates,

Here Goldmund broke into his words. ‘You speak of nothing but differences! I have slowly begun to see that they form your own particular whimsey. When you speak of this great difference between us I always feel that it lies in nothing, save in your own strange hankering to find differences.’

Narziss: ‘Right. You have hit the nail on the head. That is what I mean - that to you differences mean little, while to me they are the most important things. Mine is the nature of a scholar, and my branch of scholarship is science. And science, to quote your own words, is nothing else than a “strange hankering after differences”. Her essence could not be better defined. For men of science nothing is so important, as the clear definition of differences. To find, for instance, on every man, those signs which mark him off from all other men: that is to know him.’

Goldmund : ‘But how? One has peasant’s shoes and is a peasant; another a crown on his head, and is a king. There are your differences! But these are seen by children, without, any science.’

Narziss; ‘Yet when peasant and king are clad alike children can no longer distinguish between them.’ Ch. IV

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. Ch. IV

One thing, however, did become clear to him [Goldmund] – why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing – mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery.

Isolated here in the North, planted long ago by a Roman pilgrim, a chestnut grew, strong and solitary, by the colonnade of rounded double arches at the entrance to the cloister of Mariabronn: a noble, vigorous tree, the sweep of its foliage drooping tenderly, facing the winds in bold and quiet assurance; so tardy in spring that when all glowed green around it and even the cloister nut trees wore their russet, it awaited the shortest nights to thrust forth, through little tufts of leaves, the dim exotic rays of its blossom, and in October, after wine and harvests had long been gathered, let drop the prickly fruits from its yellowing crown... The lovely tree, aloof and tender, shadowed the entrance to the cloister, a delicate, shuddering guest from a warmer clime, secretly akin to the slender double columns of the gateway, the pillars and mouldings of the window arches, loved by all Latins and Italians, gaped at, as a stranger, by the inhabitants. Ch. I